In the guitar, Yvette Young found a refuge from the pressures of the world of classical music competition, and from parental expectations.
A tattoo of the word “resilient” adorns both Yvette Young’s collarbone and the T-shirts and masks that just recently sold out on her website. That’s an apt descriptor for Young’s strong will. It served her well when, even with the meteoric rise to success of her band, Covet, the behind-the-scenes environment turned extremely toxic after a band member’s behavior became erratic. Young is reluctant to say more about the matter, but she felt unsafe and trapped, and she wanted to quit the band she’d started to instead either pursue a solo project or revisit the visual arts. (A former art teacher, she double-majored in fine arts and education at UCLA, and made money painting guitars, including one for WILLOW.)
“I went from a situation where I was afraid of one of my bandmates, and did what I needed to do to free myself from what I felt to be an emotionally, and thus creatively draining, situation,” reveals Young, who parted ways with Covet’s members during the recording sessions for the new album, Catharsis, and had the bass parts re-done by noted touring and session bassist Jon Button.
So, Catharsis reflects the close of an old, painful chapter and the beginning of a new one. “The process was arduous, and decisions were difficult and super daunting, but I’m ultimately so proud I got through. I learned so much about recording and chasing a sound, and I learned about advocating for myself and fighting for what I want,” says Young. “I think it’s an important thing for a lot of creatives to remember: Art must not come at the expense of overall well-being and safety, and the only sustainable way to create is in an environment that you feel free. That’s what this music is to me—my freedom.”
covet - firebird (official video)
Making the album proved to be therapeutic. “I feel like, on Catharsis, some of the songs are a bit darker and it was definitely me having an outlet for some stuff that was painful, but a lot of it is uplifting and very happy and dance-y,” Young says. “Because music is transformative, and if you’re ever feeling in a bad mood, if you write music that sounds really happy, it can uplift you. Writing music that sounds like how you wish you felt can be really helpful sometimes.”
“I’ve always been really fascinated with ‘can you make someone feel something or convince them of something without even saying a word?’”
A public search for new band members would have drawn too much unnecessary attention and Yvette would have had to spend too much time vetting every prospect. Instead, she found her new bandmates via her good friend, composer and pianist Summer Swee-Singh, who recruited bassist Brandon Dove and drummer Jessica Burdeaux. Burdeaux was Summer’s bandmate at the time, but had an opening in her schedule. “Summer is an angel. She knows me. She knows that I’m an overly nice person sometimes. I tend to let people boss me around and then I give up,” explains Young. “She said, ‘You need people that are just as caring and just as hardworking.’”
Dove and Burdeaux’s work ethic was immediately on full display as they learned Covet’s ultra-technical music in just two weeks. To much online gossip and drama, the revamped Covet lineup was revealed on social media in October 2022. But even as the wheels were set in motion, Young’s resiliency was put to another series of tests. Just four days before the first show of their appropriately named Rebirth tour, their van—a 2007 Ford E-350 that Young paid for out of pocket—was stolen. Covet then raised money on GoFundMe to rent a van and get the tour going. But then that rental van was broken into, with the windows smashed and gear stolen. Even with all of these mishaps, the first tour of the new Covet lineup was successful.
Emotional Nerd Rock
The songs on Catharsis, with its mix of melancholy and majesty, are the most accurate representation of where Young’s current interests are. “I want to write something that’s catchy. I want people to be able to hum it—like for your average listener who doesn’t understand guitar, who doesn’t listen to music. I want them to be able to enter this music and still get something from it,” she says. “But I don’t want to leave guitar players bored, so I’m going to put some flashiness and odd-time stuff in there, but trick people into dancing to it. That’s really fun for me.”
The current Covet lineup, touring behind the new album, Catharsis, is drummer Jessica Burdeaux, Yvette Young, and bassist Brandon Dove.
Photo by Eli Chavez
On their Facebook page Covet describes themselves as “Emotional Nerd Rock” and Catharsis songs like “Firebird” and “Lovespell,” the album closer that features saxophonist Alex Rose from Minus the Bear, deceptively sneak geeky polyrhythms and metric mind games into the context of feel-good, catchy music. In “Lovespell,” Young explains, “There’s a part where I’m in five, drums are in four, and bass is in three. And you’re dancing to it, and you can’t tell. I play it on tour now, and that’s the song that people dance to the hardest. They don’t even notice it. I feel like I’m in a good place. I have a cool opportunity where I’m writing catchy stuff that moms and dads like and can listen to, but I’m also trying to open people’s minds up to more progressive elements of music that you wouldn’t necessarily find on the radio.”
