Unrequited Infatuations

by Stevie Van Zandt

  None of that. Just a twenty-five-year-old kid looking at a list of songs with numbers next to them. Numbers just as likely to have been determined by a computer as by a human being.

  Pretty soon, these great songs are all going to be irrelevant. Because when me and Scorsese and Tarantino and David Chase and a few others stop working, nobody’s gonna know about the classic songs of the ’50s and ’60s. They will have priced themselves out of existence.

  There was a time when songs in movies and TV shows were considered promotion only. Nobody expected to make money from them. Do you think there would’ve been all those Rock TV shows if they were being charged for the songs they played?

  There’s the story of Scorsese putting “Be My Baby” in Mean Streets, not even knowing he needed permission. Somebody in Phil Spector’s office reported the theft to Phil while he was working on John Lennon’s Rock and Roll. As the story goes, Lennon told him to leave it in. Scorsese was a cool up-and-coming New York kid that Yoko had turned him onto. So Phil left one of the classic moments in cinema history intact.

  I’m proposing this as a place for the discussion to begin.

  There should be a set price for song use.

  No permission necessary.

  A percentage pool like on Broadway. Based on the budget of the project. Maybe it costs a little more if it’s used as an opening theme or over the closing credits, although closing credits are annoyingly covered up by advertising or go to the next episode these days.

  There should be no negotiation needed.

  Let the music of the Renaissance once again fill the air and enrich our lives!

  Somebody better start dealing with this soon, or else it’s going to be Motown what? And Rolling Stones who? Before you know it.

  thirty-three

  Summer of Sorcery

  (2019–2020)

  All my life one of my greatest desires has been to travel—to see and touch unknown countries, to swim in unknown seas, to circle the globe, observing new lands, seas, people, and ideas with insatiable appetite, to see everything for the first time and for the last time, casting a slow, prolonged glance, then to close my eyes and feel the riches deposit themselves inside me calmly or stormily according to their pleasure, until time passes them at last through its fine sieve, straining the quintessence out of all the joys and sorrows.

  —NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS, REPORT TO GRECO

  A funny thing happened on the Soulfire Tour.

  An album is not the end of the artistic process. It’s the script for the live show that follows. Onstage, you can amplify and extend the theme of the record—assuming of course it has one. The raps between and even during songs can amplify and expand the ideas. Bruce began this practice and now I find it an essential part of the process.

  Halfway through the tour, as I was reabsorbing my long list of life’s work, new ideas started to come to me. After twenty years of being down, the radar went back up.

  Damn! Was I going to make a new album?

  At first the ideas were bits and pieces. A melody. A chord change. A rhythm. The important part for me was the overall concept, and in this case I knew what I didn’t want to do before I knew what I did want to do.

  I did not want to make another political record, even though that’s all I’d ever done. I wrote and sang about politics in the ’80s because most of what was going on was hidden. The news didn’t dominate our lives like it does now. You could go months without even thinking about the government. Can you imagine such a thing? Meanwhile, Reagan and his henchmen were engaging in criminal activity that needed to be brought into the light of day.

  Now, most of the government’s extensive criminal activity isn’t covered up at all. There’s not even an attempt to do so. The government brags openly about kidnapping kids and putting them in cages. The crimes, along with the ongoing murder count from COVID, are on the news every day.

  Politics suddenly became redundant.

  I also didn’t want to make an autobiographical record. Enough about me already. But I needed a concept, some kind of boundaries in order to focus.

  How could I be most useful? That’s a question every Artist has to ask. I thought I could carry on the theme of the Soulfire Tour. The spiritual common ground of music. The world was becoming desperately in need of common ground. I would try and continue providing some.

  It looked like the album would come out in the summer of 2019. That got me thinking about the season. This was to be my artistic rebirth, and spring and summer were the Earth’s yearly rebirth. Maybe I could combine the two ideas. We needed something to celebrate.

  I also wanted to capture human experience, especially the times when life was most open and exciting. A teenager’s first love. The thrill of breaking out of school, going to the beach for the first time after a long winter, watching a new band, seeing a great movie, reading an amazing book—plus the fantasy of lots of incredible sex!

  The music was the next question. If I was going to make a new record, what genres, styles, and artists did I want represented?

  The Disciples may have started off as a collection of mostly strangers, but it had become a real family. I saw us as a modern version of the ultimate cool group, the first band you’d want at a summer celebration, Sly and the Family Stone. Sly had shown up in my work before, mostly as a vocal influence (“Revolution,” “Liberation Theology”). Now it was time to bring his band’s influence to a song that celebrated the common ground of diversity (“Communion”).

  My old hero Sam Cooke always served me well, going back to “I Don’t Want to Go Home,” and he came through for me again, twice (“Love Again,” “Soul Power Twist”).

  I always dug Tito Puente and the whole Latin Salsa thing. You can hear it in the instrumental break of “Los Desaparecidos” and in its sequel, “Bitter Fruit.” We took that groove to the next level (“Party Mambo”).

