Steven Van Zandt

The E Street Band has been rock musician Bruce Springsteen's primary backing band since 1972. The band has also recorded with a wide range of other... artists including Bob Dylan, Meat Loaf, Bonnie Tyler, Air Supply, Dire Straits, David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Stevie Nicks, Tom Morello, Sting, Ian Hunter, Ringo Starr, Ray Davies, Ronnie Spector, Gary U.S. Bonds, Darlene Love, Southside Johnny, The Grateful Dead, Santana, Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Tracy Chapman, Lady Gaga, and Aretha Franklin. When not working with Springsteen, members of the band have recorded solo material and have pursued successful careers as session musicians, record producers, songwriters, actors, and other roles in entertainment. The most well known in their separate careers are Max Weinberg, who has led his own band, first on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and then on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, from 1993 - 2010, and Steven Van Zandt, who starred as Silvio Dante in the television series The Sopranos from 1999 to 2007. The E Street Band was founded in October 1972, but it wasn't formally named until September 1974.
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Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company—successor to the Volta Graphophone Company.... Columbia is the oldest brand name in pre-recorded sound, being the first record company to produce pre-recorded records as opposed to blank cylinders. Columbia Records went on to release records by an array of notable singers, instrumentalists, and bands. From 1961 to 1990, its recordings were released outside the U.S. and Canada on the CBS Records label before adopting the Columbia name in most of the world. Until 1989, Columbia Records had no connection to Columbia Pictures, which used various other names for record labels they owned, including Colpix and later Arista; rather, it was connected to the original owner, CBS, which stood for Columbia Broadcasting System.
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Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has... its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music. Rock music also drew strongly on a number of other genres such as blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz, classical and other musical sources. Musically, rock has centered around the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with bass guitar and drums. Typically, rock is song-based music usually with a 4/4 time signature utilizing a verse-chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse and common musical characteristics are difficult to define. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political in emphasis. The dominance of rock by white, male musicians has been seen as one of the key factors shaping the themes explored in rock music. Rock places a higher degree of emphasis on musicianship, live performance, and an ideology of authenticity than pop music.
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