I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio.

Few performers cross over from one artistic medium to another and achieve great success in both.

My guest Today, Stephen van Zandt, known as Little Stephen to some, is one such performer.

Singer, songwriter, and producer, Van Zant first found fame as a member of the Eastreet Band with Bruce Springsteen, but this prolific musician also founded New Jersey's own Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, along with his solo project Little Stephen and the Disciples of Soul.

In a surprising second act, van Zandt starred as the inimitable Silvio Dante in The Sopranos for nine years with no prior acting experience.

It was a role that certainly made its mark on me.

There was a period of my life of four years where I was divorced, I had my daughter.

I needed stability in my life.

Sunday night, I watched sixty Minutes nine o'clock, I watched You.

At ten o'clock, I watched Big Love, and then I went to bed.

And any show you watch, it gets in your skin and my friend and I we would say this line all the time.

You gotta pick your bottles, you want your no show jobs, mitos, gotta go.

It's the right move tea.

It's the right move tea.

We would walk around for five fucking years and we'd be in a restaurant, my friends and I go waiter.

I'm gonna have the chicken, but I don't want to want the onions.

I want the onions on the side.

I understand.

I want the fingerling potatoes and you can hold the spinach.

I don't want the cream spinach.

I just want the potatoes, onions on the side and the chicken.

All right, And my friend look at me and go, it's the right move tea.

We said the phrase it's the right move tea a thousand fucking times since I first heard you utter that on the show.

I am your great fan.

I am your great.

Fan well, and I have yours well.

The first thing I thought about when I thought about you, when I was reading the stuff the research we did, what was that idea?

Because I want to cover music and acting as well, and that is that for you.

It's live music.

You're in front of an audience and you're getting all that feedback from a live audience and you, guys, I must say, got a pretty good feedback, got a pretty good response.

And then you're in a studio recording, and then you're filming a television show and you bring the language, and you bring the traditions, and you're bringing the habits of the musician, the famous musician, and you go into the TV show the set.

Was that a difficult transition for you?

Yeah?

At first, yeah, because you know, acting is a lot of trust and I and you know, if the director is happy, you got to be happy.

And that was a new kind of trust for me.

We're used to kind of directing ourselves in the music world.

And I said to myself, how does he know if that's as good as I can do it?

You know, And in the music world, you know, you go in the studio, you sing a song, and you come in the control room and listen to it, and you say, well, you know, maybe I could, maybe I could do it better.

Let me go, Let me go in and try it again.

Acting.

You know, you act, and then you see it, you know, eight months later, and it's like, geez, I probably could have done that a little bit better if I had known, So it just took it took a minute to just to trust the process, you know, and trust the new medium, and it's a whole different trip.

You were born in Massachusetts, correct, correct and raised, and you moved to Jersey as a kid, yeah, seven years and you grew up in New Jersey.

And these two most notable.

I mean, you obviously had other successes as a solo artisan with other bands and ensembles and stuff for the recording, but you know, you're identified as both on television and on vinyl and CD as a son of New Jersey when you got hired by Chase to do the TV show.

Did that have anything to do with anything?

Yes?

Actually, first of all, everybody passed on the show because he insisted on filming a New Jersey and every respectable network said, you know, we don't film in New Jersey.

Thank you very much.

Good luck.

Luckily he found this upstart, you know, new guy named Hbo who had like a football show and a couple of movies on at the time, and they had the courage to go for it, and he was looking for a Jersey centric kind of cast, you know, So I think that was a factor.

Actually, I always try to impress upon people.

It's one thing if you have great success in TV.

It's another thing if you change the fortunes of a network.

HBO was not HBO then that they were going to.

They went in one end of that experience, came out the other end, and with sex and the city and the sopranos, it was completely transformed, you know.

I mean yeah, And I give them full credit for having that courage, because as far as I know, that was the first time I think that a network gave complete freedom to the artist and just said, go do it.

You know, we trust you, go do it, and no notes.

You know, my brother's been in the writing for TV his whole life and he wrote a book about it, and it's all it's like you're getting notes all the time.

You know, uh yeah, fix this, do that, do this, do that.

And then you of course you did your terrific TV show and probably experienced some of that, but this was like, hey, here it is, go do it.

Here's a blank slate.

And David Chase had the vision to pull it off, and Jimmy Gandelfini had the incredible talent to pull it off.

And I credit you know, Jeff Buchus and Chris Albrick and then those guys for having the courage to do it because it was a big expense at the time.

I remember, this was a huge investment for them.

They were not really spending that kind of money, you know.

I called Jimmy on the phone.

I did street Car on Broadway with him in nineteen ninety two.

