Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - The Beatlology Interviews: Springsteen Drummer (and Beatles fan) Max Weinberg

Episode Date: September 2, 2024

In this interview, Max talks about his favourite Beatle albums, Ringo’s profound influence on rock drummers, and what happened onstage at a Springsteen concert the night Lennon was murdered. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus. They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them. Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s. I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh. I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,

who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion, who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such a success. And please, do me a favor, follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan, you just have to love storytelling.

Subscribe now, and don't miss a single beat. This is an apostrophe podcast production. This is an apostrophe podcast production. Beatleology. I hear the... I hear the... I hear the... I hear the... Beetleology. Back in the late 90s, I was a co-founder of a magazine called Beetleology.

It was a magazine dedicated to beetle fans and collectors. We talked to top collectors around the world in auction houses, as well as celebrity collectors and people who knew and worked with the Beatles. Those interviews stayed in my office drawer for 25 years. So we thought it would be interesting to dust them off. In 1999, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were on a reunion tour. The band hadn't played together live since 1988 when Bruce broke up the band so he could pursue a decade of solo work. But in 1999 and spilling into the year 2000,

Bruce got the band back together. He said it was more of a revival than a reunion. And on May 3rd and 4th in the year 2000, Springsteen and the E Street Band played two nights in Toronto. On the 3rd, I interviewed drummer Max Weinberg. We had heard through the grapevine that Max was a big Beatles fan

and a bit of a collector. So, we agreed to meet at the Four Seasons Hotel in Yorkville, where the band was staying. We sat in a corner booth of the Four Seasons bar for the interview. A funny thing happened that I have to tell you about. We were sitting next to a big window, and fans were pressing their faces up against the glass, waving at Max, trying to get his attention, for the entire 40 minutes we were together. Unlike me, Max never got distracted by it at all. He took it all in stride and focused completely on our conversation.

When Max and I first sat down, the conversation naturally turned to Ringo's drums. The reason Ringo played Ludwig was Ludwig did not have a European distributor in the early 60s. You probably know this. They didn't have

a European distributor and the biggest drum set in England was Premiere. They were an English drum set. So to play a Ludwig set of drums in England in the 60s was a major deal, because you couldn't get them there. They were highly desirable because they were rare. It was an American drum set, you know? And it wasn't that popular. The most popular drummers were American drummers. The most popular drum sets made in America at that time were Slingerland, Rogers, and Ludwig was mainly a marching band, you know. And when Ringo showed up on the Ed Sullivan Show with Ludwig across the

space track, their sales went through the roof, you know. But it was because it was a hard-to-get drum set in England. It was not hard to get here. I asked Max when the Beatles first appeared on his radar when he was a kid. The first time I became aware of the Beatles was in late November 63. I guess it was about maybe 10 days after President Kennedy was assassinated. A classmate of mine returned from England, family trip, and brought singles of She Loves You. And at that time, I was a major Beach Boys fan and continue to be a major Beach Boys fan. But she played me this single, and I loved the sound.

I thought it was fantastic. I was in a band. I'd been in bands for a few years at that point. I was 12, but I'd been playing since I was 6, in bands since I was about 9. And we played Ventures material, which was surf music, instrumental, because it was hard to sing, you know. Never attempted anything challenging in a vocal sense.

But I loved the sound. And then, you know, the first week of February, you heard that this group was going to be on Ed Sullivan. And as soon as I saw it, that was it. That was it. I immediately related to Ringo. Being a drummer, being in the back, I could play in that style

already without even knowing it. And, you know, I just was like radar hooked on to Ringo. And I initially became a drummer because I saw DJ Fontana with Elvis Presley. And that was on the Milton Berle show in 56. And, you know, that was the first time I really wanted to be a drummer. And I started taking lessons. By the time the Beatles came around, I was already playing for four or five years, so I could play. But that put me in a direction. In fact, I've said this to Ringo, you know, well, I saw you doing it, and I figured, well, I could do that too. I didn't mean it in the sense that it was so easy anybody could do it. But I meant it in my pre-teen innocence that, you know, why not?

