Steve Van Zandt had an idea. Max Weinberg, the long-standing drummer of the E Street Band was double-booked, and with Conan O’Brien demanding his services for television he would have to sit out a Bruce Springsteen tour. The E Street Band needed a stand-in. Van Zandt raised his hand: what about Weinberg’s kid, Jay?
Weinberg’s kid, Jay, joining MusicRadar over Zoom, says he only found a couple of years ago that that it was the E Street Band guitarist’s suggestion that he should be the stand-in. It was a crazy idea. Max Weinberg had been in the E Street Band for decades. Jay Weinberg had only been playing drums for three years.
“I had started playing drums at 14 years old, and then at 17 years old was when I first played with them,” says Jay, now 35 years old. “It was a vertical learning curve. Steve was like, ‘What about his kid? He’s a drummer, and I’ve seen him play.’ It was funny, he told me that he told Bruce. Bruce was like, ‘Okay, that’s a wild idea – and keeps it in the family, but what are you talking about? Can he play? He’s a kid.’”
Weinberg was not as green as he looked. He had the rudiments down and applied himself behind the kit with the studied intensity of a teenage metal fan, weaning himself on Slayer, Slipknot and Mastodon. His style was a work in progress but already there were signs that he had learned much of Dave Lombardo, Joey Jordison, and Brann Dailor’s super-technical styles.
Van Zandt could see it. He told the Boss as much. Dancing In The Dark and Born In The USA were going to be easy to a kid who’s hammering away to Altar Of Sacrifice and Iron Tusk.
“Steve was like, ‘I saw this kid play once. Your music is gonna be like Mary Had A Little Lamb to this kid. He’ll be fine.’ But with that said, I had to learn decades of music,” says Jay.
He got to work. There were a lot of songs in those decades. He worked to a short-list of 200 songs, many of which he already knew. This was the music he had grown up with. He had been on tour, watching the E Street Band perform from the side of the stage, studying it, how the band interacted with Springsteen – how the Boss called the plays – not that he ever imagined that he would be the one up there behind the kit.
I’m playing along to my Slayer records. I needed to understand where Bruce’s music came from
“I loved it so much, and I respected it so much, that when I was on tour with them, I'd be just digesting everything – not like I knew I was studying because eight years later I was gonna be filling in for my dad. That was not my train of thought. But I just wanted to learn as much as I could about it.”
And so Springsteen called, Jay Weinberg took the gig – maybe took a deep breath too – then began basic training.
If there had been a practice called for that day he knew enough to “hack away at it” – no question. But this required some deep learning.
“It definitely took some some active practice on it,” says Jay. “I mean, I’m playing along to my Slayer records. I needed to understand where Bruce’s music came from; I’m not completely embodying that style yet at 17 years old, so I had to really learn where it comes from – and what are the motivations between certain stylistic choices on the drums. It took a lot.”
Springsteen notoriously likes to switch up the set and keep it fresh. He had his young drummer learning five songs a day. They would soundcheck two or three then drop them into the set. Initially, he was tag-teaming the set with his dad, building up to take on a three-and-a-half hour set on his own. “Eventually, when the Conan show rebooted as The Tonight Show, and my dad was over there, my training wheels were off, and I was playing these full marathon concerts,” he says.
But before he got that far, Springsteen needed to be sure the kid was ready. Looking back on it now, the Boss was playing the role of frontman and coach, pushing Weinberg Jr to see what he could do.
“It was a wild situation that Bruce threw me into, and I think he knew what he was doing,” says Jay. “He’s the only actual genius I’ve ever played music with. The man has his eyes on so many different aspects of performance, and in a way coaching and motivating people. I’ve never met anybody who motivates quite like Bruce does, in unspoken ways.
“He was able to take a frightened 17, 18-year-old and make it so it was chill, and so I was able to go on and do it. He wanted it to go well, obviously. He didn't want this, you know, tour to be a bust, so he had ways of coaching me forward and pushing my abilities in ways where he knew how to get the best out of me.”
One particular night in Philadelphia stands out. This was the final test. It was an arena show at the Spectrum. The band had a lot of history there. Max Weinberg would be handling most of the set. Jay was scheduled to step up during the encore.
Springsteen announced that they would be closing the set with Kitty’s Back from his 1973 sophomore album, The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle. Jay knew the song but had never played it before – and he only had until the encore to learn it.
“It’s very, very complex. It’s not Dancing In The Dark, which is, like, one drumbeat the entire way,” he says. “This has jazz-influenced accents, and wild changes, and a swing shuffle beat – and it meanders through all these different styles. I had never sat down to the drums to actually play it, and I think Bruce knew that.”
Luckily, the set was long. There were a few hours yet to get it all mapped out. That’s not to see there wasn’t panic this whole time. It’s the set closer, they’ll probably stretch it out a bit, jam on it, and there’s a sold-out arena waiting.
“I know how complicated it is. I’m freaking out, knowing that there’s this expectation, just doing this crash course on the song,” says Jay. “I’m backstage with my headphones and writing out my charts of how to remember the changes of the songs.”
A penny for Springsteen’s thoughts? They would have been elsewhere. He knew it was going to be okay, or else he wouldn’t have called the tune.
“I got up to the drum set,” says Jay. “I tape that [chart] to my floor tom. I think we played a couple songs in the encore, and then went into Kitty’s Back, and luckily it went well. But I was deathly afraid because it was an iconic song from way back in Bruce’s catalogue to mark this iconic moment of playing a venue they’ve been playing for decades, that was to be torn down. I needed to hit the moment. That was a huge, huge moment – super difficult – but it went well.”
When you feel like you’ve reached that place of consistency and flow, there are more ways to push yourself
Jay Weinberg has scarcely taken a beat since, teaming up with NYC hardcore stalwarts Madball, with Against Me!, replacing the late Joey Jordison in Slipknot, playing with Suicidal Tendencies, then he has his solo project(s) and a new album with Massachusetts death metal ragers Fuming Mouth, The Ringing Bell, out now.
But the lessons from the Boss and that 2009 E Street Band tour haven’t left him.
“He would just ramp it up in intensity," says Jay. "That was very meaningful, him demonstrating to me that you should never be satisfied. When you feel like you’ve reached that place of consistency and flow, there are more ways to push yourself and keep ascending to whatever that abstract thing that we’re all chasing is.”
