Carnival of Soul

In the more than 60 years of rock, there may be no more fitting album title than Steven Van Zandt’s Rock N Roll Rebel. Originally released in 2016, the just released 13-disc expanded edition contains all of his solo albums between 1982 and 1999, as well as additional live material, four CDs of rarities and the landmark 1985 Sun City album Van Zandt led in putting together.

Van Zandt is, in every way, a rock ‘n’ roll rebel. Talk to him for an hour as I did and two things are abundantly clear — he believes as deeply in the power of rock and roll as he did when he was a teenager. As he says, “There’s nothing more effective than rock music connecting us together.”

The second thing is that Van Zandt, who is tremendously underrated as a political songwriter, is going to speak his mind. And oh baby does he have a lot to say, especially regarding the current administration.

” I’m hoping to save the Republican party this year. I’m hoping everybody can come out and vote every single Republican out of office, every single one from the local assemblyman to the mayors and governors and senators and congressmen and up,” he says. “Every single Republican needs to be voted out of office right now to teach them a lesson and say, ‘You guys better get it together. You want to qualify as a real American party then maybe you should start believing in democracy, equality, science, certain basic things . That’s how we define our country and I don’t know how you’re defining the country anymore, Republicans, but it’s got nothing to do with us. It has more to do with making Vladimir Putin happy or some white supremacists happy. But that’s not America.’ So I’m hoping everybody is united and really works very hard to make sure people are registered and can vote every single Republican out of office this year and then start again next year rebuilding a Republican party that makes some sense because right now they don’t make any sense, they might as well be a Russian asset collaborating with treason as far as I’m concerned.”

Unfortunately with the lack of discourse we have in this country at this point, the left is going to agree with Van Zandt and the right will call him names. But Van Zandt speaks from experience with the Republican party.

” My father was an ex-marine, [Barry] Goldwater Republican. So I understand that world very well, what real conservatives are and what they believe,” he says. “I never really agreed with a whole lot of it but I understand what it was. And this Republican party bears no resemblance whatsoever to that Republican party of my father or Barry Goldwater or what is defined as conservative.”

As Van Zandt himself wrote in arguably his finest political song, “I Am A Patriot,”

“And I ain’t no communist

And I ain’t no capitalist

And I ain’t no socialist

And I ain’t no imperalist

And I ain’t’ no democrat

And I ain’t no republican

I only know one party

And it is freedom.”

So when the aptly named rock and roll rebel speaks everyone should listen with an open mind and pay close attention.

Steve Baltin: What was the last show you saw before things shut down?

Steve Van Zandt: I was in L.A. right before things shut down visiting a partner school for our history curriculum, Orangethorpe. One of the most exciting days of my life actually, to see your 15 years of work actually happening before your eyes. Our main thing is arts integration into the entire school system and all of the disciplines. And from kindergarten to sixth grade there they have integrated the arts into every single class. It’s really exciting, man.

Baltin: How have you been handling all of this?

Van Zandt: I got busier than ever. The first two weeks was bliss (laughs). Everybody was in shock. So for two weeks it was like nothing happened. I really kind of enjoyed it I must say, circumstances aside of course. But now everybody’s figured it out. We’re all sitting targets. We’re no longer moving targets. It never would have happened if we weren’t forced to do it. But every once in a while it’s good to reflect and take a look at what you’re doing and what’s going on and just have the world stop for a minute. I wish it could happen more regularly for different reasons, but there are some positive things about it.

Baltin: Well especially since you were so busy before all this and there will presumably be both a Disciples Of Soul and E Street tour in the future when things open back up. So if things hadn’t slowed down would you have had time to put the box set together?

Van Zandt: I am using the time wisely to get out almost everything I’ve ever done, is coming out this year. And everything will be available in all formats — vinyl, CD, digital. Everything except the Summer Of Sorcery live album and DVD, which we pushed until May of next year because it was just getting too crowded. We’re anxious to get everything out and I’m producing a few records on the phone. And we made sure the radio show is continuing to work fine because most of that is done from home. Our music history curriculum was already online so that was cool. But in a way, yeah, we’re looking at E Street, we’re looking at Disciples Of Soul, things are gonna start piling up is the problem. Can only do one thing at a time, which has always been a problem for me. I really need to get back on TV also. I decided to dedicate these last three years to reconnecting with my own work, which I’m glad I did. It was important to do that. I really kind of abandoned it for 20 years, So it was really good for me spiritually to reconnect with my own life’s work and now to get it all out remastered, which I never had done before. So getting all that out is good. But looking ahead I’m not too optimistic, I gotta tell you the truth, about what’s going on here. I’m not sure there’s going to be any activity in ’21. I was hoping there would be. I’m still hoping there will be, but I don’t see it. We’re in a three-stage situation here, the first stage being everything online, which is what we’ve been doing. The second stage has to do with tests and the tests have to be fast and effective. And I’m talking about like four hours, not four days, not 14 days. So the testing that’s going on right now is a joke and it’s pathetic. And that is not really gonna enable anybody to go back to work, although they’re encouraging everybody to go back to work, which is I think a huge mistake. And evidence of complete incompetence on the part of our government. Now they’re telling kids to go back to school, which I think is a huge mistake. So we’re not gonna see audiences, I’m afraid, until the earliest, ’22 the way things are going right now.