I did this very kind of weird, tepid little thriller with dem More called The Juror with Jimmy in nineteen ninety five, and Jimmy the Show premiered win ninety nine.

Okay, so the showing, the show goes on and Jimmy becomes certainly among the biggest TV stars of his time.

And I call him up and I go, Jimmy, I can't believe what's happening to you.

He's got you guys are getting nominated and everything's going great.

And I go, Jimmy, I can't tell you how proud I am of you, how envious I am of you.

This is amazing.

And he literally says to me, he's a fucking pain in the ass.

I gotta get a van.

Four o'clock in the morning.

I drive out through the Jersey four o'clock in the fucking morning.

I went through well fucking days of fucking pain in my ass.

I'm but, Jimmy, you just got nominated.

Jimmy, you're making a deal.

You're making Yeah, yea, you know, I understand, But just judges fucking huge pain in my fucking ass.

And he did a lot of whining.

I think, oh, forget it.

He quit the show every day.

We're going to get to that for you.

For you, what was I mean?

Music is obviously your first iteration in American culture?

What was music like for you as a kid.

Did you go up to a musical household?

No, not really, It was just the timing happened to be that generation that was elevated February ninth, you know, nineteen sixty four by this crazy variety show on Sunday Nights, the guy who owned Sunday Nights before the Sopranos, this crazy guy named Ed Sullivan, who you couldn't make him up if you tried, something like I don't know what he was like Richard the Third on LSD or something, and you know, he'd have something for everybody in the family to whole would gather around he one TV and he'd have opera for the old folks, and he'd have puppets for the kids, and he'd have something for the teenagers.

And February ninth, nineteen sixty four something for the teenagers was a group called the Beatles, and that changed my life, at least half changed my life.

I always have to give credit also to the Rolling Stones, because by the time we discovered the Beatles, they were halfway through the career.

You know, they were going since fifty seven, going in sixty nine, really, and by sixty four they were extremely sophisticated.

I mean they were just superb.

The harmony was perfect, the hair, the clothes, everything was just perfect.

So they revealed this new world to us.

But it didn't exactly you know, you didn't exactly look at it and say, geez, even though this gives me hope because I'm a freak and I don't fit into society anywhere, can I look he felt that way.

It does give me hope.

Yeah, but you didn't exactly say, geez, I think I can do that.

Luckily, four months later the Rolling Stones come.

They don't have any harmony at all, really, they don't, you know, the hairs are messed up, except for Brian Jones.

They are wearing whatever they feel like.

They made it look like, they made it look easier than it was.

They were the first punk band, really, And so the way I like to put it is, the Beatles revealed a new world to us, and the Rolling Stones invited us in.

I love when Jagger does the induction of the Beatles into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, when he says, he talks about someplace they were performing back in the old days, maybe in Liverpool, and he says, and there they were in the audience, the foreheaded monster job old Georgia Ringo.

They never went anywhere without the others.

And they had these full length leather dusters, these leather coats on and he said, and I said to myself, if I've got to learn to write songs in order to be able to afford I love that line.

If I've got to learn to write songs in order to be able to afford a coat like that, and I'm going to learn to write music, I'm well, well, good for you.

I'm glad the world benefited from that.

But but for you, the Beatles, and for for all of us, I mean, I'm a Beatles addict.

My wife had the greatest line that my wife said was to Paul, you know, you guys really are the original boy band.

You guys are the first boy band when you think about it.

And McCartney says to my wife, he's so clever, he says, to my way, he says, well, really, that's somewhat true.

But we had to play our instruments while we were doing our wiggling, and they only had to sing and wiggle.

So it was a bit harder for us because we had to play the guitar and the drums while we were wiggling, and we were howling, laughing, you know.

But but for you when you when you are playing music and you pick up one instrument first guitar, yeah, you're how old.

Well, just before the Beatles came out, my grandfather was showing me the Italian a little song from his village in Calabria.

I don't know if each town had a little theme song or what, but he showed me this song from his village.

So I started to play just a couple of months before they came so I got a little bit of a head start.

To play guitar.

Yeah, and when and when you're a kid and you're playing the guitar.

Are you dreaming of playing music in a band?

Are you dreaming of having even an ounce of the Beatles success?

Did you want to go into music when you were very young?

No?

No, no, it's strictly a Beatle thing.

It was strictly see keep in mind, and I know people find it's hard to believe, but the Beatles introduced the concept of bands to us.

There were no bands.

If you went to your high school dance, it was an instrumental group.

You know, There wasn't There wasn't four or five guys singing and playing.

You didn't see it.

It was soloists.

Yeahsby Elvis, all the pioneers really, you know, except for the Cricket.

