Unrequited Infatuations by Stevie Van Zandt

Author:Stevie Van Zandt [Van Zandt, Stevie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2021-09-28T00:00:00+00:00

twenty

Ain’t Gonna Play Sun City!

(1986)

When will we finally invite our black population to join the rest of us in America?

—THE UNWRITTEN BOOK

What if you spent a year planning a party and nobody showed?

I never had an attitude of superiority while doing research in South Africa, fully aware that America’s own civil rights legislation had taken place only twenty years earlier.

And I knew that by pointing out the extreme racism of South Africa I would also be commenting on our own ongoing discrimination, which seemed to be going backward.

So irony of ironies—but not entirely surprising—we were deemed too black for white radio and too white for black radio.

Nobody would play the fucking record!

Not exactly what I had in mind by “Ain’t gonna play Sun City!”

Fuck me.

I had gotten friendly with Bruce Lundvall while making E Street Band records at Columbia. Lundvall had moved to EMI Manhattan, signed me for my next record, Freedom—No Compromise, and was very enthusiastic about the issue of South Africa. We licensed “Sun City” to him for distribution at a higher than usual royalty—although, again, we weren’t doing it for the money.

I knew Bob Geldof had gotten all the royalties for the Band Aid record, but I didn’t have that kind of juice. I was happy anybody would distribute such a controversial project. But we made a good deal.

As I hadn’t quite had the chance to explain to Frank Zappa, I had created a new publishing company, Amandla Music, for all the music on the album. The creative process was truly a collaboration, and none of us wanted the job of sorting out who had done what. It didn’t matter anyway. None of us would have taken any money from this. The entirety of the record sales and publishing would go to Jennifer Davis and her Africa Fund.

We tried everything to get the record played. Calling stations. Calling in favors. Lundvall hired a few independent promotion men—all to no avail.

We even tried to get to Stevie Wonder’s radio station. He was into the issue of South Africa and human rights in general. I took the record there personally, but they wouldn’t play it.

There was only one shot left.

We needed a killer fucking video.

Hart Perry brought in Jonathan Demme, the perfect guy for the job and a soon-to-be-lifelong friend. He would eventually do a video for the E Street Band and win the Academy Award for Philadelphia, which also got Bruce an Oscar for the title track. We had a quick discussion with him and decided we wanted to capture the energy of an awakened anti-apartheid movement and the unrelenting passion of the record.

As for every aspect of the project, we didn’t want it to be slick, though we didn’t have to worry about that too much since we didn’t have any money.

We decided we’d do the video guerrilla-style, like everything else. We’d shoot it right on the street, no permissions of course, and then have the individuals arrive at a location that represented our common cause and the stronger-together-than-apart symbolism that we hoped would spread throughout the country.

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