, FORBES
Stevie Van Zandt on Twitter, copyright Geoff RobinsonStevie Van Zandt and Paul McCartney
Stevie Van Zandt is nearing the end of his marathon 24-song concert at London’s Roundhouse. He tells the sell-out crowd of 6,000 that there is unfinished business: “we are going to finish this song we had started.” Surprise guest Paul McCartney walks onstage. The two launch into a version of the Beatles song “I Saw Her Standing There” – the one McCartney failed to complete with Bruce Springsteen in the British capital a few years ago. Little Stevie Van Zandt jams with McCartney : the tale says a lot about the standing, popularity and multi-million sales potential of Springsteen's musical partner.
While the song is less than four minutes, it nicely showcases the considerable skills of the Little Steve & The Disciples of Soul. The group returns to an old tradmark name. The current ensemble was assembled by Van Zandt for the tour promoting his 2017 Soulfire album. At the end of “I Saw Her Standing There,” McCartney tells Van Zandt “I like your band” and asks the audience to “give it up for Stevie.” The stars hug each other, and as McCartney finally walks off, Van Zandt says that without McCartney, he would even be there in the first place.
Van Zandt has toured the U.S. already and is now starting his first major solo tour in Britain in more than 25 years. (The band had a tour including European festivals in the summer.) Van Zandt has been a member of Springsteen’s E Street band since 1975; “The Boss” has sold more than 120 million records, many with Van Zandt as guitarist, or singer, producer, arranger and more.
London audiences will know that local resident McCartney makes selected encore performances with friends at the end of their concerts – such in June, 2009, when he joined Neil Young for “A Day in the Life.” Three years later, in July 2012, he was back at Hyde Park to join Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band for their headlining slot at the Hard Rock Calling Festival. Springsteen said he had been waiting all his life to sing Beatles material with one of the composers. They played “Twist and Shout” and “I Saw Her Standing There” before their microphones were abruptly turned off by officials, ruining a moment of rock history, because of the park’s strict noise curfew. This writer was at the show to review it for Bloomberg News and watched with 76,000 others in despair as the musicians tried to apologize.Shortly after Van Zandt, on Twitter TWTR +0.96%, said the band regularly broke curfews without punishment, would have finished by 11 p.m. and instead faced the actions of a “police state.” The then London Mayor, Boris Johnson, told reporters that the curfew had been enforced over-zealously and the stars should have been allowed to “jam in the name of the Lord.”
This year, McCartney welcomed Springsteen and Van Zandt onstage at Madison Square Garden to do “I Saw Her Standing There.” It got such an ovation that they promptly did it again. No curfew worries there, then.
The two-hour-plus show at the Roundhouse this weekend started with a tribute to the late Tom Petty, with a cover of “Even The Losers.” The show ranged over a wide sweep of genres. There was plenty of rock, such as “Saint Valentine’s Day,” the Van Zandt song first done by his protégées The Cocktail Slippers; blues, such as Etta James’s “The Blues Is My Business”; the lilting reggae of “Solidarity” and a lengthy “Down and Out in New York City” paying tribute to the Blaxploitation sound.
In a recent interview, Van Zandt noted that he has been busy for years with Springsteen, his role as Silvio Dante on The Sopranos, his Wicked Cool Record label and radio shows. Now the time was right, Van Zandt said, to return musically as his own man.
For the most part, he is delivering old-school R&B with the tightest of bands – no mean feat when there are about 13 of them onstage. There are three great backing singers, an impressive horn section and of course serious guitar support. The versions of Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes numbers are strong right up to the encore of “I Don’t Want To Go Home,” one of Van Zandt’s first songs. It seemed like few of the audience wanted to go home either and Van Zandt looked in form to play all night too, but another London curfew loomed, this time at least without a rude interruption to the closing numbers.
Tour dates continue through across the U.K. through November 16, then heading for mainland Europe through December 13.