Steven Van Zandt

David Chase discovered him at a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony, not an audition. Chase watched Van Zandt induct the Rascals in 1997, decided the speech read better than most acting he'd seen, and cast him as Silvio Dante in The Sopranos without a single acting credit to his name. Before that, Van Zandt spent decades as Bruce Springsteen's guitarist, arranger, and co-producer on albums like Darkness on the Edge of Town and Born in the USA, then quit in 1984 for a solo career that went nowhere. A speech changed all of it.

He's still a full E Street Band member, still playing the same stages he's been on since 1975. The side project that outlasted everything else is TeachRock, the music education nonprofit he launched in 2007 with Bono, Martin Scorsese, Bruce Springsteen, and Jackson Browne as founders. More than 80,000 educators now use its free curriculum nationwide. An HBO documentary, Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple, came out in June 2024. For someone who spent the 1990s walking his dog and trying to figure out his next move, the second act ended up being more than one thing.

In 1985, while his solo records were going nowhere commercially, he organized 49 artists including Bob Dylan, U2, Bruce Springsteen, Run DMC, and Tom Petty to record a protest song targeting apartheid South Africa's resort entertainment complex. The record raised over $1 million for anti-apartheid causes and helped pressure the music industry to stop performing there. It had nothing to do with being friends with Bruce Springsteen. The Sun City project is the part of his career that most people underestimate, which makes it the most interesting part.