Talking Garage Rock with Steve Van Zandt

For one month back in the early 90s, I lived in the same W. 57th St. high-rise as "Little" Steven Van Zandt. Every day I'd spy the E. Street axman in the courtyard swathed in nasturtium billows and Jersey do-rag, smoking butts, walking his dog, killing time. Since this was my first Manhattan celebrity-spotting, I trained a close eye on him, and before long it was evident not only that he had time on his hands, but that he was caught in some profound existential torpor.

It was strange?this ebullient roots-rockin' dude, this pure, Jersey-rock organism slouching about like some deflated, Depression-era mope. Here was the guy who'd cofounded Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes, formed the Disciples of Soul, recorded and toured with Springsteen, man!, launched a five-part solo album cycle, conceived of and coproduced the anti-apartheid "Sun City" project and lent support to a bevy of political causes. Not every project was a home run, but by the standards of every kid who ever stepped in a gasoline rainbow and banged out power chords till the next door neighbors cried, "Shut the fuck up already!" he was successful. Damn successful. He was also the quintessence of the rock 'n' roll team player, a "band" guy who appreciated what a rare and beautiful thing it was to be able to rock out onstage and get paid for it.

But pop in the early 90s was scaling walls of worry and weltschmerz. On those long afternoons, Little Steven must've been peering into the abyss, addled by all the shoe-gazing and honed insouciance and the louche, antirock starism of the era's privileged alterna-weasels?those drab gas-station attendant wannabes, squatting righteous on the Knitting Factory floor chiding, "Shhhhh! Quiet, everyone. Pee Shy are about to make art." Had I been Little Steven in the early 90s, I'd've launched myself from the Harrison Park bridge.

The homily doesn't end happily. Not in the larger sense, anyway. Sure, last summer's Springsteen reunion tour was a sellout (grossing something like $45 million). Little Steven is now a principal actor on the most successful, highest rated series in the history of cable television. He is current again, perhaps more current than he's ever been, though in a different medium. As for rock radio, kids and guitars, the things he thinks about when he thinks about love?they're all memories, baby. I talked with Little Steven recently about all of this and about Underground Garage Saturdays, the monthly series his production company, Renegade Nation Productions, is copromoting with the Cavestomp folks at the Village Underground. Little Steven clearly believes that if rock 'n' roll still has a living heart, it's in the garage somewhere, beating.

You grew up on the British invasion rock of the late 60s. Personally speaking, how did garage rock fit into the picture then and how does it now?

Well, that's kind of a long story, really. It goes way back to 1972 when Lenny Kaye put out Nuggets. Back then I thought it was really odd, like jeez, you know, I guess I'm not the only one who likes these songs. Fast forward to 1998. The new version of Nuggets comes out on Rhino and it's obvious to me that this music is its own thing, completely. It comprises its own genre. And legitimately so. But the most interesting thing of all is how now we're seeing all these great young garage bands, like the Greenhornes and others like the Mooney Suzuki and the Swinging Neckbreakers, who are doing these great sellout shows outside their hometowns. It's fascinating to me. And it's great to see because, let's face it, rock 'n' roll could not be more dead!

Cremated, my friend, ashes to the wind.

Okay, so maybe this new interest in garage'll disappear tomorrow. Who knows? But possibly this really could be a rebirth of rock music. And to have sadly watched the death of radio and then the death of rock, and to see the pop crap that's coming out, there's really nothing even close to traditional rock 'n' roll anymore except for this.

Just curious: As a producer, how do you think the '98 Nuggets compares to the original?

From the standpoint of mastering?

Yeah.

Unfortunately I don't have my original anymore so I can't A-B them. But you know, all music suffers from the digital format. Don't get me started on that. It's vastly inferior to vinyl. But that's what it is now, so you just have to force your ears to adjust.

So you've teamed up with Cavestomp to do this Underground Garage Saturdays deal. You're not exactly idle these days?how'd it come about for you?

