Unrequited Infatuations

by Stevie Van Zandt

  Meanwhile, we had gone from the original half-dozen or so artists I’d imagined to fifty, adding Lou Reed, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Wolf, Bobby Womack, Nona Hendryx, Joey Ramone, Pat Benatar, Hall & Oates, Ray Barretto, Big Youth, Kashif, and more. I wished we’d gotten the Last Poets, Taj Mahal, and Jerry Dammers, but if we didn’t have their phone number we didn’t pursue them.

  And we weren’t done.

  Earlier in the year, I had gotten a call from Debbie Gold. Everyone knew Debbie. She was like everybody’s confidante/intermediary, full of positive vibes. “Stevie. Bob Dylan wants you to produce him.”

  “Really? When?”

  “Now. Get down to the Power Station.”

  Bob was playing with Sly and Robbie, the famous Reggae rhythm section, and Roy Bittan was there on piano. Bob pointed to a guitar and I joined in.

  He had just started singing a ballad called “When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky.”

  We did a take and went into the control room to listen. I wasn’t sure if I was producing or not; Bob hadn’t said anything, but I lingered behind and made a quick dozen suggestions to the Engineer—add a mic under the snare, add 2 dB at fifteen hundred cycles on the guitar, put a compressor on the bass, shit like that.

  After a second take, Bob turned to me. “What do you think?” he asked.

  “Bobby,” I said, “to tell you the truth I’m hearing this faster.”

  “Oh, yeah? Like what?” I showed him, and he joined in and sang along a bit. “I like it,” he said, “but I like it slow too.”

  “How about this?” I said. “We can start slow with the first verse, then, after a drum fill, go to a faster tempo for the rest of the song.”

  That’s what we did. He asked me for a solo, and I told him I was hearing more of a violin or horn melody line. We tried it and he liked it. “That gives me an idea for a cello line underneath,” he said. He sang it and I added it to the solo.

  His vocal performance was spectacular, his greatest at least since “Tangled Up in Blue” and arguably since Blonde on Blonde. I didn’t get any credit for producing, which was fine with me. I was just honored to be there. But he didn’t put this version on the record! Between him and Bruce, I was starting to wonder… Is it me? Years later, it would appear on his first Bootleg Series box set.

  We kept trying to get Bob for “Sun City.” He had been responsible for the birth of consciousness in Popular music in the first place, and a record like this was unthinkable without him. Late in the game, he finally came aboard. Jackson Browne was able to record him on the West Coast. But with all those extra singers, we had run out of lines. Bob did the same line as Jackson, and we put his line in between lines to fit.

  It was the mix of the century. Thirteen reels of tape times 24 tracks means 312 tracks, which had to be reduced to two. The single alone took weeks. Every Engineer in town worked on it. They’d pass out at the board, we’d carry them out, and bring in another one.

  We used every studio in town at some point. Ten days into the mix at Electric Lady, the studio flooded, like it did every spring and fall. Nobody had mentioned to Jimi Hendrix that he was building the place over an underground stream. We lost the mix and had to start all over again, but somehow it got done.

  Four freaks with no juice, no muscle, and no money had relied on street connections and a good idea to cobble together an artistically coherent album with as diverse a group of artists as had ever been assembled for a cause nobody had heard of yet.

  And Jean-Luc Godard and a nameless projectionist will never know what they started.

  twenty

  Ain’t Gonna Play Sun City!

  (1986)

  When will we finally invite our black population to join the rest of us in America?

  —THE UNWRITTEN BOOK

  What if you spent a year planning a party and nobody showed?

  I never had an attitude of superiority while doing research in South Africa, fully aware that America’s own civil rights legislation had taken place only twenty years earlier.

  And I knew that by pointing out the extreme racism of South Africa I would also be commenting on our own ongoing discrimination, which seemed to be going backward.

  So irony of ironies—but not entirely surprising—we were deemed too black for white radio and too white for black radio.

  Nobody would play the fucking record!