You could be in a band and end up on TV. So I put all my energies in that direction at that time. Mark Hudson, of the Hudson Brothers fame, and producer of many of Ringo's solo albums, once told me that when he saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan that night, they looked like aliens from another planet. I was interested to know if Max felt the same way. No, I didn't really. I'd been very plugged into show business very early on in my life from my mother, who was a Broadway fanatic, Broadway musicals. So to me, they looked very normal. I mean, they were in suits,

which was something that, you know, as I said, I've been playing for four or five years. I always wore a suit when I played, so that wasn't unusual. And their haircut we'd seen with Moe from the Three Stooges. Hilarious. Yeah, it wasn't that unusual to see somebody with that kind of mop hair. I mean, that was Moe's trademark, you know. We've all heard the story of how they got the haircut, but a lot of people, I think, in America thought they got it from Moe Howard, you know.

And you've always seen little kids with bowl haircuts. So I was into the music. I mean, the music, the vibrate, the vitality and the exuberance was what really swept me away, more than even the image thing. But I liked the fact that they were dressed sharply. But what did the Weinberg parents think when they saw those Liverpudlian aliens on TV? Well, they loved it. They loved it. My parents, I have sort of the atypical story in that my parents were completely supportive of my musical dreams, let's say, in every way, from letting us rehearse in their house to driving me around all hours. They were totally supportive. My father particularly really was impressed by the media coverage of the Beatles. Of course,

he was much older, so he was aware of the Frank Sinatra stuff. He was aware of Elvis Presley. My parents were, as I say, atypical because they loved show business. They loved anything that would excite fans. They dug that. Yeah, so I mean, we knew the Beatles were gonna be on Ed Sullivan,

and of course we watched Ed Sullivan anyway. But, you know, we all really sat around and wrapped attention. Because my band at that point, and I was always sort of the de facto leader of my bands. My band at that point was, you know, I think it was acoustic bass, guitar, saxophone and drums. And immediately I broke that band up and found three guitar players. Is that right? Oh, yeah. I mean, as I said, DJ was the first drummer I saw that made an impression on me that made me want to become a drummer.

I was five years old. But the Beatles, because I'd been in bands and I saw the possibility. And one thing that happened in my own personal case was about a month after the Ed Sullivan show, my little band with the guitars got booked to play a dance at our school. And I think because of the Beatle hysteria, the girls went crazy over our band. It was three older guys who I was playing with. And I loved that. You know, that was sort of my sports experience.

And in your instance, you think anything's possible. For Max, hearing that first Beatle record, She Loves You, was thrilling. It was one of those things where I heard it like once or twice. And that was it. And that was it. And I want to hear this again. While She Loves You was the first Beatle single Max ever heard, the first one he purchased with his own allowance money was another chart topper.

First one I bought was I Want to Hold Your Head, the single. And in those days, I had a little record player, and I would just play the thing to death. You know, your consciousness wasn't developed to buy albums, but somebody bought me Meet the single. And in those days, I had a little record player, and I would just play the thing to death. You know, your consciousness wasn't developed to buy albums, but somebody brought me Meet the Beatles. Meet the Beatles was the second Beatles album released in the States in January of 1964, but it was the first to be issued on Capitol Records. For the longest time, Brian Epstein and George Martin couldn't persuade Capitol USA to release any Beatles material.

So, a Chicago-based label called VJ Records landed the rights and released the Introducing the Beatles album ten days before Capitol finally agreed to release Meet the Beatles. And Max has long stated that Meet the Beatles had a major influence on him. Well, I had other albums before that. Sandy Nelson was a drummer in the early 60s who was very popular. And he was kind of missing link between sort of the big band era and rock and roll. And so for drummers, he was Godhead to a certain extent. He had an album out but it was sort of more steeped in big band jazzy stuff the beatles i felt was my music something i related to immediately so meet the beatles was a very important record for me and you know the

world i thought the title was great you know meet the beatles here they are you know of course introducing the beatles came out first which i later. And if you listen to the two records, they're very, very different production-wise, you know. I guess Introducing the Beatles was mainly their stage show, recorded. And, you know, this was the first LP experience, I guess, they had in the studio. But I just played it to death. And I had my record player next to my drums, and I would play to the record. A lot of people don't give Ringo credit for being one of the great rock drummers. And there's a false line that floats around,

attributed to Lennon, saying that Ringo wasn't even the best drummer in the Beatles. John Lennon, of course, never said that. A comedian said it once, and it has lingered around ever since. So I asked Max Weinberg, who is a great rock drummer, what he thought of Ringo's drumming. Ringo's a phenomenal drummer.

