48:00

I feel like I'm actually justifying

48:02

my existence here. And

48:05

as it turns out, I think that would

48:07

be the case. I didn't know that it

48:09

would be so successful at that moment. But

48:13

I just felt, even if it's not successful, I feel like

48:15

I'm doing the right thing. I feel like for

48:17

once, I'm not kind of struggling,

48:22

looking around for what my

48:24

identity is gonna be when I grow up. Well,

48:26

you had purpose and direction. Yeah,

48:29

yeah. And focus. And

48:31

Bill, I think here's, I mentioned before the

48:33

documentarian's challenges, right? But you got everybody to

48:35

do a set for interviews and a lot

48:38

of them are great. Here's

48:40

the next documentarian's challenge, which is either

48:42

you have, no, there's no archival. Where do we find

48:44

the archival? How are we gonna get through? We don't

48:46

have any archival. Or in your

48:49

case, apparently you had, I

48:52

can't imagine what it would have been like to deal with,

48:54

on the basis of what's in the movie, which is spectacular,

48:58

never before seen archival things. And

49:01

in this telling of the putting

49:03

together of Artist United is Against

49:05

Apartheid, that is as good

49:07

an example as anything in the movie, where the

49:09

archival is mind blowing for anybody

49:11

who knows a little bit about this story.

49:14

And the story of Steven pulling

49:16

together the following people for those who

49:18

are not aware. DJ Cool

49:20

Herc, Grandmaster Mel Mel, Reuben Blades, Bob

49:23

Dylan, Pat Bettatar, Herbie Hancock, Ringo Starr

49:25

and his son, Zach Starkey, Lou Reed,

49:27

Run DMC, Peter Gabriel, Bob Geldof, Clarence

49:29

Clemens, David Ruffin, Eddie Kendrick, Darlene

49:32

Love, Bobby Womack, Africa Mombata,

49:34

Curtis Blow and the Fat Boys, Jackson

49:37

Brown, Daryl Hannah, Peter Wolf from J.

49:39

Giles Band, Bono, George Clinton,

49:41

Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood from The Rolling

49:43

Stones, Bonnie Rait, Holla Notes, Jimmy Cliff,

49:47

Steph Bainer, Gil Scott-Heron, like it's just the list

49:50

is just a joy among. And then a bunch

49:52

of other people. And Jonathan Demme is gonna direct

49:54

it. So impossible

49:56

to do this, impossible.

49:59

And yet you're... production

1:02:00

or arranging or composition or whatever

1:02:02

it might be. I

1:02:09

just kind of jump in and then

1:02:11

learn everything I can about it and

1:02:13

hope it works out. You know what

1:02:16

I mean? Because I think because, again,

1:02:18

because those standards are high enough where

1:02:21

I'm not stopping until I reach somewhere

1:02:23

in that ballpark of the highest possible

1:02:26

quality of whatever it is. And

1:02:29

in that case, again, it was a

1:02:32

coming together of circumstance.

1:02:34

You got David Chase, been on

1:02:37

TV his whole life, okay? And

1:02:40

he's tired of it and wants out, okay? So

1:02:44

he's like, he's not, he's been compromising

1:02:46

his whole life as

1:02:48

a good soldier. And he's

1:02:50

like, fuck compromise, man. I'm

1:02:53

not compromising anything. It's going to be my last

1:02:55

TV show. I want to go do movies, okay?

1:02:57

You know, so I don't give a shit anymore.

1:03:01

And so when everybody turned it down

1:03:03

because he said, we

1:03:06

must film this in New Jersey. And

1:03:10

every network was like, we don't

1:03:12

film in New Jersey. And

1:03:17

he just said, well, fuck you then. I'm

1:03:20

not settling. And

1:03:23

then he didn't settle on the cast, which was

1:03:25

a bizarre cast. And to this

1:03:27

day, I think it's what separates

1:03:29

it from every other show. And

1:03:32

it turns out that by him

1:03:34

not compromising in any way makes

1:03:37

this incredible work of art. It's

1:03:41

another story of no surrender is what that is. Yeah,

1:03:44

it fits right into the theme

1:03:47

here. Yeah, totally. It really does.

1:03:50

And we

1:03:53

didn't realize that it was going to change

1:03:55

TV forever. And it did. So

1:03:57

Bill, this is my question for you. So

1:04:00

when you get to this part, as

1:04:03

you think about trying to sum

1:04:05

it all up here, again, the

1:04:08

thing I resist in this is the notion

1:04:10

of, wow, Steve Van Zant, he's Zellig, he's

1:04:12

had a really lucky life, wow, he just

1:04:15

somehow, like here he was in the E

1:04:17

Street band, and then he'll bring down an

1:04:19

apartheid, and then somehow he ended up at

1:04:21

Sopranos, and now he's like, oh, what a

1:04:23

lucky guy. But there is, to

1:04:26

me, one of the through lines here is

1:04:29

that you don't just luck

1:04:31

into that kind of life. You have, you

1:04:33

get luck. There's luck

1:04:35

as part of it. Everybody, you get some good luck.

