Montclair’s Warren Zanes: Performer and Professor of Rock and Roll

Last week as I was chauffeuring my almost nine-year-old son home from piano lessons I heard Billy Joel’s Piano Man on the radio. I belted out the lyrics (isn’t the song one big sing-along?), while tears streamed down my face because I haven’t heard the song in such a long time. Welcome to 40. Music from the proms and parties I attended in the 1980s are now being played on the oldies station. So, when my editor asked me to interview Warren Zanes (https://www.warren-zanes.com/), former guitarist for the Del Fuegos, a rock and roll band that got some airplay in the 80s on MTV—the touchstone to my youth—I jumped at the chance.

This New Year’s Eve, Zanes, 46, of Montclair, will “mix up a buffet table” of songs from his three solo CDs, I Want To Move Out In The Daylight (“my divorce album”); People That I’m Wrong For; and Memory Girls, (possibly) songs from the del Fuego albums (he has invited brother Dan Zanes, the Grammy Award-winning musician/songwriter of children’s music and former front man for the Del Fuegos), along with “real rock and roll band stuff” at First Night Montclair 2012. He has also invited Montclair residents producer/performer Don Fleming and musician/song writer and WFMU radio host Michael Shelley to join the line-up.

“I don’t play a lot of shows because I’ve got my job, my writing; I’ve got my kids (two elementary school-aged sons, Lucian and Piero),” says Zanes, sitting at his dining room table. “I love doing it — I’ve done just a few solo shows recently — but I don’t do it a lot. But I’ve really been wanting to do it in Montclair. I was very happy when they brought the idea to me.”

Zanes’ street cred as a rocker and his passion for rock and roll have led to opportunities in academia, as well as in the music and literary worlds. “I’ve always emphasized that I’ve never gotten the jobs I applied for. But I’ve gotten jobs and I think every one I applied for meant something in relation to the ones that came,” says Zanes.

The jobs he’s gotten include vice president of education and programs at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, visiting professor at Case Western Reserve University and teaching jobs at other universities, interviewer of people who knew George Harrison for director Martin Scorsese’s 2011 documentary on Harrison’s life and author of books on Warner Bros. Records and the American South called Dusty in Memphis.

Rocker Tom Petty read the latter and liked it so much, it inspired him to write the song, Down South, which appears on his Highway Companion album. This led to Zanes editing a coffee table book about director Peter Bogdanovich’s documentary on Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers and other related projects. In 2008, he joined Steven Van Zandt’s Rock and Roll Forever Foundation as executive director after impressing the musician with his in-depth research on him in preparation for his interview at the Hall of Fame.

All this on top of a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester and two master’s degrees (from the University of Rochester and the University of Wisconsin at Madison). He received his bachelor’s degree from Loyola University after leaving the Del Fuegos.

During his time at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum for approximately four years in the 90s, Zanes conducted educational programs in schools, including Case Western Reserve University as a visiting professor, interviewed musicians Stewart Copeland, Robbie Robertson, Mick Jones from the Clash, Robert Plant and Steven Van Zandt in front of a live audience and coordinated events honoring Buddy Holly, Leadbelly, Sam Cooke and Jerry Lee Lewis.

Zanes has used his experience in music and academic background to help shape the history of rock and roll curriculum for Van Zandt’s foundation, which is conducting a pilot program in New York City. At some point, Zanes says he plans to bring pilot programs to New Jersey, New York and to some areas around the country.

“There are many reasons why kids need to know the history of rock and roll,” Zanes explains. “One big reason is that it is youth-driven. I can’t bring American and European painting to them. I can’t bring American and European literature to them and expect them to think it’s theirs. They are not going to read Balzac and say ‘I am Balzac!’ But, if I’m telling them the story of rock and roll, I’m telling them the story of youth culture — it’s alive and it’s been advanced the most by s—kickers out on the margin. Elvis Presley was a marginal character. Johnny Lydon — marginal character; Grandmaster Flash — marginal character. Over and over again, it’s these young people out on the margins who are the innovators.

The race part of the story is also huge because something different is happening in the music culture than is happening in mainstream culture. Early 1950s, you’ve got young white people who are breaking away from the family console and are able to be their own tastemakers with their transistor radios rather than listening to whatever — Mystery Theater or Bing Crosby. So they are flipping this dial around and they’ve found this black station. Something is happening in a collective sense of connecting with a culture that’s not their own and it’s black culture….There is your first crossing of the color line—it’s not a physical, but a mental, spiritual crossing of the color lines that’s going to change a lot of things.”

So, what is the future of rock and roll, Dr. Zanes? “It’s gonna do what it did before. It’s some kid not visible to our eyes who’s gonna create something in the basement with a laptop. It’s gonna be too cool to resist and it’s gonna shape things.”