Stevie Van Zandt

00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, I'm really excited about today's guest. About a year ago we had the boss on and today we have the ultimate underboss, Stevie Van zanne. His first big break came in the mid seventies as Bruce Springsteen's right hand man, guitarist and occasional co producer in the E Street Band. Later, he seamlessly made the jump to acting as one of Tony Soprano's key consiglieri's sill on The Sopranos. Recently, van Zandt released his memoir Unrequited Infatuations, which details his career over the past fifty years Delvin, of course in the Street Band, but also in his endeavors as a producer, actor, solo artist and activist, including his nineteen eighty five stand against South Africa's oppressive regime when he created Artists United Against apartheide and recorded the protest songs on City, which includes cameos from a slew of artists like You Two, Mellie mel Run DMC, and Miles Davis. On today's episode, Bruce Headlam talks to Van Zant about the budding New Jersey rock and roll scene in the sixties and what it was like recording with legendary R and B singers like Ronnie Spector and Darlene Love. He also reminisces about first meeting Springsteen, who Van Zandt says he saw go from a shy kid who was too timid to speak to one of the greatest entertainers of our time. This is broken round minor notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richard. Here's Bruce Headlam with Stevie Van Zane. Well, thank you, first of all so much for doing this my pleasure. You're singer, songwriter, arranger, producer, award winning actor, a creator of and I didn't realize this, the two best channels on satellite radio. You also created an outlaw country as well as Underground Garage, member of the Street Band, and now you're an author. You're the author of a new book, Unrequited Infatuations. And there's a lot of requited infatuations in the book and some unrequited. We're going to talk about them both because it's a theme that runs through the book. And you call yourself a consigulary that so many times in your life you seem to be in this position of having to say something to somebody that is so obviously in their self interest and they can't quite see it. Were you always that kind of guy? Were you always the guy that wasn't afraid to give advice? It's certainly I feel part of the obligation of being somebody's friend, you know, So it certainly starts there. But as you suggest, I have done that with people who are not friends. Yeah. And I didn't know this part of my brain existed, and I talked about that in the book. I mean, I went through the sixties not a political thought in my head. Now could you imagine such a thing? You know. There was a few things going on in the sixties, you know, and I ignored all of it. It didn't hit me till the eighties, all right, which so I'm already what am I by then? I'm in my thirties, And suddenly I just discovered this other part of my brain that has the ability to reason and and and see logical solutions to complicated problems, which was a big surprise to me because I live in chaos all the time and in my head, and I think every artist does. I think that's partly why an artist becomes an artist. I believe to try and make some order out of the chaos. You know, something tangible, you can see it, touch it, you know. That's so that's such a relief, you know, when you walk around with all this crazy shit in your head, to actually be able to see your work and you that you exist, you know, some proof of your existence. You know. So I guess, to quote Hyman Roth or to misquote them, this is not the business you chose, The business chose you. This is this is a role you figured out for yourself. Yeah, and and and you know, growing up in a renaissance as I did, you really had to have a distinct identity as an artist. And that would change come the seventies, you know, the hybrids would begin. We no longer were a mono culture, and we were very much a mono culture in the sixties. Surprisingly or musically, um, I would say, even artistically, you know, possibly you could make an argument for that that we're you know, we all kind of like the same art, you know, in a way. You bring up a good point. I wanted to ask you. So many musicians I've talked to talk about seeing the Beatles for the first time on The Ed Sullivan Show, but you had to take that I've never I've never heard anybody else have. When you saw them, there was something that you saw that you loved. Well, I don't know how different it was from everybody else, but I saw, you know, hope from my life, which had not been very clear at that point. I just was rejecting everything society was offering me as options, and suddenly it was this really new world. You know, I've never seen a band before. You didn't see four or five guys playing and singing. I mean, you just didn't exist. Band is uh, it's communicating. It's not it's not me, it's us. It's the gang, it's the it's the posse, it's it's the family, it's the it's friendship. And they do ultimately communicate community, and that's what attracted me and I and I and I always combined it with the Rolling Stones coming four months later, because the Beatles were so good