I've read those things, and I think that probably stopped two or three years after they made it really big, in my view. He got a lot of heat in the beginning because people didn't understand what he was doing. He was perfectly complementing Lennartney's songs, George Harrison's songs. That's not easy. And if you listen to his recorded output, which is formidable, and I know how difficult it is to play in the studio, you know, to keep it going. Ringo was always incredible because he played the perfect drumming style for their songs, you know, and he was the best drummer in Liverpool. I've talked to people who I've met on tour who grew up contemporaries of his age-wise, you know, he was acknowledged as

the best drummer in Liverpool. That's why they wanted him. When you see him playing live, he had energy, he had excitement, he had excitement he had on record tremendous amount of taste he played the perfect little things you know great time a relaxed feel so what happened was there were some major jazz musicians who did interviews it was one in downbeat right after the beatles became famous in the united states who seriously criticized ringo and that became the start of this ringo's not a good drummer routine. But to anybody who's a Beatle fan, that's absurd. And in fact, it's impossible to even imagine anybody else playing on those records. If you talk to the great drummers, the people that I admire,

the Jim Keltners, you know, Hal Blaine, all these people. That's a consensus. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Because he played what he had to do for the songs. It's interesting. There was a time in the early 60s when no one thought keeping a straight beat was an art form. That there was nothing special about keeping a straight rock beat until Ringo arrived. Well, Ringo changed rock drumming. He single-handedly changed rock drumming. Prior to Ringo, most people who played on rock records were not rock drummers. The big records, or the records that you might hear on the radio, not regional stuff,

they were jazz drummers who did rock sessions. So all of their eighth note playing was imbued with a swing triplet feel. You can hear it on all the early Elvis records, and DJ was a big band drummer. Ringo was the first guy to popularize just playing straight A's, like that, and also the first guy to accent the four, because he would play, and when you saw him going back and forth on the hi-hat, that's what he was doing. So I believe that because of his high profile particularly with what was happening in england at that time the big drummer in england at that time

was a guy named phil seaman who was a jazz drummer who was ginger baker's big influence these guys started a new art form ringo's type of art of drumming and no one had ever been doing that in quite that way i mean you had Ventures, who were probably the most popular singles band prior to the Beatles, and their two original drummers were swing drummers. That's what people were playing, who switched over. Ringo was never that. Ringo was a skiffle drummer and strictly rock and roll. He says pop, but, you know, rock and roll. I was curious to ask Max what his favorite Ringo drumming moments were in the Beatles' catalog. It's really hard to pick out a few because there's so many,

but we were listening the other day to a Beatle record before we went on, and you never fail to... It's like hearing it the first time. Whenever you hear a Beatles song, no matter how many thousands of times you may have heard it. Whenever I hear rock and roll music from the Beatles 65 record, that drumming is just incredible. It's so driving. It's just a great little three minute masterpiece to me, strictly speaking drumming you know my whole concept of playing rock drums really came more from ringo than anybody else because you know he would always open the hi-hat when he would go to the middle eight as they call it the bridge and that's something i learned from him i go to the symbol or the hi-hat you know and then close it down and the first time i heard that was on i want to hold your hand in the middle and then it gets louder toward the end of the bridge when he opens up the hi-hat That was a little technique that I learned from Ringo

staying on the two and four Those transitional fills he did that was basically my musical education. So you take it from the beginning of his recorded career To say the end of the Beatles recording career those six or seven years when they made records I mean, he says his favorite piece is Rain. That's a great little track, but it'd be hard to just pick a few, there's so many.

