In addition to his work with Bruce and the E Street Band, Steve also acted as mentor to Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, playing with the band whenever possible between his Springsteen commitments. He also arranged, produced and wrote most of the original material for their first three albums, I Don't Want To Go Home, This Time It's For Real and Hearts Of Stone, using the pseudonyms Miami Steve, Sugar Miami Steve and Stevie Van Zandt. When his professional relationship with Southside and company ended in 1978, he lost his main creative outlet. Although he began to formulate ideas for a solo project soon afterwards, work on the River album and tour (plus the co-production of Gary U.S. Bonds' Dedication album) had kept Steve fully occupied for the following two and a half years. Only when approached by representatives of EMI-America in the summer of 1981 did he begin to seriously consider the prospect of making a solo album. " I really felt they knew me and understood my work," he said in 1982. " If they hadn't come to me and asked, I probably would have put it off forever."

In the fall, with Bruce at home in New Jersey writing the Nebraska material, Steve assembled a one-off band (comprising musicians from both the E Street Band and the Asbury Jukes) to record a bunch of new songs. "He just wanted to rehearse, get the songs ready, go in and just cut them live in the studio," recalled Max Weinberg shortly afterwards. "We rehearsed ten to twelve hours a day. It was like being in a garage band." Among the songs recorded at these sessions were "I've Been Waiting," which dated from the Hearts Of Stone period, "Inside Of Me," "Until The Good Is Gone," "Princess of Little Italy" and "Men Without Women," which became the album's title track and was both inspired by and named after a book of short stories by Ernest Hemingway."It was a book of boxers and bullfighters and soldiers," Steve told Rolling Stone Magazine, "but it coulda had a chapter about a rock and roll band."

Before completing work on his own record, Steve co-produced a second Gary U.S. Bonds comeback album, On the Line, in early 1982, then rejoined Bruce and the E Streeters in the spring for a series of recording sessions which produced eight of the twelve songs eventually released on Born in the USA two years later. In the summer, while Bruce prepared his home demo tape for official release, Steve put together his own permanent touring band, which included ex-Young Rascal Dino Danelli on drums, Jean Beauvoir from the Plasmatics on bass and the entire Asbury Jukes horn section. Partly to distance himself from any Springsteen comparisons and partly as a tribute to his early R&B and blues influences Little Richard and Little Walter, Miami Steve became Little Steven. Having accepted the Van Zandt philosophy that "rock and roll is motivation, not entertainment" and agreeing to abide by a strict set of rules which stipulated "no drugs, no alcohol, no lasting diversion," his new band became the Disciples of Soul. "Soul for me is taking on another definition," Steve said at the time. "What it means for me now is an emotional commitment to something. That's what the band means - people who are emotionally committed to their work."

Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul made their live debut at the Peppermint Lounge in New York on July 18, 1982 and began touring later in the year, with appearances at Radio City Music Hall in New York, the Roxy in Los Angeles, Big Man's West in Red Bank and the Marquee Club in London. The band's exhilarating horn-drenched blend of rock and soul picked up where Hearts Of Stone had left off, while the set lists included most of the Men Without Women album, several Asbury Jukes classics and a handful of covers, including Marvin Gaye's "Can I Get a Witness" and Otis Redding's " Respect." The album was released in October of that year. "Men Without Women was a New York song cycle about hard life on the city streets," recalled Jay Cocks in Time Magazine five years later. "The songs were fervent and the Disciples of Soul blasted behind Van Zandt like a garage band concertizing on top of a pizza oven." Another short series of U.S. dates and a five-week tour of Europe followed in the first half of 1983.

This new beginning for Van Zandt was actually a false start. Shortly after the band's appearance at the US Festival in San Bernardino on May 30, he ditched the horn section, the soul influences and the Jukes songs. Adopting a more direct approach both lyrically and musically, he then wrote and recorded the Voice Of America album. The new material ("Justice," "Solidarity," "Los Desaparecidos," "I Am A Patriot") reflected a growing political awareness, sparked off by his eye-opening experiences in Europe on the River tour (he once described passing through Berlin's Checkpoint Charlie as "one of the most intense experiences of my life") and his subsequent investigations into U.S. foreign policy. "To me, the story of this record is in some ways the story of my life," he told Musician Magazine in 1984. "I felt the clouds sort of open up and I knew exactly what I wanted to do, how I wanted to do it and who I was. I think on the first record I explored who I was, you can feel the struggle. Now I really think I'm doing something nobody else is doing. I wasn't sure I was ever gonna find that." The latest version of the Disciples of Soul previewed several of the new songs on a brief European tour in August 1983, although the album wasn't released until the following year.

For most of 1982 and 1983, Bruce had been comparatively inactive, leaving Steve free to tour and record with his own band, missing only a handful of sessions in the process. Although his solo career now took priority, Steve had often indicated that he would continue to work with Bruce in the future if their schedules didn't clash, but this plan inevitably proved unworkable. In the spring of 1984, with Born in the USA, Voice of America and their associated international tours ready to roll, Little Steven's departure from the Springsteen camp was officially announced, bringing to an end the E Street Band's greatest era.