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I call it a renaissance for one simple reason, it was the period where the greatest art being made was also the most commercial, that's what's unique." It was the beginning of what we have to this day, hybrids, which is fine. “They are great, but it was different from being The Yardbirds or The Stones. I won’t hear a word said against The ‘Smith! Toys In The Attic? Rocks? They’re great! Here's Aerosmith - who I love now - but they were a combination of The Yardbirds and The Stones.” And everything in the middle, you know what I mean? In the fifties and sixties virtually every important act was unique, and we thought that would last forever, and suddenly, it didn't. 1970? Boom! The fragmentation took place, you had singer-songwriters over here with the likes of James Taylor, you had heavy metal with Deep Purple and Black Sabbath over there. 1964: The British invasion, 65: folk rock, 66: country rock, 67: psychedelic, 68: blues rock, 69: southern rock. “The seventies was the beginning of the fragmentation from what was very much a mono culture. Hot Press makes the mistake of suggesting that the seventies might also qualify. “It was the seminal period of popular music, the essence of everything that's still going on today. He goes almost starry eyed in remembering. The album veers from doo wop to blues to blaxploitation, and all points in between, and looks back to Van Zandt’s youth in the sixties, a period he has referred to as “the renaissance”. ‘I Want To Be In Love Again’? I'm a happily married man and that's not really relevant! You’re going to have traces of autobiography through there, even traces of politics, but I mostly wanted to get away from those two things which dominated all five of my solo albums in the eighties.” “No,” he laughs, “it really is fictional! I'm not going to do something that's completely contrary to one of my ten personalities, but it's not autobiographical. Van Zandt has refered to it as “12 little movies” but with lines like “I’ve a picture of Brian Wilson that I pray to every night”, it must be personal too?
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Things are getting heavy early, so I move back to the album itself. “I'm not saying it's going to solve everything,” he reasons, “but I feel it's a common ground that gives us a chance to put our differences aside for a moment.” I've never seen so much nationalism, fascism, white supremacy, combined with religious extremism” The world has entered the darkest period in my lifetime, we've had some bad moments, Vietnam, whatever, but this is something different.” In my country, we're on the verge of a civil war and I'm not exaggerating. “Yes” the man they call Miami agrees, “and it’s especially needed right now. The opening track sings of “harmony, unity, communion”, it sounds like Van Zandt’s musical philosophy. Van Zandt returned to Bruce’s side when the E-street band came back together in 1999 and has been there ever since but, thankfully, in the last few years he has found the time to go back to his solo work and that’s what brings him to Dublin, for a show in Vicar Street with his marvellous Disciples Of Soul troupe/R&B extravaganza, promoting his new album Summer Of Sorcery, which is a good place to start. It was during this period of political activism and music making that he formed Artists Against Apartheid, highlighting the South African struggle.
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The story goes that it was his fresh ears and arranging skills that earned him a spot in The E-Street Band after helping out on the Born To Run album and he stayed on as the Boss’s right-hand man until the 80’s when he went solo. He first met and played with life long pal Bruce Springsteen in the late sixties and went on to co-form the deservedly legendary Southside Johnny And The Asbury Jukes, producing and writing most of their first three albums, each one a classic of soul flavoured rock n’ roll. He has more claim to that title than most. When he arrives, he presents himself as you would rightly expect: all headscarf, billowing Hawaiian shirt, boots and jewellery.