“Interlude,” Catharsis’ piano-driven track with a nostalgic/melancholic vibe,is similar in mood to some of Young’s previously released solo piano music. “It’s so funny, because my voice on piano is a little bit different than my voice on guitar,” she explains. “When I write, it feels like I’m not even there anymore. Like it feels that who I am doesn’t matter. I just hear stuff and it comes out. I know that sounds crazy, but I feel like I’m just channeling emotions and trying to find ways to express certain abstract feelings without having to use lyrics. That’s the value of instrumental music. I’ve always been really fascinated with ‘Can you make someone feel something or convince them of something without even saying a word?’ Just by the tension of the music, the timbre, the pedals that you use, the way that you phrase something, the key changes, all of that. It’s really fun to try to do that. The piano music and Covet’s music is all storytelling. It’s me trying to transport people to a fantasy place.”
Music on Her Own Terms
Young is among today’s most important young guitarists. Steve Vai named her as one of the five guitarists taking the instrument to the next level and recruited her to teach at his Vai Academy last summer. Ibanez has graced the virtuoso with two signature models: the YY10 and the newly released YY20. So, Young is a now a bona fide guitar hero, but the road to stardom was not easy.
Since the beginning, Young has had a conflicted relationship with music. Born in San Jose, California, to parents from Beijing, China, Young started piano at 4 and was immediately thrown into the fire. Her father, a piano salesman/technician, composed music, and her cousins played competitive piano at a very high level. Little Yvette was next in line—a prodigy in the making. She had to practice four hours a day and played high stakes competitions from age 9 to 18.
Young’s painting for the cover of her new album is a perfect reflection of its sense of uplift and emergence from adversity.
“The classical world was pushed really hard on me. I don’t know if it was my thing when I was younger,’’ recalls Young, who, in her youth, was obligated to practice fragments of 30-minute concertos over and over again until they were memorized and mastered. She also started violin at 7 and later played in her high school orchestra and the California Youth Symphony, where she was concertmaster. While Young delighted audiences with her flawless performances, deep down she hated the competitive aspect of music. It was not fun and Young’s internalized perfection in her musical and academic pursuits (having to be a straight-A student), combined with the intense pressure of the elite classical world’s cutthroat environment, led to anorexia nervosa. This eating disorder saw Young in and out of the hospital during a four-year span in her teens. The condition became so severe that Young would sporadically flatline in her sleep. Miraculously, she survived.
This dark period marked the beginning of Young’s new journey. While in the hospital, she picked up the guitar. It wasn’t a deliberate move; she wasn’t seeking another instrument to conquer and compete with. Rather, the 6-string was therapeutic and empowering. It also helped reignite her passion for music. “One cool thing about guitar, for me, is it was really important that it was an instrument I picked for myself. I don’t let anyone else dictate how I approach it,” says Young, “Music saved my life. I don’t think I’d be here if not for guitar. Guitar helped pull me out of my eating disorder. It made it so I felt like I had a voice, when I don’t feel like I’m the most outspoken person. The most exciting part of it all is that now I have the opportunity to share with people how wonderful of an outlet music, in particular guitar, can be. And how amazing it can be for building up your confidence. I’ve been through a lot. I’ll always be writing music. It’s kind of like my comfort but it’s also my way of expressing joy.”
“Art must not come at the expense of overall well-being and safety, and the only sustainable way to create is in an environment that you feel free.”
Young learned some chords by watching videos, and while she understood music theory, that didn’t factor at all into how she approached the instrument. Young explains: “Honestly, because of my classical upbringing, I feel like I have a good ear. I would listen to songs and—I didn’t even really read tabs at that point—I would just figure them out meticulously, note-by-note, and then teach it to myself.” The first song Young learned was Creed’s wistful ballad “One Last Breath” (referred to as “Six Feet From the Edge”), and she listened to Radiohead, and folk artists like Cat Stevens and Sufjan Stevens. While she first learned everything in standard tuning, Midwest emo bands like American Football and math-rock bands like Toe were major influences and led her to the world of alternate tunings, which she has built her style around ever since.