Other than the crickets, you know, they were all solo acts.

And by the way, I missed that first decade of rock.

I missed the pioneers.

I had to go back and discover them.

But even if I had been there, I wasn't interested in solo artists.

They didn't mean anything to me.

I didn't want to be in show business.

I didn't like show business at the time.

I like it now, but I didn't then, you know, you're building your identity and you are what you like, you know, and the concept of a band is what appealed to me.

That made the difference.

You know, well it's not me, me, me, you know, you're communicating the friendship and family and the gang, community, the gang, the posse, all of that.

That's what appealed to me.

That lifestyle of doing something in common with your friends.

You know, there was something that really appealed to me that way.

And when do you put together a band?

The first time?

Soon after I joined a band as a singer when I'm fifteen, and then by the time I'm sixteen, I start my own band and I'm playing guitar and singing and leading the band that's performing anywhere.

Yeah, oh yeah.

Oh.

We were just the luckiest generation man.

I mean, there were places to play all over the place, all over the place.

You get that age, Oh that.

Was the best time.

This is the best time, man.

We are our demographic was the first one to really be catered to.

So we not only had the high school dances and the beach clubs right there, we had teenage nightclubs built for us, which I haven't seen before or since.

We played all the time.

We were working all the time.

I see that moment you're on stage and you finish some blistering song, you're singing some really really great rock song, and you guys are done with a set and you come up the stage and the guys like your ginger.

Also, yeah exactly.

But I mean, you know, this is the thing.

It was so new that al we would never have that kind of freedom again, you know, because it's it's sort of three stages of the rock and roll lifestyle, right, you know, there's the teenage one, which you know, then there's the bar band world, and then there's the professional stuff.

You know you get into the business.

Well, at that age, the teenage world, at that time, there was no adult that's going to even pretend to tell you what to do because they didn't get it at all.

They had no idea, There was no templates, No, there was no even opinion, you know what I mean.

It wasn't like, oh, you got to you guys are going to do this, which is which is what you got.

When you got to the bar band stage, you had to play the top forty you know, that was a rule.

We we broke it with the Jukes.

We changed new Jersey history with Southside Jihn and Hesbury Jukes, by not playing the top forty, by by finding a club that was going to close because the roof had caved in and h and we said, listen, we're not going to charge you anything.

We'll just take the door, you take the bar, but we play whatever we want.

And because they were going to close, they allowed that to happen.

And then you know, we just got with fifty people, then one hundred and two hundred, and you know, it was the residency every Sunday night, and then they fixed the roof and then they expanded the place and we ended up with three nights a week, a thousand people a night.

But that was a complete change in the New Jersey rules of a bar band.

But as teenagers, man, it was just like complete freedom.

You did whatever you wanted.

You know, what was the place that was collapsing the facility?

What was it called Stone Pony?

It was Stone Pony Stone, Yeah, it was Stone Pony was falling apart, yeap, still there.

You guys put the new roof on Stone Pony.

Oh yeah, yeah, And there was you know, it was it was a time when when you were making that transition to trying to be become more professional, but we didn't want to follow the professional rules, so we wanted to make up our own rules.

My first introduction to a variety of music when I go to college, which is the real melting pot.

You really get your cultural chiropractic adjustment when you walk into college with a bunch of people from different regions and there's all these guys from South Jersey and Philly and they were all Asbury Jukes freaks.

I'm listening to.

I didn't know who Boz Skaggs was, and I'm listening to, you know, bos Skaggs, Silk degrees, all this stuff, Dan Fogelberg.

I never had a whiff of all this.

But these guys were like the Southside Johnny, Asbury dukes freaks.

These were all South Jersey guys who just craved that music.

And you wind up doing that for how long?

How long are you in that band?

And the initial run well something like seventy four seventy five, probably not the most two years, but I stayed involved and produced the first three albums, so I was involved right through seventy eight, but by seventy end of seventy five, I think Bruce decided he was hanging out with us because his first two records didn't do anything and he couldn't work, so he was not with us, and and he was about to put out his third album, Born to Run, and decided, one last shot, he was going to try fronting the band for a minute, just to see if that made any difference, because he just was kind of, you know, on the edge of you know, big trouble at that point.

So he said, come on out and play guitar.

I'm gonna I'm gonna front the band.

So I got seven gigs booked, so I decided, you know, I'm gonna do that, and I just wanted to get out of town, you know, because I was not only leading the band, but I was also managing the band, the Jukes anyway, So you know, I went out with Bruce, and him fronting the band did make a big difference, actually, and we started to break through, and I went for seven gigs and stayed seven years.

But Jukes, I wasn't actually in the band that long, maybe two years or so.

