http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/
March 29, 2011, 2:30 pm
In the nine years that “Little Steven’s Underground Garage” has been on the air, Steven Van Zandt, this E Street Band guitarist and host of that radio program, has been visited by his share of rock ‘n’ roll luminaries, including Ringo Starr, Brian Wilson and Keith Richards. But one particularly impressive — and seemingly obvious — guest has eluded Mr. Van Zandt, until now.
Bruce Springsteen, Mr. Van Zandt’s longtime friend and colleague, will appear on “Little Steven’s Underground Garage” in a series of programs that will be broadcast on the weekends of April 1, 8 and 15 to celebrate the show’s ninth anniversary.
The conversations, in which Mr. Springsteen and Mr. Van Zandt talk about their musical influences and whatever else comes to mind, were recorded earlier this month at Mr. Van Zandt’s office studio in Greenwich Village but were in the works for considerably longer than that.
“I’ve been inviting him on since Day 1,” Mr. Van Zandt said in a telephone interview. “At least every anniversary. ‘Oh, yeah, yeah, I gotta do that.’ We just never have quite gotten around to it. He just finally showed up. It wasn’t like he wasn’t invited –- of course he was invited -– but you get busy, you get doing things. And I know how that is.”
Mr. Van Zandt said he tried to do as little preparation for Mr. Springsteen’s appearance as possible. “By the time we have that lengthy conversation about the show, that’s another show,” he said. “Let’s start with absolute, total spontaneity and just talk. We’ll just have a conversation, and then we’ll fill in the music later.” He added: “I knew it would be a good show, just from us talking. Because we’ve never really talked to each other, on record, official. Not only on my station, but anywhere.”
Though the men have known and performed with each other going back to the early 1970s, Mr. Van Zandt said he learned a few things from Mr. Springsteen during their conversation. For one thing, Mr. Van Zandt said, “I don’t think I quite realized how big a fan he was of the Four Seasons.”
Mr. Van Zandt said he was also surprised by a segment in which Mr. Springsteen picked up a guitar and demonstrated how his song “Prove It All Night” was more or less lifted from the Animals’ “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.”
“It’s going to be cool for people to hear that,” Mr. Van Zandt said. “I think we have a generation right now who thinks music falls off trees. Really, it’s very important that people know a lot of thought, a lot of work goes into this stuff. And maybe a lot of theft goes into stealing riffs, but that doesn’t mean you should steal the music.”
With a tinge of melancholy, Mr. Van Zandt noted that he and Mr. Springsteen were not often able to see each other these days, in part because of the complexity of his own schedule: in addition to hosting “Little Steven’s Underground Garage,” Mr. Van Zandt is also a music supervisor and executive producer for a new film by David Chase (his director on “The Sopranos”) about a young rock band in the 1960s.
Additionally, Mr. Van Zandt travels to Norway every other week to film his role in “Lillehammer,” a Norwegian television series on which he plays a former mobster who enters the witness protection program.
“I negotiated the weirdest deal in history by telling them I can’t come for four months straight, but I can come every other week,” Mr. Van Zandt explained. “They said yes.”
Now that he’s gotten Mr. Springsteen through the door of his radio studio, Mr. Van Zandt is hoping the Boss won’t take another nine years to make his return visit.
“I would love it,” Mr. Van Zandt said. “He’s welcome to do it. But coming once every nine years won’t be enough to promote him as a co-host.”
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