Max Weinberg

Max Weinberg (born April 13, 1951) is an American drummer and television personality, most widely known as the longtime drummer for Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band and as the bandleader for Conan O'Brien on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien.

He is the father of former Slipknot drummer Jay Weinberg.

Weinberg grew up in suburban New Jersey and began drumming at an early age.

Weinberg was born on April 13, 1951, to a Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey, to parents Bertram Weinberg, an attorney, and Ruth Weinberg, a high school physical education teacher.

He has three sisters, Patty, Nancy and Abby.

He grew up in Newark as well as in the neighboring suburban towns of South Orange and Maplewood.

The young Max was exposed to music early on, attending Broadway shows weekly from the age of two and liking the big sound put forth by the pit orchestras.

He then liked the rhythms of country and western music.

He knew he wanted to be a drummer from the age of five, when he saw Elvis Presley and his drummer, D. J. Fontana, appear on The Milton Berle Show in April 1956.

Decades later, Weinberg said, "I think anybody who wanted to develop a life in rock 'n' roll music had a moment. That was my moment," and Fontana became a major influence on him.

Weinberg received a child's conga drum from his father after he watched a TV show featuring bandleader Xavier Cugat.

When the British Invasion hit in 1964, the Beatles and their drummer, Ringo Starr, became a huge influence on Weinberg.

He began playing in local New Jersey rock bands, playing the music of The Rolling Stones, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, and The Young Rascals.

While a member of The Epsilons, he played at the 1964 New York World's Fair.

He attended Columbia High School in Maplewood; there he knew Leigh Howard Stevens, who would become a famous percussionist in his own right.

Weinberg graduated from Columbia High in 1969.

Another band he was in, Blackstone, recorded an eponymous album for Epic Records in 1970.

Weinberg first attended Adelphi University, and later Seton Hall University, majoring in film studies.

His general goal was to become a lawyer, but he was still most viscerally interested in a music career and kept his drum set in his car in case any chances to play arose.

He attended college planning to be a lawyer but got his big break in music in 1974 when he won an audition to become the drummer for Springsteen.

Weinberg became a mainstay of Springsteen's long concert performances.

Weinberg has also acknowledged The Ventures as a major influence on him in a TV interview in 1988 to celebrate that band's 30th anniversary and he actually sat in on drums during the performances.

Weinberg started playing at the age of six.

His first public appearance came at the age of seven when he sat in on a bar mitzvah band playing "When the Saints Go Marching In".

The bandleader, Herbie Zane, was the leading act for bar mitzvahs and weddings in the area; he was impressed with young Weinberg and brought him along on other engagements as a kind of novelty act.

Weinberg thus became a local child star, drumming in a three-piece mohair suit.

He gained an appreciation for showmanship and was a fan of Liberace and Sammy Davis, Jr. He grew to idolize drummer Buddy Rich and become a fan of Gene Krupa and saw drummer Ed Shaughnessy of Doc Severinsen's band on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson as having an ideal job as well as admiring the level of playing and serious sartorial style of the Tonight Show musicians.

Weinberg stayed with Zane until junior high school and learned rhythms such as cha-chas, merengues, polkas, and the hora and playing everything from Dixieland jazz to Acker Bilk's "Stranger on the Shore".

Weinberg attended Temple Sharey Tefilo-Israel, a Reform Judaism congregation in South Orange, where he was inspired by a local rabbi and had what he later described as "a wonderful Jewish background."

He would later say that the Jewish concept of seder, meaning order, became key to his vision of how a good drummer serves his band's music.

Witnessing his father lose two summer camps in The Poconos impressed upon him the fragility of economic success and led to a strong work ethic.

His father's financial setbacks also provided a reason for Weinberg to find steady work as a drummer, while still in his teens and attending high school, to help his family pay bills.

Springsteen dissolved the band in 1989, and Weinberg spent several years considering a law career and trying the business end of the music industry before deciding he wanted to continue with drumming.

In 1993, Weinberg got the role as bandleader of The Max Weinberg 7 for Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

Weinberg's drums-driven jump blues sound and his role as a comic foil prospered along with the show, giving him a second career.

In 1999, Springsteen re-formed the E Street Band for a series of tours and albums; Weinberg worked out an arrangement that allowed him to play with both O'Brien and Springsteen.

In 2009, Weinberg moved to the short-lived Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien as leader of Max Weinberg and The Tonight Show Band.

Upon that program's conclusion, Weinberg was not invited to follow O'Brien to the new Conan show.

Weinberg continued playing with Springsteen, and in 2014 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the E Street Band.

In a 2020 article in The Wall Street Journal, Weinberg described the drum as having a "... a real calfskin head and a white strap. I played it all over the house."