VANZANDT: MOVING FROM SPRINGSTEEN’S SHADOW TO ‘SUN CITY’

NEW YORK —  Mick and Keith weren’t there, but the backstage crowd for the recent 10th anniversary reunion of the Dead Boys still turned a few heads: David Letterman’s musical sidekick Paul Shaffer, MTV veejay Martha Quinn and rock tough-gal Joan Jett.

However, the doorman at the Irving Plaza Theater reacted most to Steve Van Zandt, unmistakable in his familiar purple bandanna and assorted Gypsy bangles and beads. “How’s it going, man?” the doorman said. “Saw the (‘Sun City’) video on TV tonight. . . . Congratulations.”

Van Zandt mingled briefly backstage with Shaffer before heading for the wings to watch Dead Boys lead singer Stiv Bators contort his body tortuously while screaming the punkish songs that caused the Cleveland band to once be thought of as America’s answer to the Sex Pistols.

At the start of the encore, Bators called Van Zandt on stage and asked the crowd to welcome the man behind “Sun City.” The audience cheered as Van Zandt stepped across the stage, picked up a guitar and plugged it into an amplifier.

Later that night, a customer at an all-night diner near Van Zandt’s apartment here looked up as the rock musician walked past his table. “You’re Steve Van Zandt, right?” the man said. “Keep up the good work . . . the record’s great.”

Van Zandt seems so secure about his work these days that he may not have even picked up on one key point: No one during the evening had mentioned Bruce Springsteen.

After chiefly being known for a decade as Springsteen’s No. 1 sidekick, Van Zandt finally has his own identity.

The ties that bind Springsteen and Van Zandt aren’t likely ever to be erased. They have been pals since their teen-age days in New Jersey, and Van Zandt was lead guitarist in the Boss’ E Street Band from the start of the “Born to Run” tour in 1975 through the recording of the “Born in the U.S.A.” album last year.

But Van Zandt at last has some breathing room, careerwise, thanks to his leadership in writing, co-producing, organizing and now promoting the “Sun City” single--a blistering attack on racial apartheid in South Africa.

The record--which brings together a bold cross-section of contemporary musicians including Miles Davis, U2’s Bono Hewson, Ruben Blades, Afrika Bambaataa and Bob Dylan--has also been turned into an exciting video (see VideOlympics, next page) and is also the centerpiece of quite possibly the most purposeful and exciting album of the year (also titled “Sun City”).

Van Zandt’s role in “Sun City” establishes him, in some ways, as America’s answer to Bob Geldof, the Irishman behind Live Aid and the pop campaign to help famine victims in Africa.

The irony is that the record industry appeared to have little use for Van Zandt--and his politics--as late as last spring. After two highly political solo albums under his moniker of Little Steven failed to ignite the charts, Van Zandt left EMI-America Records, expecting to strike up a new, more productive relationship with another label. But he found no takers. He suspects the political bent of his music was a key reason.

Rather than compromise his vision, Van Zandt decided to concentrate on writing songs--and hope that the climate for socially conscious music would brighten.

Those close to Van Zandt for years weren’t surprised by his resolve. “That’s why he and Bruce were always best pals,” said a record company executive who worked with Springsteen and Van Zandt. “They came from the same background and they had the same goals. Just listen to ‘No Surrender’ and you’ll see their story.”

“No Surrender”--from Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” album--is about friendship and the youthful idealism of two New Jersey teen-agers who seemed to lose at everything until they found rock ‘n’ roll.

The song opens with pure teen-age bravado: “We busted out of class / Had to get away from those fools / We learned more from a three-minute record / Than we ever learned in school. . . .” It is followed by the triumphant chorus, “We made a promise we swore we’d always remember / No retreat, no surrender.”

In “Bobby Jean,” another song on the album that is reportedly an outgrowth of their friendship, Springsteen salutes that early struggle at several points: “Now you hung with me when all the others turned away, turned up their nose . . . / We liked the same music, we liked the same bands, we liked the same clothes . . . / Now we went walking in the rain, talking about the pain.”

