Do you remember getting your first paycheck as a professional musician?
Yeah. I gotta tell you, our generation was incredibly lucky because there were a lot of places to play when I was a kid. Still in high school, you could play the other high schools, the beach clubs, the VFW halls, Hullabaloo, which was a rock ‘n’ roll TV show.

What you’re saying is real similar to something Mark Farner from Grand Funk Railroad told me not long ago for a piece I did on that band. A group starting out now has to contend with all these 21-and-over places, so what’s the option? Starting out playing arenas? Hardly.
And that’s why I’m dedicating every single minute of my free time to this infrastructure where people can at least make a living at it. Just to survive. Until they maybe get that break, write that great hit song. There’s got to be development, man. You can’t just jump into the business and go on MTV or play an arena. You gotta develop.

Have you ever thought about going into A&R or working at a label trying to take bands to radio?
See, that’s the nice thing about all this. I don’t have to take ‘em to radio. I AM the radio! [laughs] And I ain’t going nowhere! I just gotta go to myself! There are plenty of bands I’d love to sign, older and new. For example, I’ve always wanted to make the album that Richard & The Young Lions never got to make. They were a classic legendary garage band, had three or four singles in the ‘60s, and never quite made the album. They were from Jersey. They had a hit, “Open Up Your Door And You Can Make It Alright,” a couple others. And they’re back together now after 30 years. They played Cavestomp! for us, and they’re just terrific. As far as the older stuff, the possibility of giving these older groups who are still viable, giving them an outlet. The Troggs, for instance; the Electric Prunes; the Creation—these are groups [Cavestomp!] helped re-form in many cases. The Creation re-formed in order to come to America for the first time. Now they were as big in Britain in the ‘60s as the Who, but they never came over here. The Electric Prunes re-formed for us, and lemme tell ya something, they were just tremendous! I really mean it. It brought you right back to 1967 in a minute. So it would be nice to have an outlet for these cats who just might be writing the best songs of their lives, who knows? I mean, speaking for myself, I know I’m still getting better. We go out there as the E Street Band, we ain’t worse, you know! Nobody says, “Jeez, you guys aren’t as good as you were in 1980!” Nobody says that. We’re better, man.

Yep. I saw you in 1999 in Phoenix. And I’ve been seeing you since the Born To Run tour. So no argument there.
So why isn’t that possible for a bunch of these other older bands? I’d like to have that door open for them. And, of course, obviously the bulk would be the new bands, because there’s plenty of them. Honestly, everybody I’m playing on my show I would either like, if I don’t sign them myself, maybe make a deal with a record company to get them a little better distribution, whatever I could work out. Whatever way I can help.

You actually do sound like an A&R guy, but one who’s not jaded yet.
It’s all about A&R if you’re a radio DJ who picks your own songs. To me, that’s the same job. What’s the difference? You’re looking for cool songs. Now, as a DJ you’re playing stuff that’s a little further along than a demo tape, but it’s the same process. I started off as an arranger and record producer, and you’re constantly looking for the cool song. That’s what it’s all about. And cool songs have to be developed like anything else. I’m a good person to develop those things. I’m a songwriter, a producer, and I know how to get the best out of people. You develop that stuff as a record company. As a radio show you get the end result of that. But you still need to develop it, and the major record companies ain’t doing it. They don’t know where to begin.

You used to be engaged in a lot of political activism. Did you swap that for your current enthusiasm promoting this music?
I think I took that zeal for politics and found a new mission. This whole thing didn’t start off as a mission. I just sort of stumbled into it, just starting off trying to get some of my favorite songs on the radio. I was looking around and didn’t see much rock ‘n’ roll being supported at all, at least not how I defined rock ‘n’ roll. I found out that every single oldies station across the country had started to eliminate the ‘50s. Every single classic rock station had started to eliminate the ‘60s. Now the ‘50s and ‘60s are the Renaissance; they are the decades that matter, the decades that people will be coming back to and studying for the next 100 years.

