Jay Weinberg's inclusion into Slipknow was kept secret for a few months until there was just so much evidence, they couldn't deny it. Because of this fun game Slipknot played, Weinberg never had a chance to really talk about what the process was like to join his favorite band of all time. Weinberg revealed was exposed to the band at 13 when his dad, renowned drummer Max Weinberg, took him to Ozzfest, after seeing the band perform on Conan O'Brien.
A very in depth convo with Weinberg was just posted on Music Radar, and we recommend checking out the entire thing. Here are some of the highlights:
On his audition for the band:
“When I got the call I was finishing up finals for my last semester at college,” recalls Jay, by now 20 years old, “and I got a text from Slipknot’s manager who coincidentally was the manager for Against Me. He said, ‘Could you make it out to LA in three days?’ And I was back in New Jersey at this time and I was like, ‘What for?’ And he said, ‘I can’t tell you, can you make it out here?’ And I followed him down the rabbit hole – I didn’t know at all what I’d just got myself into. So I went out to LA, met the guys in the studio and it went from there.”
“I had no idea, no one had any idea, of what the band were going through, it was a complete secret, so I was one of the first people to know that the band was moving forward without Joey Jordison."
"Clown asked me, do you know any Slipknot songs? And I was like yeah, how about we start with these? And we started with ‘Before I Forget’ and ‘Duality’, those were the first songs we ever played together, and when we played those the whole vibe of the room started to change, and they were like, ‘Well, that sounded f**king awesome, do you know anything else?’
"And I was like yeah, let’s play ‘Disasterpiece’, and then we were just calling out, let’s do B-sides from the first record, let’s play ‘Get This’, and at that time it was clear that this was heading for a ‘holy s**t, this is lightning in a bottle, we’re really onto something’ kind of moment, and it just built and built.
"And my audition with Slipknot, a lot of those songs I hadn’t played along to since I was 14, just figuring out how to play drums. So a lot of my playing that day was based on muscle memory from when I was 14. It was a really wild experience, to draw from, ‘Oh maybe this is what happens in this part,’ and my muscle memory came rushing back.”
On being a part of the writing process:
“I cannot overstate how intense making the record was. I believe for the first month and a half or two months it was just Jim Root, Clown and myself with our co-producer Greg Fidelman at a studio called Sound Factory in Hollywood, and we were there for between 12 or 13 hours a day, five or six days a week, for like two months, just working on pre-production, working on arrangements.
"Man, we did just take after take after take, searching for what Clown would call ‘the sex’ in the song. When you’re playing a song 10 times in a row, and I can’t even see straight because the song is depleting all my energy, then it’s, go for 10 more, go, go and go further and further and that’s when you get the desperation, the absolute craziness that this record needed.
"And I think that comes across on the record. It was an exhaustive, thorough process, the band pushing me, like Clown and Chris Fehn would be in the room with me, tracking. They’d just be going crazy, just because of the vibe, like we’re on a Slipknot stage.
"There was so much emotion because it is such a heavy record for the band, thematically, the first record the band’s ever done without Paul Gray, without Joey Jordison – that’s a huge responsibility for the band and for myself."
On following in Joey Jordison's footsteps:
“Having a massive respect for the band’s music, having a massive respect for Joey Jordison as a person and as a player, I understood my role in needing to deliver what this band needs, and understanding what Joey brought to the table, and having this band’s legacy continue in the way that the Maggots, the fans of the band, respect, and the nine of us feeling proud of the music we’re creating.
"Of course the history of the band feeds into what I think of the band, but when it came time to come up with new material, new songs, I didn’t think about Joey Jordison one bit. And I feel it would be disrespectful to do that, and the band wanted me to be completely myself. Because why would I want to be Joey Jordison, why would I try to mimic what he’s done?
"Joey’s one of the greatest drummers we’ve ever had the privilege of witnessing. So as a fan of the band and someone who respects the people and the music, I didn’t want to come in and try to be a copycat.
"That’s not interesting to me, that’s not interesting to the band and it would be insulting to everyone involved, including the fans.”
Check out the whole interview here.
