My father was an ex-Marine Goldwater Republican.
— Steven Van Zandt
Before Dylan, before rock became art, it was a wonderful fusion of pop structure and personal statements.
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.
'Born to Run' was a mixture of things but mostly about youth and fantasies.
I was very lucky with 'The Sopranos.'
Let's not pretend we have too much of a democracy here, because we don't.
I was 100 percent political in the '80s - the first time around, let's call it, my first life as an artist.
I did nothing but international liberation politics for ten years, and usually it was like, you gain an inch, you lose a half an inch. It's slow going, man.
Being a rock n' roll star ain't a part-time gig.
Go out and support your local rock n' roll band.
Your celebrity capital rises and falls in any given year. And when you have some - temporarily, usually - you try to use it for some good.
I think I'm one of the few people who have experienced New Jersey becoming fashionable twice in a lifetime.
They legislate fatherhood in Norway. It's not an option. That's a shocking thing to us in America.
I believe that hundreds of years from now, history will be divided into pre-1960s and post-1960s.
Primal Scream could be the biggest band in the world. They are fantastic when they make rock records - once every 10 years.
Sometimes there's no qualitative difference between two-and-a-half and three-and-a-half hour shows. It's just a matter of how long you do it. It's not like the show must be three hours and 30 minutes to work. That's just not the case.
It's so liberating to play a song in front of 50,000 people that you've never played before. Not something you played a long time ago and have forgotten: Never. Played. Before. There's something magical about it.
When I was younger, I went through the windshield of a car ,and my hair didn't grow back right. I had been wearing scarves occasionally, and I decided that I didn't want to deal with wigs and things, so I just stumbled onto my thing.
Whatever I'm doing, I try and keep the quality very high.
'Soulfire' is a collection of stuff I've done in the past. Each song is an element of who I am: There's a doo-wop song on the album; a blues song, R&B and some jazz. For people who are going to be hearing me for the first time, it's an introduction to who I am.
Part of the job of being a producer is the Vulcan mind meld, where you listen not to what they're saying but what they mean.
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.
Believe me, if Donald Trump didn't have some point that he's making, hitting home with people, he could not have come this far - as much as a showman as he may be.
You're either on the Republican team or the Democratic team, and all that matters is that your team wins. Judging by history, regardless of which team wins, the people always lose.
Politics, in general, when you're trying to change the world for the better in any kind of way, no matter how small or how big, it's inches.
It ain't passive. It ain't TV. Go out there and rock n' roll and dance and have fun.
Garage rock is music for older people with young souls and young people with old souls. It's a certain sensibility, and you may have it when you're 17 or when you're 67.
Boycotts are not something to be taken lightly.
People want to learn how other people live. It's just human nature.
Netflix completely shook up the world.
I learned everything I know from leaving the E Street Band. And of course, one of the things I learned is, I never should have left.
I tried to get Primal Scream to come over to America several times.
Bands should never break up.
You ask people to fall in love with you. To need you. To want you. To buy your records and come see you. You have an emotional contract with people. To break up is to violate that contract.
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.
For those who are familiar with my work, 'Soulfire' is a return to how most people identify me, which is that soul-meets-rock thing.
For me, it all comes down to one issue: if we can get money out of political systems, the whole world will change.
The River,' to me, meant 43 songs.
It's a challenge every year with a TV series. You want to keep evolving and keep it going. That's part of the fun.
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.
I tend to personally judge issue by issue rather than sort of endorsing this football-team mentality that we fall into in this country, where it's all about the team.
I've always had a reluctance to meet my heroes.
Rock n' roll is a participatory sport.
The rock era, as I clock it, went from '65 to '94, from 'Like a Rolling Stone' to Kurt Cobain's death.
Stevie Van Zandt could not walk on to a set and act. I don't know how actors do that! It's the scariest thing in the world.
I learned a lot from Bruce Springsteen and David Chase.
Every successful person needs to have at least one person in their life who's not afraid of them.
Little Richard opens his mouth, and out comes liberation.
This conversation with the audience has been going on since, what, '72, '73... Sometimes it's like a conversation after dinner with friends. You're in a restaurant, and you got there at 8 o'clock. Suddenly, you realize it's midnight. Where did the time go? You're enjoying the conversation. It's sort of a natural, organic conversation.
I tell everybody, if you've got a band that works, it's a miracle. It's never going to be perfect, but if it works on some level, hold on to it with both hands and don't ever let it go.
