Slipknot’s Jay Weinberg Shares His Feelings About Playing For Bruce Springsteen And In Front Of 80k People

Slipknot drummer Jay Weinberg talked about his experience of playing with Bruce Springsteen during a recent appearance on Sweetwater.

In the conversation, Jay mentioned that his father, Max Weinberg, was playing for Springsteen and one time, he had to stand-in for his father when he was 17 years old.

While saying that it was completely surreal for him to play drums in front of 80.000 people, he also said that it was only three years after when he started to play drums.

Furthermore, Jay also stated that he was fortunate enough to be on tour with Springsteen and said that he saw how the band grew up in time as he praised the talent of the band members.

Interviewer asked:

“So what was it like, if you don’t mind me asking, going from relatively not playing drums for that long to stepping into your dad’s drum throne at the Giants Stadium? There must have been a freaking 80,000 people there. How was that, what’d that feel like?”

Here is what Jay Weinberg said:

“Completely surreal. Yeah, I was 17 so it was about three years after I had started playing drums. But those three years to me was like it was kind of like self-imposed boot camp, it was all I did.

“I quit my hockey team, I just holed up in a room and played drums all the time, it was all I cared to do, and still, it’s all I want to do. But so the circumstances that led to that point were I was the last child of the members of the band. We all kind of hover around sort of the same age, so I was kind of the last kid who never got on stage.

So I remember being nine years old and watching that, that was when the band had their reunion tour back in 1999, and I remember watching that and it blew my mind that my sister had gotten on stage with them and done that.”

He continued:

“But for me becoming a drummer, I never even considered the option that that would be in the cards for me because I’m like, ‘Well, if I’m on stage and messing up on the drums, there’s no way I could hide that, there’s no way you can just tuck that down in the mix or something if the pressure would be on.’

But my dad had an idea. He was like, ‘Well, play a song with us at soundcheck.’ And I’ve been watching them for almost 10 years at that point so all that stuff was ingrained into my subconscious from seeing them play all these songs, just night-after-night.”

Jay Weinberg added:

“I was fortunate enough to be on tour with them a lot of the time, so I’ve seen all this growing up, and so I knew a song like Born to run like the back of my hand.

And then becoming a drummer for three years, I can get by playing that song, so I got by playing it at soundcheck and that was nerve-wracking in and of itself, but then Bruce had the idea: ‘Hey, why don’t you get up and play that during the show?’

So we did that and it was all with the intent of like, ‘I never have to do that again. I can hang my cap on, I play the Giants Stadium and I never have to even do that again, I did it.'”

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