Unrequited Infatuations

by Stevie Van Zandt

  And the next morning, my main man Alex’s last act as an employee was to inform me that he’d slightly miscalculated: I’d lost $3 million, and the union guys, who you really don’t want to fuck with, were looking for me.

  Making history can be an expensive hobby, but what a glorious disaster!

  A few days later I went for a drive to clear my head.

  I chose the Palisades, the most scenic of New York’s outer arteries. After the first few miles I started to relax. The leaves were turning—autumn has always been my favorite season—and the quiet hum of the Cadillac’s four hundred horses made for a smooth-as-silk magic carpet ride. It was as close to a perfect afternoon as I was likely to have for the next little while. The pretty girl sitting next to me was just a bonus. The only slight damper on the day was knowing that in just a few more miles I was going to have to kill her.

  It was always depressing when a character was eliminated from The Sopranos because the cast had grown very close and you knew you would not be seeing that person again very often, if ever.

  Drea de Matteo was very popular and her character, Adriana, was one of the show’s more sympathetic, so it was a grim event indeed having to be the bastard who took her out. She had cooperated with the Feds and left us no choice.

  It was the most difficult thing I’ve had to do as an actor.

  Adriana came across as a tough broad on the screen, but when you put your hands on her in real life she was… a woman. Dragging her roughly out of the car made me physically sick. I despise bullies of all stripes. It’s just in my DNA. And guys who assault women in any way are among the lowest of the low in my book.

  Drea, a pro, told me not to hold back. “If this is gonna be my last scene,” she said, “let’s make it memorable!”

  So I had to really concentrate and become that guy, get in that frame of mind. Completely eliminate my own thoughts and feelings. I just had to keep telling myself that Silvio was a traditionalist. There was no mercy for betrayal. Male or female, didn’t matter. I had to rough her up for a couple of hours. Tough, tough day.

  After it was done, we let ourselves collapse and lay down in the leaves, both of us mentally and physically exhausted.

  “You just won your first Emmy,” I said.

  She sighed. “I certainly fucking hope so.”

  twenty-seven

  A Wicked Cool Super Bowl

  (2005–2009)

  The old Kings and the Princes so recently dethroned,

  Were prophets once upon a time, their words the law of the land,

  They used to look so regal in their psychedelic colors,

  There is no place for them now in the land of the bland…

  —“FACE OF GOD,” FROM BORN AGAIN SAVAGE

  Scandinavia had become the Rock and Roll capital of the world.

  The reason was subtitles. In much of Europe, TV and movies were dubbed. Scandinavian TV and movies were broadcast in their original language and subtitled, which meant Scandinavians grew up hearing and learning English. Since it was the universal language for both airline pilots and Rock and Roll bands, Scandinavians could make records that got played on the only Rock format that existed. Ours.

  The Underground Garage channel played about twenty bands from the region, more than from the rest of Europe combined (minus the UK). We played the Cocktail Slippers from Norway, Hawaii Mud Bombers from Sweden, the Breakers from Denmark, and many more.

  Scott Greenstein would even be knighted by the Swedish king for supporting Swedish music… played on our station.

  Those bands and others urged me to start a record company because nobody had American distribution. We didn’t foresee that the digital domain was literally around the corner and would make territories irrelevant.

  We started Wicked Cool Records and signed a dozen bands just in time to catch the end of the record business and lose a bunch of money. At first, I mostly just picked the acts we signed and worked on the singles, but at some point I realized I had to be hands-on all the way to keep our quality consistent, and I started going through every demo, making suggestions on every song.

  Two guys run my world. Dennis Mortensen took over from the legendary Kid Leo as Program Director of the SXM Underground Garage channel and has done an absolutely brilliant job making us better and better every single day. He runs the station with assistance from Olivia, Rebecca, and Casey. He also produces my weekly radio show and runs Wicked Cool Records with Louis Arzonico, who does everything else—websites, graphics, album covers, videos, archives, pictures, bios, speeches, scripts, three publishing companies, and the like. Devanshi does the books and Jeremy does whatever else is needed.

