Steve Van Zandt has admitted he is unsure if the world will ever return to normal after the Covid-19 pandemic
Steve Van Zandt is worried for the future of concerts.
The singer/songwriter – who is best known as a member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band – has admitted he is unsure if the world will ever return to normal after the Covid-19 pandemic and he fears that large crowds will not be able to gather for live music events.
He told Rolling Stone: "I laid it out months ago. I said, it's gonna be three stages. The first stage, everything's online. We all know about that. The second stage would be people going back to work if there was an effective, very fast test, which never happened. That was, to me, necessary for a second stage, at which point you could go back to work in the sense of a band playing a drive-in. That would be the second stage. And then the third stage being the vaccine, and then you may go back to [playing for] masses again. Maybe that may never happen again. Frankly, vaccines are 50 per cent effective. So everybody thinking that that's the answer – they're gonna be feeling a bit a little bit disappointed if and when that happens. That's the best-case scenario. But we can't even get to the second stage. That's what's concerning me, because of our complete incompetence in getting a test together."
Steve, 69, also admitted he has been hugely disappointed in America's response to the crisis.
He said: "Well, we couldn't have handled the situation any worse. We're pretty much the only country in the world that did not do a national quarantine, which is what it needed. And we still may have to do that. Because I don't see any end in sight here. Just because the rest of the world is ahead of us and they opened up their restaurants and bars, doesn't necessarily mean you want to do a stadium show. I'm not so sure about that. Certainly, you know, places like Norway, Denmark, they're doing quite well – but you got Sweden, which is a disaster because [their government] did not do a quarantine. Brazil's a disaster. It's coming back in China, it's coming back in Italy. I'm not so optimistic about that."