{"id":822887,"date":"2026-07-24T10:52:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T10:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/822887\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T10:52:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T10:52:18","slug":"jay-weinberg-on-what-he-learned-from-bruce-springsteen-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/822887\/","title":{"rendered":"Jay Weinberg on what he learned from Bruce Springsteen test"},"content":{"rendered":"

Steve Van Zandt<\/a> had an idea. Max Weinberg, the long-standing drummer of the E Street Band was double-booked, and with Conan O\u2019Brien demanding his services for television he would have to sit out a Bruce Springsteen<\/a> tour. The E Street Band needed a stand-in. Van Zandt raised his hand: what about Weinberg\u2019s kid, Jay?<\/p>\n

Weinberg\u2019s kid, Jay, joining MusicRadar over Zoom, says he only found a couple of years ago that that it was the E Street Band guitarist\u2019s 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<\/a> for three years.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI had started playing drums at 14 years old, and then at 17 years old was when I first played with them,\u201d says Jay, now 35 years old. \u201cIt was a vertical learning curve. Steve was like, \u2018What about his kid? He\u2019s a drummer, and I\u2019ve seen him play.\u2019 It was funny, he told me that he told Bruce. Bruce was like, \u2018Okay, that\u2019s a wild idea \u2013 and keeps it in the family, but what are you talking about? Can he play? He\u2019s a kid.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Latest Videos From\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

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\u2019s super-technical styles.<\/p>\n

Van Zandt could see it. He told the Boss<\/a> as much. Dancing In The Dark and Born In The USA were going to be easy to a kid who\u2019s hammering away to Altar Of Sacrifice and Iron Tusk.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSteve was like, \u2018I saw this kid play once. Your music is gonna be like Mary Had A Little Lamb to this kid. He\u2019ll be fine.\u2019 But with that said, I had to learn decades of music,\u201d says Jay.<\/p>\n

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\"Jay\n<\/p>\n

Jay Weinberg and Bruce Springsteen perform at Pinkpop in 2009. (Image credit: Didier Messens\/Redferns)<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 how the Boss called the plays \u2013 not that he ever imagined that he would be the one up there behind the kit.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m playing along to my Slayer records. I needed to understand where Bruce\u2019s music came from<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved it so much, and I respected it so much, that when I was on tour with them, I’d be just digesting everything \u2013 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so Springsteen called, Jay Weinberg took the gig \u2013 maybe took a deep breath too \u2013 then began basic training.<\/p>\n

If there had been a practice called for that day he knew enough to \u201chack away at it\u201d \u2013 no question. But this required some deep learning.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt definitely took some some active practice on it,\u201d says Jay. \u201cI mean, I\u2019m playing along to my Slayer records. I needed to understand where Bruce\u2019s music came from; I\u2019m not completely embodying that style yet at 17 years old, so I had to really learn where it comes from \u2013 and what are the motivations between certain stylistic choices on the drums. It took a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band – Racing in the Street (Live at The Paramount Theatre 2009) – YouTube
\n\"Bruce<\/p>\n

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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. \u201cEventually, 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,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a wild situation that Bruce threw me into, and I think he knew what he was doing,\u201d says Jay. \u201cHe\u2019s the only actual genius I\u2019ve 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\u2019ve never met anybody who motivates quite like Bruce does, in unspoken ways.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band – Badlands (London Calling: Live In Hyde Park, 2009) – YouTube
\n\"Bruce<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

Springsteen announced that they would be closing the set with Kitty\u2019s Back from his 1973 sophomore album, The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle. Jay knew the song but had never played it before \u2013 and he only had until the encore to learn it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very, very complex. It\u2019s not Dancing In The Dark, which is, like, one drumbeat the entire way,\u201d he says. \u201cThis has jazz-influenced accents, and wild changes, and a swing shuffle beat \u2013 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Luckily, the set was long. There were a few hours yet to get it all mapped out. That\u2019s not to see there wasn\u2019t panic this whole time. It\u2019s the set closer, they\u2019ll probably stretch it out a bit, jam on it, and there\u2019s a sold-out arena waiting.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know how complicated it is. I\u2019m freaking out, knowing that there\u2019s this expectation, just doing this crash course on the song,\u201d says Jay. \u201cI\u2019m backstage with my headphones and writing out my charts of how to remember the changes of the songs.\u201d<\/p>\n

A penny for Springsteen\u2019s thoughts? They would have been elsewhere. He knew it was going to be okay, or else he wouldn\u2019t have called the tune.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got up to the drum set,\u201d says Jay. \u201cI tape that [chart] to my floor tom. I think we played a couple songs in the encore, and then went into Kitty\u2019s Back, and luckily it went well. But I was deathly afraid because it was an iconic song from way back in Bruce\u2019s catalogue to mark this iconic moment of playing a venue they\u2019ve been playing for decades, that was to be torn down. I needed to hit the moment. That was a huge, huge moment \u2013 super difficult \u2013 but it went well.\u201d<\/p>\n

When you feel like you\u2019ve reached that place of consistency and flow, there are more ways to push yourself<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But the lessons from the Boss and that 2009 E Street Band tour haven\u2019t left him.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe 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\u2019ve reached that place of consistency and flow, there are more ways to push yourself and keep ascending to whatever that abstract thing that we\u2019re all chasing is.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Steve Van Zandt had an idea. Max Weinberg, the long-standing drummer of the E Street Band was double-booked,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":822888,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":["post-822887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=822887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/822888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=822887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=822887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=822887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}