Steven Van Zandt knows what youre thinking, especially when the topic is his music and not his acting. You hear his name and immediately imagine a bandana-clad rock gypsy who sings and plays heated, self-righteous diatribes about politics and life in a justice-challenged America. And he doesnt disagree with you. All my previous solo records were very political and very personal, he says from his Manhattan home. And I wanted to get away from both of those things. I wanted to fictionalize my life. I was sick of me.
Van Zandts first step in that direction came when he heard that his longtime employer, Bruce Springsteen, would be heading to Broadway in 2017. I said, I might as well use the time, he says. On that years Soulfire, Van Zandt revived his inactive solo career, his long-dormant band name (Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul) and several songs hed written for other artists but had never cut himself. As soon as I did Soulfire, I said, I should evolve this to the next logical place, he recalls. All my records in the Eighties were diverse, but the music was always second to the lyrics. This time I wanted the music to come first.
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For his next project, Van Zandt started with a new song, Summer of Sorcery, which he says was relatively new territory for me Id never wandered into that Van Morrison area very often. Starting with that swirly, strummy reverie, a new idea took shape: what he calls a concept loosely about going back and experiencing the first summer of consciousness, first time in love, first experiences in life and that thrill of unlimited possibilities.
Working with his current band, Van Zandt rode that feeling into Summer of Sorcery, the most eclectic record hes ever made. Set for May release, it largely dispenses with protest songs and revels in the rock, soul and R&B of his Sixties youth. On tracks like Soul Power Twist, Vortex and Love Again, he returns to the sort of Jersey Shore soul shakers he once wrote for Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. I wanted to write some of those songs for me, he says. I wouldve given those to Southside, but I never wrote them for myself.
The album also ventures into Phil Spectorstyle pop (A World of Our Own), Latin music (Party Mambo) and garage rock (Communion). Even more striking are the lyrics, which avoid autobiography in favor of character studies, like the lovesick romantic in A World of Our Own. Every singer is an actor, and the song is the script, he says. And youre selling it. Youre convincing the audience you are who you say you are. In this case, I had to inhabit the body of that person, and I played and sang along with these different movies that required my singing to be different.
The results are particularly felt on Suddenly You, which features a rare Van Zandt swoony croon. He also points to the horn-swinging Love Again, which he calls a complete fantasy inspired by pop of a bygone era. I was thinking about Sam Cooke singing I aint got nobody [in Another Saturday Night] and yet he was having sex with two or three women a day! Van Zandt laughs. But theres nothing autobiographical about this one.
Still, Van Zandt couldnt shut out current events entirely. Superfly Terraplane portrays a new anti-gun and prosocial-media generation, while Gravity laments the denigrated state of the country (Two hundred years of muscle/You blew it all trying to be the boss). I couldnt help myself, he shrugs. It pulled me back in.
Yet he admits its ironic that hes made one of his least political records during one of the countrys most tumultuous times. I got that with Soulfire too: What are you doing? he says. Its unbelievable whats going on. Were in a civil war here. But my usefulness now is trying to bring people together and find a common ground. Van Zandt learned a hard lesson when he launched TeachRock, a rock-historybased education program for schools around the country. I didnt endorse Obama and I didnt criticize Trump, he says. TeachRock is the biggest thing Ive ever done in my life, and I didnt want a teacher in Alabama saying, I dont want to follow this liberal.
Van Zandt will be taking the Summer of Sorcery songs on the road starting this summer through October. He hasnt heard anything about future E Street Band roadwork, but he knows he needs to take advantage of his break and the chance to play his own songs as much as possible. If Bruce goes back out, he says, we could be gone two years.
Until that happens, assuming it does, Van Zandt says hes going to enjoy stepping away from himself. Theres nothing more anxiety-producing than trying to understand yourself and analyze yourself, he says. Its exhausting.