In 2013, while working as an art teacher, Young found fame accidentally after posting guitar videos on Facebook. One of her students created an Instagram page for her, and suddenly she became very famous. “I didn’t expect to have one of my videos go viral. The one video that went viral was this tapping fast thing, and I got contacted by a bunch of companies to do videos for them,” recalls Young. “At the time, I was a teacher, I was working in a school, and music was just this fun side thing—this outlet I get to do after I work my 9 to 5, to feel better. I had no idea that these videos would pop off like that, so it was exciting.” In 2014, Young formed Covet, and the trio has since been at the forefront of the math-rock scene.
Yvette Young’s Gear
Young’s new bandmates, Jessica Burdeaux and Brandon Dove, learned Covet’s ultra-technical music in just two weeks.
Photo by Sarah Phung
Guitars
- Ibanez YY10
- Ibanez YY20
Amps
- Vox AC30
- Vox AC10
- Roland JC-40
- Yamaha THR10
Strings
- D'Addario NYXL (.011-.056)
Effects
- DigiTech Whammy Ricochet
- Walrus Audio Julianna
- Caroline Guitar Company Somersault
- Boss DD-3 Digital Delay
- MXR Carbon Copy Deluxe
- Earthquaker Devices Avalanche Run
- Earthquaker Devices The Warden
- Dirge Electronics Slowly Melting
- Moreland Magnetics 707 Fuzz
- DigiTech FreqOut
- Hologram Electronics Microcosm
- ZVEX Mastotron
- Ground Control Audio Noodles
- Boss OC-5 Octave
- Meris Mercury 7
- Electronic Audio Experiments Longsword
- Strymon Zuma
A 6-Stringed Piano
Young is part of a new generation of virtuoso guitarists that have created a new language far removed from the vocabulary of legacy, boomer guitar heroes. You won’t hear Hendrix, Slash, or even Yngwie-inspired licks. The omission of these influences wasn’t deliberate, however. “I just wasn’t exposed to it. It’s like when you grow up more sheltered. I didn’t really consume any pop culture, to be honest. I wasn’t even allowed to listen to rock rock when I was younger because my parents were more traditional, and they were like, ‘classical music is the way.’ I’m a late bloomer, man. I just discovered rock like, last week,’” she jokes. “I started out listening to indie music/post rock. Post rock really appealed to me because it was a lot like classical music in the way that it progresses. It’s very dynamic and it’s emotional. For me, music has always been less about virtuosity and more about its emotional appeal.”
Still, there’s no doubting Young’s virtuosic abilities. Her ultra-technical style is inspired by the piano’s polyphonic capabilities. She views the lower strings as the left-hand accompaniment register of a piano and will use it to play implied bass parts and harmonies. The upper strings of the guitar are used as the right-hand melodic side of the piano. Both hands may cross over into the other register if the music calls for it. Pianistic effects are achieved by her use of uncommon tunings, fingerstyle moves, and right-hand tapping.
“Now I have the opportunity to share with people how wonderful of an outlet music, in particular guitar, can be.”
While tapping is a big part of Young’s style, its modern-era pioneer, the late Eddie Van Halen, wasn’t even in the equation when Young started doing it. Rather, she picked up the technique from listening to bands like TTNG and other acts in the obscure art/indie scene that she grew up with. She’s recently gotten into Van Halen’s playing, though, and has also started incorporating more conventional guitar-isms, like bending.
“I don’t really know how it happened. One day I was just like ‘Instead of this slide up one fret, what if I bent to that?’ I was like, ‘Ooh, I love the way this sounds with delay.’ It sounds really cool. I checked out a bit of Van Halen, too. I wanted something that had a lot of energy. I was running and I was listening to that, and was like, ‘Okay, yeah, like the way Eddie plays is really cool.’ I think subconsciously I probably just digested all of that and spat it out in the form of my own writing.”
Another part of her distinctive sound is muting. “I’m muting with my right-hand palm and with my left hand,” she explains. “My right hand will mute the lower strings and I’ll sometimes use the pointer finger on my left hand to stop the high strings from ringing out. I’m also doing whammy bar stuff. This is new to me. I feel like I had a little bit of a breakthrough and I downgraded to .011s now because I need to be able to bend. I was using .012s before and I had a dark era where I was at .013s.”
“In order to stay passionate at what I do, to not have it feel like how I felt in the classical world—doing things for other people or trying to impress other people—I really have to be my own fortress and I have to really stay in tune with what excites me.”