  I don’t possess the authoritarian gene, so the office staff come and go when they please and take days off when they want. I figure they are all adults and can get the job done without someone watching them.

  I only offer one word of advice to them: anticipate. You anticipate, you win.

  The one person missing is the one whose job it is to make money. So we don’t. The entire operation runs at a deficit.

  Wicked Cool follows the same philosophy as the Underground Garage radio format. No absolute rules, but each act, like each record, needs to have a connection to the Renaissance.

  The original idea was to cross the generations, link older songwriters and Producers with young Artists. I loved it when Richard Gottehrer, who started out as a Brill Building songwriter and was in the Strangeloves, produced the Raveonettes, and when the Cocktail Slippers covered a Greenwich/Barry song.

  We never realized my original vision for the company. Jeff Barry, Russ Titelman, Carole King, Barry Mann, Andrew Oldham, Cynthia Weil—all should have been producing records for us. Shel Talmy. All he did was the Kinks’ first four albums and the first album of the Who, still my fave. We never did hook up a production for him. A shame.

  But we have always encouraged the generations to work together in the name of connecting the dots. Old Wisdom with Young Energy.

  Speaking of wisdom, the wisest friend I had, Frank Barsalona, was showing early signs of the most tragic of all diseases, dementia. He had developed a strange obsession with fishing golf balls out of the water hazards between holes. “Go ahead,” he’d say. “I’ll catch up.” He kept them, too, to the point where he had a garage full.

  At first, it was funny. Then he started spending more and more time doing it, and it was less funny. By the time he stopped playing altogether and just fished, we were quite concerned. Justifiably so, unfortunately.

  There’s nothing worse than watching someone you’ve known all your life disintegrate before your very eyes. I discussed it with Frank’s wife, June, and their daughter, Nicole, my goddaughter and assistant at the time, and decided we needed to move quickly to get Frank into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We spoke to Jann Wenner and Jon Landau, who agreed.

  A few years earlier, when Frank had been honored by the TJ Martell Foundation, June and Nicole had asked me to make a speech as Silvio Dante. They wanted a repeat performance of that for the Hall of Fame induction. I brought bodyguards Jimmy Gandolfini and Steve Schrippa to give Frank the royal treatment he deserved.

  Frank just barely made it through his acceptance speech. I stood close by, quietly urging him on. It would be his last public appearance.

  Once he stopped recognizing people, I stopped going to see him. I felt so bad for June and Nicole, but I loved him too much to watch him fade away. I’d watched it up close with my father and one time was too many.

  Everybody in the music business, what’s left of it, and everybody who got rich from it when it existed, owes a profound debt of gratitude to Frank Barsalona.

  I had tried to extend his legacy. Our company covered a lot of ground: agency, management, record company, radio production, TV production, live events, publishing, publicity, marketing, and more. I hoped that Nicole would eventually run the company. I had trained her as best as I could, though she was pretrained, born with a booking book in her crib. Sh
e eventually got tired of the business carnage—everything we tried seemed to come up short of the finish line—and left to try management, which she’s doing great at.

  Renegade Nation, our parent company, was on a roll for a minute there, though we never solved our basic problem, which was not having someone whose job it was to actually make money.

  We had a lot of so-called salesmen come and go, but I always wondered why they insisted on a salary if they were so good at selling. I paid them a 20 percent commission, and not one of them sold dick for what was, at the time, the biggest independent radio show in the world. I finally had to do what I liked least in the world: find us some sponsors to keep the radio show going and pay for the tours we wanted to do.

  It’s interesting what willpower can do. It’s the tiniest part of who we are and the most important. Every once in a while I have to stop and think about how it powers us.

  Who exactly are we, after all?

  What are we?

  We’re four things.

  We are our genetic makeup, our inclinations, talents, gifts. You can sing in tune or you can’t.

