Credit: Wicked Cool/Big Machine/UMeE Street Band guitarist “Little Steven” Van Zandt is giving fans a new preview of his upcoming solo album, Soulfire, which will be released on May 19.
Van Zandt’s rendition of “Love on the Wrong Side of Town” — a song he co-wrote with his E Street Band boss, Bruce Springsteen — can be heard now at Little Steven’s VEVO YouTube channel.
The original version of the Motown-inspired song was recorded by Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes and appeared on that group’s second studio effort, 1977’s This Time It’s for Real.
In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, Van Zandt says about his own rendition of the tune, “It’s a deceptively simple song, and you realize that the simpler a song is, the more difficult it is to sing because there are not a lot of places you can go, so you have to make those few notes really count…I found that discipline fascinating. It gave me even more of an appreciation for Southside Johnny.”
Recalling how the song came together, Little Steven says Bruce had a guitar riff that he then worked into the finished tune.
Adds Van Zandt, “I wish me and Bruce had done more together, honestly. It was just a song here, a song there, whatever we needed at the time. Of course, Bruce was busy doing his own thing, and at the time you don’t think, ‘Wow, we really should work together more often.'”
Soulfire will be Little Steven’s first solo album since 1999. The record, which he made with an updated version of his old backing group The Disciples of Soul, features a variety of songs he wrote or co-wrote for other artists over the years, as well as a couple of new tunes and a few cover songs.
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