So, Young’s new Ibanez YY10 and YY20 models come with .011s. “First I did the YY10, Strat style, then YY20 Tele style, orange finish,” she says, explaining their genesis. “There’s no Wilkinson tremolo system. There may or may not be a new one in the works, but I’m really excited because [if it happens] it’s gonna be a higher end one.”
These signature guitars are tuned (low to high) F–A–C–G–B–E when they are shipped. “I wanted to just kind of challenge people to try it,” she relates. “I’ve been talking to a bunch of students and they’re like, ‘I never tried open tunings because I’ve always been scared of tuning it to something different.’ I was like, ‘Well what if it just came that way?’”
Young’s own musical voice is ever evolving and, despite making a name for herself as a virtuoso, the self-described “people pleaser” resists pressure to cater to any expectations. “As I matured in my craft, I was like, ‘I feel like this isn’t even what I’m excited about,’” she says. “I’m sitting here live, playing these technical songs, sweating bullets, not feeling the music, just really worried ’cause everyone has their phone out and all eyes are on me, and I better not mess up this run or else it’s gonna end up on YouTube. I hated that. In order to stay passionate at what I do, to not have it feel like how I felt in the classical world—doing things for other people or trying to impress other people—I really have to be my own fortress and I have to really stay in tune with what excites me. The direction I go in becomes really clear when I focus on what gives me goosebumps when I’m playing, what makes me jump up and down ’cause I’m so excited about it.”
YouTube It
Yvette Young wasn’t raised on legacy guitar heroes and, as a result, her approach is fresh and highly personal. “I truly discovered it like an outsider. I was working on guitar and was like, ‘I guess you could play it like this.’ That definitely contributed to me sounding the way I sound,” says Young. “But I also consumed and listened to a wide variety of music. I was trying to take all the things I find exciting about different genres and just blend them into one sound.”
“Shibuya” sees Young—tuned to D–A–D–F#–A–E (low to high) with a capo on the 2nd fret—using her unique approach with plucks, taps, slaps, and slides to create a mesmerizing musical experience.
Stevie Van Zandt with “Number One,” the ’80s reissue Stratocaster—with custom paisley pickguard from luthier Dave Petillo—that he’s been playing for the last quarter century or so.
There’s a life-size cameo of a go-go dancer in banana yellow; she’s frozen in mid hip shimmy. One wall displays rock posters and B-movie key art, anchored by a 3D rendering of Cream’s Disraeli Gearsalbum cover that swishes and undulates as you walk past it. Van Zandt’s shelves are stuffed with countless DVDs, from Louis Prima to the J. Geils Band performing on the German TV concert seriesRockpalast. There are three copies ofIggy and the Stooges: Live in Detroit. Videos of the great ’60s-music TV showcases, from Hullabaloo to Dean Martin’s The Hollywood Palace, sit here. Hundreds of books about rock ’n’ roll, from Greil Marcus’s entire output to Nicholas Schaffner’s seminal tome, The Beatles Forever, form a library in the next room.
But I haven’t seen this yet because the elevator is dead, and I am in it. Our trap is tiny, about 5' by 5'. A dolly filled with television production equipment is beside me. There’s a production assistant whom I’ve never met until this morning and another person who’s brand new to me, too, Geoff Sanoff. It turns out that he’s Van Zandt’s engineer—the guy who runs this studio. And as I’ll discover shortly, he’s also one of the several sentinels who watch over Stevie Van Zandt’s guitars.
There’s nothing to do now but wait for the NYFD, so Sanoff and I get acquainted. We discover we’re both from D.C. and know some of the same people in Washington’s music scene. We talk about gear. We talk about this television project. I’m here today assisting an old pal, director Erik Nelson, best known for producing Werner Herzog’s most popular documentaries, like Grizzly Man and Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Van Zandt has agreed to participate in a television pilot about the British Invasion. After about half an hour, the elevator doors suddenly slide open, and we’re rescued, standing face-to-face with three New York City firefighters.
As our camera team sets up the gear, Sanoff beckons me to a closet off the studio’s control room. I get the sense I am about to get a consolation prize for standing trapped in an elevator for the last 30 minutes. He pulls a guitar case off the shelf—it’s stenciled in paint with the words “Little Steven” on its top—snaps open the latches, and instantly I am face to face with Van Zandt’s well-worn 1957 Stratocaster. Sanoff hands it to me, and I’m suddenly holding what may as well be the thunderbolt of Zeus for an E Street Band fan. My jaw drops when he lets me plug it in so he can get some levels on his board, and the clean, snappy quack of the nearly 70-year-old pickups fills the studio. For decades, Springsteen nuts have enjoyed a legendary 1978 filmed performance of “Rosalita” from Phoenix, Arizona, that now lives on YouTube. This is the Stratocaster Van Zandt had slung over his shoulder that night. It’s the same guitar he wields in the famous No Nukes concert film shot at Madison Square Garden a year later, in 1979. My mind races. The British Invasion is all well and essential. But now I’m thinking about Van Zandt’s relationship with his guitars.
