app.com article - APMFF: Max Weinberg on the joy of the E Street Band

Max Weinberg doesn’t need a pair of drum sticks in his hands to entertain an audience. A microphone will do just fine.

Weinberg, drummer for the Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band will be on stage  in “A Conversation with Max Weinberg,” as part of the Asbury Park Music and Film Festival at 4:45 p.m. April 22 at the House of Independents in Asbury Park.

Weinberg will be interviewed by Bob Santelli, a Point Pleasant Beach native who is the executive director of the Grammy Museum.

“I really like public speaking, and the questions and answers that come out of that,” said Weinberg, who started a one-man public speaking show called “Growing Up on E Street” in 1986. “I’ve done a few (events) with Bob (Santelli). Bob is the greatest interviewer there is.  He is a historian and I tend to try to have a historical perspective on the music I’ve been involved in and the music I learned how to play from.”

Among Weinberg's recent events was a kids drummers clinic at the Lakehouse Music Academy in Asbury Park in January.

“They’re incredibly enthusiastic and they’re also really good players, these young kids, and that’s what it’s all about,” said Weinberg of the Lakehouse music students. 

The Asbury Park Music and Film Festival, presented by RWJ Barnabas Health and the Asbury Park Press, raises funds for the music programs of the Asbury Park Music Foundation, housed at the Lakehouse, which serves the kids of Asbury Park and the surrounding area.

“It’s particularly important with the tragic and extensive cuts in arts programs across the country," Weinberg said.  "They’re just eliminating all sorts of arts programs, particularly music, left and right, so it is left up to facilities like Lakehouse and parents to pick up the slack. They’re doing marvelous job down there.”

Weinberg is on break from his duties with the E Street Band, which just wrapped up a tour of Australia and New Zealand, but that certainly doesn’t mean he has nothing to do. Weinberg has speaking engagements, concerts with the multiple music groups he leads, and he often plays with members of Asbury Park’s Beatles-inspired combo, the Weeklings.

“When we play together, sometimes it’s the Weeklings, occasionally it’s just me and (Weeklings members) Bob Burger, Glen Burtnik and John Merjave, but (drummer) Joe Bellia, he’s a fantastic drummer and he’s a busy guy, too, so when I play with them, it’s not the Weeklings and we play a variety of everything, from the Beatles to Bruce to the Stones,” Weinberg said.

“What I do now, the audience makes up the set list and these guys, they know every song – every record, and I give the audience a list to pick from. We did a club last week, a fabulous place in Evanston, Illinois called Space, and there was a list on a video behind me, and people would just call out a song. It was wild, it was really fun. It could be anything from Tommy James to the Yardbirds, you name it, they’re all on the list.”

Max Weinberg performs onstage at The 2013 MusiCares Person Of The Year Gala Honoring Bruce Springsteen at Los Angeles Convention Center on February 8, 2013 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo: Kevork Djansezian, Getty Images)

 

Mighty Max Weinberg of South Orange joined the E Street Band in 1974 after an open audition and he became the foundation of the group, combining an explosive ferocity with an expert touch of style and finesse. He became a TV  star, too – he’s got great comedic timing –  on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” and “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien” when the E Street Band was disbanded in the '90s.

Weinberg, 66, surmounted a few health scares in recent years, heart surgery and prostate cancer, but the E Street Band’s four-hour concerts this past summer in New Jersey and Philadelphia show that he’s as mighty as ever, and at the pinnacle of his profession.

“This is the best time in my life,” Weinberg said.

Jay is the drummer for the hard rock band Slipknot, and Ali is a reporter for ABC News.

“I’m fortunate to have a 27-year-old son who still exposes me to new bands,” said Weinberg, who lives in Florida with his wife, Rebecca.  “Neurosis, Blink-182, we saw everybody and it was great. That part of my relationship with my son was priceless. We’d go to Starland (Ballroom in Sayreville) all the time and Jay started jamming in and around Asbury Park and meeting with the Bouncing Souls. They were the first band he ever played with – at Asbury Lanes – and it was a phenomenal bonding experience.

My daughter as well – Ali – is a great musician but she’s chosen to be a journalist. She has a musician’s heart and an artist’s way of doing things.”

Jay  filled in for his dad on the E Street Band’s 2009  “Working on a Dream” tour when Weinberg had TV commitments. Ali, an accordionist, was the first E Street offspring to play with the E Street Band.

Ali is a digital journalist who covers foreign policy and national security.  

Weinberg and the E Street Band made news when Springsteen proclaimed them to be part of “new American resistance” to the presidency of Donald Trump during a January 22 show in Perth, Australia. Springsteen said the band was against the administration’s “hate and division and in support of tolerance, inclusion, reproductive rights, civil rights, racial justice, LGBTQ rights, the environment, wage equality, gender equality, healthcare, and immigrant rights.”

Weinberg supports Springsteen’s stance.

“It was outrageous what went on in January,” Weinberg said. “The news reports were humiliating and I thought Bruce handled it perfectly.”

“It’s just really shocking – really, really shocking – what has become of our government, our political system and how P.T. Barnum was proven right. I think that over the first 100 days, it’s been proven right. There’s a lot of buyer’s remorse.”

There’s no remorse on Weinberg’s part for the career path he took.

“The  hardest thing in the world to do is to get good songs and a dynamic frontman, in terms of that, I hit the lottery 43 years ago,” Weinberg said. “The E Street Band is such a unique group of musicians, unique people, I love them all dearly, terribly miss Clarence (Clemons) and Danny (Federici) – we all do – but it’s a living, breathing thing. I was fortunate. I do consider myself very lucky. Seventeen years on television, which is certainly a lifetime on television, and that was a great gig, fabulous. I have lived out –  except for taking Ringo’s place in the Beatles – every fantasy I ever had about what I  might do with whatever talent God gave me.”