But what about that connection?

Springsteen’s story is well-documented: the kid from the nowhere town of Freehold who didn’t fit in at school or at home and found a “reason to live” in rock ‘n’ roll. Is that also Van Zandt’s story? Did he have his own rock dreams or just share Springsteen’s? And why the strong political awareness of his solo albums and “Sun City”?

About the Springsteen connection and his early rock ambitions, Van Zandt said: “Yeah, we definitely went through a lot of the same things. That’s what drew us together. He was the freak of his town and I was the freak of my town. I eventually got thrown out of school because my hair was too long. Rock gave me a sense of myself and a sense of future. There was nothing else I wanted to do . . . never has been.”

Van Zandt is used to talking about his music and his politics, but he hasn’t been asked a lot about himself. When he was with the E Street Band, he generally avoided interviews, feeling it was Springsteen’s show. Now that “Sun City” is out, Van Zandt prefers to talk about the issues outlined in the album.

But his own story is the classic tale of a misunderstood youngster finding a future in something only he believed in. Though he had little interest in politics during his early years as a musician, the way he was beaten down by school, friends and in some ways family fostered an underdog spirit that made him especially sensitive to injustice.

Van Zandt, who is in his mid-30s, was born in Boston, but his Italian parents were divorced when he was still a child and his mother remarried--hence the Dutch name. (Coincidentally, Springsteen, too, is a Dutch name, and Springsteen’s mother is also Italian). The family moved to Middletown, N.J.--near Asbury Park, the town associated with the E Street Band.

Where Springsteen’s father struggled through a series of jobs and had a hard time making ends meet, Van Zandt’s father fared better as a construction supervisor. Van Zandt, excited by seeing the Rolling Stones on television, started a band, the Source, while in his teens.

The Source played teen-age clubs in Middletown, Freehold and Asbury Park, doing mostly obscure rock tunes. His rock ambition caused tension in the family. “A rock musician to them was the next thing to being a criminal,” Van Zandt said, sitting in a restaurant near his mid-Manhattan apartment. “I guess my dad was just looking out for his kid and he didn’t think there was any future in rock.”

Van Zandt found he was a lot more serious about rock than the other musicians on the circuit. He’d frequently catch the bus to New York City to check out the latest sounds. He was surprised on one of those visits to see another kid from the area at one of the clubs: Springsteen.

“Bruce and I felt exactly the same way,” he said. “Most people in bands looked on it as a hobby or a way to make some extra money while they were going to college, but it was life to us.”

Meanwhile, tensions continued on the home and school front. The most traumatic moment was the day when, he swears, a policeman planted a marijuana cigarette on him. “I had never seen a marijuana cigarette. I think they were just out to show me because of my long hair. The charges were eventually dropped, but my parents kind of sided with the police. . . . You know, ‘You play rock ‘n’ roll so therefore you are a drug addict’ and all of those cliches. That caused a serious break with my parents for a while.”

Van Zandt looks at the incident as a turning point. “Before that, I was more or less half buying what my father’s conservative politics were at that time,” he said. “That incident completely changed my life in a lot of ways. I became very self-destructive because I sort of lost faith. I started doing drugs because of that. It took me a long time before I could even say hello to a cop.”

He feels it contributed to his outrage over the racial situation in South Africa.

“I look back at the . . . that bully thing of, ‘I’m a cop. I’m bigger than you. I’ve got the badge,’ ” Van Zandt said, his normally soft-spoken manner assuming an edge. “I’ve never been able to tolerate that. I’ve never been able to turn my head when I see that kind of injustice. I always feel that I’m that little kid again. Subconsciously, I see the bully again--not just the policeman, but the kids who would beat you up because you weren’t just like them.”

But it took time for his political consciousness to be raised. Dylan was an influence in the late ‘60s, but Van Zandt responded more to the Dylan’s tone than the specifics of his message. “We all knew Dylan was saying something important but we weren’t sure we really knew what it was,” he said, laughing.

