Band members have a special bond. A great band is more than just some people working together. It’s like a highly specialized army unit, or a winning sports team. A unique combination of elements that becomes stronger together than apart.
Steven Van Zandt
First of all, just because the Tea Party people appear to be generally uneducated, ignorant about the political process, ignorant about economics, confused about their own platform from the beginning, and indelicate when it comes to the craft of diplomacy, doesn’t mean they’re wrong.
Steven Van Zandt
I’m very, very proud to have been at what I feel are two of the pivotal moments in this whole new Golden Era of television – one being ‘The Sopranos’ with HBO and now with Netflix expanding that whole HBO concept to the world and making it more of a global thing. It’s been wonderful to witness that from those two vantage points.
Steven Van Zandt
The simple fact is we do not live in a democracy. Certainly not the kind our Founding Fathers intended. We live in a corporate dictatorship represented by, and beholden to, no single human being you can reason with or hold responsible for anything.
Steven Van Zandt
Half of the modern world goes back as far as Pearl Jam. The real historians go back to U2. But they need to go back further. They have to go back to the ’50s and ’60s, where things started. That’s how you get to be your own personality, by studying the masters. Rock and roll was white kids trying to make black music and failing, gloriously!
Steven Van Zandt
Boycotts are not something to be taken lightly.
Steven Van Zandt
There is an established tradition of actors directing films that have a particular, personal meaning for them – Warren Beatty, Clint Eastwood, Kevin Costner, and most recently George Clooney to name a few. Remarkably, their films share an unusually high percentage of being very good.
Steven Van Zandt
In ‘The Sopranos,’ these guys know their best years are behind them. They have nostalgia for their old traditions. In their minds, they’re looking for a time when loyalty mattered, community mattered. E Street is about community, too. People are looking for something real.
Steven Van Zandt
For me, making a record is a vacation. I’d like to do it more often. Just, chances are impossible… It’s a very expensive hobby, you know?
Steven Van Zandt
I’ve always considered the government taking one out of every two dollars I earn absolute tyranny.
Steven Van Zandt
Young fans want to know about the past and older fans also want to find new music.
Steven Van Zandt
Within three hours of a disaster event there should be a recon damage assessment of the infrastructure and an educated guess as to the casualties and degree of imminent human peril. Then make the airdrops of supplies and personnel. Simultaneously, Seabees would be dropped in, with lights and generators, to begin rescue efforts.
Steven Van Zandt
Rock n’ roll as a genre is different from pop and hip hop: it is about bands, and that for me suggests brotherhood, family, friendship and community.
Steven Van Zandt
They legislate fatherhood in Norway. It’s not an option. That’s a shocking thing to us in America.
Steven Van Zandt
As most of the population suffers through life, barely surviving, disappointed and confused day after day, hopeless, wondering what happened to their strong and beautiful country, it is in the media’s power to restore, if not some of our quality of life, at least a bit of our peace of mind.
Steven Van Zandt
The first rule of rock and roll is it’s all about live. Then you have to learn a second craft, which is making records. It should go in that order.
Steven Van Zandt
Once Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings are not cool on country radio, it’s time for a new format.
Steven Van Zandt
I don’t wake up every day and just write to write. I only write with purpose.
Steven Van Zandt
Netflix completely shook up the world.
Steven Van Zandt
It ain’t passive. It ain’t TV. Go out there and rock n’ roll and dance and have fun.
Steven Van Zandt
Rock n’ roll is our religion, and we will continue to lose disciples as we go, but we pick up the fallen flag and keep moving forward, bringing forth the good news that our heroes have helped create, their bodies lost, but their spirits and their good work everlasting.
Steven Van Zandt
I’ll never understand why people somehow support pollution. It’s completely irrational, and I don’t get it. Somewhere along the line, they bought into this fiction that one has to choose between the environment and business, which is just a complete falsehood and absurd.
Steven Van Zandt
I met all my heroes on the oldies circuit: Gary U.S. Bonds, Lloyd Price, Little Richard.
Steven Van Zandt
I am interested in the interaction of a group of people who have a common goal, or a common obsession, each contributing something unique to make something greater than the sum of its parts. I don’t know why, but from day one, that has interested me.