and so different. You know, they just were perfect, perfect harmony. You know, everything, the hair, the clothes, it was all new, all new, and never see anything like it, but I'm sure it was exciting. But then four months later, here comes the Rolling Stones and they're dressing like whatever they feel like. The hair is not perfect except for Brian Jones. Uh, you know, there's no harmony to speak of. And they make it look easier than it is, you know, they're they're very casual about it. The most impressive thing to me, and I think the biggest moment was seeing that Mick Jagger did not smile. And this was another another epiphany, you know, that that said, this isn't show business because I wasn't interested in show business then. I like it now, but I didn't back then. You know, you're building your identity and you are what you like, you know, and so the fact that he didn't smile said this is not show business. This is uh, this is the lifestyle. And I and I said, I want, I want, I want that lifestyle. It's interesting. The Stones made it seem like more of a possibility though. Yeah. They were really the first punk band. They did exactly what the punks did in the seventies, which was make it look easy. Learned three chords and and and you know, make a record, yeah, forget about all that. Yes, and Rush you know, and Emerson Lake and Palmer stuff. You know, just play a couple of chords and turn it up. You know. She se that was the stuff I was exposed to when I was a kid, and I never became a musician because I thought that's too hard, and that was extremely you know, evolved, sophisticated, you know, part of the business, you know. But the Stones were, you know, they they were missionaries for the blues and an early R and B. And they're great accomplishment which nobody ever gives them credit for. They were never a pop band, and the fact that they crossed over to the pop charts, you know, for fifty years, there's a rather remarkable achievement. Yeah. Was it through those British artists than you learned more about American music? Yeah, forget it. I never heard of Chuck Berry. I never heard about the Muddy Waters. No, why why would I? How would I? They weren't on a radio, not when I was not when I was a teenager. All the pioneers had come and gone blues. Well you never heard it. Where would you hear blues? You know? So all that stuff was brand new to me. We didn't know who who was writing what. I didn't even think about that, you know, until later, untill they till they started talking about those guys, you know, and they were they were putting their influences right on their sleeves, and and uh and and really promoting those artists and and and thankfully they did and uh we got a chance to learn all about our own music. Then when did the band start for you? When did you start playing in a band? Um? I remember exactly because I started as a singer with a neighbor's band called the Shadows. And I remember the first thing I did on stage was singing like a rolling stone. So it would have been sixty five, And then I started learning to play a guitar and I got pretty good. I think I started my own band would have been maybe sixty six into sixty seven. I started my band The Source, at which point I was, you know, lead guitar and singer. But I started off as just a singer. We hear now so much about that Jersey scene and all the musicians that came out of it. Can you tell me what was it like when you started, when you were looking around for clubs places to play. There's like three stages of the rock life. You know. There's the teenage years, which is the most fun, especially in those days because it was just being invented, which meant The adults had no idea what you were doing and would not think to try and tell you what to do, So you had complete freedom, which was a lot of fun and that and that lasted until you got to the bar. The bar years, which is a second stage, and that's a whole different story. They told you exactly what to play. You had to play top forty, and you had to look a certain way, and there were these show bands that were all very popular. You had to be extremely good at copying records and make sure you did it exactly right before you got to the bar scene. Were there like clubs that kids could go to because the drinking age was still twenty one in New Jersey back when you were doing it, So was there a place like an eighteen year old could go and hear a band? Well, it was better than that. We had teenage nightclubs. You might have had to be I don't know, well, Latin devous. I don't know if there was a minimum age to get into La teen Devous. Anyway, it was there were teenage clubs and upstage in Asbury Park was up a little different because it was open from eight o'clock at night till five in the morning. So I think you had to be You might have had to be sixteen to get in that one. But there were clubs and all kinds of places to play. We were we were working like crazy all the time. I mean high school dances, the VFW halls, the beach clubs. I mean Bruce used to joke about these, you know. Uh, you know, if you wanted if you wanted this new thing called rock and hall in your club, you had to go to the kids, you know, because the older bands