POINT BLANK
THE MAX WEINBERG INTERVIEW
"The best thing about the E Street Band was we had the best lead singer around"
Hit it Max! Exclusive interview with Max Weinberg
© Salvador Trepat
(It is forbidden
to copy or reproduce this interview without permission)
Published in Point Blank Magazine #4 (April 1994). This is an extract of the interview we had with Max Weinberg in Red Bank, NJ on June 24th 1993. The original interview (much much longer) is available in #4 of the magazine.
Max: (Talking about the concert in Barcelona in 1981) I remember the long boulevard in the center, what was it called?... Yeah, Ramblas! We were in a hotel at the end of town, a long building looking like the Hilton.
PB: Princesa Sofía
Right. I also remember that during the soundcheck the lights of the house went off and we were afraid we would not be able to play that night. Finally, the lights were on again after five minutes. I remember some years later we played there the last show of the Tunnel of Love tour, it was a great show. We were in that hotel near Ramblas
You met Bruce on the audition day, didn't you? What I know is that you played 'Let the Four Winds Blow'. What happened at that audition?
I met Bruce before the audition. No one
has ever asked me this question. I actually met Bruce in April of
1974, which was about four months before the audition. I was in a
band that was opening for him at a college in North Jersey. I
watched his set and his band. At that band there was David
Sancious and Boom Carter and it was the night after he met Jon
Landau [Monmouth
College, West Long Branch, NJ April 18,1974. Ed.], and I went over to him and I introduced myself
and I said I enjoyed his music and that was it.
And then I saw the ad in the paper and I auditioned in August of
74. It was really wonderful, it was like love at first sight. I
think he auditioned 60 drummers. We did play 'Let the Four Winds
Blow' and that was the song years, years later I asked Bruce why
he chose me and he said that we played this one particular song
and in the middle... at that point he was trying to get more
into, you know, interaction with the band onstage stuff, you
know, cues, stops, the kind of dramatic stuff he does onstage.
What he was really looking for was a drummer who could play and
improvise but also pay attention.
So he cued the band and then the band stopped and then he threw
out his hand like that and I hit the snare drum, and he said that
was the moment he knew that I was the guy because, he said, a lot
of drummers stopped but I was the only one who hit the snare drum
when he gave the cue, which means I was watching which is what he
needed.
Did you rehearse a lot before you went on tour?
Initially we rehearsed for about 10 days, about 10 hours a day, before the first tour that Roy and I did in the fall of 74. We had three hours of music to learn, so we did rehearse a lot. That was the most we ever rehearsed.
(....)
How did the lawsuit against Appel affect the band on those days?
It created a tremendous solidarity and inner strenght in all of us, individually and as a band. We felt that it was all of us against them, so to speak, and it really pulled the band together.
(...)
Seen from the audience you're always the most hidden member of the band. People usually pay more attention to the guitar player than to the drummer.
Just remember in a football team who snaps the ball to the quarterback. You never see his face, you only can see his head, but until he snaps his ball to the quarterback the game doesn't start. And people in bands know that, I never cared about that anyway. That's what a great band is, you need a guy up-front. The best thing about the E Street Band was we had the best lead singer around. That's the big problem in most bands.You can have a great rhythm section but if you don't have a front guy who's great... think of the great bands you know: Bono is great, Mick Jagger is fantastic, Robert Plant -great frontman, and Bruce... so you need that.
(....)
Were you involved in the creative process of the songs, or did everything come from Bruce, the arrangements...?
Oh, no, absolutely, we all were. We would just play. If you listen to the songs, from Darkness on they got very simple in terms of arrangement. The music was there to support the words as opposed to the first two records, even Born to Run which was very arranged. So from Darkness, The River and Born in the USA was just basically sit up and play, jam, that's what it was. He had the songs but we tried different ways, it was pretty basic. He wouldn't really tell you what to do, if you did something he didn't like he would tell you 'no, that's not great, don't do that here'. He gave the keyboard players a lot of stuff, you know, 'play this riff, do it like this' and he'd show them what to play.
"I'd say the peak of the recording experience was Born in the USA where we just knocked everything out and it sounded great"
Did they have to play it exactly as he said?
Pretty much. With the rhythm section he was very... as long as it felt OK he didn't really care what I played. On those 3 records... Born to Run was very arranged, almost every single beat, on everybody's part. And I wasn't on the first two records. Tunnel of Love, which I was pretty much the only one on for most of the record, again what happened was he recorded the whole thing with the drum machine and it just didn't feel right so he got me come in and replace the drum machine, which worked real well. I'd say the peak of the recording experience in terms of the band really playing great was Born in the USA where we just knocked everything out and it sounded great.
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