I remember Phil Collins saying that when he first listened to Sgt. Pepper, and in particular, the big drum sound on With a Little Help from My Friends, it changed his whole view of drumming. He said he wanted to throw his entire drum kit out the

window and start all over again. I wondered if Max, as a fellow drummer, felt the same way too. Yeah, actually my view of the sound of drums in a rock band context changed with Revolver, with I Want to Tell You, Got to Get You Into My Life. The snare drum sound on that is just awesome. It's so metallic. You know, you really heard the drums. Also, before Ringo, engineers would insist that you keep the hi-hat tightly closed or don't play it at all. And Ringo was the first drummer who got away with that and I remember when they remastered the first CDs that came out, I was so disappointed because they took all that sizzle out,

which was a big component of the excitement of those records. But that was Ringo's style. And the reason you do that is when you're playing in clubs with loud guitarists, the only way you can hear yourself is to let the cymbals shake against each other and get that. I do it now. If ever I can't hear correctly, I open up the cymbals a little bit more and it just makes it sound bigger.

Because Max loved Revolver so much, I asked him if he thought it was actually more revolutionary than Sgt. Pepper. You can't compare them. I mean, one was a precursor to the next, you know. People forget how groundbreaking both those records were. They were the first band to make concept albums, and I never compare them in terms of better or worse. They were different. Revolver was interesting because it still had vestiges of the rock band, where Sgt. Pepper was like, this was something else.

This was art rock to a height. They made a very, I don't know if it was conscious to them, but it was very obvious to me. They made a dramatic rhythmic change in the late 60s, when they went from playing everything in common time, just 4-4 time, to cut time. And I can describe that by playing the beat of rock and roll music. They would do this. And on Sgt. Pepper they went to this.

Cut it in half and it slowed everything down, perceptually. To me it was the beginning of heavy music. They were the first band to do that, playing cut time, to my knowledge. Although bands like, you know, the metal bands Led Ze Zeppelin and who never even did that? I mean, they did that a little bit later on in their career, but when Ringo started playing that heavy two and four, let it be, you know, that was quite a rhythmic change. As Max stated earlier, his Desert Island disc would be Meet the Beatles. I think it's a great record. I think it's a tremendously innocent record, you know, done very quickly.

I asked which of the other Beatles records he would add to a short list. I like Rubber Soul. I like Revolver. When the Beatles went, you know, quote, psychedelic, I was a true rocker. I mean, I was searching for more basic rock and roll. In fact, when they did do the cut time thing and got away from that rock beat, it moved more into a little bit more, you know, if punk had happened six years earlier, I would have been a punk rocker. That was the beat I liked, you know. So when they got really, let's say, arty, at that time they kind of lost me a bit. And I went into soul music from that. To me, in 67, when Sgt. Pepper came,

it was very difficult for me to understand it, to get into it. I immediately went to the Stax stuff, because to me it was more like the rock and roll that I knew. I think my perspective was not that broad at that time. So soul music was what I listened to pretty much exclusively until the early 70s. Because Max is such a pure rock and roller, I wondered if he preferred Lennon's compositions over McCartney's. No, no, no. We had this discussion the other day. Right before we went on in Pittsburgh, I wondered if he preferred Lennon's compositions over McCartney's. with one entity. I never knew they wrote until much, much later on that they didn't write together.

See, my sensibility is because of my mother's interest in Broadway and my own proclivity towards rock. I could appreciate everything John was doing and appreciate everything Paul was doing. When they did Till There Was You, well, I thought that wasn't as legitimate as Dizzy Miss Lizzy. It was just well-performed, well-executed music. performed well executed music trivia question who played more hours live on stage with the beatles pete best or ringo answer after this The answer is Pete Best.

He played for eight hours a night with the Beatles in Hamburg. Ringo only played 29-minute live shows with the band. As we talked about the Fab Four albums, I mentioned that a lot of people refer to the White Album as the Beatles' Unplugged Album. It's more like their Unplugged Album. That was the easy one to make, because that was the first record after Sgt. Pepper that they felt like a band to get.

Unplugged, yeah. They went back to this acoustic kind of approach on stuff. Like I said, by that time, I was listening almost exclusively to soul music, stuff that I hadn't had as much experience with when I was a young teenager. So by the time I was 17, 18, 19 years old, I wasn't as involved in the Beatles.

My hero in drums at that point became Al Jackson. He couldn't play that well or in that style in the way he did. That was what I emulated, that real clean, crisp sound. As Ringo has said many times, if it wasn't for the enthusiasm of Paul McCartney, the Beatles wouldn't have recorded as many albums. He was the motivator in the band. Paul, he's an amazing record to me.