Stevie Van Zandt's Gear
Van Zandt’s guitar concierge Andy Babiuk helped him plunge deeper down the Rickenbacker rabbit hole. Currently, Van Zandt has six Rickenbackers backstage: two 6-strings and four 12-strings.
Guitars
- 1957 Fender Stratocaster (studio only)
- ’80s Fender ’57 Stratocaster reissue “Number One”
- Gretsch Tennessean
- 1955 Gibson Les Paul Custom “Black Beauty” (studio only)
- Rickenbacker Fab Gear 2024 Limited Edition ’60s Style 360 Model (candy apple green)
- Rickenbacker Fab Gear 2023 Limited Edition ’60s Style 360 Model (snowglo)
- Rickenbacker 2018 Limited Edition ’60s Style 360 Fab Gear (jetglo)
- Two Rickenbacker 1993Plus 12-strings (candy apple purple and SVZ blue)
- Rickenbacker 360/12C63 12-string (fireglo)
- Vox Teardrop (owned by Andy Babiuk)
Amps
- Two Vox AC30s
- Two Vox 2x12 cabinets
Effects
- Boss Space Echo
- Boss Tremolo
- Boss Rotary Ensemble
- Durham Electronics Sex Drive
- Durham Electronics Mucho Busto
- Durham Electronics Zia Drive
- Electro-Harmonix Satisfaction
- Ibanez Tube Screamer
- Voodoo Labs Ground Control Pro switcher
Strings and Picks
- D’Addario (.095–.44)
- D’Andrea Heavy
Van Zandt has reached a stage of reflection in his career. Besides the Grammy-nominated HBO film, Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple, which came out in 2024, he recently wrote and published his autobiography, Unrequited Infatuations (2021), a rollicking read in which he pulls no punches and makes clear he still strives to do meaningful things in music and life.
His laurels would weigh him down if they were actually wrapped around his neck. In the E Street Band, Van Zandt has participated in arguably the most incredible live group in rock ’n’ roll history. And don’t forget Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes or Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul. He created both the Underground Garage and Outlaw Country radio channels on Sirius/XM. He started a music curriculum program called TeachRock that provides no-cost resources and other programs to schools across the country. Then there’s the politics. Via his 1985 record, Sun City, Van Zandt is credited with blasting many of the load-bearing bricks that brought the walls of South African apartheid tumbling into dust. He also acted in arguably the greatest television drama in American history, with his turn as Silvio Dante in The Sopranos.
Puzzlingly, Van Zandt’s autobiography lacks any detail on his relationship with the electric guitar. And Sanoff warns me that Van Zandt is “not a gearhead.” Instead he has an organization in place to keep his guitar life spinning like plates on the end of pointed sticks. Besides Sanoff, there are three others: Ben Newberry has been Van Zandt’s guitar tech since the beginning of 1982. Andy Babiuk, owner of Rochester, New York, guitar shop Fab Gear and author of essential collector reference books Beatles Gear and Rolling Stones Gear (the latter co-authored by Greg Prevost) functions as Van Zandt’s guitar concierge. Lastly, luthier Dave Petillo, based in Asbury Park, New Jersey, oversees all the maintenance and customization on Van Zandt’s axes.
“I took one lesson, and they start to teach you the notes. I don’t care about the notes.” —Stevie Van Zandt
I crawl onto Zoom with Van Zandt for a marathon session and come away from our 90 minutes with the sense that he is a man of dichotomies. Sure, he’s a guitar slinger, but he considers his biggest strengths to be as an arranger, producer, and songwriter. “I don’t feel that being a guitar player is my identity,” he tells me. “For 40 years, ever since I made my first solo record, I just have not felt that I express myself as a guitar player. I still enjoy it when I do it; I’m not ambivalent. When I play a solo, I am in all the way, and I play a solo like I would like to hear if I were in the audience. But the guitar part is really part of the song’s arrangement. And a great solo is a composed solo. Great solos are ones you can sing, like Jimi Hendrix’s solo in ‘All Along the Watchtower.’”
