Steven Van Zandt is wearing a multicolored hat, tinted glasses and no shirt.
His face and neck, which have a white cast, are slathered with what appears to be sunscreen as he takes in the brilliant late afternoon in Barcelona, Spain.
On Saturday, the singer and guitarist will be jamming with Bruce Springsteen and the rest of the E Street Band for a second night at the city’s Olympic Stadium.
The band already had a three-hour show there Thursday in what was a return trip after two shows at the stadium during the first year of their massive, ongoing tour. Since February 2023, Springsteen and the band have played their way through North America and Europe twice. They’re currently headed for a third time.
So it’s easy to see Van Zandt, 73, as an indispensable part of a musical whole, or a right-hand man to The Boss.
But a new documentary reminds anyone who didn’t already know:
Steven Van Zandt has a whole lot going on.
He’s worn many hats — and headscarves — in his long, multifaceted career:
Rock ‘n’ roller, artist, songwriter, arranger, producer, frontman, activist, actor, radio host and more.
Van Zandt has also been known by a fair few names: Miami Steve, Little Steven and Stevie Van Zandt.
“Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple” premieres Saturday night on HBO and Max, just hours after Van Zandt takes the stage with Bruce again in Barcelona.
The documentary, which spans 150 minutes and most of Van Zandt’s life, is directed by Bill Teck (”One Day Since Yesterday: Peter Bogdanovich & the Lost American Film”).
As Van Zandt tells it, basking in the Barcelona sun via Zoom, Teck had been on him about doing a film for a long time.
“He had been asking to do something with me for decades and I just ... kept turning him down,” he says.
But when Van Zandt finally relented, he had a request for Teck.
“I said ‘just do me a favor, will ya?’” he tells NJ Advance Media. “’Try and explain my life to me, will ya? Because it doesn’t make any sense.’”
In an effort to do just that, the director recruited big names who have worked with, played with and befriended Van Zandt over his five-plus decades in music. Not just Jersey’s Springsteen and Southside Johnny, but also Paul McCartney, Bono, Darlene Love, Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, Jackson Browne, Rubén Blades and Jimmy Iovine.
The filmmaker traveled the globe to conduct interviews with 52 people about Van Zandt. The group includes many more musical artists as well as high-profile talents from film and TV — “Home Alone” director Chris Columbus, “Sopranos” creator David Chase and Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos.
“It was a trip because it seemed like all those people really wanted to talk about Stevie,” says Teck, joining the Zoom call from Los Angeles.
“It seemed like they’d been waiting their whole lives to really drop knowledge on Stevie and Stevie’s music,” he tells NJ Advance Media. “Eddie Vedder, we got to his place and they were like, ‘Ed’s got to stop at 4 p.m.’ And at 4 a.m., we were still playing Stevie music and talking and hanging out.”
Van Zandt breaks into a hearty chuckle as Teck continues.
“I don’t know if a lot of grunge guys from that scene, his peers in that scene, knew Stevie’s work and the E Street Band’s work, and so I think he’d been waiting his whole life,” the director says.
Teck noticed a similar feeling of appreciation for Van Zandt from McCartney.
“Stevie has so many lives and all those people intersect with him in different ways,” he says.
From the garage to Asbury Park
Everything changed for Van Zandt on Feb. 9, 1964, when the Beatles played “The Ed Sullivan Show.”
“February 10th, everybody had a band in their garage,” he recalls in “Disciple.”
Growing up in Middletown, Van Zandt had learned the mandolin — one of his signature instruments — from his grandfather and would play music and sing with his family. The documentary features some darling recordings of Little Steven when he really was little.
But after the Beatles unleashed the British Invasion, Van Zandt saw rock ‘n’ roll’s potential for someone like him — one of the “misfits, freaks and outcasts.”
Noticing Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger’s commitment to not smiling, he just knew.
“I wanna do that,” Van Zandt told himself.
He met his fellow architects of what would become the Jersey sound at Asbury Park’s Upstage Club.