But when you say managing the band and producing records, did you find it managing for you?

Did you find any kind of managerial road.

Was it tough for you?

Yeah, I can't do naturally.

You didn't, well, it did come to me naturally, but I didn't really like it.

I don't enjoy business in general.

I don't enjoy the whole negotiating process.

So I tend to be just up front about Look, this is what's needed here.

If you don't want to do it, you know, I'll go elsewhere.

I'm always willing to walk away.

I don't feel like I need anybody that badly, you know, or any deal that badly.

So that kind of gives you a bit of an edge right away.

You know, I don't need anybody or anything, you know, And I communicate that.

Or at least you pretend you don't need them very effectively.

You're good at pretending you don't need it.

Yeah, that's yeah.

You and I may have that in common.

I profess I don't need anyone or anything.

You can all go fuck.

It's the Irish goodbye.

It's the Irish goodbye.

Go fuck yourself and I'm out of here.

We don't even say it, but we leave the party getting an uber It's the Irish goodbye.

Yes, and it's not exactly a completely fraud, because if you're a writer, you know, you tend to be pretty independent.

You know, you can be.

I mean, nobody's nobody's completely independent.

Of course, we all.

Need distribution of our work one way or the other.

But you can be quite independent if you're a writer first.

You know, I'm a writer producer first, you know.

And so when it comes to performing, that's just like a vacation for me.

You know, whether it's acting or whether it's being a rock star and on stage, you know, that stuff is just nothing but fun for me.

The real work is looking at a blank piece of paper and creating something from it.

You know, where's the first time you met Springsteen?

Where were you in your first laid eyes on him?

The day before the Beatles played at Sullivan, there wasn't one band in America.

The day after, everyone had a band in their garage.

I mean literally everyone.

It was the most.

It was incredible cultural impact, and not just for the musicians, by the way.

I mean after that, when kids were going out at night, you went and saw a band.

You know, if you didn't go to drive in, you know, to the movies, you went and saw a bawl.

I mean that that was it, that was what you did with your free time.

I mean, so the Beatles created more than just a world, a new world for musicians.

It was a it was a new social world for everybody, you know, and new culture.

Really it really was.

I mean that's no exaggeration.

So you met him where well, you know, like I said, everybody had a band the next day, and mercifully most of them stayed in the garage, but about a dozen of us got out there into a circuit, and he was one of them, and I was one of them.

I had my band, the Source, and he had his band, the cast Heels, and we met each other on the circuit, which was made up of all of those places I said before, v W VFW halls and all of that, and we'd have band battles, you know, every month or so there'd be a band battle, you know.

But I on the weekends, I started going up to the village, going to the Cafe Wah on Saturday afternoons, where there was bands, one one after the other.

And they were all about a year ahead of us in New Jersey.

Because in those days a lot happened very quickly, you know, the time was very different.

The whole chronological time was a completely different animal than now.

I mean, five years goes by now and nothing happens.

You know.

Back then, every three, four or five months, something major was happening, you know, so you go up and try and you know, keep up and get ahead of what was happening.

And so I go up and steal ideas and bring them back to my band in New Jersey, you know, which is why we were one of the best.

And I started running into Bruce doing the same thing.

You know, it was only an hour on the bus, but it was kind of an adventurous for you know, for sixteen year old kid to do at the time.

So I ran into him with the Cafe Wah, which is still there by the way, and we became closer.

And because of that, and then I started coming up with him.

I go to his house in Freehold.

He played me some new songs, and I'd play him my favorite new records, and then we'd get on the bus and go to New York.

So we became closer because of that.

And did musical collaboration was inevitable or did you talk about it right away?

Was it attractive to you or did that take some time?

You know, do you think he fit into your musical plans and vice versa.

You can meet somebody you love, but to sit there, I don't see us working together.

I don't know why, you know, I regret that we didn't back then, But I was reminded of this by one of the other members of the group, which we tracked down when I was writing the book, and he reminded me that I did come to the band and want Bruce because Bruce had having a little trouble with his band.

He wasn't even the lead singer in his band, by the way, but he was having a little trouble, you know, there was some bad vibes going on.

So I went to my band and wanted him to join, wanted Brews to be in our band.

But it was pointed out to me that Bruce's mother didn't drive, so because the mothers were the ones.

Taking turns, I swear to his truth, his gold.

Because the mother took turns driving us to the gigs, and because his mother didn't drive, he really couldn't be in the band.

So so we didn't actually collaborate.

We didn't.

We wouldn't collaborate till a few years later.

You know, when we started having a different group every three, four or five months.

You know, we just started experimenting.