Around the time of Nuggets II, my friend Twig of Richard and the Young Lions called and said, "Hey, something weird's going on. We're getting all this interest. Mail is coming in from all over the world." At this same time, these terrific Cavestomp shows started happening. So I was thinking, okay, these once-a-year happenings are great, but that's not often enough for me, ya know? I'd like to see this happen more regularly. So I contacted Steve Weitzman [manager of Village Underground and formerly Tramps], who's a friend of mine, and said let's try to do this once a month. Let's see if we can get a little sponsorship and break even on it. If it works, I'd like to see it turn into a weekly thing.

If the Cavestomp thing is any indication, there's got to be enough interest to support at least a monthly series.

Well, keep in mind, Jon Weiss [Cavestomp founder/promoter] does it the right way. He's not just some nostalgia guy. He treats this music very seriously as contemporary, timeless music. He makes sure that he gets the original members, that they're well rehearsed and that they're not gonna disappoint people. At the same time he's seeking out these really vital younger bands like the Embrooks. He brings a very high level of quality to the whole thing. People see Cavestomp, they respect it. [Long pause] You know, people really do want the rock 'n' roll experience. They want something they can depend on, and these days there really isn't much you can depend on. You can't even depend on a friggin' snowstorm.

Strikes me as the closest thing to a New York rock scene.

Exactly! That's what we want to do. Young and old. To have a scene, to have a community, which really has been absent since the old CBGBs.

So do you see yourself producing any of these young bands?

Well, other than doing the series, I'm not really in the music business. I don't live in that world anymore. I put my own record out on my own label, but to do it right and not lose your shirt, it's hard. And expensive. If at some point a label sees what's going on here and wants to do a distribution deal with my label or one of the indie garage labels like SunDazed or Norton, then I might think about producing a couple bands a year.

What's it going to take for rock music to come back on a grand scale? A shift in the culture? A personality? A war?

Well, society is influenced by individuals doing extraordinary things. People don't get excited by formats. They get excited by people, by songs. Music is so much more individual than it's given credit for, which is partly why rock radio failed. They took the personality out of it. Once the music DJ lost the ability to have a relationship with his audience, radio failed. The infrastructure of what we knew as rock 'n' roll is gone. So we need to look with some interest on these new radio technologies, stuff like Internet radio packaged as original equipment in automobiles providing hundreds of new niche stations. It'll be interesting to see if that makes any difference. I think what'll happen is you'll have a lot smaller audiences for everything. We'll have to scale down how we measure success for rock music. There'll be the occasional pop thing breaking through and doing five million, but now it's harder to have the mass consciousness focused on any one thing. Just how it is now.

Kind of sad, no more arena rock.

I don't see the older groups being replaced. Name me five groups that can play an arena tour that are under 40 years old. I'm not judging anybody. People are a lot more distracted by competing media, and rock music doesn't hold the cultural significance it once did. This year a rock song or two snuck into pop radio, but it's been like 10 years. A rock song doesn't come close to top-40 radio anymore. Whereas the era when garage was born, the late 60s, that was the greatest crossover period in history. Sure, a lot of these garage songs were one-hit wonders, but so many of them were in the top 10.

Every so often you'll hear the garage influence in contemporary radio pop, like that Smashmouth stuff.

And that connection is healthy. What bothers me is the rock acts who're succeeding now sound like they're borrowing from Seattle of 10 years ago, they sound like Eddie Vedder or Kurt Cobain. A couple even sound like Hootie, you know? You got this corporate mediocrity ruling the world, and that's why people aren't excited anymore.

To those few 14-year-old kids who're bashing away in the tool shed, got any suggestions, couple words of advice, little pep talk maybe?

[Laughs] Well, like I've always said, if you need encouragement to play rock music, you ain't gonna make it, baby! So it doesn't matter what I say. What really is inspiring, though, is these bands like Richard and the Young Lions. I love that enthusiasm that never changes. It's the same way I feel when I walk onstage. They're giving 100 percent, man, and I miss that. For me, the opportunity to get onstage and communicate with people is miraculous. I take that like life and death. I'm a bit extreme in that area, granted.

Speaking of which, any chance of you getting onstage at one of these shows?

Naah, I don't plan on doing that.

Thanks so much for chatting with me.

Absolutely. It's great that people are taking an interest in this music again. Obviously we need everybody we can get, but we'll make it happen. It's a revolution, baby!