Southside Johnny Lyon became friends with Van Zandt after hearing him perform a Yardbirds song. They saw themselves as competition, but they’d play together, too. It was much like his relationship with a young Springsteen. Playing in various bands, forming new bands and playing again.
For Lyon, Springsteen and Van Zandt, Asbury Park, with its thriving live music scene and teen shows, was one big creative cauldron.
It’s where Van Zandt picked up his ethos of art above all.
“I think all that comes from growing up when I did, in that renaissance period where the standards were extremely high and greatness was something that happened to be commercial at that time,” he tells NJ Advance Media. “So you focused on the craft more than any commercial aspects of what you were doing ... Seeking quality in the work is what ended up dominating my whole path, and so when the things I was doing artistically did not turn out to be so commercial, that was never really the intention.”
When Springsteen first met Van Zandt, he was wearing a huge paisley tie, the Boss recalls in the documentary.
Little Steven’s personal style — an assortment scarves, open shirts, vests and groovy prints that make him look like a swashbuckling pirate of rock ‘n’ roll — would become an instantly recognizable signature of his onstage presence.
Early on, Van Zandt played in a band called The Source and Springsteen was in the Castiles.
While Van Zandt would often play with Springsteen, when Springsteen was signed to Columbia Records in 1972, he was viewed as a folk singer, so Van Zandt wasn’t in the picture.
Eventually, he decided to quit music and worked a construction job, operating a jackhammer on the Garden State Parkway. At the time, he lived with Lyon and his wife.
Lyon knew the job wasn’t for Van Zandt, and he soon returned to music. In the early ’70s, he played the oldies circuit with doo-wop group The Dovells, performing with artists who had been “put out to pasture” by the British Invasion, Van Zandt says in the film.
After touring with the group in warmer climes, he refused to abandon his tropical shirts and zest for balmy weather.
His leanings earned him the nickname Miami Steve.
Southside Johnny, Springsteen and the E Street Band
Van Zandt would go on to write the classic Asbury Jukes song “I Don’t Want to Go Home.”
He would also produce the band’s 1976 album of the same name.
It was home in Jersey, not Miami, where he found his musical direction — in two bands that would come to represent the Jersey sound.
The E Street Band formed in 1972, and Lyon and Van Zandt formed Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes in 1975. Both groups demonstrated a commitment to musicianship and a penchant for highlighting horns.
Van Zandt, Springsteen and Southside Johnny made the The Stone Pony the place to be, creating an in-demand scene.
Later, in the early ‘80s, Van Zandt started his band Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul.
Teck followed Van Zandt’s performances with the band for the film — Van Zandt rocks out in footage from a Disciples concert in the opening of the documentary.
But the director also follows Van Zandt’s long history of collaboration with Springsteen, whose manager and producer Jon Landau appears in the film.
Stevie wasn’t just a guitarist with the E Street Band, he became a key part of producing the band’s music.
Van Zandt, Landau says, “saved their asses” on the song “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” from the iconic 1975 album “Born to Run.”
Springsteen’s manager often didn’t agree with Van Zandt about musical choices, but Bruce said it was useful to consider both of their approaches.
In the studio, Van Zandt helped Springsteen capture the rawness and electricity of the E Street Band’s live performances.
“They were such a gang, a group of men to be reckoned with,” Vedder says of the band in the film. “They scared me.”
Iovine recalls how Van Zandt schooled him in soul music, and Van Zandt talks about how he took a page from the book of hit songwriting duo Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller (Stoller appears in the film) to write songs like “I Don’t Want to Go Home.”
Activism, South Africa and ‘Sun City’
Teck devotes a good portion of the documentary to Van Zandt’s genius as a songwriter, producer and arranger of music.
But he also charts his rise as an activist in the ’80s.
Van Zandt married his golden-haired wife, Maureen Van Zandt — “the Brigitte Bardot of New Jersey,” he says in the film — in 1982.
Teck includes footage from the nuptials to go with Springsteen’s recollection of Little Richard marrying the couple (they had told Richard to go easy on the Jesus talk, which he seemed to disregard).
