E Street Band guitarist and co-star of The Sopranos, Steve Van Zandt, publishes his long-awaited memoirs today (September 28th), titled Unrequited Infatuations. Tonight, he'll appear at the Books And Greetings bookstore in Northvale, New Jersey, and tomorrow night (September 29th), Van Zandt will be interviewed by Jay Cocks at Manhattan's 92nd Street Y, with the interview available for streaming.
Bruce Springsteen will interview Van Zandt on October 17th at a still-undisclosed location in Asbury Park, New Jersey, in promotion of the book, which will also feature a panel discussion, moderated by Jon Stewart, including Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau, collaborator Nona Hendryx, and Sopranos co-star Steve Buscemi, with “additional guests to be announced soon.”
Van Zandt will also be on hand to promote the memoir on October 3rd in Montclair, New Jersey at Succeed2gether’s fifth annual Montclair Literary Festival.
We spoke with Steve Van Zandt and asked him why the time was finally right to get his story down on paper: “Well, I think it was the convenience — or the inconvenience — of the quarantine. I just wanted to make sure that it was more than just my narrative, which, frankly, is the least-interesting part of this to me. I wanted to capture some of the history, that I, basically, lived through most of the rock history — other than the first. . the first decade, y'know?”
Van Zandt has gone on record as saying that quitting the E Street Band prior to the release of 1984's blockbuster Born In The U.S.A. album was the defining moment of his life: “Well, it was the one big life-changing moment, y'know, where you veered off of this rather linear, sort of, path up until then. So, I've always had very, very strong feelings of feeling that I did the wrong thing by leaving. Y'know, that's 15 years of work; y'know, I just threw it away. And at the same time you do all of these things. Y'know, you do these solo records, you become and artist, You do (The) Sopranos, you do Lilyhammer, y'know, you get (Nelson) Mandela out of jail. Y'know, you do a lot of things.”