On the Little Steven Documentary, "Disciple"

Yes, I know I am months late to watching the SVZ documentary, but I am one of those people who subscribes to cable services on an as-needed basis. I looked around to see what people had been saying about it, which was not much, and friends I texted about it replied with things like "I gotta watch that" so I know it is not just me that is a little late to this, which is why we are here right now. And I wasn't going to write about it and instead was going to finally write my piece on Men Without Women or about "I Don't Want To Go Home" and I realized all of these things can exist in the world and that too many people I know haven't yet watched this, and should.

You do, in fact, gotta watch this, and it's not going to be for the reasons that you think you do. I'm personally thrilled that there is footage of Stevie's wedding to Maureen, because for years all we knew about it was what we read in Rolling Stone and from the few photos we saw: Bruce as best man, Little Richard as the officiant, Percy Sledge sang "When A Man Loves A Woman," various E Streeters in tuxedos, Jimmy Iovine as an usher.

But that ended up being trivial compared to the depth and breadth of the film, which is divided into 4 segments: Salvation, Revolution, Evolution, Revelations. It's not strictly linear, but it is assembled in a way that makes sense, and provides context without spending time over-explaining. If you're reading this newsletter, it's highly likely that you know a lot of it already, or have heard about it, and you'll nod your head through the early history, and the Jukes, and that moment in the studio for Born to Run where he sings the horn lines to the Brecker Brothers, and then his departure from the E Street Band, where SVZ says, repeatedly, that he made a colossal mistake, and at one point decided that he may have ruined his life, which is how he found himself on an airplane headed for South Africa where he was going to be smuggled in to the homelands to meet with the ANC. "I'd blown my life," he says. "15 years in the E Street Band."

I wasn't prepared for that. I was not.

"The night before payday...I quit," Steve says. And later, we get this from Bruce: "It was difficult, and painful, and not my favorite chapter in what we've done."

I am not an expert on film and cinema, it overwhelms me as a discipline, but I do understand, a little bit, about the art of telling a story, and I didn't appreciate until I watched this for the second time how every segment of this film exists not just to present that time period but because it also provides a deeply significant connection to another segment. The most prominent example of this is the segment on his time working on The Sopranos, and he says, a few times in different ways, "I kind of used my relationship with Bruce" in his development of his character of Silvio Dante. He's kind of alluded to this before, but here, in this documentary, is where you absolutely, vehemently see it, because they've spent the previous half of the film showing you what that was, how it worked, where the conflict was – that discussion about whether "No Surrender" or "Dancing in the Dark" were going to be on Born in the USA vs b-side territory, and then there's Jon Landau noting that that was the record where Bruce turned more to "his side" of things. It's subtle, it's brilliant, it's also more than a little damning.

"He is nothing less than a revolutionary." - Jackson Browne

There could be, and probably should be, an entire documentary about Steve's work as an activist and specifically about his work in South Africa, and even if you think you know the entire story there is new insight. I particularly liked Ruben Blades pointing out that none of the other benefit records had included Latin artists ("We are the world - except you!"), or Jackson Browne's observation that "Steve understood that rock and roll had a debt to the continent of Africa." (Somehow the fact that he got Paul Simon off an ANC hit list for breaking the boycott did not make the film.)

But perhaps the best revelation is in the interview with Bono, where he says, "I followed him exactly." And I'll be honest that I don't think that I ever saw it quite so clearly before, not that their paths were identical, but that formula of using your position to be loud, repeatedly, until change happened. Unless you were there, it is hard to realize that people were just as annoyed about Steve constantly talking about South Africa in the 80s as they are with Bono and the One campaign or Amnesty International or debt relief or any cause that he has taken to heart (and that includes all of the members of U2).

I also think about how for a while in the 80s my outgoing answering machine message ended with "...and I ain't gonna play Sun City," which was not original (I think I stole it from my friend Miriam) but it wasn't bullshit, it was a form of grass roots advocacy which, ultimately, Steven Van Zandt was directly responsible for, which is another thing I had not stopped to consider until watching the documentary. He got a very wide, broad coalition of people who may not have been involved politically very much, or at all, to be individual spokespeople for this movement, by doing dumb things like changing our answering machine messages so that every person who called us was reminded of it, or calling radio stations asking them to play the song ("It was too black for white radio, it was too white for black radio," SVZ explains for probably the 500th time.)

So you go through all of this glory – even leaving E Street, Steve was still working and putting out music and touring and drawing crowds and doing it all on his own terms, which isn't nothing. He says, in that self-deprecating SVZ tone of voice, "And then I basically walked the dog for seven years," and this is when you understand why the guy who has a new project or venture or channel or other product offering these is constantly working. Because there was a period of time at the beginning of the 90's during which nobody was taking his phone calls, and I don't think that's a thing you ever forget.

Nothing he had done before, whether it was the songs or the records or the arrangements or the touring or the focus or the vision mattered. Was it because no one wanted another record of highly political songs? Was it because no one wanted an artist on their label who was also going to be making speeches and talking about Native American rights in interviews? Some of it was definitely that moment in the 80s when everyone stopped using synthesizers and gated drums, but if anyone can read the room musically, it is Steven Van Zandt. Even though you know much of what happens later – the Sopranos, the Reunion tour, Underground Garage, Teach Rock, finally going back out on the road and performing his own material once again – I was sitting there relieved that there was a happy ending after that particular time period where somehow no one was in need of the services of Miami Steve Van Zandt. I feel like perhaps that 'no one' could have done with some... exploration, but perhaps the filmmaker did that deliberately so that we could all sit and contemplate that.

The question I kept asking myself when thinking about the documentary was, "Why does it matter?" I think I have said the words, "Remember Steve Van Zandt went out on the oldies circuit with the Dovells" probably a thousand times in trying to explain something E Street related, and I admit that while that is crystal clear to me, it is probably not to many other people, which is also likely the reason that there wasn't more buzz about this film. That kind of gets answered in the movie, with his advocacy for his Teach Rock program and using rock and roll as an arts curriculum, how he's worried not just that people will forget about rock and roll, but that future generations won't have the opportunity to let music do for them what it did for him. It matters because it is about lineage, and this is all part of our lineage, nothing in popular music exists in a vacuum, and trying to understand and appreciate where everything originated from makes you a better music fan, it enhances your appreciation and enjoyment, and it helps perpetuate the art form and preserve it for the next generation, so they can take it and build on it from there. I think that's why it matters. I think that's why Steve cares. I think that's why you should care, too.