  A change of pace with a little Bossa-Nova-meets-Samba for the mellower Latin side, an outtake from the Brazilian sequence in Lilyhammer (“Suddenly”).

  Some James Brown Funk, which I had gone deep into on Revolution (“Gravity,” “Education”).

  I loved the whole Girl Group thing, which is where songs like “Love on the Wrong Side of Town,” “Among the Believers,” and “Love and Forgiveness” had come from (“A World of Our Own”).

  Some Blues (“I Visit the Blues”).

  A little funky blaxploitation (“Vortex”).

  A touch of Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and the Beach Boys (“Superfly Terraplane”).

  And a taste of new territory in the form of some Astral Weeks–era Van Morrison (“Summer of Sorcery”).

  And voilà!

  I worked with my in-house graphics genius Louis to create my favorite album cover ever, by anybody, a tribute to my favorite childhood Artist, Frank Frazetta. Frazetta did the covers of the books I loved as a kid, Conan and Tarzan and John Carter of Mars. They had a common theme of heroes finding their way to triumph through mysterious, dangerous worlds. I wanted to infuse the record with that same sense of adventure. Like my life had.

  I credit the loyalty of this band—Marc Ribler, Jack Daley, Richie Mercurio, Andy Burton, Eddie Manion, Stan Harrison, Ron Tooley, Ravi Best, Clark Gayton, Tania Jones, Sara Devine, Jessie Wagner, and Anthony Almonte—with giving me a secure foundation that allowed my creativity to rise again like Lazarus.

  This would be the first time I’d ever made two albums in a row with the same band. It was exciting.

  I’d always wondered how I would evolve if I had the chance. The first five albums showed growth, but it was horizontal, five different soundtracks in five different genres. This was the first time I got to do what every other band does, which was to grow vertically. The Stones and the Ramones made basically the same album every time, but with different songs. I loved that. I envied that. Get the sound right the first time and stick with it.

  What I envied was being satisfied in one creative discipline and sticking to it. Next life.


  Summer of Sorcery was released in May 2019, exactly thirty years after my last solo album of original material, Revolution.

  The Summer of Sorcery Tour turned out to be its own exhilarating energy source. We lit up a darkening world for a few precious months.

  The only real disappointment was that it proved that the old road to success had been forever washed away. We were going back to cities where we’d slayed with the Soulfire Tour, and the same number of people showed up. Sometimes even fewer.

  This never would’ve happened in the old days. The entire industry was built on coming to town and knocking them out, knowing that everybody in the audience would bring three friends next time you came back.

  The Soulfire band couldn’t have been any better or gotten a better response.

  The Sorcery Tour was even better.

  I had to admit to myself that the fantasy of some triumphant return was simply not in the cards. Much less the comeback of a never-was!

  It was too late. Too expensive. I should’ve made sure I had that one hit when I had the chance. I made sure Bruce had one. And one makes all the difference.

  Ladies and Gentlemen, Jimmy Buffett! Casino owner!

  Bruce released an album called Western Stars in the summer of 2019. It had been finished for a little while, and he referred to it as his Burt Bacharach album because it had a great deal of orchestration.

  When first I heard it, about a year before it came out, I told him he needed to stop calling it that. “What it is, really, is your Jimmy Webb album.” That was the closest style that came to mind.

  Kind of Country. Rural. Cinematic. Small stories in big vistas. Bruce never ceased to impress me when he stretched out artistically.

  The Disciples were in Europe when the record came out. I was doing lots of press, and Western Stars was coming up quite often—and not in a good way. I was quite surprised. I’d never before heard a negative word about Bruce’s work, especially in Europe.

  I found myself defending him with the journalists, an odd and unexpected turn of events.

  “You a Bruce fan?” I asked.

  “Yes of course!” They were effusive.

  “Well, this thing called Art is funny.” I had their attention. “Sometimes it can be coy. Coquettish. Sometimes it wants to be courted. The good news is, it’s forever. No deadlines. No panic. A work of Art may not choose to speak to you now, and then reveal the secrets of the universe to you ten years from now.”

  Where was this going?

  “So as a fan of Bruce, you’ve enjoyed, what, forty years of good work? And you’ve probably noticed that he has some insight and knowledge and talent and wisdom that you don’t?”

  They nodded.

  “I’ll be back in a year or two and we’ll speak again. In the meantime, while I’m gone I want you to consider one simple thing.”

  They leaned in.

  “Maybe there’s nothing wrong with this record. Maybe the problem is with you.”

  While I was on the road for Summer of Sorcery, hearing all the negative reaction, I thought the album could use a little bit of what Jimi Hendrix did for Dylan’s John Wesley Harding. I worked up a version of “Tucson Train” just for fun as a commercial for his upcoming movie, which he didn’t need.

  It occurred to me that Rock had truly redefined the significance of chronological time. I personally knew seven different artists still working in their eighties. Dion had just made an album, at the age of eighty. The next generation, in their seventies, were still doing great work. Looking at the substance, there’s a certain kind of work that can’t be done until you’re an elder. I did a radio break on it. I called it “Wisdom Art.”