Like I said, we were learning our identities.

And you'd go from one trend to the next.

Every year there was a different trend, you know, a bridge invasion to folk rock, to psychedelic rock, to country rock, the blues rock, you know, to southern rock.

You know, there was one one trend to the other, and you tend to go from one trend to the next as a as a learning like you were going to school, you know, and you pick up a little bit from this, a little bit from that, and you know, put it into your own identity as you built who you were going to be.

And and then finally we we ended up, you know, he ended up getting he got signed, and then I would join him on the third album for the tour.

So you didn't record the album, you just joyed the album.

No.

I visited those sessions just as a friend, you know, but then officially would join at that point.

Yeah.

Actor and musician Stephen van zandt If you love in depth discussions about iconic TV shows, listen to my conversation with the creator of The Wire, David Simon, A.

Lot of people think The Wire came in the wake of the Sopranos, but when we wrote the Wire scripts for the first season, we hadn't seen the Sopranos.

We were writing in the absence of the Sprans.

We were writing in the shadow of Oz.

Oz was the first time that HBO had ventured into this.

Hey, we'll put it on TV, and you've never seen it before on TV territory.

So that was when I saw the pilot of Oz.

I went to Tom and said, you know, you could do a show about a drug corner.

Here the rest of my conversation with David Simon at Here's the Thing dot Org.

After the break, Stephen van Zandt tells us about the moment he walked away from the music business.

I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the Thing.

Stephen van Zant's path from musician to actor was anything but straightforward.

It began when he left the East Street Band after seven years.

I actually left eighty two.

I produced most of Born in the USA.

I then left recorded two solo albums, and then they added three more songs to what I had done and put out Born in the USA.

The same year as my second album, Voice of America, So technically eighty two.

Nobody noticed until eighty four, and then I was took a little eighteen year hiatus.

Yeah.

Well, I did five solo albums in the eighties, all very political, and I decided that would be my identity because in the Renaissance period that I grew up in, everybody had a very, very very specific identity.

Eighteen years.

Are you in a band and performing solo acts for the entire eighteen years and then you go back to.

No, no, no No for the first seven years.

I started the Disciples of Soul, and I do my five solo albums in the eighties and eighty nine, I walk away from music business completely and I basically go out into the wilderness for seven years.

I don't want to be over dramatic about it, but I was.

You know, nobody wanted to sign me after Sun City success.

It was a little bit too successful, and people started getting nervous about me.

Uh Troublemaker, yeah, and a successful one you know, which was the worst punctive, yeah, effective one, which you know, nobody thought that coming, including me.

But so I kind of just drifted for seven years until the David Chase called and said, do you want to be in my new TV show?

When he contacted you to be in the show, you weren't back with Bruce yet.

No you will, No, No, I'm looking for it, and I think it's interesting.

And I don't say this.

We were all kind of some of my producers kind of I'm not going to say they gasped, but their eyes widened when I said, isn't it interesting that you work with Springsteen, who I have boundless admiration for.

I mean, I certainly love his music.

But I said, isn't it interesting that you go on your own and you went up on a TV show where on any given Sunday you have a bigger audience in one night and he has the entire run of his Broadway show times ten.

You go on to become one of the stars of the most successful television shows in history, and that's kind of it's kind of weird.

Did you see that coming at all?

Did you have any idea that acting was because because you say, you kind of go off into the wilderness, you're on this hiatus, you're on this vision quest, and then you wind up Chase calls you.

Were you ready for that call?

Were you thinking I'll try that.

No, I had no idea, no, and I and I had no interest in being an actor ever.

I liked obviously, I liked the art form, and I saw myself maybe writing someday and maybe even directing or producing.

But I never, you know, never sort of fantasized about being an actor.

So it was it was a challenge, you know, when he called, and it just so happened.

This particular genre, you know, this particular mill you was something that was an interest of mine, you know what I mean.

It was just one of I don't know what if they call it a hobby or an interest.

But I had just read every Mob book, you know, and I had seen every Mob movie, and uh.

And I grew up around the guys or maybe wannabes, which is what's the difference.

They're equally scary, you know.

So I kind of just I just kind of felt I could do this, you know, I kind of knew this kind of guy, and uh, and if I could, if I could create him from the outside in, which is what I did.

And I wrote a biograph I want to talk about that, yeah, you know, but so, you know, I just I just it's just something I just felt I could do.

So you're famous for you wear a Bendanta, you have a bendada.

You are a legendary bandana aficionado.

Your startorial legacy is highlight by Ben Dana wearing for many decades.

And yet you turn up on a TV show where you have one of the richest heads of hair in human history.

This character has a little hair like the hood of a car, like the hood of a buick.

