Yet people still catch a lot of shit for doing just that. Bruce, you were on 60 Minutes
recently, commenting about how people are still being demonized for speaking out
against the war, and even that got conservatives in a tizzy. Is there any hope that we
can get to a place where real discourse between opposing viewpoints can happen?
>SPRINGSTEEN You have to behave as if there is. I think with the incredible access
to media and with everyone able to get their ideas out, we’re going to hear from a
lot more stupid people. That’s the soup we’re in, and that’s not going anywhere.
You just have to keep pressing and remain committed to your ideas and the small
part you can play. Bill O’Reilly’s gonna curse me? God bless him.
>BUTLER I studied 1920s Russian literature in school—Yevgeny Zamyatin wrote
We, the first dystopian novel about how fucked up everything was…and he was
killed. I’ll take being nastily blogged-about over running for my life or having to
hide my novel in a fucking drawer for 50 years because evil people are running
the country. That’s why it’s important to speak up.
It seems like a lot of younger bands, Arcade Fire certainly included, are talking
about Bruce Springsteen right now. After so many years, what is it about this
particular moment that feels relevant?
>SPRINGSTEEN It’s hard to say—I think when a generation bumps up against

Little Steven’s Wicked Cool Ways

HOW SPRINGSTEEN’S SIDEKICK PLANS TO SAVE ROCK’N’ROLL

He never saw
that uppercut
coming.
EStreet guitarist,
liberal activist,
solo artist,
Silvio on The

Sopranos—Little

Steven, a.k.a. Steven Van Zandt, has donned numerous hats, not to mention hairpieces and bandannas. For his latest role, though, he wants to be nothing less than a one-man School of

Rock. “Today, you can trace the mainstream stuff all the way back to…Eddie Vedder,” he says with a chuckle in his Manhattan office, where Beatles and

Stones posters adorn the walls
and Keith Richards’ daughter
Theodora is discussing a
project. “Or, with this indie stuff,
it goes all the way back to…U2.”

When it comes to “that linear river that goes back as far as you can see and extends as far as you want”—in other words, the roots of rock—“that thing stopped flowing,” he says. As a result, Van Zandt has taken it upon himself to keep prehistoric rock alive. After stumbling upon the underground retro-garage scene a decade ago, he decided to spend what he calls his “celebrity capital” on promoting that community, via radio shows, a recently launched indie label (called Wicked Cool), and branded concerts. Wicked Cool signees the Woggles beheld Van Zandt’s new calling up close when he dropped by their dressing room after a show in New York, excitedly talking them up as heirs of the Who and the Stones. “It was a surprise,” recalls singer Manfred Jones. “But he’s a man with a vision, and that’s what it takes.”

No one’s more shocked by Van Zandt’s mission than Van Zandt
himself. Thanks to his tenure with Springsteen and his own
projects, he missed out on the alt-rock explosion. When he finally
caught up, in the post-grunge years, he didn’t like what heard. “We

grew up with 30 years where rock’n’roll was the main thing,” he says. “And somewhere in the mid-’90s, it was, ‘Guess what? It ain’t forever.’ We’d been hearing for years ‘Rock’n’roll is dead.’

But rock’n’roll was dead.”

At 57, Van Zandt still speaks passionately—well, mutters, much like Silvio—about how rock represents “friendship and brotherhood,” and how “you have to go back to greatness to achieve greatness.” He’s fiercely opinionated about digital sound (“shit”), the way major labels essentially abandoned garage rock after the Strokes and the Hives peaked (“Like always, the industry overreacted”), and what he sees as a decline in rock fashion (“a dearth of gay management”). “He’s from an era that will never be repeated,“ says Tegan Quin of Tegan and Sara, who are featured on a Wicked Cool comp. “He comes from a time when music was life and it was everything.”

Van Zandt’s undertaking remains a struggle. He’s lost an unspecified “substantial” amount of money on his self-financed company (whose CEO is Jean Beauvoir, former bassist for punk shockers the Plasmatics), and meetings to launch a TV version of his radio show haven’t been fruitful. (Next up: writing a rock-history curriculum for high schools.) “I have to be more concerned with quality right now than making money,” says Van Zandt. “Let’s get the standards raised back up and try out figure out how to make money later. When you see a band like the Woggles, they’re so much fun—and that’s important. Fun is gone from the culture. Where’s fun?”

And if saving rock doesn’t pan out, there’s always Silvio. “Oh
yeah—he’s alive and well,” he says. “He’s not ‘well’ well, but he
lives. Just in case there’s a movie, he lives!” DAVID BROWNE