‘I saw something in Bruce Springsteen that nobody else saw’: the world according to Stevie Van Zandt

The Boss's trusty sideman has many plans - from saving central America to TV Hogmanay at the Playboy Mansion - and he's more than happy to share his rock wisdom

It is the middle of the 1980s, and Stevie Van Zandt, having departed the E Street Band and left Bruce Springsteen's side, is pursuing a solo career. He has also parlayed decades of experience playing in bar bands into a new and unusual role: international activist and campaigner against injustice. And so he finds himself, in company with Jackson Browne, in Nicaragua, against which the US is waging a proxy war.

He arranges a meeting with Rosario Murillo, the wife of Nicaragua's president, Daniel Ortega, as he notes in his memoir, Unrequited Infatuations. After a few drinks, I moved off the small talk and suddenly asked her if she loved her husband. She was taken a bit aback but said, Yes, senor, very much. Well,' I said, you should spend as much time with him as possible, because he's a dead man walking. It's just a matter of time and time is running out' ... She was a very smart woman married to a revolutionary. But she was expecting a pleasant conversation about the arts, and the reality of what I was saying hit her hard."