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The British invasion was the most important event of my life. I was in New Jersey and the night I saw the Beatles changed everything. I had seen Elvis before and he had done nothing for me, but these guys were in a band.

Steven Van Zandt

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Steven Van Zandt
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: November 22
Composer
Disc Jockey
Guitarist
Musician
Screenwriter
Singer
Television Actor
Winthrop
Massachusetts
Little Steven
Miami Steve
Everything
Guys
Nothing
Saws
Done
Band
Elvis
Important
Events
Beatles
Life
Changed
Invasion
Seen
Jersey
Guy
Event
Night
British

More quotes by Steven Van Zandt

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I have a bigger mission than any kind of specific politics, which is trying to restore the accessibility of rock 'n' roll.
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Let the wealthier countries and corporations of the world fund an Emergency Organization.
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I think it's important that all 50 years of rock 'n' roll live in the same place, because it's all connected.
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We never understood the concept of people going onstage and giving anything less than 100 percent. Maybe that's a blue-collar work ethic, but I call it just ethics.
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It's become uncool to play other people's songs, and that's absurd. It has got to change. It's the reason why everything's so mediocre.
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The simple fact is we do not live in a democracy. Certainly not the kind our Founding Fathers intended. We live in a corporate dictatorship represented by, and beholden to, no single human being you can reason with or hold responsible for anything.
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The quality of our lives is diminished every time we lose a great artist.
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I know what it takes to make a band, how they should interact, what makes a record sound like it's a band - everything having to do with a band, I happen to be into.
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There is an established tradition of actors directing films that have a particular, personal meaning for them - Warren Beatty, Clint Eastwood, Kevin Costner, and most recently George Clooney to name a few. Remarkably, their films share an unusually high percentage of being very good.
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I am a reformed Taoist, part-time Buddhist, Hindu, animist, pagan, Jewish mystic, and Christian. I always got along great with priests and rabbis and mullahs and gurus, even though I spend most of my life constructively criticizing them.
Steven Van Zandt
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The first rule of rock and roll is it's all about live. Then you have to learn a second craft, which is making records. It should go in that order.
Steven Van Zandt
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Timing really is nearly everything. And what it isn't, circumstance makes up for.
Steven Van Zandt
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Half of the modern world goes back as far as Pearl Jam. The real historians go back to U2. But they need to go back further. They have to go back to the '50s and '60s, where things started. That's how you get to be your own personality, by studying the masters. Rock and roll was white kids trying to make black music and failing, gloriously!
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Rock 'n' roll is a participatory sport. It ain't passive. It ain't TV. Go out there and rock 'n' roll and dance and have fun.
Steven Van Zandt
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I'd never go onstage in my life without fully intending to do the best show you've ever seen.
Steven Van Zandt
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I'm not pretending to be an academic, or to have this down to a science. It's strictly my taste. But there is a connection between everything I play and the sets I put together.
Steven Van Zandt
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I was in the back of the car with my girlfriend, the Rascals came on the radio and I realized their song was sexier than the sex I was trying to have.
Steven Van Zandt
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First of all, just because the Tea Party people appear to be generally uneducated, ignorant about the political process, ignorant about economics, confused about their own platform from the beginning, and indelicate when it comes to the craft of diplomacy, doesn't mean they're wrong.
Steven Van Zandt
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The quality of our lives is diminished every time we lose a great artist. It's a different world without Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Curtis Mayfield, Brian Jones and the rest.
Steven Van Zandt
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I am interested in the interaction of a group of people who have a common goal, or a common obsession, each contributing something unique to make something greater than the sum of its parts. I don't know why, but from day one, that has interested me.
Steven Van Zandt