In his autobiography, Van Zandt mentions that his first guitar was an acoustic belonging to his grandfather. “I took one lesson, and they start to teach you the notes. I don’t care about the notes,” Van Zandt tells me. “The teacher said I had natural ability. I’m thinking, if I got natural ability, then what the fuck do I need you for? So I never went back. After that, I got my first electric, an Epiphone. It was about slowing down the records to figure out with my ear what they were doing. It was seeing live bands and standing in front of that guitar player and watching what they were doing. It was praying when a band went on TV that the cameraman would occasionally go to the right place and show what the guitar player was doing instead of putting the camera on the lead singer all the time. And I’m sure it was the same for everybody. There was no concept of rock ’n’ roll lessons. School of Rock wouldn’t exist for another 30 years. So, you had to go to school yourself.”
By the end of the 1960s, Van Zandt tells me he had made a conscious decision about what kind of player he wanted to be. “I realized that I really wasn’t that interested in becoming a virtuoso guitar player, per se. I was more interested in making sure I could play the guitar solo that would complement the song. I got more into the songs than the nature of musicianship.”
After the Beatles and the Stones broke the British Invasion wide open, bands like Cream and the Yardbirds most influenced him. “George Harrison would have that perfect 22-second guitar solo,” Van Zandt remembers. “Keith Richards. Dave Davies. Then, the harder stuff started coming. Jeff Beck in the Yardbirds. Eric Clapton with things like ‘White Room.’ But the songs stayed in a pop configuration, three minutes each or so. You’d have this cool guitar-based song with a 15-second, really amazing Jeff Beck solo in it. That’s what I liked. Later, the jam bands came, but I was not into that. My attention deficit disorder was not working for the longer solos,” he jokes. Watch a YouTube video of any recent E Street Band performance where Van Zandt solos, and the punch and impact of his approach and attack are apparent. At Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., last year, his solo on “Rosalita” was 13 powerful seconds.
Van Zandt and Bruce Springsteen’s relationship goes back to their earliest days on the Jersey shore. “Everybody had a different guitar; your guitar was your identity,” recalls Van Zandt. “At some point, a couple of years later, I remember Bruce calling me and asking me for my permission to switch to Telecaster. At that point, I was ready to switch to Stratocaster.”
Photo by Pamela Springsteen
Van Zandt left his Epiphone behind for his first Fender. “I started to notice that the guitar superstars at the time were playing Telecasters. Mike Bloomfield. Jeff Beck. Even Eric Clapton played one for a while,” he tells me. “I went down to Jack’s Music Shop in Red Bank, New Jersey, because he had the first Telecaster in our area and couldn’t sell it; it was just sitting there. I bought it for 90 bucks.”
In those days, and around those parts, players only had one guitar. Van Zandt recalls, “Everybody had a different guitar; your guitar was your identity. At some point, a couple of years later, I remember Bruce calling me and asking me for my permission to switch to Telecaster. At that point, I was ready to switch to Stratocaster, because Jimi Hendrix had come in and Jeff Beck had switched to a Strat. They all kind of went from Telecaster to Les Pauls. And then some of them went on to the Stratocaster. For me, the Les Paul was just too out of reach. It was too expensive, and it was just too heavy. So I said, I’m going to switch to a Stratocaster. It felt a little bit more versatile.”
Van Zandt still employs Stratocasters, and besides the 1957 I strummed, he was seen with several throughout the ’80s and ’90s. But for the last 20 or 25 years, Van Zandt has mainly wielded a black Fender ’57 Strat reissue from the ’80s with a maple fretboard and a gray pearloid pickguard. He still uses that Strat—dubbed “Number One”—but the pickguard has been switched to one sporting a purple paisley pattern that was custom-made by Dave Petillo.
Petillo comes from New Jersey luthier royalty and followed in the footsteps of his late father, Phil Petillo. At a young age, the elder Petillo became an apprentice to legendary New York builder John D’Angelico. Later, he sold Bruce Springsteen the iconic Fender Esquire that’s seen on the Born to Run album cover and maintained and modified that guitar and all of Bruce’s other axes until he passed away in 2010. Phil worked out of a studio in the basement of their home, not far from Asbury Park. Artists dropped in, and Petillo has childhood memories of playing pick-up basketball games in his backyard with members of the E Street Band. (He also recalls showing his Lincoln Logs to Johnny Cash and once mistaking Jerry Garcia for Santa Claus.)
