Stevie Van Zandt, Part 1

In which John Heilemann talks with Stevie Van Zandt, a founding member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, inductee in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, co-star of The Sopranos, and author of a new memoir, Unrequited Infatuations. In this special two-part episode, Heilemann and Van Zandt discuss his early musical influences, the foundations of his best friendship with Springsteen, the extraordinary albums they made together in the 1970s—Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town, The River—and the painful breakup that caused Van Zandt to commit "career suicide" by leaving the band on the brink of its becoming the biggest rock act in the world; his solo career as a musician and political activist, in particular his crucial part in the movement to dismantle the apartheid regime in South Africa; his unlikely emergence as a beloved actor in the role of Silvio Dante opposite James Gandolfini in David Chase's acclaimed HBO mobster series; and his reconciliation with Springsteen and return to the E Street Band two decades after his departure. Van Zandt also explains why he fought The Boss over calling his group The E Street Band — and still considers it a piss-poor name — and Van Zandt's view that the debate over "sways" versus "waves" in the lyrics of "Thunder Road" is no debate at all.