  Not exactly what I had in mind by “Ain’t gonna play Sun City!”

  Fuck me.

  I had gotten friendly with Bruce Lundvall while making E Street Band records at Columbia. Lundvall had moved to EMI Manhattan, signed me for my next record, Freedom—No Compromise, and was very enthusiastic about the issue of South Africa. We licensed “Sun City” to him for distribution at a higher than usual royalty—although, again, we weren’t doing it for the money.

  I knew Bob Geldof had gotten all the royalties for the Band Aid record, but I didn’t have that kind of juice. I was happy anybody would distribute such a controversial project. But we made a good deal.

  As I hadn’t quite had the chance to explain to Frank Zappa, I had created a new publishing company, Amandla Music, for all the music on the album. The creative process was truly a collaboration, and none of us wanted the job of sorting out who had done what. It didn’t matter anyway. None of us would have taken any money from this. The entirety of the record sales and publishing would go to Jennifer Davis and her Africa Fund.

  We tried everything to get the record played. Calling stations. Calling in favors. Lundvall hired a few independent promotion men—all to no avail.

  We even tried to get to Stevie Wonder’s radio station. He was into the issue of South Africa and human rights in general. I took the record there personally, but they wouldn’t play it.

  There was only one shot left.

  We needed a killer fucking video.

  Hart Perry brought in Jonathan Demme, the perfect guy for the job and a soon-to-be-lifelong friend. He would eventually do a video for the E Street Band and win the Academy Award for Philadelphia, which also got Bruce an Oscar for the title track. We had a quick discussion with him and decided we wanted to capture the energy of an awakened anti-apartheid movement and the unrelenting passion of the record.

  As for every aspect of the project, we didn’t want it to be slick, though we didn’t have to worry about that too much since we didn’t have any money.

  We decided we’d do the video guerrilla-style, like everything else. We’d shoot it right on the street, no permissions of course, and then have the individuals arrive at a location that represented our common cause and the stronger-together-than-apart symbolism that we hoped would spread throughout the country.

  Jonathan was shooting Something Wild at the time, and we only had him for one day.

  He shot the New York scenes while Hart flew to Los Angeles to get footage of Jackson Browne, Bob Dylan, George Clinton, and Bonnie Raitt.

  Then we assembled as many singers as we could in Washington Square for the final scene. To edit the project, we somehow got the hottest video makers in the world at that time, Kevin Godley and Lol Creme. Peter Gabriel might have made the connection.

  The conversation I had with them was similar to the one I had with Demme and everybody else: I wanted intense, unrelenting energy.

  We gave them what Jonathan and Hart had shot, along with additional footage from another protest rally we had attended and some news footage—some of it stolen, but this was war!

  Godley and Creme did an amazing job. In the intro, they used footage of police whipping protestors as a kind of visual percussion, synced to our snare accents, and also devised innovative ripped-from-the-headlines effects to transition from scene to scene. The result was fierce and violent and motivating, exactly what you want in a battle video. Like everyone else—all the Engineers, all the musicians, the crew—they worked for free.

  At that moment, MTV was having its own war with the black community.

  Since its launch in 1981, it h
ad not played many black videos.

  At first, it hadn’t played any.

  It had taken Walter Yetnikoff threatening to pull all Columbia and Epic product if it didn’t play videos from Michael Jackson’s Thriller. That had been in December 1983. Things had improved since then, but only slightly. Artists like David Bowie and Rick James criticized MTV for maintaining a color line, and the network responded by admitting that it was concerned about losing its midwestern audience.

  I met with the entire executive team of MTV. “Listen,” I said. “I hear you’re having a public relations problem. I might have the solution right here in my pocket.”

  I laid out the situation in South Africa and our strategy. “You guys can not only go a long way in solving your problems with the black community,” I said, “but you can be on the front end of a movement that is going to be sweeping the country. For once, instead of observing history, you’d be making it.”

  Of course, I was pretty much lying my ass off like usual. But it all turned out to be true.

  I played them the video, and they loved it.