By this time, Van Zandt had moved to Asbury Park, where he shared an apartment with Southside Johnny, who’d later be the lead singer of the Asbury Jukes. He was in a band briefly with Springsteen, but was living in Virginia when Springsteen was signed as a solo artist to Columbia Records. Springsteen wanted Van Zandt to join his new band, but Van Zandt had a run-in with Springsteen’s manager at the time.

“I went up to New York--only I didn’t know (manager Mike) Appel wanted Bruce to be the new Bob Dylan and part of this folk thing,” Van Zandt said. “So, when I plugged in the electric guitar, Mike hated it. He didn’t want these little ‘folk’ songs, like ‘Growin’ Up,’ getting this heavy-metal treatment from me.”

Van Zandt took a temporary job in construction to pay off some debts, but ended up spending two years at it. Eventually, he missed music and joined the back-up band for the Dovells, a group from the early ‘60s that worked an oldies circuit.

In that band, he started honing in on a musical direction that mixed the R&B; and rock that he explored with the Asbury Jukes--whose early albums he produced--and expanded in his Little Steven LPs. The Jukes were a sensation around Asbury Park by the time Springsteen once more asked Van Zandt to join the E Street Band--just before the landmark “Born to Run” album was released.

“I thought Bruce was the best at what he did and I really felt there was a place for me there--not just as his friend who could watch his back to keep away all the vultures who wanted to take advantage of him, but I felt I could help musically. There was a real goal there. I thought we could conquer the world.”

By the time of “The River” tour in 1980, however, Van Zandt was getting restless. He had been troubled during a series of European concerts by growing anti-Americanism overseas. He began to reflect on it and read about politics and foreign affairs. When he started to put his feelings in songs, he felt it was time to go out on his own. He made tentative steps in a political direction in a 1982 EMI-America album, but saved his most powerful statements for “Voice of America,” the 1984 follow-up.

Though the albums attracted considerable attention in Europe, they were largely ignored by radio in this country. He had not officially left the E Street Band so most people assumed Van Zandt would be in the fold again when Springsteen returned to the road last year. But Van Zandt, despite of the disappointment over sales, felt he had found a place for himself .

“Everybody . . . and I mean everybody . . . told me I ought to stay in the E Street Band,” he said. “The record company very much wanted me to go back. They pointed out all the attention I would get for my band, but I knew they were wrong. I couldn’t have done it even if I wanted to. My heart was somewhere else by then--and it wouldn’t have been fair to Bruce.”

Van Zandt felt he would have no trouble finding a new label. After all, his sales--350,000 copies worldwide for the second album--seemed promising. So he was “shocked” when there was resistance over his themes. “I thought I’d just stop and cool out for a while and wait until these people saw what was beginning to happen. Maybe times would change. Even when they didn’t, I felt I knew what I had to do.”

Van Zandt’s interest in South Africa started almost by chance. During intermission at a Los Angeles revival movie theater a few years ago, he heard Peter Gabriel’s recording of “Biko.” Van Zandt loved the record and wanted to know more about the inspiration for the song--Steve Biko, a black South African who was a spokesman of the black consciousness movement and a potential national leader. His death while in police custody in 1977 provoked international outrage.

The passion and pain in Gabriel’s record stuck with Van Zandt, who played a tape of it before his own concerts. The issue of apartheid also stayed with Van Zandt. He met two South Africans, one white and one black, at an EMI Records convention in Los Angeles, and accepted an invitation to visit the country. He went twice for two weeks each, meeting with black and white residents. One goal was to set up a future concert in a black neighborhood.

Once there, however, he found that black leaders didn’t want him to bring his band there. They argued that all artists should boycott South Africa as a statement of their outrage. The most extreme elements even opposed Van Zandt’s visit there as somehow playing into the white government’s hands.

About meetings with blacks, he said, “I had several strikes against me . . . being white, a Dutch name, being American and a rock musician and maybe just going there for publicity. It took several days before we could get into serious discussions. I kept trying to convince them they could trust me--that I wasn’t just going to go home and forget them. I promised I was going to do something. “