that were the show bands or the the wedding bands, they didn't get it yet. They weren't they weren't playing this rock stuff yet. So you know, if you want to hire a you know, rock and roll band, you had to hire fifteen year olds because they're the only one's doing it. It's a fascinating thing to think about, you know. Can I ask you just for a minute to talk about Ronnie Specter, who was an important, really important person in your life, and you are an important person in hers. Yeah, yeah, we we um. Of course. You know, everybody had fallen in love with with her voice, and and and in that late sixteenth early seventies period really became reacquainted with all that, all of those oldies, you know that we're just you know, seventy seven years earlier or whatever. You know, things were happening very quickly in those days. Uh so, you know, become reacquainted with with all that, all of that pioneer stuff, and just I fell in love with the whole girl group thing. What was she like in the studio? What was she like to be in that studio with that voice? You're a little nervous because you know it had been a while and she and she. I mean the thing about every all the fifties and sixties artists that I've worked with, and I worked with quite a few, it's always a joy because they're just better. You know, they're better because they had to be better. You know, there's no auto tune in those days, and it was not even that much editing. I mean, they did a little bit, but you basically had to sing a song from beginning to end and sing it in tune and sing the right melody. You know, you know what I mean. You had to be great. It was just that was just the standard. All of those artists. You know, when you work with them, it's like, oh my god, what a joy. This is you know, can you think of particular people who sort of surprised you that way. It's always a surprise in a way because you're not used to it. In her case, it was a little bit shy about what she was doing. Me and Bruce were like, something, something's not quite you know, right, what is it? And we realized, well, she's not using the vibrato like she used to, so we reminded her, you know, you know this vibrato thing that he used to do, you know, and then it kind of came back to her, you know, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. But the the other big surprise to me, I mean, I mean was Gary was Bonds, who you know. Bruce said, let's do a record with Gary Gary Bonds, And I loved Gary's records and I had met him on the on the oldies circuit. Just a great guy. But I was like, you know, when you listen to Gary's records, you know quarter to three and New Orleans, you know, they literally like he invented the party, the party record. They sound like a party. They sound like they recorded in his garage. You know, He's just not the kind of guy you would think, you know, of the great voices of the Pioneer years. You just never would think of Gary Bonds. I'm sorry, you know, And I said to Bruce, I said, you know, Benny King's around, Chuck Jackson's around, Wilson Pickets around. You know, at that point, David Ruffin it was still around, you know, Smokey Robinson, you know, you know, I think Curtis Mayfield was still around. I mean I gave him a list of like fifty of the most incredible singers in all of all time, and he says, no, no, I want to work with Gary. You know, I really like him, and so we get in a studio with him, and a guy is just one of the greatest soul singers of all time. And I mean you would never know it from his records. And I don't know how Bruce knew it. He went and saw him live and maybe he got the indication from from the live show. But he's great on the album we did. Then we did a second album, which nobody heard. You know, we had a hit single on the first album which was incredible, So people heard that first album, but most people never heard the second album, which Bruce wrote the whole thing. You know, After all knew Bruce Springstein songs and Gary is singing like you cannot believe incredible. It's one of my favorite productions that I've ever done. And I'm not even sure it's available. I'm gonna see what's available these days. But anyway, Gary, I think Gary was a was a big surprise to me. And that wasn't the case with Ronnie, and that wasn't the case with you know, Darlie Love. You know when I when I finally produced Darlene Love, I mean I knew she was the greatest singer in the world, and and she was and is right now, you know, at the age of eighty. We have to take a break, but we'll be back with more of Bruce Adlam's conversation with Stevie Van Zanne. We're back with more of Stevie van Zan and Bruce Hadlam. Let's go back a bit and talk about your relationship with Bruce Springsteen. When did you guys first meet? We met on the circuit, you know, um, the day before the Beatles played at Sullivan. There was no bands in America. The day after everyone everyone had a band and they most of mostly mercifully stayed in the garage. But but but a dozen of us got out and we all knew each other because it was only literally a dozen bands if that in our area. So we all knew each other. And then, um, I started going to the village. Was about an hour on the bus, but it was you