[Note: At this point in the conversation, Van Zandt starts to sound uncannily like Silvio Dante or Tony Soprano, browbeating some gathering of mob underlings over some persistent, nagging problem he’s noticed about the family business. Even if I was inclined to disagree with Van Zandt—and I’m not—there’s no way I’d do anything but agree with him, and earnestly. I know what happens to guys who piss off Little Sil-, I mean, Little Steven.]

They ain’t gonna be studying the ‘70s or the ‘80s or the ‘90s. They’re gonna be coming back to the ‘50s and ‘60s ‘cos that’s where it all went down. And to have that eliminated from our radio waves is a fucking crime! [laughs] You might as well eliminate Shakespeare from your theater class. Because you are eliminating the most important shit that influenced everything. Everything can be directly traced back to those years.

How many records are in your collection?
Oh, there’s a lot! More importantly, though, there’s a playlist that I pick from, so there’s about 900-950 songs. Literally, classic rock is now playing about 200 records. 200 records, 24 hours a day, across the country. I’m playing 900, two hours a week. That’s why I need a station 24 hours a day.

“All Steve, All The Time.”
Yeah, that’s what I’m hoping to do, I really am. There is so much cool stuff that needs to be played. And, god forbid, in six months’ time I could be the only guy out there playing the Beatles. That’s almost where it’s going. Nobody’s playing album tracks from the Beatles or Stones or Kinks, Who, Yardbirds. You never hear the Yardbirds. So I play the cool ‘50s guys, like Eddie Cochran, Jerry Lee Lewis. I got the whole British Invasion. Then you get to the one-hit wonders that rarely get played, the Nuggets bands, the Music Machines, Electric Prunes. Then you get to the ‘70s, and I got the Ramones—which nobody ever played. They are from my town here, and our local station, maybe in their heyday, played ‘em once a month. That only lasted for a year or two. So here you got the Ramones, whom I consider the most commercially viable group since the British Invasion. I got more Ramones on my playlist than anybody except the Rolling Stones. I play ‘em every week.

I like the way you’ll throw in a curveball. On one of your recent shows you played Mongo Santamaria’s “Watermelon Man.”
Oh, instrumentals is a whole other conversation. I got a whole thing going on there where I’m carrying that flag. There’s no question about surf instrumentals, for example.

We touched on politics kind of sideways. I wonder what your take is on current American foreign policy, if you’d care to weigh in.
Look, I’m a little confused these days on foreign policy because I’m not as politically engaged as I have been. I had to get back to trying to make a living! But, ah, I thought we were engaged in one war, and now I hear they want to jump into another war, with Iraq? I don’t get it. Aren’t we busy enough, trying to fight this other war, this very abstract, bizarre, war against terrorism? Which I would think is full time ... I dunno. I do know there isn’t a connection, really. While Saddam Hussein is not a good guy, by the way, and I wish they would have finished the job first time, he don’t like the Palestinians much, he don’t like Al Qaeda, he don’t like Bin Laden, he don’t like Arafat. He don’t got nothing to do with none of that stuff! He is his own terrorist! So there may be some sort of tortured logic connecting him up five or six levels away, but there is no direct connection between this one war we’re supposedly fighting now and the one we’re gonna be fighting a few months from now. Maybe they feel they’ve failed to succeed in this other war, or maybe some investigator is getting too close to Dick Cheney’s finances, or who know what it is?

“Wag The Dog.”
Yeah. Is it a way to try and kick the economy in the ass? You wonder, and you have to be cynical about these things or you’re a fool. This is no crazy conspiracy theory here.

Is rock ‘n’ roll a good entry point for kids who want to get involved in the political process? I mean, Bono just gets voted one of the most influential people on the planet? Who would of thought in 1965 a rock musician would have that status?
I love it, and I really share in that success because I’m very proud of Bono. When [Artists United Against Apartheid] engaged in the most important political project in rock ‘n’ roll history, “Sun City,” Bono was one of our people who came in with us—and took a lot of chances with his career at that point, too, because political activism was not cool. That’s one thing we accomplished in the ‘80s: We made it cool, we made it socially acceptable, and we made it acceptable within the industry, to be engaged in political issues. It was not cool before then. You could lose your career in an instant.

