The Last Gangster in Town

“Most people are lucky to have one in their lifetime but I’ve got three of the best jobs in the world.” – Little Steven Van Zandt

He’s a key member of one of the most legendary outfits in rock and roll history; he stars in a television phenomenon; and now he is spearheading a revolution in American rock radio. Steven Van Zandt aka Little Steven aka Miami Steve aka Silvio Dante of The Sopranos is a lot of things but mostly he is rock and roll incarnate, a true believer and a born survivor.

RDS, Dublin, Saturday May 31, 2003, 4.30pm: hours before Bruce Springsteen is due onstage, the E Street Band’s backstage compound is a haven of peace and tranquillity in contrast to the good-natured mayhem on the streets outside. There are no obvious hierarchies or inner sanctums here, no goons at every step demanding an orange pass to go here, a red one to go there and a silver one to go anywhere else.
E Street bassist Gary W. Tallent, “the thunder from down under”, strolls past with a plate of broccoli. Drummer “The mighty” Max Weinberg says a friendly “hi”; keyboard player, “Phantom” Dan Federici wanders around hands in pockets. Piano player Roy Bittan “the illegitimate son of Liberaci and Jerry Lee Lewis,” is joking with the crew while Clarence Clemons (truly a big man in the flesh) is also laughing heartily at something or other. The Boss himself meanwhile is still up onstage giving his Fender Esquire the usual pre-show workout.
But I’m here to meet Little Steven Van Zandt, long time E Street guitarist, (in Bruce’s words “the keeper of all that is righteous on E Street,”) star of The Sopranos and latterly host of his own syndicated radio show – Little Steven’s Underground Garage. Arriving into the catering marquee on cue, the instantly recognisable Van Zandt looks like a cross between Gypsy Rose Lee and Keith Richards’ badly dressed kid brother. (Springsteen recently introduced him onstage as “the only man comfortable anywhere in the world – in his pyjamas!”)
Straight away he wants to know, “if any of the U2 guys are around” or if Ronnie Wood is in town. “I’d like to invite them all along tonight,” he says “Ray Davies came to the show in London – it was great to see him again.”
He’s looking around for some iced tea, which doesn’t appear to be available.
“Hey, I thought tea was a big deal in Ireland,” he says in a gruff voice not dissimilar to that of Silvio Dante, the strip-club owning mobster he plays in The Sopranos.
Time is tight and there’s a lot to talk about and I tell him I won’t ask him to go through the whole story of how he came to be offered the part in the hit TV series.
“I’d be really grateful to you for that,” he laughs, before telling most of the story anyway.
For those not familiar with the details it goes something like this: It’s May ’97 at the annual Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame ceremony. Van Zandt has been invited to make the induction speech for ’60s legends The Rascals. The ceremony is being broadcast for the first time and TV producer and another New Jersey native David Chase is at home watching closely. He is in the latter stages of developing a TV series about the Jersey mob. After viewing Little Steven’s speech he quickly comes to the conclusion that, “this man is the very essence of New Jersey.” He promptly goes off and creates a part especially for him.
When he took the call from Chase offering him the part of Silvio Dante, Van Zant’s career was at a low ebb. Having spent a decade helping Bruce and the E Street band go from North Eastern cult favourites to world superstars he bailed out in 1984 just before the record breaking Born In The USA tour, opting instead for a solo career. Despite critical acclaim for heavily politicised albums like Voice Of America and Revolution, commercial success eluded him and by the end of the ’80s he was, in his own words “washed up.”
“I did nothing much in the ’90s apart from walking the dog,” he says. “It was a lost decade for me. I became alienated from the music business and I thought my life was finished. The problem was, I didn’t have any identity as an artist. Little Steven never had an identifiable sound. All five of my solo records were completely different and fucking crazy musically, although lyrically they’re actually quite linear.”
I remind him that I met him before in the summer of ’95 in a Brussels hotel bar where I was interviewing Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. Bon Jovi happened to be playing Brussels that same weekend and the band entered the bar, followed by Little Steven who was guesting with the New Jersey outfit on the tour.
“Oh that,” he recalls. “I don’t know what I was doing going around the world with them. It was a very silly thing for me to do. OK, so apart from that, I did nothing in the ’90s,” (laughs).

