Long before Bruce Springsteen became America’s self-appointed rock-and-roll political conscience, a younger, jazzier drummer named Vini Lopez was laying down the beats that made it all possible.
These days, Lopez — the original E Street Band drummer, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, and current frontman of The Wonderful Winos — is watching his former bandmate’s political crusade from a comfortable distance in Largo, Florida, and he has thoughts.
Springsteen’s ongoing “Land of Hope and Dreams” tour has become less a concert series and more a rolling political rally, with the New Jersey rock icon labeling President Donald Trump’s White House “corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless and treasonous” and branding the commander-in-chief “our wannabe king.”
Lopez, now 77, isn’t buying the approach.
“You gotta have respect for the president,” Lopez told The Post plainly.
That is not the statement of a man hedging his words. Lopez went further, leaving no room for interpretation.
“Trump is the president of the United States — everyone should have respect for him,” he said.
He painted a picture of how he personally would handle a face-to-face encounter with the president. “He is the president of the United States. And if I was standing there talking to him, I would have mucho respect for the man,” Lopez said — before adding with a chuckle that he “wouldn’t talk to him about anything that’s going on” politically.
It is a philosophy that extends to his stage as well. Unlike Springsteen, who has transformed his concerts into a venue for political messaging, Lopez keeps The Wonderful Winos strictly in the business of music.
“My band, whatever we think, we don’t go there in our music,” he said.
Lopez’s history with Springsteen dates back to the very beginning. He played on “Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.,” the 1973 debut album that launched Springsteen toward superstardom. The pairing eventually ran its course — Lopez acknowledged he was “too jazzy for what [Springsteen] wanted to do” — but the bond between the two New Jersey lifers never fully dissolved.
Lopez has since played with roughly 30 musical groups across his career. He has voted Republican up and down the ballot, from City Council to Congress, though he is quick to distance himself from the sharper edges of political identity.
He also has a Trump story of his own — one that predates the rallies, the campaigns, and all the noise.
Years of caddying on golf courses eventually landed Lopez at Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey, club, where a chance meeting with the future president left an impression. Lopez shook his hand knowing full well where Trump stood politically, and the interaction was warm.
“He was very nice to me. He was very inquisitive and introduced me to Melania,” Lopez recalled.
As the drummer headed out the door that day, Trump stopped him with a request that now reads almost like a historical footnote.
“Tell Bruce I’m his biggest fan,” Lopez said Trump told him.
That goodwill has since curdled publicly. Trump has called for a full Springsteen boycott and taken to calling the rocker a “dried-up prune.” Springsteen, for his part, has not let up, targeting what he calls Trump’s “rogue government” at every tour stop.
Lopez occupies an unusual middle position — a Republican voter who still defends his former bandmate’s right to say exactly what he is saying.
“I am not against what Bruce is saying now,” Lopez said.
What Lopez is against is the broader fracturing that political combat produces. He described watching the country’s divisions with a weariness that comes from seven decades of living.
“Maybe when I was 20, I was a little more extreme, but I’m 77 now, so the extremities are gone,” he said. “It’s so divided, the political part. It’s a tough one on me.”
He still holds out hope. “I would love to see something good come out,” Lopez said of the Trump administration’s policy direction.
Meanwhile, the friendship between Lopez and Springsteen quietly persists. Lopez described their current relationship as “perfect,” built on sporadic phone calls and the unspoken shorthand of men who built something together long ago.
“If he wants me to do something, he’ll call me,” Lopez said. “Sometimes it’s just because he hasn’t seen me for a while.”
The calls, however, are increasingly carrying heavier news. “Most of the time it’s terrible when I call him because it’s when one of our crew died and he doesn’t know that,” Lopez said. “That’s happening more and more.”
Lopez skipped the current tour but attended a Springsteen show in Philadelphia a few years back. He slipped in quietly, found a spot in the corner, and watched the man he helped launch become the spectacle he is today.
“I don’t even think he knew I was there,” Lopez said.