“I was more interested in making sure I could play the guitar solo that would complement the song. I got more into the songs than the nature of musicianship.” —Stevie Van Zandt
“I’ve known Stevie Van Zandt my whole life,” says Petillo. “My dad used to work on his 1957 Strat. That guitar today has updated tuners, a bone nut, new string trees, and a refret that was done by Dad long ago. I think one volume pot may have been changed. But it still has the original pickups.” Petillo is responsible for a lot of the aesthetic flair seen on Van Zandt’s instruments. He continues, “Stevie is so much fun to work with. I love incorporating colors into things, and Stevie gets that. When you talk to a traditional Telecaster or Strat player, and you say, ‘I want to do a tulip paisley pickguard in neon blue-green,’ they’re like, ‘Holy cow, that’s too much!’ But for Stevie, it’s just natural. So I always text him with pickguard designs, asking him, ‘Which one do you like?’ And he calls me a wild man; he says, ‘I don’t have that many Strats to put them on!’ But I’ll go to Ben Newberry and say, ‘Ben, I made these pickguards; let’s get them on the guitar. And I’ll go backstage, and we’ll put them on. I just love that relationship; Stevie is down for it.”
Petillo takes care of the electronics on Van Zandt’s guitars. Almost all of the Strats are modified with an internal Alembic Stratoblaster preamp circuit, which Van Zandt can physically toggle on and off using a switch housed just above the input jack. Van Zandt tells me, “That came because I got annoyed with the whole pedal thing. I’m a performer onstage, and I’m integrated with the audience and I like the freedom to move. And if I’m across the stage and all of a sudden Bruce nods to me to take a solo, or there’s a bit in the song that requires a little bit of distortion, it’s just easier to have that; sometimes, I’ll need that extra little boost for a part I’m throwing in, and it’s convenient.”
In recent times, Van Zandt has branched out from the Stratocaster, which has a lot to do with Andy Babiuk's influence. The two met 20 years ago, and Babiuk’s band, the Chesterfield Kings, is on Van Zandt’s Wicked Cool Records. “He’d call me up and ask me things like, ‘What’s Brian Jones using on this song?’” explains Babiuk. “When I’d ask him why, he’d tell me, ‘Because I want to have that guitar.’ It’s a common thing for me to get calls and texts from him like that. And there’s something many people overlook that Stevie doesn’t advertise: He’s a ripping guitar player. People think of him as playing chords and singing backup for Bruce, but the guy rips. And not just on guitar, on multiple instruments.”
Van Zandt tells me he wanted to bring more 12-string to the E Street Band this tour, “just to kind of differentiate the tone.” He explains, “Nils is doing his thing, and Bruce is doing his thing, and I wanted to do more 12-string.” He laughs, “I went full Paul Kantner!” Babiuk helped Van Zandt plunge deeper down the Rickenbacker rabbit hole. Currently, Van Zandt has six Rickenbackers backstage: two 6-strings and four 12-strings. Each 12-string has a modified nut made by Petillo from ancient woolly mammoth tusk, and the D, A, and low E strings are inverted with their octave.
Van Zandt explains this to me: “I find that the strings ring better when the high ones are on top. I’m not sure if that’s how Roger McGuinn did it, but it works for me. I’m also playing a wider neck.”
Babiuk tells me about a unique Rick in Van Zandt’s rack of axes: “I know the guys at Rickenbacker well, and they did a run of 30 basses in candy apple purple for my shop. I showed one to Stevie, and purple is his color; he loves it. He asked me to get him a 12-string in the same color, and I told him, ‘They don’t do one-offs; they don’t have a custom shop,’ but it’s hard to say no to the guy! So I called Rickenbacker and talked them into it. I explained, ‘He’ll play it a lot on this upcoming tour.’ They made him a beautiful one with his OM logo.”
The purple one-off is a 1993Plus model and sports a 1 3/4" wide neck—1/8" wider than a normal Rickenbacker. Van Zandt loved it so much that he had Babiuk wrestle with Rickenbacker again to build another one in baby blue. Petillo has since outfitted them with paisley-festooned custom pickguards. When guitar tech Newberry shows me these unique axes backstage, I can see the input jack on the purple guitar is labeled with serial number 01001.
“Some of my drive is based on gratitude,” says Van Zandt, “feeling like we are the luckiest guys in the luckiest generation ever.”