Baltin: Where did your interest in music and politics intersect?

Van Zandt: It all began interestingly enough with the first sentence in Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” for me. “Johnny’s in the basement mixing up the medicine,” kind of a fun line you can make of it as you will. Second line: “I’m on the pavement thinking about the government.” “What, thinking about the government?” Whoever thought about the government, that was a radical idea Bob Dylan introduced. From there it became part of the DNA of rock music and the rock era. The rock era became a wonderful way to communicate between us in our country and between countries. Suddenly we could talk to people in different countries without going through our government for the first time. And that was something rock music encouraged.

Baltin: Talk about how the ’60s influenced the ’80s activism and leading that into the rise in music activism today.

Van Zandt: The basic difference is you have a regime right now that is so upfront in their criminality that it almost feels redundant to talk about it, As opposed to the ’80s, for instance, when I was at my most active writing about what was going on. My motivation was to write and explain to people because it was invisible. It was all behind the scenes. You had the front of this happy grandfatherly cowboy in Ronald Reagan making everybody feel good. And all of these crimes are going on behind the scenes. I thought, “We gotta point the light where right now there is only darkness in terms of the international criminal behavior of this administration.” But now you got an administration that brags about putting kids in cages as a way of stopping immigration and they lost a couple of hundred kids. There’s no need to explain what’s going on anymore, it’s so obvious. And now we have troops going into Portland, which is what everybody feared would happen. Now we’re seeing the beginning of literally a civil war. And in between November and January look out because I fear we could literally be in a literal civil war by then. So it’s good people are talking about it and obviously are very united. I think it’s important right now…I’m not a big fan of the party system, but I do believe if we’re gonna have a party system you need at least two functional parties. And we don’t have two functional parties right now. We need to come out in enormous numbers, undeniable numbers physically and try and overcome what is a real fight, not to mention the Russian hacking, which is going on now. Mitch McConnell refuses to stop it. He is an absolute traitor to this country, refusing to stop it.

Baltin: What does rock music mean to you?

Van Zandt: I dedicated the last 20 years or so to making sure this endangered species called rock music survives. I turn on the radio one day and I’m like, “Man, we’re in trouble.” So I started a whole new radio format, two radio formats really: one for rock music and soul, Underground Garage, and Outlaw Country for country-leaning stuff. But that’s why I started my music history curriculum, the radio show, my record company. Everything I’ve been doing the last 20 years is to basically make sure that this endangered species called rock survives. Why? Because it is the best form of communication I think that we’ve ever had. Music is the great common ground to begin with and it’s a wonderful, wonderful way of communicating between people emotionally. Music communicates emotionally first. But we’re finding it to be the most effective way of teaching kids in school, especially kids who have Attention Deficit Disorder. So we use music for teachers as an effective way of communicating with kids right now. That’s why we have 30,000 kids registered and we just went public with it last year. So there is something about rock music and its various hybrids like hip hop; sometimes it wanders in the pop world, country world with people like the Chicks. But there is something about rock music in general that communicates very effectively. Without it I think it’s going to be a lot more difficult for us to reach each other and communicate with each other. Even with social media now, which is wonderful and can be very effective, it also can be very dangerous cause there’s a lot of weird stuff going on there too. But there’s nothing more effective than rock music connecting us together.

Baltin: What can be done to change things globally?

Van Zandt: I’ve been so blessed these last three years, the most productive three years of my whole life artistically. But more than that we toured the whole world, man, and there are problems in Australia, Indonesia, Hungary and Poland. Brexit in England is a disaster. All of these walls being put back up, all this nationalism, isolationism, extreme religious beliefs taking over countries. All of that is bad. It’s all bad. Our goal in life should be global unification. Isn’t that what life’s all about? And that’s the trajectory we kind of had been on since World War II more or less up until now. And now the opposite is happening. Everybody is pulling back, isolating, and the walls are going up. And we gotta stop it right now and get back on track.