1:04:38

That has to be part of the story, but that

1:04:40

Steve had certain qualities

1:04:42

and certain things about his temperament and

1:04:44

the things he cared about, the

1:04:46

things he didn't care about, the choices he made,

1:04:48

how he reacted to adversity. And I guess I'm

1:04:50

curious if you can, that's a big sweeping thing

1:04:52

to say, but how do you sum it up?

1:04:56

How do you feel like, you know,

1:04:58

if you have, what's the logline on

1:05:00

this movie? What's the Bill Tech logline

1:05:02

for the life of Steve Van Zandt?

1:05:04

It's such a hard guy to get

1:05:06

a logline for because you see the,

1:05:08

you're right, he's not a Zellig, John,

1:05:10

and when you see who's in

1:05:12

the movie, not just the rock stars that show

1:05:14

up to kind of testify and talk about him,

1:05:16

but all these captains of industry, from the president

1:05:19

of Sirius to the president

1:05:21

of Netflix, or rather the CCO, but

1:05:23

the former president of HBO, Joe

1:05:26

Roth, everybody comes out, or the Jim Allen from

1:05:28

the hard rock, all these captains of industry are

1:05:30

there too. And I think they're there because

1:05:33

Steve is such a unique American

1:05:35

character. I think if I had to come up

1:05:37

with a logline to sum it up, it's

1:05:40

hard, but I would say it's the story of

1:05:43

a person who's saved by something, in

1:05:45

this case, rock and roll, and then

1:05:47

turns around and devotes his life to

1:05:49

saving that same thing. And

1:05:51

that is a great transition to

1:05:54

the topic that I wanna end with, Stevie.

1:05:56

So look, I mean, there's a

1:05:58

moment in the movie. where Eddie

1:06:01

Vedder, who we talked about before, is

1:06:04

recalling being a

1:06:06

kid and seeing some video

1:06:08

of you performing in Europe

1:06:11

during your solo career phase

1:06:14

and singing a song that Bill actually

1:06:16

mentioned earlier, a song called

1:06:18

I Am a Patriot. I believe

1:06:20

in that title there's a parentheses then. So

1:06:22

I'm a Patriot and the river opens for

1:06:24

the righteous. This is what

1:06:26

Eddie Vedder said. I

1:06:29

used to be part of Little Benefits

1:06:31

in San Diego when I was working

1:06:33

like a midnight shift security job and

1:06:35

that was one of the songs that

1:06:37

really could connect. So

1:06:45

I kind of dissected the song and made

1:06:47

a version of it. I

1:07:01

want to leave you with this song. This is about my

1:07:03

favorite song. This is

1:07:05

written by Little Stephen. I think it

1:07:07

was like an 86th Amnesty International. I

1:07:09

saw Jackson Brown play a version and

1:07:11

that was really exciting. I am

1:07:13

a Patriot. Stevie

1:07:18

was a huge influence on me at

1:07:20

a time when I was trying to

1:07:22

write songs about what I cared about

1:07:25

and that I hadn't even

1:07:27

dared to try to talk about in the

1:07:29

song. Stevie, I shouldn't need a

1:07:32

reminder having seen

1:07:34

you make a lot of music over a lot

1:07:36

of years but with all of

1:07:38

the stuff that you've done and all of

1:07:40

the twists and turns and all the just

1:07:43

everything that's gone on, the movie was

1:07:45

a real reminder

1:07:48

and that discussion there

1:07:50

with Eddie and Jackson Brown, it was

1:07:52

a real reminder of just what a

1:07:55

great just at bottom like what

1:07:57

a great fucking songwriter you are and were and

1:07:59

have been. even

1:10:00

though it's all due to the craft. Every

1:10:04

single class I teach, I start with that.

1:10:06

I'm like, it's all about the craft, man.

1:10:09

Don't worry about the art. The art takes care of itself. The

1:10:12

Art of Art The

1:10:15

Art of Art In

1:10:19

Politic with John Heilman is a puck podcast

1:10:21

in partnership with Odyssey. Thanks again

1:10:24

to Steve Van Zandt and Bill Tech for

1:10:26

coming on the show. And be sure to

1:10:28

check out Steve Van Zandt, disciple on Macs

1:10:30

at your earliest possible convenience. And

1:10:33

if you dug this episode, please, please, please

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1:10:45

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1:10:48

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1:11:29

always, namaste.