Meeting The Zombies and Little Steven
A New York Story
Before I get to The Zombies and Little Steven, I have to back up to Cavestomp.
It was the fall of 2000, and the Datsons' drummer at the time, John Malinos, had quit mid-tour. We were three 20-somethings crammed together on the road, not exactly equipped with the empathy to understand each other's plight, tensions running the way they tend to when you're young, broke, tired, and living out of a van. John had had enough and walked. With our first ever New York show just a week away, Cavestomp 2000, The Garage Rock Festacular, at the Westbeth Theatre, we needed someone to fill in fast. Stomp Records, our label at the time, suggested we ask Dave Hamelin to step in. He’d been playing with our friend Tim Fletcher in a band called the Undercovers, which was winding down around that same time. We drove down to New York together, Trevor (the Datsons' singer/songwriter), Dave, Tim, and me. The whole drive, Dave and Tim kept talking about wanting to make something with more depth to it, major 7th chords (which I knew nothing about at the time) and all. They kept bringing up Radiohead. While in NYC, they connected with Gus Van Go (ex-Me, Mom, and Morgentaler,) who they already knew from Montreal. That was the beginning of the Stills. Their debut album is great, still holds up.
That Cavestomp connection ended up mattering more than I realized at the time, because it’s how we first appeared on Little Steven’s radar.
A year later, with a new drummer, Robb Surridge, the Datsons got invited to open for a reunited Zombies at the Village Underground in New York, part of a series Little Steven was putting on / Cavestomp. Three nights, and we were filling in for a band that had cancelled. We were thrilled.
Night one went well. Rod Argent and the rest of the band were warm, gracious, genuinely kind to us. Partway through their set, Rod stopped and told the crowd:
“One of the wonderful things about being a musician this long is you get to explore so many different kinds of music, and one thing I’ve explored a lot is classical. Here’s a piece I wrote called… Fiesta!”
Rod Argent playing a neo-classical composition. To a room full of garage rock kids. For ten minutes.
I remember the whole room just going quiet. Not the good kind of quiet.
Odessey and Oracle is one of my favorite albums of all time, right up there with Sgt. Pepper's. So getting the chance to support the Zombies at all felt surreal. Before the show, I picked up a vinyl copy of it at a record shop in Greenwich Village and got the whole band to sign it, including Chris White, the original Zombies bassist, who happened to be there that night. The bassist actually playing with them at the time was Jim Rodford (RIP), formerly of the Kinks.
Standing there that night, my friend Pete Hayes, from the band The Figgs, nudged me: "Hey, who's the guy who looks like Little Steven?" I genuinely didn't know who Little Steven was. I hadn't watched the Sopranos, wasn't especially into Springsteen at the time. Looking back, that's a little embarrassing to admit. Steven Van Zandt's legacy in rock and roll is enormous, guitarist for the E Street Band, a career that spans decades, and at the time I had no real sense of who I was standing next to. But I remember the impression he left. The paisley shirt, the bandana, that smile, the enthusiasm, the unmistakable New Jersey accent. Even without knowing the history behind him yet, something about him just radiated rock and roll.
Also somewhere in that room: Max Weinberg and Paul Shaffer. I remember yelling something at Paul Shaffer (Canadian? Ex-Canadian?) as he walked by, something like, “I’m from Canada!” and getting a gruff “bah!” in return. Max Weinberg gave me a once over, I was in my three piece suit, and said something like, “You remind me of me when I was younger.”
Night two, we weren’t on the bill. The Mooney Suzuki was instead. I had complicated feelings about The Mooney Suzuki. We’d crossed paths with them before, at a mod night in Boston, a packed bill with a bunch of bands, and we were nervous wrecks. Then The Mooney Suzuki took the stage and just took over the room completely. I remember tables getting overturned. They were a phenomenal live band, dripping with a kind of Detroit, New York City attitude we could never quite pull off, polite Montreal kids that we were. I resented them a little for being so cool.
We drove back to Montreal after our night. Then we got a call. Turned out the Zombies weren’t feeling The Mooney Suzuki and wanted us (the polite—or nasty?—Canadians we are) back for night three. We turned the van around and drove straight back to New York.
Before we went on that third night, I found myself talking to Rod. I asked if they were doing the same set as before. He told me they’d decided to cut “Fiesta.” Said it was a bit of a downer. I told him that was actually my favorite part of the whole set. I watched his eyes light up. I had to bite my tongue.
There were a few other moments from that last night worth mentioning. Backstage, we were sharing a small room with the Zombies, our suits hanging up on a rack. At one point Colin Blunstone turned to Rod and said, “Rod, I found my hangers!” Rod sighed. “That’s nice, Colin,” he replied. Without another word, Colin took every single one of our suits off their hangers, dumped them in a pile, and walked off with the hangers.
He just took them. Never explained why. I still think about it to this day.
Later, a cooler of beers got knocked over, and Colin meticulously lined every bottle back up inside it, one by one. Order restored.
At the end of the night, we went back into the dressing room to grab something we’d forgotten, a guitar stand, I think, and I walked in on Rod sitting there in his tighty whities sipping a glass of red wine. He looked up, said something like, “Oh dear!” clearly caught off guard. I said thanks again for everything and got out of there as fast as I could, doing my best not to think too hard about what I’d just seen.
Little Steven loomed large over the Datsons after that residency, and for years afterward. Whenever things got complicated with Rainbow Quartz Records, he was there. He was launching his SiriusXM radio station around that same time, and having someone like that championing our music was huge for us, more than I probably understood in the moment. He’s the one who put us on Rainbow Quartz’s radar in the first place. He’s the one who helped us settle on the name the High Dials. Down the line, we’d go on to play his Underground Garage Festival on Randall’s Island, a whole story in itself. For the better part of six years, he was a real presence in our lives, and I’m forever grateful for the impact he had on mine.
Years later, when I finally quit the High Dials, Little Steven reached out directly, just to ask why. I told him I wasn't feeling it anymore. I was touched that he even cared enough to ask. What I didn't know at the time was that he'd left the E Street Band himself years earlier, going through his own version of walking away from something that had defined him for so long. I only found that out much later.
In 2013, Elephant Stone would end up supporting the Zombies again, and reconnecting with Little Steven along the way. Different band, same road.
Wish I had known of you guys back then, grew up in Brooklyn and lived in NYC’s East Village for law school in the early 2000s. Just now mining so much of that great music.
Im your older guy fan from Rhode Island...I always liked Little Steven's stage presence and energy (MTV videos, OMG). Now finding out the he's one of the good guys is really great. You are fortunate to be friends with him.