He became obsessed with almost personally dissolving the country’s apartheid system and legalized oppressing of native Blacks after hearing a random playing of Peter Gabriel’s “Biko” in a movie theater. In fact, the book opens with Van Zandt hiding under a blanket on the floorboard of a car as he’s secretly shuttled to meet with the leaders of a possibly violent revolutionary group in South Africa. But would I have done five solo albums? The Sopranos or Lilyhammer? Busted Nelson Mandela out of jail? Probably not!” “Should we have stayed together? Probably. It was enough to cure him of any desire for that to repeat on any scale. When they were walking to a local café, the pair were instantly mobbed by enthusiastic autograph seekers and picture takers. When he was in Rome, Italy and had two hit singles at the time, wife Maureen came over for a visit. But I’ve never been a big fan of celebrity,” he says.Ī “celebrity” experience only happened to him once, he recalls. I kind of abandoned my friend at his moment of glory, and I regret that, aside from the money and the fame.

“When you look back, you come to the inescapable and illogical conclusion that you couldn’t have done it all. But then he also knows what he wouldn’t have done had he stayed. In the book, he admits it was a mistake (especially to his bank account). Simply walked away when he felt his voice in the decision-making process was unheard or ignored in favor of manager Jon Landau. In the book, Van Zandt details how he was there and urged Springsteen at pivotal moments in his career: adding an important note to “Born to Run” or arranging the distinctive horns on “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out” encouraging him to put his name in front of the band’s questioning a shady contract with manager Mike Appel and putting him together with influential promoter Frank Barsalona releasing Nebraska as his spare original demo and giving a rousing speech when half of E Street was ready to quit.īut just when 15 years of hard work was about to pay off with the massive success, millions of records shipped, and sold-out stadiums of the Born in the USA era, Van Zandt did the unimaginable: he quit. He also found a soulmate in a scruffy young Springsteen, then himself took wildly varying path(s) of career and personal growth. It traces his story as a rock and roll teenager who hit the road early, earning this valuable advice from R&B singer Lloyd “Personality” Price: if you wash the lube off a condom, you’ll last longer. Well, all of the Versions of Van Zandt come together under his latest guise as author, in the highly entertaining and rollicking memoir Unrequited Infatuations(416 pp., $31, Hachette Books).

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