Jay Weinberg: “It was Little Steven who made me play with Springsteen”

In December 2008, the 18-year-old Jay Weinberg he was going to school in New Jersey accompanied by his father, Max, when Bruce Springsteen called him to speak to him. Among other things, the Boss told Jay, “Maybe you heard I have a band. That band has the best drummer in the world, but he’s got a commitment. He gave me your name and number and suggested I call you to see if you’d be interested in playing with me and the E Street Band.”

The best drummer in the world that Bruce was referring to was, of course Max WeinbergJay’s father. While the commitment he was involved in was that of band leader of the television program Tonight Show with Conan O’Brienso he was unable to attend all of Springsteen’s world tour dates in support of the album “Working On A Dream” (read the review here).

As he says today, in an interview granted to Rolling Stone, Jay Weinbergwas the guitarist of And Street Band, Steve Van Zandt aka Little Stevento advise Springsteen to rely on a family member when choosing a new drummer. “Steve had seen me play at Handsome Dick Manitoba’s, a bar on the Lower East Side of New York, with my high school band. I had been playing for a couple of years and we were very inspired by Mastodon and Slayer, incredibly complex music for teenagers at the time. As they were trying to work out this scheduling problem, he said to Bruce, ‘How about Max’s son? I saw him playing this crazy music in a bar. He knows us. We know him. He grew up with us. Trust me, the music they like will make your songs sound like ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’.”

“That was Steve’s proposal,” he continues to explain Jay Weinberg. “They consulted my father, seeing as it was about his role in the band. And he said something like, ‘That might be a good idea.’ The important thing was that it stayed in the family. Then there’s Jake Clemons, who’s been playing in the band for over a decade. Keeping it in the family is very important to them and to Bruce. Going into the challenge, I knew I couldn’t afford to neglect the E Street Band experience. Bruce, without even speaking, was able to guiding and orienting myself in that musical world was all new to me before. I had never played in front of more than 50 people.”

That was the baptism of fire for Jay Weinberg who then became one of the best drummers on the market playing with Madball, Against Me!, Hesitation Wounds And Slipknot. In 2023 Weinberg, now 35, was unexpectedly fired from Slipknot and now play with Suicidal Tendencies And Infectious Grooves.