It's too bad that, you know, their whole history, because they really could have, if they'd all been as enthusiastic as Paul, they would have never broken up. You know, it's a shame. I don't think they realized what they had, frankly. And it's too bad. When the Beatles were close to breaking up in 1969, McCartney tried to convince them to go back out on the road,

to perform live again, to recapture the excitement and magic the band had just a few years before. I asked Max how important it is for a band to perform live. That's the only place it exists. Today, it's a totally different business. And then, you know, you play every day for four weeks. That's a tour in venues at that time where you can't hear yourself. And once you get over the initial, hey, this is great. For them, I'm sure it was a drag at certain times, you know. Today, it's completely different.

I mean, it doesn't bear any resemblance to touring in the 60s, touring today. So I can see how they get tired of it, but you need to play live. But, you know, they'd had it. The arc of their career was very steep and very quick in retrospect. And I don't think they had pretensions to anything greater than that. And their output all happened pretty much before they were 30 years old. It was a real fast up and real fast down. And they just got tired of it. Which prompts the eternal question, if Lennon had lived, would the Beatles have gotten back together again? In some

ways, Lennon was the least nostalgic. Yeah, they probably would have. Well, I think probably economics would have played a part. Yeah, it's hard to say, but I mean, the tours that Paul did were phenomenal. And Ringo's tours are great. The one time I saw George play live on his own tape was at that Massesburg Art Benefit with Bob Dylan,

and he was great. I was interested to hear Max's insight into the internal dynamics of a band and how George Harrison must have felt being the third writer in a group that had probably the best songwriting duo of the 20th century, eating up most of the album tracks. It's well documented that there was quite a bit of resentment there because he would get one or two songs a record,

there was a lot of revenue that wasn't passing his way, and he wrote some great stuff. Don't bother me, I always thought it was great. I thought he was a great writer. And he's held up. You know, he probably gets more airplay if anybody gets airplay, you know, of four of the Beatles. Charlie George, he gets more airplay than anybody. Max Weinberg has had the pleasure of playing with Paul, George, and Ringo over the years. I've played with Paul a few times. A couple times in more intimate circumstances. He's great, you know.

He likes to have a good time. He's a phenomenal bass player. Paul changed bass playing like James Jamerson and Motown changed bass playing. Big influence. And he's a fabulous bass player. In 89, I watched him rehearse for an afternoon, his band for that tour in New York at the Ed Sullivan Theater, actually. It's my wife and I. We were the only ones there.

I was so impressed. His tour was phenomenal. They were great. He played everything. He played the drums. He played the piano. He played great guitar. Sang fantastic.

I had a great moment with George Harrison at the Rockwell Hall of Fame dinner in 1988 where somehow he and I think Eric Clapton got situated right in front of it there was a drum set there and I happen to be playing that drum set the house band drummer was playing the other drum set and Paul Schaefer who was the leader called out I think Jerry Lee Lewis was there, Great Balls of Fire or somebody was singing lead I don't remember who was singing but George Harrison was right next to my bass drum and his band band started to play. They played it in a very hard rocking straight eighth feel. I hadn't started to play yet. Wanted to see what they were doing. George turned around and looked at me and said, play a shuffle. So I changed the beat to a shuffle.

And he got this big smile on his face because, you know, he gave me this sort of direction and I did it and the tune changed into a shuffle, which is what great balls of fire is. It's a rock beat, but it's got a shuffling thing to it. It's not real straight. So that was a nice little moment. They say there are rock stars and then there are the Beatles. And when other rock stars play with a Beatle, it's still a thrill. Well, I can't speak for anybody else but myself, but whenever you happen to run into the three of them, it's quite an experience, you know. Right before we played at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,

the E Street Band, we were standing around in the kitchen talking to Paul. Billy Joel's there and all these people, and it's Paul McCartney, you know, it's rock royalty. It doesn't get any more impressive than that, you know. And just his body of work alone, but he's very nice and he's very cordial. He was there with his daughter who I knew, I'd known before. I did a short tour with 10,000 maniacs, 92, it was the end of 92. We were in England and Mary McCartney and Stella were big fans of Natalie Merchants. So I got them tickets to come to this little club we played at in London. So I'd known both of his daughters a little bit. He knew that and he knew that I got him tickets.

