Steven Van Zandt: ‘Bruce Springsteen backing the Democrats lost us half our audience’

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“I happened to be in Nashville one day talking to this cat named Tony Brown, who was Elvis’s piano player and ended up starting record companies — a big deal. He said the last three people he produced — George Jones, the Mavericks, slightly off stuff — couldn’t get on country radio. They won’t play Johnny Cash any more! I thought, ‘It’s time for a new format.’” Heartland radio shunning the Man in Black for his leftism speaks to the polarisation of America. “Yeah, it does, like when the Dixie Chicks criticised George Bush. It’s sad.”

In the 20 years since he founded Outlaw Country, American politics has become greatly more divided, with senior Republicans talking openly of the possibility of civil war. “Those things used to sound like hyperbole,” Van Zandt says with a sigh. “Not any more.” Is Springsteen, supposedly the ultimate heartland rocker, unable to play in certain places now? “Well, our audience is much less mixed than it was, politically. When Bruce got vocal behind the Democrats, we probably lost half the audience. There’s nowhere we can’t do business but some places, yeah, they feel a bit like enemy territory. We’re ten times bigger in Europe. We might play six stadiums in America and sixty in Europe.”

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