  If you know “Sun City,” it’s because of MTV. Or BET, which also played the video frequently. But it’s not from radio.

  After the video started getting us more visibility, we started doing interviews and performances whenever possible to spread the word. We shut down the Sun City resort overnight, which meant that the cultural boycott finally had teeth—virtually no one broke it after our record and video came out. That was icing on the cake. But it wasn’t the cake.

  The cake, of course, was the economic boycott. Everything we had done from the beginning was to raise consciousness, knowing the day was coming when there would be important economic legislation that Reagan would not like. The clock was ticking on whether we would achieve critical awareness before Reagan vetoed the legislation. The goal was to establish such a powerful distaste for the injustice that even Saint Reagan’s veto would be overturned. That showdown was imminent.

  Senator Bill Bradley brought me to the Senate to explain the situation. It was my closest-ever encounter with our most revered lawmakers, and I must confess, it was a little frightening.

  Very few senators had Bradley’s intellect, and it was obvious most were hearing about the subject for the first time. How could I tell? By the way I had to point out where South Africa was on the map! And that’s a country with two clues in its name!

  While I waited for the world to change, I managed to sneak in a few side projects.

  Southside and I did a benefit in New Jersey for fire victims in Passaic.

  Gary Bonds wanted to do a third album, but all I had time for was a single, “Standing in the Line of Fire,” which I cowrote with him and produced.

  I produced two songs for my friend Stiv Bators and his great band, the Lords of the New Church. My pleasant memory of working with them was only slightly tainted by meeting their Manager, Miles Copeland. I’ve been very lucky in my life. After all these years in and around a showbiz full of creeps, I’ve only had to deal with a few. As temporarily as possible.

  I didn’t spend enough time with Miles for him to achieve official Royal Scumbaggery, but from our first meeting he was one of those arrogant, condescending slimeballs who make you want to take a shower after being in the same room with them.

  My friend Brian Setzer needed a song, so we cowrote “Maria,” a song about Mexican migrant workers in Texas.

  We were honored by Mayor Bradley in LA and then by Coretta Scott King, Andrew Young, Julian Bond, and John Lewis in Atlanta.

  Arthur Baker, who was working on music for Demme’s Something Wild, came to me for a few songs, and I wrote “You Don’t Have to Cry,” about the gasoline riots in Jamaica at the time, for Jimmy Cliff and “Addiction” for David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks.

  When the United Nations decided to give “Sun City” an award, we sent a big delegation. Between the early Hip-Hop styles and the Rocker looks, we were the wildest bunch to ever enter the super-sanctimonious United Nations. I saw the secretary general, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, walk in, take a look at us, hand the award to his deputy, and split!

  Ha-ha. I thanked him in my speech anyway.

  Somewhere in there, I made another run to the West Coast for Jimmy Iovine to write three songs for Lone Justice for their second album, Shelter, and got coproduction credit on the record.

  Sol Kerzner, the main owner of Sun City, made the mistake of challenging me on The Phil Donahue Show, spewing the usual bullshit apartheid talking points.

  I squashed him like the cockroach he was.

  Peter Gabriel’s latest obsession was something called the University for Peace in Costa Rica.

  It was connected to the United Nations and run by an ex-ambassador of Costa Rica. As it was explained to me, it was a school to study conflict resolution; how to deal with the collateral damage of conflict, like refugees; and other international issues like that.

  Costa Rica had been of particular interest to me ever since I discovered it was the only country in Latin America that wasn’t constantly in conflict because they had the incredible wisdom and strength to disband their military.

  I was a little dubious about the university, but Peter was way into it, and I was more than happy to help in any way I could. We pulled together a benefit for the University for Peace; Nona Hendryx, Lou Reed, Jackson Browne, and others participated. Hart Perry filmed it.

  It was called Hurricane Irene and was held in Tokyo.

  You’d have every right to ask, Why Tokyo?

  Good fucking question.