That's your hair or do they put a piece on you?

Well, the wonderful thing that turns out of wearing the bandana, you know as often as I did.

When you do have hair, you know, you really look quite different.

And let me tell you something.

That particular hairstyle I got partially from you.

One of your early movies you had very close to that hairstyle, and I thought, I thought, that's that's exactly what he should look like.

So you probably I'm not.

I'm not, I'm not.

I forget which movie, but you know what I mean.

You remember your hair was very similar to Silvio's at one point.

I mean, it may have just been one movie I did.

I did.

I had a famous hairdresser who is who I think he retired from the business.

Name was Lewis Lacari.

Lewis Lacari was a legend in New York and he had a very unique voice.

And I'm sure he won't mind me making fun of him.

And and I said to him, I said, I want it, black man, I said, dye my hair.

I wanted to be so fucking black.

I wanted to be like the fucking Ink.

And finally, Etercity one day he died in my hair.

And he says, now, Alec, He says, if I dye your hair any darker, it's gonna be purple on camera.

It's going to look like an egg plant.

I said, I don't fucking care.

I'm going to make it look like an egg plant.

And I would put so much shit in my hair to have that black, black Elvis hair, you know what I mean.

But so, is it your hair or they put a hair piece on you?

No?

No, no, no, no, it's a piece.

It's a piece in a piece that hair.

Oh my god, unbelievable.

Yeah, so so, my my I wrote a biography and a guy and uh and he was, you know, well, it came from a treatment that I had written about a guy who opened a Copla gobanda type of club, but in present day, and you know, the five families all had their tables, and the commissioner and you know, the police and the mayor.

It was kind of a gumba casa blanca kind of a you know, basically exactly, and it was Silvio and that's where the character came from.

So you know, I had, I had a bit of a backstory prepared because you know, I had, you know, I'd watched my wife do it.

You know, my wife's a real actor.

I mean she she's been going to classes for years and had a theater company, and she would go to class and tell me about the classes, and you know, some of the stuff I agreed with some of the theory, some of some I didn't necessarily, But in the end, I just had to come up with my own acting theory, which I felt, you know, every human characteristic exists in all of us, and the job, the craft is finding the appropriate characteristics for that particular character in that particular moment.

And that's how I looked at it.

And I felt if I could look at the mirror and see the guy, then I could be that guy.

And today's day, I have nothing but respect for actors such as yourself, who can act looking like themselves.

I mean, I just find that incredible, you know.

And I'm always trying to access pieces where I can put you know, as what you know.

Olivier called it the putty on the nose acting, you know.

I mean, I'm always trying to find roles I can play where I can get as far away from myself as I can.

But what's interesting is that in acting, when you have the chance, there's acting that's very muted and you want to keep it as close to yourself as you can and do as little as possible, and you're probably going to make an ass of yourself if you don't.

And then there's acting where it's tight.

It's three four moves and maybe two or three beats where you're at that character for you, the hair, the scowl, there's three or four things that you pick up on that become the character in terms of his cut.

Because all acting, to me and old television and film projects are like music.

It's like classical music.

You have your part to play.

You've got to fit in to this thing.

Director the writer has a vision for something he wants to do, and the worst thing you can do is step outside of what you're supposed to do.

Like you're looking at the director, this is my thing, and I'm going, what do you want me to do?

Am I here to play the triangle?

Am I playing the tuba?

What am I playing?

Am I the violin?

Soloist?

Or the piano?

And with you, you take these three four beats you put together and you're like fucking Edward g.

Robinson.

You know, I mean, you're in that territory of a guy who's created a character.

And it's like that line, it's right, Moufti, It's right, mouft You know, just expect.

But he's a wise You crafted the guy that was the wise mobster.

The other guys are emotional, tough, loud, crazy, and you're the one who he needs you.

When you watch the Sopranos, what you realize is of all those men, you're the one he needed most.

That's my opinion.

Well, it's it was a fascinating thing to analyze because you know, when you're doing these things, you're not necessarily analyzing it.

But when I when I go back to write a book, you know, you really got to analyze it.

And first of all, all the things you just said are true.

And I had one additional challenge which I needed to in my mind.

Since I was never going to play music again, you know, I was done with that, you know.

So now i'mbarking on a brand new career, which I thought would be the rest of my life.

I wanted to make sure that I did everything a little bit different.

You know.

I didn't want anybody saying, wait a minute, I just saw him play in Cleveland last week, you know.

So in addition to all of those other little things, you know, the hair and the scowl and the walk, I mean, I practiced laughing, I practice smiling practice, you know, every single thing I could think of, I wanted to do different than I usually do.

