Musician, actor, author Steve Van Zandt is nowhere near done

Steve Van Zandt is a Jersey Shore rock and roll founding father, costar of one of the most acclaimed TV dramas of all time, leader of Little Steven & the Disciples of Soul, and founder of the Underground Garage and Outlaw Country satellite radio channels.

He’s the Italian guy with a Dutch name who dresses like a psychedelic pirate, the political activist who spearheaded the star-studded antiapartheid 1985 protest song “Sun City.” The author of the juicy, astute memoir Unrequited Infatuations is also the subject of the HBO documentary Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple.

Oh yeah, he also has another job bringing him to Citizens Bank Park on Wednesday and Friday. He’s guitar player, back up vocalist, musical director of the E Street Band, and consigliere and comic foil for his friend Bruce Springsteen — a relationship that prepped him to play Tony Soprano’s loyal lieutenant Silvio Dante on HBO’s The Sopranos.

On Monday morning, he spoke to The Inquirer via Zoom from his Manhattan apartment, just 12 hours after leaving a Pittsburgh stage on the second night of the North American leg of the band’s summer tour.

He’s wearing a fuchsia animal print shirt and purple paisley bandanna that matches his upholstered kitchen chair and artwork by Ringo Starr that hangs over his left shoulder.

The Bruce and Steve story goes back to a mid-1960s Battle of the Bands at the Hullabaloo in Middletown, Van Zandt’s Monmouth County hometown.

Van Zandt — born Steven Lento, raised by his mother and her second husband, William Van Zandt, a barbershop quartet enthusiast — was playing with his band the Shadows. Springsteen was in the Castiles, led by George Theiss, the singer whose death in 2018 is at the core of Springsteen’s 2020 album Letter to You.

The two became fast friends. They were together in Steel Mill and the Bruce Springsteen Band, but not in the E Street Band that cut its teeth at the Main Point in Bryn Mawr in 1973.

Instead, Van Zandt was guitarist with the Philly doo-wop band the Dovells, known for their 1961 hit “Bristol Stomp,” whose tour dates included a stop at Jerry Blavat’s club Memories in Margate.

Van Zandt started The Underground Garage as a syndicated show, and it still airs at 10 p.m. Sundays on WMGK-FM (102.9). In 2004, it became a 24-hour Sirius XM channel. Van Zandt wanted to recruit The Geator, who didn’t want to play anything recorded after 1959. “‘Do I have to play the new stuff?’ he asked me. He just couldn’t relate to it. So he never came on board.”

But back to Bruce: When Van Zandt returned to Asbury Park after the Dovells ended their tour in South Florida, he had taken up wearing Hawaiian shirts. Springsteen dubbed him “Miami Steve,” and brought him in to arrange the horns on “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out” on Born to Run.

While writing and producing for Southside Johnny in the 1970s, Van Zandt joined E Street as the band moved up to the Tower Theater and the Spectrum as Philly became a city of Springsteenophiles.

“It is absolutely true that Philly was one of the first places to support the group,” he said. ”That is not nostalgic self-aggrandizement.”

The most memorable Philly shows for Van Zandt were tragic. The band played the Spectrum on “The River” tour in December 1980 the night John Lennon was killed, and again the following night. The band learned of Lennon’s death after the first concert ended.

“What a horrible, horrible thing. I remember saying to Bruce, ‘So I guess we’re going to cancel the show?’ And he said, ‘No. This is when people need you the most.’”

The band opened with “Born to Run,” and “I cried all the way through it. It hit me very hard, maybe harder than any death, ever … They were so critically important in giving those of us who were freaks, misfits, and outcast an identity. You realize your life is what it is because of them,” Van Zandt said.

In 1984, he left the E Street Band and embarked on a solo career, just as Springsteen was about to explode with Born in the U.S.A.

The split was presented as amicable. But as Van Zandt details in both Disciple and Unrequited Infatuations, he really left because he felt his creative voice in the band had been stifled, shut out by Springsteen and manager Jon Landau.

Damage to their friendship was quickly repaired, but Van Zandt second-guessed his decision for years.

Looking back, as he worked on his memoir, lifted that burden. “If I stayed, yeah, I would have been significantly wealthier,” he said. “But basically everything I’ve accomplished in life happened after that.

“I believe you are what you do. And I probably wouldn’t have done any of those things, helping to bring down the South African government, creating the TeachRock school curriculum …. or becoming an actor,” in The Sopranos and then later in 2012′s Lillyhammer, the Netflix show in which he played a mob boss in witness protection in Norway. “So that was a relief. I thought I was messing around with destiny. But probably, I was fulfilling it.”

Shortly after David Chase convinced Van Zandt to join The Sopranos in 1999, Springsteen reunited the E Street Band. And in the quarter-century since, Van Zandt has been busy, juggling various projects while being back on stage to Springsteen’s left mugging for the camera on “Glory Days” and “Two Hearts.”

What sets Springsteen apart from other legends, Van Zandt says, is the way he built on the legacy of previous generations. After the pioneers of the 1950s and 1960s rock greats like The Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan, “Bruce set the standard for the third generation,” he said.

“You see it with the cinematic quality of his work, how he brings all the influences in of literature and film noir. And to be still doing it with the quality as high 50 years later is incredible.”

This week’s Philly Springsteen shows are rescheduled from August 2023, when Springsteen postponed due to an illness later revealed to be peptic ulcer disease. “I wasn’t really aware of it at all,” said Van Zandt. “Later, he told me he was in severe pain for the previous four shows. I didn’t detect a thing. He keeps it all inside somehow. So it was a complete surprise.”

Before the band’s tour began in 2023, they hadn’t played live since 2016. Thinking it might be the last time, Van Zandt lost 100 pounds. “I wanted to be a rock star one more time,” he says.

Now, Van Zandt, who at 73 is a year younger than his Boss, is hopeful for the future. For years he’s been urging Springsteen to tour more frequently while the band still can.

“With this tour, we wanted to come out and hit you like a hurricane. To let you know that not only do we still got it, but we still got it and then some. The theme is mortality, but we balance that with vitality.”

There are already dates scheduled for 2025, “so that’ll be the first time we’ve ever toured three summers in a row,” he said. The band’s fan base, Van Zandt said, keeps getting younger, particularly in Europe, where Springsteen plays exclusively to stadium crowds.

“I know 20 people who are touring in their 80s,” he said. “I’m convinced that there’s a benefit in terms of self-preservation. And I’m hoping to convince Bruce of the same thing. Obviously, at some point we won’t be able to keep on doing this. But we’re getting bigger, and we’re better than ever, really. I don’t see any end in sight.”

Toward the end of a nearly two-hour conversation, Van Zandt jumped up to answer his landline. It’s his wife, Maureen, with whom he lives along with Tiggy, their Cavalier King Charles spaniel, named after the hedgehog heroine of a Beatrix Potter book.

“Sorry, babe, I can’t talk now. I’m doing an interview. I’m Zooming!”

Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band at Citizens Bank Park, 1 Citizens Bank Way, on Aug. 21 and 23, mlb.com.