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 and Suicidal Tendencies drummer Jay Weinberg.

Weinberg grew up in suburban New Jersey and began drumming at an early age. 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. 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 declined to follow O'Brien to the new Conan show. Weinberg has 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.

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.

Weinberg 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. 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."

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.