So there was that, And what was I think most interesting about the whole experience was well, first of all, David Chase hired me to be Tony.

Okay, I don't know if you know that.

Yes, all right, So so so HBO said, are you out of your fucking mind?

Okay, we're about to invest all this money.

The guy never acted before, and he said, so, he says, well, so what do you want to do?

I said, I said, well, David, now that I think about it, because it's all been such a spontaneous sort of rush.

I said, I'm starting to feel guilty about taking an actor's job here.

I mean, you know, these guys work their whole lives.

I watched my wife go through it, you know.

And I said, you know, so I'm just going to go back to where I belong, you know, which is unemployed.

And he said no, I'll tell you what.

Then I'll write you in a part that doesn't exist.

You know.

I want you.

I want you in this And that's when he said, what do you want to do?

I said, well, I have this treatment, you know, I have this treatment of the Silvio Dante guy who was an independent hitman, and he has this club and you know.

And David went away, Okay, let me, let me run it by HBO.

He says it's a good idea.

Comes back says, now, I can't afford it, so we're going to make it a strip club and you know, and you'll run it for the family.

So what happens, I think is I don't know if it's liminal or what, but I think that's why a lot of second seasons are always better than the first season, because the writers start to they start to incorporate the characteristics of the actors into the parts, right, you know what I mean.

And now, in this case, the most to me, the most interesting thing is I'm the only guy that's not in the pilot, I mean originally, so now he puts me into the pilot and puts me into the into the show as a kind of unclear you know, Okay, you're going to run the strip club for the family, and we're gonna have the meetings in the back room.

You know, that's gonna be the clubhouse whatever you call it, the office.

But that was it though, you know what I mean.

There wasn't any kind of really clear definition yet.

Okay, Now here's what's interesting to me.

Here's mister David Chase, the most detailed oriented guy on Earth.

Okay, and he writes what twelve fifteen fascinating characters, terrific characters.

He doesn't write in the Undivorced.

He doesn't write in the Consolieri, which is sometimes two different people.

Okay, sometimes it's the same guy, sometimes it's two different people.

He doesn't write into the script either one.

Now, this is an extremely important part of any mob family, you know, on the Boss, you have a CONCLIERTI that's just you know, there's no exception to that rule.

He doesn't write them in.

Okay, So by the end of the first season, you know, he did a second season.

You know, my character gravitates into that role is about which was very similar to the role I was playing with Bruce Springsteen in real life.

You know.

Interesting, It was fascinating to me.

When you really look back and analyze it, I'm like, Wow, how could he not have written in and I'm the Boss?

You know all those shows.

I did a couple of arcs on Will and Grace, and I was madly in love with Megan Malalley.

I just worshiped Megan.

She's so talented, and they bring me on to play this kooky character that's in love with Megan.

And I went back and watched online early episodes of the show, and you can see, like a lot of shows and ones that become very popular and very successful, they're all groping towards the character in season one.

Right by season two, season three, they're doing characters which are unrecognizable from the first four or five episode.

They've migrated so far.

So you go back to Bruce you go back into the band.

Correct.

Yeah, it was a tough decision because I just started, you know, after eighteen years of unemployment.

Basically, I finally found a new job, which I was hoping to be, you know, my first steady job of my life.

That's what unfortunately, I'm still looking for.

So he decides to put the band back together right after the first season's filmed and just as it's being broadcast.

So I said, you know, I just felt I needed some closure.

There's I'll always wonder about this move, but I said, you know, I left under some bizarre circumstances explained in the book, but I really needed to have some closure there.

And so David Chase, being the amazing guy, he has scheduled my scenes for days off of the tour, and believe it or not, and.

He went back.

I went back and did seven seasons in ten years of Sopranos, and another three seasons and four years of Lillly Hammer Lily Hammer, fourteen years of steady acting and touring simultaneously.

And I missed one month of one tour and one month of another tour.

That's it.

Stephen van zandt subscribe to Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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When we come back.

Stephen van Zandt tells us how we ended up playing the role of another gangster on the mean streets of Norway.

I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing.

Stephen van Zandt parlayed his incredible success on The Sopranos into another show with a familiar concept but an unfamiliar setting.

I was producing a record for my record label in Norway.

I signed a bunch of Norwegian bands and there's a couple in the lobby to see you go down and say hello, hello, you know Is and br Instead and I left Scottvin and they were writers in Norway and Oslo, and they said, well, we wrote a TV show for you.

You know, now, as you know, this is not something you hear every day.

You know, you might hear it every day.

I don't hear it every day, you know, that's all you know.

Your ego says, oh, hello, what would that be?