Out on the road with Bruce—who’d be talking about causes from the stage and such—did you ever get the feeling that some folks would just wish the band would shut up and play?
Yeah, but you don’t give up your citizenship just because you become a guitar player. Of course, my personal solo records were all politics, and I made a point of trying to politicize everybody, including the Bonos of the world: “Become engaged. Let’s move this thing from social protest to political protest. Let’s name names. Let’s get in there and get the bad guys. Let’s fix things and not just complain about them.” So I was extreme for a reason, and it succeeded; I managed to politicize all my friends. It was at the expense of my career at the time, but I was willing and able to do it. Now, it’s not that weird a thing. You can do these political things without getting bounced off the radio.

Those who lay the groundwork, however, sometimes pay a price.
Yeah, I did. But I’m proud of what we accomplished. What Bruce says now in the shows, it’s the bare minimum. He’ll say, “Before we go into Iraq, let’s have a full debate about it.” That’s all he’s saying, and if someone is offended by it, you know what? Fuck you. OK? Fuck off, baby. You ain’t being a patriotic American if you don’t believe in a full debate before you send your children into war. You’re a fucking fascist. Social revolutions that really happened back in the ‘60s were a transition that people were uncomfortable making, from that blind trust of government to the more correct and proper, but messier, version of reality. Which is that you have to question, you have to do some research, and you have to think and participate. It’s not as easy for people. But that’s how democracy is. It’s messy, it’s work, and it’s a participatory sport, baby! If you don’t get involved, you’re gonna be the one whose cousin comes back in a box and you won’t know why.

Democracy sometimes feels like a football game that always ends in a stalemate.
With a lousy halftime show to boot!

And the bookies won’t pay off their bets, either. Back to the music: The other night in Boston, the E Street Band encored with the Standells’ “Dirty Water.” Then two nights later, you opened your radio show with “Dirty Water.” That can’t be a coincidence.
I gotta tell you, it really was a coincidence! [laughs]

Really? I pictured you at soundcheck: “Please, please Bruce, we gotta do this one tonight. We’re in Boston!”
No, no, I’d love to take credit for that, but that’s just how it fell.

Did you bring that song to the band, or was it something you might have played in bars years ago?
We had a collective garage-rock upbringing. These are the songs that are in our blood. They are our genetic make-up.

The “Detroit Medley” you used to encore with ...
Yeah, all those things. We encored with “Dirty Water” in Boston, like you said. We knew “I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night.” “Talk Talk.” “Dirty Water.” “Friday On My Mind.” All those things, man, they were the coolest songs for us growing up. And they still are.

Then does that ongoing appreciation, and the ability to play the tunes, make the E Street Band the ultimate garage outfit?
There’s certainly a big part of it in who we are. Obviously we evolved to other places and didn’t stay a garage band, but man, sure, it’s still in us. Still in the best bands, too—you can hear it in Aerosmith. It’s there in a different way in U2. It’s there in Metallica in a different way. But those roots stay with you. And the nice thing about that stuff is that it was freaky then, and it’s freaky now. And that’s why young people love it. They can discover it and get as much out of it as we did. Because it didn’t fit in then, either. That’s what people forget. It ain’t about nostalgia. This stuff is truly timeless. The way any great art is timeless. They didn’t know it was great art at the time, and they didn’t mean for it to be great art, but that’s how it is. It’s like a great book or a great painting. It’s gonna turn you on and inspire you and motivate you whenever you discover it.

Tell ya what then. If you ever look out into the crowd from the E Street stage and you see someone holding up a sign that says, “Shake Some Action,” that won’t be one of the signs for Bruce—it’ll be me holding it up for you, Steve.