The Boss was Van Zandt’s best man and Percy Sledge sang “When A Man Loves a Woman.”
The whole production was very Van Zandt, Springsteen says in the film. This soulful wedding spectacular would foreshadow the way he would soon combine music with activism.
He traces the beginnings of his awakening as an activist to specific encounters. When he was in Munich, someone asked why Van Zandt, an American, was putting missiles in their country.
“I never thought of myself as an American ... I’m from New Jersey,” he says in what is surely the pull quote from this documentary.
That got Van Zandt thinking about his place in the world and the megaphone he had as a performer. Teck includes footage of him performing in Germany in 1984 and apologizing to the crowd for his government’s arrogance and his people’s ignorance.
Van Zandt’s activism against South African apartheid became his most visible and consequential contribution.
He was inspired by Peter Gabriel’s 1980 anti-apartheid song “Biko,” about the 1977 death of South African activist Steve Biko in police custody.
But it was what he saw himself that moved him to act.
When he was in South Africa doing research, he witnessed a cab driver swerve to hit a Black man.
“I came back with quite a bit of passion about the subject,” Van Zandt tells NJ Advance Media. “It was more than just an intellectual idea.”
“Stevie is so meticulous and studies so much, so whether he’s writing about migrant workers or he’s writing about Native American struggles or South Africa, the research is insane,” Teck says. “He would print these reading lists on the back of his albums. So if you wanted to know a little bit more about the song, you could do the deep dive and check out some books — which I did, and it influenced my thinking.”
Maureen would later fear for Van Zandt because of the dangers he faced visiting places like South Africa. But Van Zandt, who had left the E Street Band at the time, says he felt little fear.
“It occurred to me that I had blown my life,” he says in the film, talking about his regret over departing the band.
During his time away from E Street, he created the celebrity music supergroup Artists United Against Apartheid, which in 1985 released the song and protest album “Sun City” — named for the South African resort he pledged not to play.
Van Zandt drew together rappers, rockstars and R&B singers at a time when MTV was not playing videos from many Black artists.
The ranks of “Sun City” included Miles Davis, Gil Scott-Heron, Springsteen, Clarence Clemons, George Clinton, Bono, Lou Reed, Run-DMC, Kurtis Blow, Afrika Bambaataa, Peter Gabriel, Grandmaster Melle Mel, Darlene Love, Herbie Hancock, Ringo Starr, Jimmy Cliff, Pat Benatar, Joey Ramone, Bonnie Raitt, Hall & Oates and more.
“I’m a band guy, I’m a collaborator type of guy,” he tells NJ Advance Media, looking back on the endeavor. “I’ve always felt that. I mean, that’s why I got into the business ... It was the band aspect of it that appealed to me, that friendship and collaboration.”
The United Nations recognized the pressure that Van Zandt and all of these influential artists applied to the South African government. Teck shows how the celebrity movement contributed to the momentum that led to the 1990 release of Nelson Mandela from prison and the end of apartheid.
Van Zandt beamed as he welcomed Mandela to New York.
Art and commerce
Little Steven’s big example inspired Bono to walk a similar path.
The U2 frontman says he knew that Van Zandt had a certain “feistiness,” but was surprised by how organized he was in his efforts to fight injustice.
The Jersey rocker saw himself as an artist and journalist, committed to finding the truth and telling it.
His 1984 song “I Am a Patriot,” which sings the praises of freedom and truth over politics and party, has been so embraced by Jackson Browne that people often think he wrote it. Vedder also covered the song with Pearl Jam.
Video contains profanity
Van Zandt views his activist-minded ‘80s albums as artistic successes, though they were not commercial hits.
That’s part of what had him feeling somewhat stranded without a record deal in the ’90s.
Like all those years ago when he left music for construction, he hit a point where he thought maybe this was it — he was done.
“It was, in some ways, a mutual decision,” Van Zandt tells NJ Advance Media of disinterest from labels. “I kind of felt spent.”
“I really was quite, quite happy with the work,” he says. “It was never going to be commercial. And at the same time, I think the record companies felt the same way.”