know, exotic, you know, it was it was unusual thing to do. I don't even know what would have occurred to me to do that. I never thought about this before, but anyway, I started doing it and going to the cafe wa and and and and you'd see bands all afternoon, and then I'd come home Saturday night. Um and you would, you know, see things that were a year ahead of where New Jersey was, so I would, you know, steal what I could steal and use it with my band, you know. And I started running into Bruce doing the same thing. You thinking about it now, it's pretty weird. You know, We're not only going to the same part of town in New York City, but we're going the same club. There's dozens of clubs. So we got friendlier because of that and started coming up to the city together. And I go over to his house and he started playing the songs he was writing. He was that far ahead, he was he was writing even then. You describe him as being very focused. Yeah, he was the most focused guy ever. He just knew exactly where he was going. He knew and nothing was gonna stop him, nothing because there was no other There really was no plan B for people like us. I mean I was a little bit more, uh, you know, I was a little bit more social than he was. You know, I took a bunch of jobs. You wears construction. He never did that. Yeah, yeah, no, no, I don't. I don't know if he ever had any other job. He managed to somehow make a living playing rock and roll from the very beginning, and let me tell you, it wasn't easy. He just was very very focused on it because I think, like me, it was it was this incredible gift of a new world where we finally could imagine fitting in. Because as freaky as I was, he was even freakier. I was a little bit more social. He didn't say two words, you know. I mean, if you picture the grunge guys with hair down to their knees and just staring down playing and and and not saying a word, that's him and h watching this very very shy guy turn into the world's greatest entertainer was quite a front row seat to a remarkable transformation. You had this beautiful quote, which I think people who've seen him will of course recognize, which is you said in concert he wanted to provide irrefutable proof that life had meaning. Yeah. Is that a quality you saw from the beginning in him or is that something he developed over time? Well? Yeah, but but it was rock and roll was giving us life. So we're passing it along, you know, we're passing the life force that that is and was passing it through us, you know, in an exchange of energy with audiences. You know, when when when he became conscious, which was the darkness era, you know, suddenly everything changed. He found his identity, he found an identity for what he was going to be as a performer, and Ash and the and the show from that moment on. You know, it's very different through Born to Run. It's just an entirely different identity, an entirely different justification for existence. You know, at that point, it became very conscious we are going to do a show with substance. Basically, substance became a thing. You know. No, this is fascinating to me because I'll bet you, every Springsteen fan down to the last one thinks of his career in terms of the first two albums, and then he emerges with Born to Run. But you believe that Darkness was really his first fully realized album. Why why do you feel that way? Yeah, the fans and even journalists, they're not wrong as far as the Born to Rue being sort of a birth of the moment when people discovered him. But what was fascinating to me, and something I didn't really think about until I wrote the book, Well, you know, when you finally get discovered by the world, it's a miracle and you better embrace it with both arms, you know. So in this case, he there's a whole transformation of himself from those first two albums to becoming this front guy. You know, that's why I joined the band, and the whole identity change at that point to this character that you know inhabits the entire Born to Run album. And it wasn't the big hit people think it was, but it but it certainly was substantial. And what's fascinating is instead of embracing it with both arms and being thankful, he realized somewhere here somewhere in the in the touring of Born to Run, or into the writing of Darkness on the Edge of the Town. Somewhere in that period he just realized that wasn't going to be him. He just wasn't that guy, and he wasn't going to be that guy the rest of his life. So it was like, sorry, folks, I know I asked you to fall in love with me, and you did, and I really appreciate that. But I'm gonna go one hundred and eighty degrees here and revealed to you that I'm actually a whole different guy. And it was a very courageous thing to do, and hours and hours of discussion that he had with John Landau, I think confirmed that the guy that we're running at. It was the line, we're leaving his town. It's a town full of losers, so we're getting out of here to win, right. I do love that you're asking me the lyric I think you've probably heard you may have heard it a couple of times more than me. But that but that that thing, that identity of you know, grab the chick out of the you know, from the tough town, put