With his pompadour hair and silk suits Silvio Dante, a close confidante of godfather Tony Soprano, is one of the most popular characters in The Sopranos. Despite having no previous experience as an actor Van Zandt took to his role as the owner of the now legendary Bada Bing club seriously, though he once admitted “the wig does 50% of the acting”.
“I liked the script a lot – I was a fan of gangster movies going right back to James Cagney so it was kind of familiar territory for me,” he says. “I tried very hard to get into the character. I even put on a little weight to make me feel like I really was this guy.”
Yet according to Van Zandt, The Sopranos is not so much about gangsters as about a guy with two families – one at home and one at work. He also says that being a member of the male dominated family that is E Street made it easier to fit into a family of gangsters.
“It’s actually very similar to being in a band which, when you think about it is also about loyalty, a sense of community and a lot of nostalgia for the old days. Those are the reason I got interested in music in the first place.”
The Sopranos was initially turned down by all four of the major TV networks before it found a home on cable channel Home Box Office (HBO). The gamble paid off when it became a TV phenomenon scoring 16 Emmy nominations, a handful of Golden Globes and surprisingly, praise from New Jerseys’ real life DeCavalcante family for its realistic portrait of the mobsters. The fifth and quite possibly the last series is about to air on Network 2
“I think I only missed three shows out of 15, which I’m quite happy with because we’re touring with the band simultaneously,” says Van Zandt. “Usually there’s some overlap but not this time. In fact I’m flying back to New York tomorrow to work on it while the rest of the band take a week off.”
Ah the E Street Band! At the same time as his acting career was taking off, Van Zandt took a call from Bruce Springsteen who wanted to get the E Street Band back together for a re-union tour. “Great fucking timing I thought to myself,” he laughs. “Where were you five years ago when I was doing nothing?” The 1999 re-union jaunt and the subsequent Rising tour saw the E Street Band on top of their form again with a critically acclaimed album and a new audience.
“We went to a lot of trouble to re-invent things,” says Steve. “It’s very enjoyable for me. When people started singing along to songs from The Rising we knew it wasn’t just about nostalgia. It’s absolutely an ongoing concern. From here on in, it will be new stuff, and we’re back in the usual band cycle of album-tour-album-tour – I hope forever,”
But the thing that he is clearly the most passionate about at the moment is his radio show – Little Steven’s Underground Garage. From slow beginnings three years ago it is now syndicated to 130 stations in the US and Canada, and 43 countries around the world, through the Voice of America network. Rolling Stone magazine summed it up as “mind blowingly great.”
“I know it sounds fucking tragic,” he says. “But right now I’m the only one in America playing Eddie Cochran, The Clash, The Ramones, The Hives, The Vines, The Ramones, The White Stripes and all the early British Invasion stuff on one radio show.”
The show is now credited with spurring a major resurgence in garage rock across the US. How did it start?
“I just wasn’t hearing my favourite songs on the radio anymore,” he says simply. “I’m a button pusher, I’m always looking for a good song. But things are just not the way they used to be in America. They’re playing fewer and fewer songs and the formats are getting narrower and narrower. They’ve reduced play-lists down to about 200 records in total. The oldies stations have completely eliminated the 1950s classic rock stations are now starting to eliminate the 1960s.
“So I said to myself, I’ve got a bit of celebrity at the moment. So, what do you do with your celebrity capital? Because that’s what celebrity becomes – capital. In the 1980s I spent what little celebrity capital I had on politics, which was great but then I stopped that. So I got a bit of celebrity again recently. I thought why not get a show on the radio and play some of these songs. The more I got into it and realised I’ve never heard my favourite songs on one station.
“I spent a year figuring out the format, seeing what works, what fits, what doesn’t fit. I ended up with five song sets, which felt right to me. I had to balance old/new, English/American, hard/not so hard – plus I wanted it to be all-encompassing, rather than separate it into different genres like Punk, British Invasion – it’s all rock and roll to me. I don’t care what era it’s from. I don’t care what genre it’s from. I’m playing the fucking essence of rock and roll here. So I started playing Eddie Cochran into The Ramones into The Ronettes into The Kinks into The Hives. It actually makes sense when you hear it. And of course it blew everyone’s mind.
The man is clearly the star’s biggest fan.
“I’m very particular, I’m not playing things just because it’s new or because it’s cool or because it’s important,” he reflects. “I just won’t do it that way. It’s got to be a great fucking record. It’s 100% my choice. I don’t care what anybody thinks and I’m not doing any fucking audience surveys either. I want to bring back that personal radio thing where the DJ was expressing him or herself you know.”
It wasn’t an overnight success and radio programmers were initially sceptical about his plans to re-vitalise rock and roll, and he had to come up with a million dollars of his own money to convince them.
“Now everybody thinks I’m a fucking genius,” he laughs. “But it’s actually very simple for me. I’m just playing what they’re not playing.”

The Sopranos airs on RTE Network 2 on Tuesday April 13th (and subsequent Tuesdays) at 9.30pm.