Little Steven: rock ’n’ roll belongs in TV ads

Steven Van Zandt—E Street Band guitarist, Sopranos thug, rock ’n’ roll savior—has written a short piece for Billboard about selling rock songs for TV commercials. To put it mildly, he’s in favor of it. He writes: “During the height of the rock era, if one of your songs was used in a TV commercial, your career was on the way out. And after the late ’60s, hit singles weren’t even cool again until the ’80s. But now the opposite is almost true. If you don’t have a song in a TV commercial, your career is over. I’m exaggerating slightly, but you get the point.” This isn’t a new position for Van Zandt. We interviewed him back in 2004, when he was getting companies like Pepsi and Unilever to support his syndicated radio show, Little Steven’s Underground Garage. “For rock ’n’ roll to survive—and it will never be as influential as it was, but for it to survive as a niche—it’s going to need the support of sponsorship and advertising,” he said. “These days the ad-agency people are much more creative and adventurous than the record companies or even the radio stations. The rebels are on the other side of the fence.” We can assume he’s in favor of putting rock songs in major television-series finales, too.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

June 25, 2007 | Permalink