the chick on the motorcycle, and ride out of town into the into the sunset and you know, let's let's go to another world thing, which was extremely attractive and then wonderful. It's a Chuck Berry had the word, it's he's motivating and by the way, and in that this generation gap of really a tough relationship with his father as part of that whole thing, very adversarial. That was the vibe. Well boom, he says on dar I'm not leaving. I'm staying. And not only that, I'm gonna defend my father and I might become my father, you know in some ways. You know, I'm gonna I'm gonna accept the fact that I'm I'm his son and all that goes with it, which means we're gonna make this work from where I am. We're not running away. We're gonna stay and fight huge difference. And he had the talent and the balls and you know, the band to back it up and pull that off and and take the audience with him, you know, which not not not a given man, not a given. You know, they might have loved they might have liked that other guy too much. You know, they liked that guy on the motorcycle. You know what I mean, all of a sudden, here's a guy. Uh, I was gonna work in the factory. And you know though you know all that, and uh, it was a big, big difference. But he had something else, which is he had you, and you know you came in. There's a very I think it's a very telling scene. I think you're talking about tenth Avenue freeze out. I might be wrong because you didn't like the horns. Yeah, and and and he says we'll do something about it with a few expletives, and you say, you know, he says it loudly, so everybody pretending to be the boss, and I pretend to do it, so everybody thinks he's the boss. And it's just very it's this very interesting little play you guys were doing. Yeah, it was, you know. At first he started calling himself the boss in Adsbury Park and it was kind of a joke, you know, because kind of a play on Frank Sinatra, you know, right. And I was very strong locally. I was very very strong boss in my own world, very strong, as strong as as he was. Some would say stronger in some ways, you know. But I saw something in him that was special and I and I thought, you know, I could see my gifts complimenting his gifts. You know. So when I joined his band, people were shocked. And when I started calling him the boss, uh, suddenly it became a little bit different because here's a boss calling him the boss. You know. So it wasn't just some affectation. It wasn't some kind of joke anymore. He's a serious guy who was saying, no, no, I'm not the boss. He's the boss. You know. Did you like being a boss when you're the boss? Yes? And no. You know, I I do like being in control to a large extent, But I don't. I don't need the spotlight. I don't. I don't crave it. You know, I don't really like it. You know, I can, I can tolerate it. You know when I got quite good at it, you know, in the eighties, I really became quite a good front man. But um, I don't like it. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't like being in a spotlight. I really don't. I recognize you know, a lot of a lot of good goals with that. You Oh, like I got a constelia or anunder boss or a producer. I mean, if I had to identify myself, I would identify myself as a writer, producer. You know. That's what counts to me, is the creativity. I mean, it's fun, you know, it's fun being a rock star, you know, and it's fun being an actor. But that's not how I That's not my uh most satisfying part of my being. You know, that's that's sort of the vacation, that's the that's the reward, you know, you know what I mean, that's that's the fun part. But again, in this I guess if I had to sum it up, I'm sure Bruce Springsteen had a lot of people telling him what he wanted to hear. You're great, You're this, You're that. You seem to be the one that can tell him what he needs needed to hear. You don't want this arrangement. Nebraska is not an album for the band. But that's a tough position to be in because you know, he can start to resent you if you're right too often. He can be like, uh, yeah, I'm a little sick of you being right. Well, the three fights we've had I put in a book in great detail because of that, exactly what you're saying. You know, nobody wants to really hear it, you know, But as I said, I felt it was an obligation as a friend to do that. And what am I getting from it? Nothing but kicked out of the house, kicked out of a band, you know, well, and you you did, You did say at eighty three, you just you felt he had stopped listening, and so you left the band. That was the occasion when I left. