This week's look back on "Sun City" with "political guy" Stevie Van Zandt at the Springsteen Center
- Mark Krajnak
- 12 minutes ago
- 4 min read
September 4, 2026
Forty-one years ago, Steven Van Zandt wanted to do something...
He had stepped away from the E Street Band, and was looking for what was next. "I needed an identity, so I thought, 'I’ll be the political guy,'" Van Zandt told Founding Executive Director Bob Santelli on Tuesday night during The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music’s inaugural installment of its Music + Film Series. Their conversation followed a screening of the 1985 documentary film The Making of Sun City, held in the Center's 250-seat Powell Soundstage theater.
More than a decade ago, Van Zandt told Dave Marsh (author of Sun City: The Making of the Record) what his early-1980s education and transformation into "the political guy" entailed: "I had 44 situations around the world I was looking at as I tried to educate myself about what’s going on in the world, which I had never done [before]... In fact, out of those 44 situations, we [the United States] were on the wrong side most of the time."
After learning about the conditions in South Africa under its racist apartheid system, and going there to witness it firsthand, Stevie felt something needed to be done. So he decided to cut a song, "Sun City," to raise awareness about what was going on in South Africa. He felt a louder, stronger voice was needed to raise this awareness, and the best way to do this would be through music.
On Tuesday night, when Santelli asked Van Zandt why he took this stand back then, and if he was worried that taking on such a topic would hurt his career, Van Zandt said, "I was too dumb to think about my career," which brought laughter from the sold-out crowd.
Santelli and Van Zandt dove deeply into the making of the song "Sun City" and the eponymous album that accompanied it. "This was the most organic album ever created," Van Zandt said. "It started out as one song [originally written for] my solo album [Freedom, No Compromise] and it just developed from there. One song turned into many [for the Sun City album.]"
Van Zandt decided to record the song as a communal effort, one that crossed musical genres. Working with producer Arthur Baker and journalist Danny Schecter, Stevie set out to find musical artists who wanted to be involved in the recording of the song, and also had something to say. What started out as a few just grew and grew.
Eventually everyone from the jazz great Miles Davis, to rappers Run-DMC and the Fat Boys, to punk legend Lou Reed, singer/songwriter Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne (and his then-girlfriend actress Darryl Hannah,) Nona Hendryx, Afrika Bambataa, Jimmy Cliff, Pat Benatar, Peter Gabriel, Bono, Bob Dylan, and Van Zandt's E Street friends Bruce Springsteen and Clarence Clemons, along with many other artists, said yes to Little Steven. The song was released as recorded, officially and collectively, by Artists United Against Apartheid.
When pressed about Miles Davis’ involvement, Van Zandt said, "Initially, I just had him come in to do the intro, and then a piece in the middle. It was supposed to be twenty seconds. But then he played for four minutes and I thought 'I’m not going to leave four minutes on the floor of Miles Davis; that’s not going to happen.' So then we called [members of] one of the great quintents he had played with - Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock, Tony West - and they played to what Miles had done. So we had another song. Then Peter Gabriel came in… another song."
Schechter invited MTV to get involved, and asked a friend, Hart Perry, to film the recording sessions over the course of two days. Musicians would drop into the studio at all hours to record their sections. A music video, directed by Jonathan Demme with Godley & Creme, also was produced to support the song. The video received extensive airplay on MTV at the time:
Then, as now, Van Zandt sees music as a way to educate people as to what was going on in the world and propel them to social activism. The main way he does that these days, of course is through continuing to lead and support the organization that he founded, TeachRock. It continues and greatly expands upon the approach that Stevie started back in the 1980s with "Sun City" and his solo career, when, as he also told Santelli on Tuesday night, he often would include a booklist in the liner-notes of his albums, so that listeners could do their own research into the topics he was singing about. "Before you open your mouth, you better do your homework," Van Zandt said.
The approximately two-hour program concluded with an audience Q&A session. Santelli closed out the evening by asking "So, Stevie, what’s next? You’re not on tour. Are you making music now?"
The ever-expressive Van Zandt, clad head-to-toe in various shades of purple and red on this evening, said he’s more focused on acting again, and writing "I have about six scripts floating around Hollywood now, so we’ll see what happens." When someone in the crowd asked him if he ever considered comedy, he said "Well, there was some comedy in The Sopranos, you know…"
If you'd like to watch the Making of Sun City documentary that was screened at Tuesday's event, Swedish video-archivist Rosa Mannen has a vintage Swedish-captioned version of the film posted here.
-report and photos by Mark Krajnak (JerseyStyle Photography) for LettersToYou.net
Mark is a freelance photographer and writer located in Central New Jersey. You can follow him @jerseystyle_photography and on his blog.