  All I really remember is that Irene was some kind of goddess of peace, hence the title of the show. Tokyo I can’t help you with. To this day it’s still the only time I’ve ever been there, so that was cool.

  One memory from that show still makes me smile. I spent a good hour explaining the entire project to Lou Reed: the concert, the benefit, the peace goddess. He listened intently the whole time. “OK,” he finally said. “I’m in. I just want to know one thing. Where the fuck is Costa Rica?”

  At some point, Peter Gabriel and I combined our bands and performed at the United Nations to celebrate the International Day of Peace, September 21, which was connected to the university, and we were honored by the United Nations for the second time.

  We did an anti-apartheid concert in Central Park with the usual suspects—Peter, Jackson, Bono—and new recruits like Bob Geldof, Yoko Ono, and Sean Lennon.

  Geldof asked me to perform Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” with him at the upcoming Amnesty International Concert in New Jersey, which would be televised internationally.

  After the show at Giants Stadium, I was backstage with Maureen when I looked across the room. “Holy shit!” I said. Maureen, used to me not being impressed by anybody, was impressed.

  “Who is it?” she whispered.

  “Muhammad fucking Ali!” I managed to get out.

  “Why don’t you go say hello?” she said. “He’s probably friendly.”

  Are you kidding? I was too shy. And anyway I never liked meeting my heroes, in case they were assholes. A little while later, a well-dressed, cultured gentleman tapped me on the shoulder.

  “Excuse me, sir,” he said. “Mr. Van Zandt? Please pardon the interruption, Mr. Muhammad Ali would love to meet you, but he’s too shy to come over!”

  Right?

  There he was. His handshake was gentle. His eyes twinkled mischievously. He bent down and whispered in my ear, sounding like Don Corleone. “You did good with South Africa,” he said.

  “You did good with George Foreman,” I said.

  He smiled.

  So that was a good day.

  The year ended big.

  In Santa Monica, at a reception organized by Tom Hayden, Bishop Desmond Tutu gave us a special recognition for efforts on behalf of the anti-apartheid movement. I don’t think he was an archbishop yet.

  Hart Perry and I received the International Documentary Association Award for The Ma
king of Sun City. A companion book written by Dave Marsh and a teaching guide went along with it.

  And finally, Congressman Ron Dellums’s Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 was passed, by larger margins than we’d imagined.

  As expected, Ronald Reagan vetoed it. Republican Richard Lugar stood up and declared that South Africa was tyranny and that all true Americans were against tyranny!

  What became of that kind of Republican?

  The Reagan veto was overturned.

  The dominoes started to fall.

  Both the UK’s and Germany’s pro-apartheid positions were now untenable.

  The banks would soon cut off South Africa, just like we wrote it up.

  In the world of international liberation politics, this was a rare complete victory.

  It was time to get back to work.

  twenty-one

  Freedom—No Compromise

  (1987–1989)

  The Art is always greater than the Artist.

  —THE UNWRITTEN BOOK

  Freedom—No Compromise was not only my most ambitious album but also the first produced the way I would produce somebody else. The first produced by me the Producer, as opposed to me the Artist. That’s why Artists should never produce themselves. The Artist takes over and you don’t realize it until it’s too late.

  Prince is the only exception I can think of. A true genius. I crossed paths with him often in 1987, as we both spent most of that year touring Europe. “You stole my coat idea back in 1978, didn’t you?” I said the first time I ran into him. He confessed with one of his sly smiles.

  His album that year was Sign O’ the Times. I took the fact that the gang in the title track was named the Disciples as a personal tribute. The tour behind that record was the best Rock show I’ve ever seen. I went three times, and it blew my mind every time.

  The production was the highest evolution of the live, physical part of our Artform I have ever seen. It was Prince’s vision, but his production designer, LeRoy Bennett, deserves much of the credit for pulling it off. It was Rock, it was Theater, it was Soul, it was Cinema, it was Jazz, it was Broadway. The stage metamorphized into different scenes and configurations right before your eyes, transforming itself into whatever emotional setting was appropriate for each song.