The story of how Jay Weinberg came to be in Slipknot is quite an interesting one. Of course, fans were completely shocked when Joey Jordison was dismissed from the band, but Slipknot had a new album to put out and needed to move fast.
In a new interview with his drum maker, SJC Custom Drums, Weinberg talks about his entire musical journey – including seeing Slipknot with his dad when he was a teenager. He then talks about how he went back to school and one day, a manager called him up and told him a band wanted to see him in LA, but didn't say who. Here's a transcript:
“After spending a lot of time on the road with different bands, I stopped touring entirely and went back to school. My manager, who managed this band I used to be in, calls me and says, ‘What are you doing? I have something, and I think you’d wanna do it. Can you just trust me and get out here to LA?’
“Without hesitation I was just like, ‘Yeah! Okay… I can do that.’ I didn’t know what it was for, but I knew if someone was asking me to come and play drums on something, I wanna kick the shit out of it.
“I go out there and go to this studio, and they’re like, ‘Alright, there’s a drum set. We’ll bring in Slipknot in, like, 20 minutes. That cool?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah… okay, that’s cool.’
“Just from going on muscle memory from when I was, like, 14 or 15 in my shed, we played about 20 Slipknot songs. And it was like, ‘Alright man, if you want this then it’s yours.’”
And the rest is history!
In a 2016 interview, Weinberg went into a bit more depth about what happened once he was in the room:
"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.”
In this same 2016 interview, Weinberg stressed he didn't want to be a copycat of Jordison and how much respect he had for the original Slipknot drummer:
"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.”
Here is the full SJC interview, we initially quoted:
Slipknot is on tour all summer. Here are the dates:
Fri Jul 26 – Mountain View, CA – Shoreline Amphitheatre
Sat Jul 27 – San Bernardino, CA – San Manuel Amphitheater
Thu Aug 1 – Salt Lake City, UT – USANA Amphitheatre
Sat Aug 3 – Albuquerque, NM – Isleta Amphitheater
Sun Aug 4 – Phoenix, AZ – Ak-Chin Pavilion
Tue Aug 6 – Denver, CO – Pepsi Center
Thu Aug 8 – Lincoln, NE – Pinnacle Bank Arena
Sat Aug 10 – Des Moines, IA – Iowa State Fairgrounds*
Sun Aug 11 – Tinley Park, IL – Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre
Mon Aug 12 – Clarkston, MI – DTE Energy Music Theatre
Wed Aug 14 – Virginia Beach, VA – Veterans United Home Loans Amphitheater
Fri Aug 16 – Noblesville, IN – Ruoff Home Mortgage Music Center
Sat Aug 17 – Bonner Springs, KS – Providence Medical Center Amphitheater
Sun Aug 18 – Maryland Heights, MO – Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre
Tue Aug 20 – Toronto, ON – Budweiser Stage
Wed Aug 21 – Saratoga Springs, NY – Saratoga Performing Arts Center
Fri Aug 23 – Burgettstown, PA – KeyBank Pavilion
Sat Aug 24 – Scranton, PA – The Pavilion at Montage Mountain
Sun Aug 25 – Darien Center, NY – Darien Lake Amphitheater
Tue Aug 27 – Mansfield, MA – The Xfinity Center
Wed Aug 28 – Wantagh, NY – Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater
Fri Aug 30 – Holmdel, NJ – PNC Bank Arts Center
Sat Aug 31 – Camden, NJ – BB&T Pavilion
Sun Sep 1 – Bristow, VA – Jiffy Lube Live
Tue Sep 3 – Alpharetta, GA – Ameris Bank Amphitheatre
Wed Sep 4 – Tampa, FL – MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Amphitheatre
Fri Sep 6 – Austin, TX – Austin360 Amphitheater at Circuit of The Americas
Sat Sep 7 – Dallas, TX – Dos Equis Pavilion
Sun Sep 8 – The Woodlands, TX – The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion presented by Huntsman
*Iowa State Fair – Slipknot & Gojira only
[MetalSucks via Kerrang!]
