“All my life I’ve carried with me this guilt”: Steven Van Zandt on leaving Bruce Springsteen’s band at their moment of triumph
Steven Van Zandt has opened up about his decision to leave Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, a move he once described in his memoir Unrequited Infatuations as “the big mistake of my life”.
After nearly a decade as Springsteen’s guitarist and backing vocalist, Van Zandt made his exit in 1984 after recording what would go on to be the Boss’s breakthrough album Born in the USA.
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In a new interview with The Guardian, Van Zandt admits that he sometimes wondered how things might have been different if he had stayed with Springsteen and co. back then.
“All my life I’ve carried with me this guilt and feeling of jeez, if only I could have stayed in the band and yet done all these other things,” says the musician. “Wouldn’t that have been wonderful? I realised when I analysed it, that is ridiculous and that wouldn’t have happened.”
“By staying in the band, there wouldn’t have probably been any solo records, there wouldn’t have been the Sun City record [his 1985 anti-apartheid protest song], there wouldn’t have been The Sopranos or Lilyhammer [a crime comedy-drama that was one of Netflix’s first original series].”
“I don’t know what I would have done,” Van Zandt continues. “I would have perhaps produced a few things and who knows where I would have went? But if I’d continued to dedicate my life to Bruce Springsteen’s vision I would never have realised my potential.”
“I still haven’t, obviously, but I got a few things done and I think they wouldn’t have gotten done if I’d stayed.”
Also in the chat, Van Zandt speaks about the role of the Fab Four and The Rolling Stones in kick starting his rock n’ roll journey, saying: “The Beatles obviously introduced us to this whole new thing but, since we had discovered them halfway through their career, they were much too sophisticated at that point to actually think you could do it. They were just perfect.”
“Then luckily, four months later, the Rolling Stones came and made it look easier than it was. The way I like to put it is: the Beatles introduced us to this world and the Rolling Stones invited us in. That was it for me. I was a very religious kid at the time and my religion just switched right over to rock’n’roll at that point. From then on it was just pretty much a straight line straight up.”
In other news, Van Zandt’s new HBO documentary film Disciple is now out. Check out the trailer below.
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