You know, it's that kind of father thing. You know, I'm a father, he's a father. That kind of played into it a little bit. There was a show on the History Channel called Turning Points. It was an ongoing series that focused on the events that changed the course or direction of history. One such episode said that John Lennon's death was a turning point in the 20th century. The next day, a critic in a Toronto newspaper said Lennon's death shouldn't have been included in that episode because it wasn't that important in the 20th century. I think any time a significant cultural figure, political, entertainment-wise, which he was,

is taken like that, I think it has a major impact to me and I've seen it written but it kind of was the end of the 60s. That's not an original thought. I've read that. I kind of agree with that. His death in 1980 really was the end of the 60s in a lot of ways. I think he represented an extreme idealism that love could change the world and then he gets murdered. That's what he was about, love. John Lennon was uh you know that was shocking we were playing in philadelphia and we got off stage and you know we walked back to the dressing room and someone said john lennon had been shot i mean my first thought was hunting accident which is exactly the same thought i i had with i don't know why i thought that with john kennedy and uh

something other than a political assassination it was was terrible. We played the next night. Bruce came out and said some great things about John Lennon. We wouldn't have been up there had it not been for John Lennon. You can't be our generation rock musician and not be a fan of the Beatles. It's part of the vocabulary. Max mentioned that when the E Street Band is backstage before a performance, they will often listen to Beatles records. I asked him if listening to the Beatles pumped them up.

You know, it's easy to get pumped up to play with the E Street Band. You don't need anything to pump you up. That's just a way to relax. I have a lot of influences in my drumming, but in this type of music, a lot of it is Charlie Watson, Ringo Starr. It's American rock and roll filtered through the English experience. Max Weinberg is also an author. He published a book back in 1991 called The Big Beat, Conversations with Rock's Great Drummers.

I wanted to do an oral history of the drummers that I grew up and admired. And it was conversations with rock's great drummers, as I considered them, whether it was studio guys like Hal Blaine and Earl Palmer, who played on all those great records in the 50s and 60s, or people like Ringo and Charlie Watts.

It was drummer-to-drummer conversations. Side note. In 1974, Max answered a Bruce Springsteen ad in the Village Voice looking for a drummer. The ad famously requested, No Junior Ginger Bakers,

which was a reference to Baker's reputation for long drum solos. I was interested to know what Ringo told him in his book because I know that Ringo also hates drum solos. I was interested to know what Ringo told him in his book because I know that Ringo also hates drum solos. The rock drum solo came out of the jazz drum solo. So if you're a rock musician, if you're going to play on three-minute pop records, there's no room for a drum solo. What do you need it for? And that was his perspective. And that's why he always kept working. The drummers who work are not the drummers who play drum solos. They're the drummers who back up other musicians with a solid beat.

That's the most important thing. And I think Ringo knew that as a young drummer. And if you talk to Ringo, with all he's done, he'll maintain that his innermost being is the drummer. That's what he loves to do. That's why he goes on tour every year. He loves to play the drums. Max is also a bit of a Beatles collector. I asked him what kinds of things are in his collection. I have symbols that Ringo's given me. He gave me his first four CDs. So a lot of my

stuff came from Ringo, which is what Farron spread to me. Memorabilia. I still have some stuff that I bought when I was 13 years old. Magazines and things. I've got four have some stuff that I bought when I was 13 years old, magazines and things. I've got four Beatle dolls that I bought when I was 13 years old. I think they were $3.98. Those Remco dolls, by the way, if they're still in the original boxes, are worth over $2,500 today. Yeah, really? I've got things like, I saved the wrapper. It was Beatle Fudgicle. Worth $40 or $50 now. I've saved the wrapper from that. I've got some beetle soap.

This is all stuff I didn't really collect. I just had. But I've got these great magazines. I've got this one newspaper article from the New York Herald Tribune, which is a defunct paper. They had an article on the beetles coming to the United States, and they had four pictures, individual pictures, and all the names were wrong.

All the names were wrong on the pictures. So I have that, and I've got a couple of Beatles versus Dave Clark 5 magazines. Dave Clark has become a very good friend of mine. Being the drummer in Springsteen's E Street Band, Max has had a multitude of amazing memories and moments. But I asked him if he could recall the most satisfying rock and roll moment of his life. The most satisfying rock and roll moment of my life?

