UNREQUITED INFATUATIONS

This is a story that starts in the New Jersey suburbs in the early 1960s. Steven Van Zandt, just a boy, was already impatient to get going. Call it restlessness. Call it ambition. Call it the need for adventure. Whatever it was, when rock and roll arrived, it was a rescue mission. It freed Van Zandt to chart his own course, and he did: first in teen bands, then on the bar-band circuit, then in arenas and stadiums all over the world. Along the way, he developed a personal and professional partnership with Bruce Springsteen, anchoring the E Street Band as it became the top rock-and-roll live act in the world and serving as Springsteen''s right-hand man. And then, in 1982, as the E Street Band was recording Born in the USA, Van Zandt walked away from the group. He became a purely political artist, traveling to the world''s hot spots-from Nicaragua to South Africa-and making records about what he found there. Then came the Sopranos. After David Chase saw Van Zandt at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he invited him to be a part of his new show. In fact, he wanted him for the lead role, Tony Soprano. HBO wasn''t thrilled about casting an untested actor, so Van Zandt ended up playing Tony''s consiglieri, Silvio Dante, who became the show''s darkly funny heart. In the years that followed, Van Zandt rejoined Springsteen, touring the world with the reunited E Street Band playing the biggest stadiums in the world. UNREQUITED INFATUATIONS chronicles every twist and turn of Van Zandt''s vibrant, varied, and always surprising life: his early years as a rock-and-roll disciple, his rise to fame through boardwalks and bar bands, his trailblazing decade as a hard-rocking activist. All the ups and downs, the triumphs and the troughs, the false starts and the times he pulled out all the stops. Throughout it all, his passion has drawn order out of chaos, driven his story forward.