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I left. I left. I left myself at that point, and it was it was hard. You you said, you felt like you were being written out of history, even though it was your own choice. Yeah, it was. It was a kind of a spontaneous move that I felt compelled to do at the time. I'm not sure I really weighed the consequences of it. I just felt like, you know, I need to leave in order to preserve the friendship. The friendship was more important to me at that moment than my own career, so to speak, because I never really, I never really separated any of these things. I don't separate career from the art, you know what I mean, from the friendship, from the band. I mean, it's all it's all one thing, you know. I didn't quite realize that at that moment until it hit me on a plane flight to South Africa that I didn't just change jobs, I just ended my life and I would become a different person at that moment. I would become fearless in a way, which I think helped me in my research for South Africa and made me go a little bit deeper than I probably would have normally, because I didn't care whether I lived or died. So when you when you stopped caring about living, it has a funny liberating effect on you. Sorry, was that related to you leaving the band? You stopped caring what you lived or died? Or did you just feel you're in a moral I realized I worked for fifteen years to get to that point. We just start making money, We just got We just successful, you know for two years at that point. In a River was the first success I produced, most of Born in the USA in eighty two. And I leave, So we had only been successful for a year or two after fifteen years of work, and I walked away. And now what you can start all over again, which is yes, that's what I had to do. I start all over again and never never, never even approached the level of success that I walked away from We'll be back after a quick break with more from Stevie Van Zanne. We're back with the rest of Bruce Hellum's conversation with Stevie Van Zan. You started doing your own albums, and I want to ask a bit about those. I want to ask about the song Checkpoint Charlie. Can you tell me a bit about that writing? Yeah, that was you know, I had Each album was had a theme, and that particular album, the second album of Voice of America, the theme was how the government affects families and that was the ultimate perfect metaphor. What was the Berlin Wall? You know, literally, you know, politics separating families. Me and Bruce had gone through Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin, and man was a scary I mean, it was the twilight zone for real. Well, I don't think we stayed too long, hour or two maybe, but uh, and I wrote a song about it, you know, which was we're punishing these people for their father's crimes and all that. It was a perfect metaphor. Can you talk a bit about another really memorable song on those albums, which is Saint Valentine's Day. Yeah, that's one of my favorites. That's a recent recent song. I was gonna work with Nancy Sinatra and I wrote this song for her and and uh, I still hope to do it with her. I don't. I'm not sure what went wrong at the time, but I ended up doing with the cocktail Slippers and and then it became the song in David Chase's first movie that his fictitious band was writing. And then I just did it on my last tour on the Soulfire album. We should talk a bit about sun City and how you brought people together. One thing I had forgotten was that it was it was a year before run DMC did Walk This Way. It was kind of the first metal rap song. Yeah, not metal but but but rock rock rock rap. Yeah. It was a very big issue at the time because, you know, me and Danny first started talking. I said, I want to put this new thing called rap on the record, and he was totally into it. It was one of those things that I had I had been very very aware of black artists not being able to express themselves as opposed to white artists. We were expected to express ourselves. That was part of a part of being an artist. But h Marvin Gay had a you know, fight with Barry Gordy and uh, you know, and then Stevie Wonder had a you know kind of fight for his freedom, and Sly and family Stone, you know, got into a little bit. But it was it was unusual, and it was not encouraged, and I thought, well, this rap thing, this is interesting, man. This is the first time that you know, I'm here in black artists expressed themselves and I want to encourage it. And so, uh well, I mean, the whole, the whole, the whole Sun City album is basically Arthur Baker's phone book, you know. And I always, you know, I always make sure I mentioned all four of us because it literally was all four of us doing it. I mean, without Danny Scheckter, nobody would have ever heard of it. Arthur Baker, it's his, it's his phone book on the record, and Hart Perry, if he hadn't videotaped it, nobody would have ever heard of it because it wasn't a big hit on the charts, right, it was a big hit on TV. Radio wouldn't play it. Radio said it was too black for white radio, and two white for black radio. Was I. I had a big meeting with MTV because they were having big problems at the time. They weren't playing any black artists, you know, and I said, well, here's a here's a solution to that. You know, we got more black artists in his video He'll take care of your whole quota for the year. Ye and b Et of course also played it extensively in a Black Entertainment but but that was it radio. I wouldn't't play it. You sort of say how the nineties were lost to you a little bit, but then you did a lot of stop during the nineties, which I was reminded of writing the book, because you're like, huh, so it's a blank spot in my head. Really, you're doing these projects you're doing. You did You're Born Against Savage