Photo by Rob DeMartin
Van Zandt also currently plays a white Vox Teardrop. That guitar is a prototype owned by Babiuk. “Stevie wanted a Teardrop,” Babiuk tells me, “but I explained that the vintage ones are hit and miss—the ones made in the U.K. were often better than the ones manufactured in Italy. Korg now owns Vox, and I have a new Teardrop prototype from them in my personal collection. When I showed it to him, he loved it and asked me to get him one. I had to tell him, ‘I can’t; it’s a prototype, there’s only one,’ and he asked me to sell him mine,” he chuckles. “I told him, ‘It’s my fucking personal guitar, it’s not for sale!’ So I ended up lending it to him for this tour, and I told him, ‘Remember, this is my guitar; don’t get too happy with it, okay?’
“He asked me why that particular guitar sounds and feels so good. Besides being a prototype built by only one guy, the single-coil pickups’ output is abnormally hot, and the neck feels like a nice ’60s Fender neck. Stevie’s obviously a dear friend of mine, and he can hold onto it for as long as he wants. I’m glad it’s getting played. It was just hanging in my office.”
Van Zandt tells me how Babiuk’s Vox Teardrop sums up everything he wants from his tone, and says, “It’s got a wonderfully clean, powerful sound. Like Brian Jones got on ‘The Last Time.’ That’s my whole thing; that’s the trick—trying to get the power without too much distortion. Bruce and Nils get plenty of distortion; I am trying to be the clean rhythm guitar all the time.”
If Van Zandt has a consigliere like Tony Soprano had Silvio Dante, that’s Newberry. Newberry has tech’d nearly every gig with Van Zandt since 1982. “Bruce shows move fast,” he tells me. “So when there’s a guitar change for Stevie, and there are many of them, I’m at the top of the stairs, and we switch quickly. There’s maybe one or two seconds, and if he needs to tell me something, I hear it. He’s Bruce’s musical director, so he may say something like, ‘Remind me tomorrow to go over the background vocals on “Ghosts,”’ or something like that. And I take notes during the show.”
“Everybody had a different guitar; your guitar was your identity. At some point, a couple of years later, I remember Bruce calling me and asking me for my permission to switch to a Telecaster.” —Stevie Van Zandt
When I ask Newberry how he defines Van Zandt’s relationship to the guitar, he doesn’t hesitate, snapping back, “It’s all in his head. His playing is encyclopedic, whether it’s Bruce or anything else. He may show up at soundcheck and start playing the Byrds, but it’s not ‘Tambourine Man,’ it’s something obscure like ‘Bells of Rhymney.’ People may not get it, but I’ve known him long enough to know what’s happening. He’s got everything already under his fingers. Everything.”
As such, Van Zandt says he never practices. “The only time I touch a guitar between tours is if I’m writing something or maybe arranging backing vocal harmonies on a production,” he tells me.
Before we say goodbye, I tell Van Zandt about my time stuck in his elevator, and his broad grin signals that I may not be the only one to have suffered that particular purgatory. When I ask him about the 1957 Stratocaster I got to play upon my release, he recalls: “Bruce Springsteen gave me that guitar. I’ve only ever had one guitar stolen in my life, and it was in the very early days of my joining the E Street Band. I only joined temporarily for what I thought would be about seven gigs, and in those two weeks or so, my Stratocaster was stolen. It was a 1957 or 1958. Bruce felt bad about that and replaced that lost guitar with this one. So I’ve had it a long, long time. Once that first one was stolen, I decided I would resist having a personal relationship with any one guitar. But that one being a gift from Bruce makes it special. I will never take it back on the road.”
After 50 years of rock ’n’ roll, if there is one word to sum up Stevie Van Zandt, it may be “restless”—an adjective you sense from reading his autobiography. He gets serious and tells me, “I’m always trying to catch up. The beginning of accomplishing something came quite late to me. I feel like I haven’t done nearly enough. What are we on this planet trying to do?” he asks rhetorically. “We’re trying to realize our potential and maybe leave this place one percent better for the next guy. And some of my drive is based on gratitude, feeling like we are the luckiest guys in the luckiest generation ever. That’s what I’m doing: I want to give something back. I feel an obligation.”
YouTube It
“Rosalita” is a perennial E Street Band showstopper. Here’s a close-up video from Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park last summer. Van Zandt’s brief but commanding guitar spotlight shines just past the 4:30 mark.
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