Steven Van Zandt: ‘Every Springsteen needs a guy reminding them they were once nobody’

Some 150,000 Wembley-goers can’t be wrong: Bruce Springsteen is worth every penny of his newly minted status as A Billion Dollar Rock Star. I’m joking, of course,” says “Little Steven” Van Zandt, the guitarist who’s been standing stage-left of Springsteen, on and off, since their shared teenage garage-band origins in New Jersey. In Disciple, Springsteen recalls how Van Zandt “became my rock’n’roll brother instantly”. “It was very bonding back then, even though we were 15 – being in rock’n’roll was still an unusual thing to do,” says Van Zandt by way of explaining the pair’s lifelong connection. Van Zandt had been around since Born to Run, through Darkness on the Edge of Town, The River and Nebraska, before the album that caused everything in Springsteen’s life to “go berserk,” he says.