  We are our environment. You grow up in a loving environment or you don’t.

  We are our circumstances. You’re born rich in Chicago or poverty-stricken in Uganda.

  And we are our willpower.

  Those first three factors are big, probably between 30 percent and a third each, which leaves us somewhere between 10 and 1 percent for willpower. The part we actually control.

  We always think we’re making decisions. I do not personally believe that. I think most of who we are is decided very early. Environment and circumstances can change as we grow up and that can affect us. But in the end, it’s how we use that little bit of willpower that matters.

  In the worst-case scenario, you could have genes, environment, and circumstances stacked against you, 99 to 1. But against all those odds you can still win.

  I think about my friend, the late John Lewis, who I met during the Sun City years, when he was a newly elected congressman. John was born one of ten kids of sharecroppers in Nowheresville, Alabama, and ended up as the head of one of the Big Six groups that organized the history-making March on Washington in 1963. He helped pass the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and served in Congress for thirty years.

  The voting rights legislation was gutted in 2013 by a Supreme Court that also tolerated gerrymandering and has been slowly losing its way for years. As I write this, a seventh practicing Catholic has been confirmed for the Supreme Court.

  Our sacred separation of church and state has been slowly but surely disappearing ever since Reagan. Hopefully by the time you read this, there will be a new stacked court with six new justices who are all atheists or agnostics.

  Why six? Because right now the religious extremists on the Court outnumber the others six to three. Assume one of the new justices fools you—there’s always one—making it seven to three. We will need the other five to outnumber them eight to seven.

  That will give us a shot at equality for women and for the LGBTQ community, not to mention democracy, all of which are rapidly disappearing. And speaking of the last of these, we will also hopefully have a new stronger voting rights act with John Lewis’s name on it.

  My moments of great willpower don’t compare to John’s, but I’ve gotten things done that I shouldn’t have been able to. As long as it was for someone else. Or a good cause. And Renegade Nation had one. I took the energy I had previously invested in politics and redirected it toward the support, preservation, and creation of Rock and Soul. It was an endangered species, and something had to be done.

  If you’ve been around long enough, it’s easy to be cynical about this world we find ourselves living in. One quick happy story.

  As I think I mentioned, as soon as we started Wicked Cool Records the entire record industry as we knew it basically ended. No more record sales. So we’re thinking, How are we gonna survive?

  We are going to have to survive by licensing our music to commercials and film. No sooner had we said that then one of my guys comes running in in a panic. I just made a deal for a commercial, he says, but the ad agency wants to own the publishing!

  Ohhhh! You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. That’s really the end. It’s the last income we have left. This will spread like wildfire and kill what’s left of the business. Who is the agency? Deutsch, he says. Find out who owns it or who runs it and get them on the phone.

  Much to my pleasant surprise on the phone comes Donny Deutsch.

  “Donny, I got to talk to you.”

  “Great,” he says, “let me talk to my schedule girl…”

  “No, Donny, I mean like right now.”

  “Right now?” he says. “Like now now?”

  “Yeah, come on, I’ll buy you a cup of coffee. Where are you?”

  “I’m over here by the Four Seasons on Fifty-Seventh.”

  “I’ll see you in the bar in ten minutes.”

  Never met the guy before, never spoke to him. He shows up, I explain the situation, and he fixes it. No argument. No demand for publishing. And life went on, damaged but survivable, thanks to him.

  So every once in a while you find a guy like that.

  They give you hope.

  The Hard Rock Cafe was the first sponsor of the radio show, and, chief willing, still is as you read this.

  The Hard Rock is owned by the Seminole Tribe of Florida, the rockingest Indians ever, and managed by one of my closest friends, Jimmy Allen.

  The Seminoles had started Indian gambling in 1979 with high-stakes bingo, and within minutes everybody with an Indian great-grandmother opened a casino.

  Where there’s action, guess who follows? Right. Every Mob guy, wannabe Mob guy, hustler, and con man, many of whom successfully robbed every Native American tribe blind for decades.