Steven Van Zandt
Being a rock n’ roll star ain’t a part-time gig.
Steven Van Zandt
Little Steven – the songwriter, producer, and arranger – stayed alive doing the ‘Lilyhammer’ score. That pretty much took up three or four years of my life, and all of my musical energy went into that.
Steven Van Zandt
The Rascals are something else. They’re up there with the Beatles, and Stones and Byrds. That level of musicality. They have a real chemistry. It is like magic.
Steven Van Zandt
Like most people, I’ve always felt using words like ‘best’ when applied to art is a fun way for critics to stay busy at the end of the year, and I guess a good way to help get ratings for awards shows, which is fine.
Steven Van Zandt
I was obsessed with politics in the ’80s. I’ve recovered and I’m feeling much better now, thank you.
Steven Van Zandt
You think your congressman is working all day to get you a job? He may want to. He or she is probably not a bad person. They probably want to do the right thing. But they can’t.
Steven Van Zandt
What the world needs is an Emergency Boss. An Emergency Czar. An Emergency Commander. A true Master Of Disaster. One person completely responsible for the anticipation, immediate reconnaissance, and urgent execution of rescue and relief efforts around the world.
Steven Van Zandt
C-17s should be ready to go at various military bases around the world packed with water, food, medical supplies, sleeping bags and tents, all prepared to be air dropped in alongside soldiers and doctors to begin relief efforts.
Steven Van Zandt
Let the wealthier countries and corporations of the world fund an Emergency Organization.
Steven Van Zandt
I’m a real band guy, you know? I’m really good at certain things, and the band stuff is one of them.
Steven Van Zandt
I know what it takes to make a band, how they should interact, what makes a record sound like it’s a band – everything having to do with a band, I happen to be into.
Steven Van Zandt
My lifelong friend and mentor Frank Barsalona is gone. And the music business as we knew it went with him.
Steven Van Zandt
Timing really is nearly everything. And what it isn’t, circumstance makes up for.
Steven Van Zandt
The British invasion was the most important event of my life. I was in New Jersey and the night I saw the Beatles changed everything. I had seen Elvis before and he had done nothing for me, but these guys were in a band.
Steven Van Zandt
It’s become uncool to play other people’s songs, and that’s absurd. It has got to change. It’s the reason why everything’s so mediocre.
Steven Van Zandt
The energy that comes when you compel people to dance stays with you your whole career – whether you are playing to 100,000 people at Glastonbury or 1,000 kids in a club.
Steven Van Zandt
The quality of our lives is diminished every time we lose a great artist. It’s a different world without Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Curtis Mayfield, Brian Jones and the rest.
Steven Van Zandt
You can trace the E Street Band directly back to the Rascals.
Steven Van Zandt
A lot of the idealism of the Sixties was spot on, from the environmentalism to the war to the Civil Rights movement, the women’s rights movement, you name it.
Steven Van Zandt
I played around with the idea of touring with a soul revue, with Smokey Robinson, Sam Moore, Darlene Love, people like that.
Steven Van Zandt
Life should never be boring.
Steven Van Zandt
Reach for greatness, nothing less. And make sure you have some fun along the way.
Steven Van Zandt
Where do I begin with ‘The Godfather?’ It’s like explaining why the ‘Bible’ is so popular. I’ll always remember seeing the first one because it was the only time I went to the movies with my grandfather.
Steven Van Zandt
In my mind, it’s always easier to do a sequel than an original.
Steven Van Zandt
I’m always surprised when a sequel is not as good or better than the first one. I never understand that. You’ve already set your own bar. You’ve already done the hard work. It should be easier to make the second one, but a lot of the times, it’s not.
Steven Van Zandt
There are… certainly more innovations on ‘Revolver’… but the truth of the matter is ‘Sgt. Pepper’ has something that was just completely different and unique at that moment.
Steven Van Zandt
I just love that whole Brill Building era. I will always regret not being there. That’s where I belong.
Steven Van Zandt
I have very little interest in the modern world, and I’m not in any way conflicted about that.
Steven Van Zandt