The success of the show has prompted Steve to lobby for rock’n'roll to be accepted as a bone fide college degree course. To that end he’s fundraising for his High School Foundation project.

“We’ve been endorsed from inside the academic community which hasn’t happened before,” he reveals. “Rock’n'roll is still the last outcast. You can get curriculums on movie making or jazz but rock’n'roll has been late to the game. Bruce Springsteen, Martin Scorsese and Bono are my first three board members so it’s going to be extremely exciting.”

“I had walked away from music,” he tells me. “I couldn’t relate any more. Grunge was happening. There was a good band or two there, Pearl Jam, Kurt Cobain. But I’m strictly a rootsy guy. If I don’t hear the roots in contemporary rock’n'roll it’s irrelevant to me. In the early ’90s, I’d produced four albums in a row including a Southside Johnny reunion record. There was no reason to make a great record anymore.

The infrastructure that had supported rock’n'roll had disappeared.

“Disintegrated. There was no support. So I just walked away.”

But then I discovered this contemporary garage rock world, a bunch of young kids listening to the ’50s and ’60s again. I said, ‘I need to support this thing’.

“So I started the radio show. Then Bruce put the band back together so I went from no job to three jobs.”

“February 9, 1964, The Beatles came over and played a variety show called Ed Sullivan,” he says giving an outline history lesson.

“On February 8 there were no bands in America. On February 10, the day after the Beatles played, everybody had one. In the suburbs they rehearsed in the garages, which is where the term comes from.

“There were 10 or 12 bands in our region. The ones who were left were the true freaks, misfits and outcasts, which were basically me and Bruce. People think, ‘You were so noble hanging in there against all the odds’,” he laughs. “But that’s nonsense. We were there because we had no choice.”