A biography for Steven Van Zandthasn’t been written yet.
“Life should never be boring.”
“You think your congressman is working all day to get you a job? He may want to. He or she is probably not a bad person. They probably want to do the right thing. But they can't.”
“It ain't passive. It ain't TV. Go out there and rock n' roll and dance and have fun.”
“My mother remarried when I was young, and my stepfather adopted me.”
“I was obsessed with politics in the '80s. I've recovered and I'm feeling much better now, thank you.”
“I believe that hundreds of years from now, history will be divided into pre-1960s and post-1960s.”
“I'm always surprised when a sequel is not as good or better than the first one. I never understand that. You've already set your own bar. You've already done the hard work. It should be easier to make the second one, but a lot of the times, it's not.”
“It's become uncool to play other people's songs, and that's absurd. It has got to change. It's the reason why everything's so mediocre.”
“The Rascals are something else. They're up there with the Beatles, and Stones and Byrds. That level of musicality. They have a real chemistry. It is like magic.”
“You can trace the E Street Band directly back to the Rascals.”
“Timing really is nearly everything. And what it isn't, circumstance makes up for.”
“The quality of our lives is diminished every time we lose a great artist. It's a different world without Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Curtis Mayfield, Brian Jones and the rest.”
“The only reason why I made solo records was because I got so obsessed with politics, and that is quite personal. I don't really philosophically believe in solo records.”
“People want to learn how other people live. It's just human nature.”
“A lot of the idealism of the Sixties was spot on, from the environmentalism to the war to the Civil Rights movement, the women's rights movement, you name it.”
“The simple fact is we do not live in a democracy. Certainly not the kind our Founding Fathers intended. We live in a corporate dictatorship represented by, and beholden to, no single human being you can reason with or hold responsible for anything.”
“I was a gambler when I was a kid, so when we got to Las Vegas, it was like Mecca.”
“I just love that whole Brill Building era. I will always regret not being there. That's where I belong.”
“Little Richard opens his mouth, and out comes liberation.”
“To walk into a studio, for me, is just like walking onto a beach or something.”