Steven Van Zandt is number one at being the number two guy.
A guitarist for the E Street Band with Bruce Springsteen and the underboss Silvio Dante to crime boss Tony Soprano, his role adjacent to centre stage has allowed him to pursue other passions.
He walked away from Springsteen just as the band was filling stadiums, but he found his calling as an activist, boycotting Sun City in South Africa and campaigning to free Nelson Mandela.
Steven Van Zandt Photo: AFP / FILE
His memoir is Unrequited Infatuations: Odyssey of a Rock and Roll Consigliere (A Cautionary Tale).
His was born at the right time to pick up rock n roll as a youngster, he told Jesse Mulligan.
“We kind of inherited it as an art form.
“The Beatles and the British invasion of 1964 turned our culture into a band culture, which it hadn’t been.”
Van Zandt saw the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the mid-1960s and says it was transformative.
“I didn’t want to be a college person, I didn’t want to be a military person, there was no job that interested me, I was too small for sports so whaddaya gonna do?
“There were no options until the Beatles and The Who and The Kinks and The Animals the Dave Clark Five, The Yardbirds until they all came and said here’s an option, here’s a new world you can maybe be a part of.”
He and Springsteen still have a strong bond of friendship, Van Zandt says.
“That bond that brought us together then I think has maintained itself all the way to present day. It still connects us I think.”
Rock n roll was everything to them when they met, he says.
“We never had a plan B and it was important if you’re the only freak in town you’re going to start wondering maybe there’s something wrong with you, but if there’s two of you, then it’s like maybe we’re on to something.”
He and Springsteen had few rows, but one led to him quitting the band on the cusp of international success.
“After fifteen years in rock n roll trying to make it and we finally make it we have one success and I leave, it finally hit me on the flight to South Africa I’d just ended my life, my life was literally over.”
Van Zandt threw himself into the South African liberation movement he says in part because he had nothing else to do.
“I’d just lost my career, my career was gone so I had nothing else, but that.”
Van Zandt has gone on to have a successful career as a writer producer performer and actor.
