Steven Van Zandt Born: E Street Band Guitarist and Actor Emerges

Steven Van Zandt earned rock immortality as the bandana-wearing guitarist in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band while simultaneously building a second career as an acclaimed actor and cultural activist. Born in Winthrop, Massachusetts, in 1950, he grew up in New Jersey and met Springsteen in the Asbury Park music scene of the late 1960s. He became Springsteen's closest musical collaborator, co-producing The River and serving as bandleader, arranger, and on-stage foil. His departure from the E Street Band in 1984 to pursue a solo career produced the album Sun City, an anti-apartheid protest record that brought together artists from Little Steven's rock world with hip-hop, jazz, and world music performers in a cultural boycott of South Africa that influenced the broader sanctions movement. The song "Sun City," which named the South African resort where international performers played despite the cultural boycott, shamed several artists into canceling their bookings. He returned to the E Street Band in 1999 and has remained a core member since. His acting career began with the role of Silvio Dante in The Sopranos, a performance that drew on his real-life experience as a rock and roll consigliere to create one of the show's most memorable characters. He starred in Lilyhammer, one of Netflix's first original series, playing a mobster in witness protection in Norway. His Underground Garage radio show, syndicated to over a hundred stations, became one of the most influential platforms for garage rock and unsigned bands. His activism, music, and acting demonstrated an artist whose influence extended far beyond any single discipline.