[bomp] Little Steven

[Robert Ash <Robert.Ash@xxxxxxxxx>]

Here in England there's a great piece on Little Steven in today's
Guardian...
Rob


Only rock'n'roll 

Just one kind of music speaks to 'Little' Steven Van Zandt: rock'n'roll.
As he explains it, the Rolling Stones are more than a band, they're a
religion 

Will Hodgkinson
Friday July 1, 2005
The Guardian 


"Little" Steven Van Zandt is on a mission: to save rock'n'roll from
extinction. "If the Rolling Stones came out today, there's not one radio
station in America that could play them," says Van Zandt, currently
dividing his time between filming the last season of The Sopranos (he
plays Silvio Dante), being the guitarist for Bruce Springsteen's
re-formed E Street Band, and recording his weekly Underground Garage
radio show. "The Rolling Stones wouldn't fit anybody's format! How did
we end up in a world where there's a format for everything apart from
rock'n'roll?" 

Van Zandt claims that rock'n'roll is his religion, and as he talks with
messianic fervour about the importance of saving America by ensuring it
doesn't lose the music of its youth, you have no reason to doubt his
faith. With his paisley bandanna and psychedelic shirt, Little Steven
certainly doesn't look as if he's been paid a visit by the Queer Eye for
the Straight Guy team. 

His headquarters, on a stretch of Manhattan that looks out over the
Hudson river, is filled with B-movie posters, records in their
thousands, and a Sopranos pinball machine. And Underground Garage, his
two-hour show that plays modern garage bands alongside both obscure and
famous rock'n'roll from the 1950s, 60s and 70s, is a nationwide hit
that's currently syndicated to an audience of around a million. But when
Van Zandt and his producer Dan Neer approached stations and syndicators
five years ago, every single one rejected them. 

"There was one thing missing in all the radio station statistics," says
Van Zandt. "It's called human nature. I was told that the audiences are
leaving and you had to give people familiarity. But there's a reason why
the audiences are going away from mainstream radio. It sucks! There's a
generation out there that needed to hear cool radio of the kind I grew
up on, and a ridiculous egomaniac like me was needed to give it to
them." 

The idea for Underground Garage began in 2000, after a seven-year fallow
period in Van Zandt's life was ended by the discovery of a thriving
garage-rock scene coming out of New York City. Having organised the Sun
City anti-apartheid concerts, played guitar for Bruce Springsteen and
released solo albums throughout the 1980s, Van Zandt entered the 1990s
to find Mandela released, Springsteen going solo, and music, in his
opinion, taking a turn for the worse. "I moved away from music at that
point and did nothing. I literally walked the dog for seven years," he
says. "Then an old friend of mine came up to me one day and said: 'You
know that band I was in as a teenager in the 1960s? Richard and the
Young Lions? Somebody's putting our single on a compilation. Now we're
re-forming and doing a gig next week.' It turned out that there was this
whole scene I knew nothing about." 

The compilation was the Nuggets box set; a collection of mid-60s singles
by mostly teenage bands that drew their inspiration from British
invasion groups such as the Rolling Stones, the Kinks and the Beatles.
Some, like Open Up Your Door by Richard and the Young Lions, were modest
hits, but most were obscurities to be unearthed as forgotten gems
decades later. It was the kind of music that Van Zandt had grown up on
and first learned to play on the guitar. 

"We didn't call it garage at the time," he says. "Back then I just knew
I was hearing great songs on the radio, whether that was a soul track
like Knock on Wood by Eddie Floyd or a garage single like Talk Talk by
the Music Machine." The idea of garage as a genre was born in 1972 when
Patti Smith's guitarist Lenny Kaye compiled the original Nuggets album.
It featured great songs by mostly one-hit wonders like the Standells and
the Shadows of Knight. "Garage bands were linked by a snotty attitude
and a sense of teenage frustration. And the fact that they knew the
Rolling Stones were the coolest band in the world." 

Van Zandt's enthusiasm is infectious, even if you didn't already know
that 96 Tears by ? and the Mysterians is the best song ever written. He
sees the Ramones, the much-loved, much-missed punk heroes of New York,
as the cornerstone of all the music he champions. "I like everyone who
influenced the Ramones and everyone the Ramones influenced," he says.
So, having heralded the return of rock'n'roll radio, championed a
generation of new bands and held down day jobs in The Sopranos and
Springsteen's band, what's next? "I need to get Underground Garage on in
Britain because England seems to be full of arty romantic stuff right
now, like Coldplay and Radiohead. You know, it's great, God bless them
all. But it ain't rock'n'roll."



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