Van Zandt reunited with Southside Johnny and Springsteen for the 1991 Asbury Jukes album “Better Days.”
He would eventually release his fifth solo album, “Born Again Savage,” in 1999 through his new label, Renegade Nation.
When the E Street Band reunited the same year, Van Zandt rejoined the lineup.
“It feels like it’s the way it oughta be,” Springsteen says of their journey in the film.
‘The Sopranos,’ Silvio Dante and radio
Another auspicious event happened in the late ‘90s — David Chase came calling.
Van Zandt originally auditioned to play Tony Soprano, the North Jersey Mafia boss and antihero who would revolutionize the TV landscape in “The Sopranos.”
As Chase and Van Zandt recall in the recently premiered Alex Gibney documentary “Wise Guy: David Chase and the Sopranos,” Chase liked him for the part (the film includes footage from Van Zandt’s audition — he dressed for the role), but HBO preferred that an actor with some experience lead the show.
Chase still wanted Van Zandt in the series, and Van Zandt didn’t want to take a job away from an actor. So Chase created a separate character just for him. And he had some help.
Van Zandt tells NJ Advance Media that he conceived of a character named Silvio Dante, though in his original rendering, Dante was a hitman who owned a club frequented by Mafia families, local officials and law enforcement. He was told the concept was too expensive, so in “The Sopranos,” the club became a Dante-fronted strip club — the Bada Bing(!) — with a back room for business.
Video contains profanity
“As detailed as David Chase was ... he didn’t write in an underboss or a consigliere,” Van Zandt says.
But when Van Zandt hit it off with star James Gandolfini behind the scenes, Dante moved into the role of Tony’s consigliere and underboss.
Any apprehension Van Zandt had about being a first-time actor started to fade a year into the show, when he came to a realization:
“Oh, this is very similar to the role I played with Bruce Springsteen my whole life ... Oh, I know what this is about, I understand these dynamics.”
After “The Sopranos” became an immediate success, Van Zandt — who helped induct Chase into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in October — even played a kind of celebrity consigliere to Chase.
When the series creator (”a very humble guy,” Van Zandt says) put himself down in an interview, he offered some advice from his years in the spotlight.
“I said ‘Dave, don’t ever f---ing do that again,’” Van Zandt tells NJ Advance Media.
Chase said he was just being honest.
“You can’t be honest in this world,” Van Zandt told him. “If you start putting down your own work, it gives every critic on Earth the license to put you down.”
As the show moved into its fourth, fifth and sixth seasons in the 2000s, Van Zandt branched out with his talents once again.
His radio show “Little Steven’s Underground Garage” became a Sirius XM channel of the same name devoted to playing an eclectic lineup of rock ‘n’ roll and garage rock, past and present. He also piloted the Sirius channel Outlaw Country, focused on the “outlaw” artists of country, alternative country and roots rock.
Van Zandt built on his contributions to the TV mob canon in one of the first Netflix series, “Lilyhammer.”
The show, which premiered on TV in Norway in 2012 before coming to Netflix, stars Van Zandt as Frank “The Fixer” Tagliano, a Mafia guy who has to enter witness protection. He moves to Lillehammer, Norway and assumes a new identity — Giovanni “Johnny” Henriksen.
As for the guy behind all those other guys — the one Maureen Van Zandt describes as a Renaissance man and a restless creative — well, he’s still restless.
“I’m always quite frustrated, actually, with my output,” Van Zandt tells NJ Advance Media. “I have so many things I’m never gonna get to .. The progress I make is quite a bit slower than I would like.”
“I’ve got dozens and dozens of ideas,” he says.
One perennial stumbling block is how to fund them — “I can raise money for other people but I can’t raise money for myself,” Van Zandt says.
“I may get a few of ‘em done,” he says. “We’ll see.”
“Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple,” which runs 2 hours and 30 minutes, airs Saturday, June 22, 8 p.m. ET on HBO and will be streaming on Max.
Thank you for reading. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a subscription.
Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com and followed at @AmyKup.
Ad Choices