And of course the pitch was, you know, a guy goes into his protection program and chooses Norway.

Sammy the Bull goes to Oslo.

Yeah, And I was like, oh man, I just played a gangster for ten years.

I can't do that.

You know.

I love the show.

By the way, I just started, I thank you in the end.

I couldn't resist.

I was like, whoever heard of going to a foreign country and starring in a local show.

I'd never heard of that before, you know.

So we took a year to write it, which was very complicated.

I didn't want it to be a straight ahead comedy.

I wanted to be a drama edy.

And I said to them, I said, listen, if I'm making my living playing a gangster, I can't make fun of these guys.

You understand.

I canna live in New York, you know.

So any humor has to come from circumstance.

It has to come from character, you know.

I don't wan anybody trying to be funny, you know.

And we decided how much English to use because it had to work for the Norwegian audience and the American audience, you know.

Very complicated and anyway, so we're six weeks into filming and I realized somebody, you know, the production people, not the writers, but the production heads kind of fraudulent about the budget because I, you know, all of a sudden, I see my my makeup guy carrying a camera, and you know, I'm like, what, you know, what's going on here?

And it turns out I'm telling you it's like that.

They're very you know, do it yourself over there.

And I realized, oh my god, we can't afford to shoot the show that we wrote, and I mean we spent a year writing it.

So I told my agent.

I said, the one guy I know, Chris Albrick.

But we just left HBO to go to Stars.

I said, book.

I said, I gotta make a deal.

I got to make an American deal.

Here.

We can't afford to shoot the show.

I go to Chris.

I had the guys create a trailer, which wasn't easy.

We'd only been filming six weeks.

So we put together a trailer miraculously, and I showed it to Chris Aubrick that he loved it.

He says, I want it.

It's great, I said.

He said, what do you need?

I said, well, you know, the budget's over there.

I said, the mere reality show budget.

It's like eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

When I'm competing with you know, four million dollars.

Do you know that.

I was on the Sopranos, right.

I mean, and I said, I said, I need at least a million dollars a show.

You know.

He says, I don't have it in a budget this year.

I said.

He said, I'll give you two million next year.

You know.

I said, this is going to be great, I said, Chris, I can't wait.

I started filming.

The thing is, you know, I'm in the middle of filming this fucking thing.

It's weird.

So I said, okay, well, well, I said, let me see what I can do.

And I leave there and I said to my agent, what's that across the street?

This new thing called Netflix?

All right?

I look it up and I see, uh Ted Sorrando's name, and I call, you know, I said, I can I talk to Ted Torrandos please.

He gets right on the phone.

I said, Ted, Stevie van Zane, hear you're looking for content?

Is this true?

He says, yeah, we're just starting.

You got something?

I said, yeah, I got something.

He says, come on in.

There's two people at Netflix at that time too, so materials.

He loves it and the greatest business deal of my life.

In one hour, I walked away with a two year deal, which I'd never heard of, and I think it is to this day.

It may be the only two year deal.

Almost impossible.

Now, Yeah, even successful shows, right, they only go one year, you know, because you know, God forbid, they take a chance.

Well, this guy had balls, man, and I will respect this guy forever.

I'm so glad the success he's had.

But we turned out to read the first show on Netflix fantastic.

So I watched History Happen twice.

You know, HBO with their extraordinary creativity becoming the go to a place for adult content and then Netflix turning it into an international concept.

You're developing any other TV now or no?

I got five scripts?

Yeah, I'm looking at and I want to I want to do something because you know, we had another tour.

We were going to tour us here and then once again we're not.

So I've got to go.

I want to get back on TV.

I really do.

Thank you so much for taking the time.

And I want to say, you know, you tell your story and you talk about your nature that you doubt things, your purity, your honesty, your integrity, whatever, But all these things that guided you through your music career and then on into your acting career.

They were responsible for your success, you know, to Thine own self be true, you clinging to your beliefs made you who you are.

When I think about your career, made you who you are as a musician and led to the amount of success you had as a musician and as an actor.

You know, you said you were like, I'm going to play this part the only way that I feel comfortable with and the rest is history.

So you in the to Thine own self Be True department, It's really paid off for you, big time, big time.

So thank you.

I don't know if you have any choice in these matters to tell your truth.

You know, we all like to pretend in charge, you know, and making all of these decisions.

But I sometimes wonder about that it was.

The right move.

T.

I get to say that to you now.

It was the right move to your career choices, It was the right move.

T.

Thanks man.

Good talking to you, my.

Friend Stephen van ZANDT.

This is I Don't Want to Go Home.

From the album Soul Fire Live by Little Stephen and the Disciples of Soul by Malec Baldwin.

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