Rock legend speaks at local lecture series
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (WKBN) — There was a sold-out crowd in Youngstown Tuesday as people came to listen to a rock-n-roll legend and a star of the TV series The Sopranos.
Wearing his trademark bandana, Steven Van Zandt spoke to 1,500 people at Stambaugh Auditorium as part of Youngstown State's Centofanti Symposium.
Van Zandt is one of the original members of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band but he began his talk with how he became a political activist.
'And we were taught, of course, that America was doing the right thing worldwide — always. And then reading books, I realized that was not exactly the case. We were occasionally on the wrong side of a few things and that really bothered me,' he said.
After Van Zandt was greeted with a standing ovation he remarked that he has to get to Youngstown more often. He also commented on the beauty of Stambaugh Auditorium.
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New from the Boss: Seven albums lost in Springsteen's desk drawer
During his 50-year music career, Bruce Springsteen brought out 21 studio albums, both with and without his E Street Band. But he actually recorded a few more in that time, and now the man whom his fans call "Boss" is issuing seven albums in one go. The box set "Tracks II: The Lost Albums" contains 83 songs which Springsteen recorded between 1983 and 2018, the vast majority of which will be entirely new to Springsteen fans. "The Lost Albums' were full records, some of them even to the point of being mixed and not released," Springsteen said on the release of the box set. "I've played this music to myself and often close friends for years now." With boxsets and other album releases of this kind there is always a suspicion that an artist is trying to make money from leftovers, so to speak – records which at the time for some reason did not become albums and were put on the shelf. So the question is: How good are "The Lost Tracks"? Eighteen songs between 'Nebraska' and 'Born In The U.S.A.' The new release kicks of with the "LA Garage Sessions 83" which took place between the albums "Nebraska" and "Born In The U.S.A." Springsteen told the music entertainment industry magazine Rolling Stone . "At the time I wasn't sure where I was going with 'Born in the U.S.A.' I had half the record, but I didn't have the other half. And so it was just a record that happened in between those two records." "My Hometown" which we hear as a less polished version here, at the time ended up on Springsteen's most commercially successful album. The rest of the songs did not. But a genuine jewel is the hard-driving "One Love" which recalls Fleetwood Mac. There are other great tunes like "Sugarland" and "County Fair." 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