  Artists of our generation just seem to be defying science and continuing to do work they couldn’t have done when they were younger. In music. In film. Suddenly, everybody’s Picasso a little bit!

  I happened to be in LA for Bruce’s seventieth birthday party. We went into a back room away from the crowd, and I played “Tucson Train” for him. Happily, he dug it.

  I went back to the party, to a table in the yard. Francis Ford Coppola came in and sat at the table next to mine. I had been trying to reach him for a couple of years. I had a script that I thought would be of particular interest to him. Just as I was working up the courage to say hello, Leo DiCaprio sat down. He and Francis immediately got into an intense discussion, the kind that you could tell would last for two hours.

  As I was cursing my fate, Bob Dylan and his girlfriend sat down next to me. As I have mentioned, my encounters with Bob are brief and bizarre but always interesting. I’m never sure if he knows that the musician me and the actor me are the same guy.

  I decided to have a little fun. I turned to his girlfriend. “I’m gonna let you in on something I bet nobody’s told you about Bob.”

  He gave me half a nervous glance.

  “You’ve heard about how his songwriting changed the entire Pop music world and helped create a whole new Artform. Fine. But nobody talks about how Bob was one of the great fingerpickers back in the day.”

  She smiled. “Really?”

  Bob looked relieved.

  I went on. “Next time you listen to Bob’s early records, listen carefully to what’s happening with his guitar playing. Keep in mind those records were made live. He didn’t play the guitar and then come back and sing later. He’s doing that fancy playing and singing all at the same time. It’s very difficult to do, and no one has ever given him credit for it. Until this moment.”

  She was impressed.

  Bob then told me a story I hadn’t heard before. The first time he went to England, it was to act in a TV play! While he was there, he visited London Folk clubs, where the artists were one degree closer to the source than what we had in America. Those visits, he said, inspired his second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, where he first made his reputation as an unparalleled songwriter.

  A few weeks after Bruce’s party, Bob called to invite me to his show at the Beacon Theatre. Back in the day, you always knew who was in town. Always. It was a big deal! Now, Artists and bands come and go through town and you never even know it. It was good to see Charlie Sexton, still part of Bob’s band after twenty years. And Bob did me the honor of an impressively lengthy shout-out from the stage. Marty Scorsese, too, who I didn’t see.

  Since I have spent much of this book and this last phase of my career avoiding specific political party issues, I do feel obligated to mention a few of the things that I’ve been carrying around for forty years while thinking about these issues.

  I’ll put the full political platform of ideas on some website somewhere, which makes sense since websites get adjusted from time to time. But here are nine quick items that I would implement if I were king of the forest:

  1. Design the Future

  • Organize a forum of futurists, visionaries, and social engineers.

  • Design the future, then train people in the right jobs to build it.

  2. Poison-Free by 2030

  • Set a ten-year, Kennedy-moon-shot-type goal: poison-free by 2030.

  • Government should partner with fossil-fuel and military industries as they transition to a sustainable green economy.

  3. Eradication of “Black Communities”

  • The biggest scam ever perpetrated on the black community by the white community was convincing them that black neighborhoods were their idea. It’s time to invite black Americans to join the rest of America by eliminating all so-called black communities.

  • End poverty, racism, crime, unarmed shooting deaths, black-on-black crime, and overpopulated prisons and recidivism once and for all with one bold move, dismantling “black” neighborhoods.

  • Incentivize the immediate neighbors and integrate the poor into middle-class neighborhoods, not with low-cost housing but given equal equity.

  4. Become a Democracy

  • The tragic Buckley v. Valeo Supreme Court decision of 1976 declared the spending of money to be pr
otected by freedom of speech in the First Amendment. This officially made us a Corporatocracy and led to the antidemocratic Citizens United legislation and the ridiculous protection of corporations as if they were individual human beings. The issues where money speaks loudest win, while the issues that don’t put enough money in politicians’ pockets or campaigns die in silence.

  • There will never be meaningful gun control, a poison-free environment, justice for the working class, or true democracy in America until Buckley is reversed.

  5. Women’s Rights and Protection

  • Pass the long-overdue Equal Rights Amendment.

  • End the vast majority of rape and sexual assaults by mandatory martial arts training from kindergarten up for girls only.

  • Yes, boys should be taught to respect girls. And yes, there needs to be more female owners and executives. But sexual assault will never stop until women can physically defend themselves.

  • Sex should be legal. If our ambition is to become the freest, healthiest country in the world, sex should be legal and available to whoever wants it whenever they want it. Sex Workers of all sexual preferences should be licensed and protected. The inability for most of society to have sex leads to irrational misogyny, inexpressible frustration, and dangerous violence. Sex being illegal is unfair to the disabled, the introverted, and the socially retarded, which turns out to be most of us. It is only our religious extremism by a vocal minority that maintains the hypocritical laws that outlaw sex. No truly healthy society in the history of the world has ever attempted to outlaw such a fundamental function of human nature.

  6. Immigration Reform

  • Institute a Marshall Plan for Central America.