Steven Van Zandt
The SPIN Interview: Steven Van Zandt
There are many Steve Van Zandts (although, ironically, not Steve Van Zandt, his publicist gently rebuked me, which comes as no small embarrassment since that’s what I’ve been calling him for the 35 years I’ve known him). There’s Little Steven, Stevie Van Zandt, Miami Steve, and of course Silvio Dante, Tony Soprano’s consigliore. There’s also Dr. Steven Van Zandt, awarded an honorary degree as a Doctor of Fine Arts by Rutgers University, who got a typically inspiring commencement speech in return. And UN honoree Van Zandt, recognized for his incredibly effective political activism, including his central role, with Peter Gabriel, in International Peace Day, and for making the western world viscerally aware of the horrors of apartheid with his anthemic “Sun City” song, and later film an...
The 100 Greatest Rock Stars Since That Was A Thing
Three of the 100 are in this picture! The Rolling Stones, in 1964, from left to right: Bill Wyman, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Brian Jones. The problem with lists like this is they are invariably bullshit. So our prime objective was to make sure we didn’t do a bullshit list. I’m not saying we did a scientific one either. Because that isn’t possible — actually, it is, if you wanted some compilation of who sold the most records/concert tickets/has the most fans/got the most death threats, etc., and someone could come up with a bunch of very empirical metrics and create a “heat index” or something, and could deliver an actual scientific ranking! But we, um, didn’t do that. In fact we didn’t even, technically, do the “we...