album, you put together a Demolition twenty three, you did the Darling Love album, and there's this there's this refrain, and you actually mentioned it earlier in the conversation. You would talk about how this is some of your best work, and then the section would always end with nobody heard it for business reasons, for whatever popularity reason. You just had this feeling that no one was hearing you in a way. What was that like, Well, it was frustrating. You know, it was a little frustrating. You know. I attribute that to not having a manager. And uh, you know, the creative process is two things. You know, it's the content and it's the marketing of that content, and they're kind of not two different things, they're kind of two halves of the same thing. And you can create all day long, and I don't know, you know, but you got to have somebody out there selling it. It's a big It was a big, a big flaw, you know, in my life, and and I just, uh I tried, I tried. I tried to find find somebody, and uh, it just it just never worked out. So I ended up doing a lot of good work. I think that that nobody heard. You had a conversation with Bruce Springsteen at one point because you were going to play at a festival. You hadn't headlined for a while, and you lost your voice, and he said something to me that I thought was kind of fascinating. You said, well, you can tell he's been in Freudian an analysis time. Do you remember what he said to you. I had not sung or performed my own music for thirty years at that point, so I'm re experiencing them for the first time, and I couldn't get through a lot of the songs without crying. And when you cry, you your voice tightens up. And it was just an odd phenomenon that I had never experienced before because you realize that you didn't have the buffer, you know, the buffer of you know, doing things over and over, you know, the repetition and the redundancy, and and you put away the that raw emotion that creates the song. You get a little distance from it. And what happened was suddenly I was I'm thinking about the words that I'm that I'm singing, and feeling that that interaction with those chord changes and the melodies, and it was just pure emotion, you know, in that in a way that you don't usually experience it because you have that little little bit of distance from doing it. And yeah, Bruce and Bruce had a had a psycholo a psychoanalytical thing on it, which was yeah, which by what he said, or was it koop be trow coopy trow You know. Yeah, you run one of the only channels that a breaks new bands and b plays new music by older artists, So you seem to be the person who might know this. What is next for rock music, the music you love? H I don't know, it's it's it's uh. I've been spent I spent the last twenty years trying to rebuild an infrastructure for it which has gone. We now have returned to being the cult where we started, you know, we returned to nineteen fifty five. So the job right now, I think it is for us to try rebuild an infrastructure that can can at least create a healthy cult it. We're never going to be mainstream again. That was a blip in a radar, an anomaly in history, that thirty year period where rock ruled. We probably belong in a cult, the truth is, but let's we're trying to make it a healthy cult where people can make a living doing it. And that's been that's been a challenge. And what's next for your music? I don't know, you know, every record could be the last. I write with purpose, so I don't, I don't, I don't, you know, write all day long. I write when I have a reason to write, and you know that usually involves a record, and it usually involves a tour, unless it's something for a movie, you know, which is possible, you know, but it was very difficult touring these last two tours seventeen eighteen and nineteen the busiest I've ever been. Six album packages, two new albums Soul Fire and Summer of Sorcery, and two world tours. But it was very difficult taking around fifteen piece band and you know, thirty five person touring party with you know, I'm sure that's the only time that's ever happened with an artist with no hits. You you're the only guy who writes a book to unwind. Yeah, thank you so much for talking. It's been just fabulous talking to you, and it's great reading your book. Thank you, my friend. Good talking to you. Thank you to Stevie van Zant for taking us through his history as an artist and sharing insight into his new memoir, Unrequited Infatuations. You can check out a playlist with all of our favorite Stevie songs at Broken Record podcast dot com, and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast, where we can find all of our new episodes. Broken Record is produced it helpful Leah Rose, Benalida, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez with engineering help from Nick Chaffee. Our executive producer is Mio Lobell. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others and Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content an unasrupted ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions, and please remember to share, rate, and re view us on your podcast app. If you like us. Our musics by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.