  Every tribe, that is, except the Seminoles, who had the wisdom to hire Jersey: Jimmy Allen, literally the Last Boy Scout.

  At first, the Seminoles’ only connection to the Hard Rock organization was that they had licensed the name for their casino in Hollywood, Florida.

  Jimmy and I were having dinner one summer night at Morandi in the Village. As part of the license deal, he explained, they had international audit rights, which gave them a look at the books. “So I’m looking,” he said, “and I see that our little casino is a big piece of their profits worldwide. I think I’m gonna try and buy the Hard Rock.”

  I almost choked on my artichoke.

  “The whole fucking thing?”

  “Yeah, why not?”

  He talked to the chief of the Seminoles, who said let’s rock! And bada bing, a billion bucks later, give or take, they owned it. Jimmy has probably tripled the value by now.

  We held our first Halloween a-Go-Go show at the Hard Rock in Times Square, featuring Rocket from the Crypt, Gluecifer (a Norwegian Hard Rock band, no relation to the Russian hackers… I don’t think), and Bobby “Boris” Pickett, with Maureen’s dancers, the Garage Girls a Go-Go.

  Then we got a sponsorship from Rolling Rock for a twenty-city tour. It was a great concept. We picked four Rock bands, one from each decade, fully paid for by sponsors like Rolling Rock and Dunkin’ Donuts to keep ticket prices low. And not obscure bands either. We lined up acts like the New York Dolls, the Zombies, the Romantics, the Chesterfield Kings, and more. We boarded all the musicians onto a bus, wrapped it, and barnstormed the country.

  We went back to the Hard Rock for New Year’s Eve a-Go Go.

  New Year’s programming back then was totally boring, and I wanted to take over the holiday.

  I had lunch with Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion. “Check it out,” I said. “New Year’s Eve from here. Televised.” I explained that our thing was a retro-’60s vibe, which he loved. “We bring in like five bands from different decades and use Playboy Bunnies as go-go girls. What do you think?”

  “I’m in!” he said.

  Next, I thought, it was on to the easy part, the TV sale
. Keep in mind, there was maybe one pretty lame New Year’s show at the time. Needless to say, we would have owned New Year’s forever.

  Nobody wanted it.

  Nobody.

  Sometimes I think, I am so on the wrong fucking planet!

  I mean, look around.

  Could life be any more fucking boring?

  What the fuck happened to evolution?

  What happened to fun?

  Somebody had a connection at ESPN and heard they were up for something new, since New Year’s happened to be a dead time on their station in those days.

  I asked Johnny Pasquale, the manager of the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square, if anybody had ever used the top of the marquee for a show. Nobody had.

  The cafe was right under where the ball dropped. Being on that marquee is one of the coolest experiences you’ll probably never have.

  You are in it, baby. In the heart of the monster that is New Year’s Eve, but also securely above it. Big screens in every direction, stages below, confetti raining down. A trip and a half.

  So did I secure the marquee for future New Year’s gigs forevermore? Of course not. Now Johnny rents it out for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I can’t get back in.

  Our 2005 Rockin’ ESPN’s New Year’s Eve, the world’s best-kept secret due to zero promotion, managed to be third in the ratings that night. I cohosted with Stuart Scott. We just made things up as we went along.

  We did a second Halloween show the next year, this time down at the Hard Rock in Hollywood, Florida. We called it Cheap Trick or Treat. Featuring guess who? It was also Roky Erickson’s first gig out of Texas after coming back from the horrendous horror of being locked up—for five years for two joints—and after receiving shock treatments as if it was the snake-pit 1950s. He survived somehow and put on a great show.

  Back in 2002, Congress, in its infinite wisdom, had passed the No Child Left Behind Act. They did this because American math and science scores had dropped to somewhere between those of farmers in Rwanda and baboons on the Yucatán Peninsula, but our legislators hadn’t figured out that in order to prepare for these endless tests, the schools would start canceling all the Arts classes.