Rock and Roll Forever: Little Steven on The Rascals, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, 'Lillyhammer' and The Underground Garage

At the start of The Rascals: Once Upon A Dream, the Broadway 'bio-musical' that wraps up its stand at the Academy of Music on Saturday night, the voice of the show's creator, Steven Van Zandt, comes over the PA system to inform the crowd that if they want to take out their smart phones and take pictures and shoot video to their hearts content, they should go right ahead and do so.

With that, Van Zandt shuts up and goes away, and let's the music and the members of The Rascals do the talking. Shortly before the show opened in Philadelphia however, Van Zandt took the time for an interview to talk up his creation, and he had plenty to say, not only about Once Upon A Dream, but also his day job as guitarist and consigliere in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, his role as a witness protected gangster living in Norway in the Netflix series Lillyhammer, his Sirius/XM satellite radio channel The Underground Garage, and his views on the history and current state of rock and roll.

Much of what Van Zandt, who played Tony Soprano's second in command Sylvio Dante in The Sopranos, had to say about The Rascals is in my story on Once Upon A Dream that ran in Sunday Inquirer A & E section. You can read that by going to Inquirer.com here and using promo code  R71V, or by clicking here.