Probably when my daughter played with us last summer at the Meadowlands. She plays keyboards and came up and played. At that time, she was just 12. She was, at that time, she was just 12. She's very, very good, very poised. In one sense, you know, that was everything. Here I am playing in front of our fans in New Jersey and having my daughter play, so the fatherhood thing came into play. That was an amazing moment for me, but I've had some tremendous thrills. In a Beatles sense, I mean, I've had some great moments playing with all three of them at various times. I remember we played the Apollo Theater in Manchester.

And I remember seeing that that was on one of their itineraries for one of their Christmas tours. And we played Twist and Shout. And it was just kind of a neat thing that, you know, here we are playing on the stage that they played. A little small little movie theater. I mean, it was probably a thousand seats. I have the best of both worlds, having my own band

on TV and touring around with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. So, I mean, in terms of dreams fulfilled, I've got it was probably a thousand seats. I have the best of both worlds, having my own band on TV and touring around with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. So, I mean, in terms of dreams fulfilled, I've got it covered. I asked Max what his defining song is as a drummer. Which track was he most proud of? I've been so fortunate to have so many great experiences as a drummer. I think Born in the USA, the song, is, musically speaking, one of my high points because I really captured what I was going for, which was a very tough sound. Born in the USA yielded an amazing

seven top ten hit singles. Springsteen has said that Max was the best thing on the record. Not only does Bruce Springsteen play three-hour concerts every night on tour, Max also delivers a very powerful beat. It has taken a toll on him. He has had eight operations on his hands, two on his back, and has had both shoulders reconstructed. I imagine there must be so many amazing advantages when you're in one of the most famous rock and roll bands.

I asked Max what the biggest advantage was. It's a real privilege to be able to look into the faces of the people who come to see these shows, particularly because it was 11 years since we played and see the joy on their faces and nils lofgren was talking to me about this before the tour about what a privilege it is to be able to bring that kind of joy into people's lives and i i really agree with him it is a privilege it's a great feeling you get this energy out and you get it back, you know, by all these people. And you can see it in the individual faces. Yeah, that's really, that's really something, I gotta tell you. Another advantage is being asked to play on other records. For example, Max played drums on Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart and Air Supplies' Making Love Out of Nothing at All,

both written, by the way, by Jim Steinman. Max also played drums on some of the songs on Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell album, also penned by Steinman. Yeah, the guy who put that project together was, at the time, a good friend of mine and my lawyer. And he had found Meatloaf and Jim Steinman and asked me if I'd help him put a band together and record it, and I recommended Roy Benton, who was, you know, brilliant on that record.

I played on Bad Outta Hell and Paradise by the Dashboard Light. You know, the record's held up through the years. Another advantage is geography. Max told us this interesting Beatle-related story. I'll tell you a great drum story. Beatle drum story. Joe Morello, the famous jazz drummer, a good friend of mine, he played with Dave Brubacki, a really illustrious drummer,

teaches drums in West Orange, New Jersey. And I would go visit him there at this little studio. And it's a drum store and in the back room, it's a drum set. So I'm talking to the guy, the clerk there. And we're talking, he's an English guy and very soft-spoken, mild-mannered guy. And apparently he's worked at this drum store a real long time and it was not far from where I grew up. And he's, like I say, he's very kind of quiet. You know, like London, London, I knew the Beatles. Finally comes out that he's Andy White. All Beatle fans know that Andy White is an interesting footnote in Beatle history. When the Beatles were recording their very first song, Love Me Do, with George Martin, Martin didn't think Ringo's drumming was good enough. So George Martin brought in a session

drummer by the name of Andy White. There are actually three versions of Love Me Do. The first had Pete Best on drums, the second had Ringo, and the third had Andy White keeping the beat. Andy's version was the one issued as a 45 in the US, and it's the version on the Beatles' British debut album Please Please Me. Andy also drummed on P.S. I Love You. Yeah, he brings out this

yellowed newspaper clipping when he first moved to West Orange, New Jersey. They did a story on him, the guy who played with the Beatles. And there he was all these years, working in this drum store and still plays around, you know, and moved to America. Married an American woman. And there he's working behind the counter in this drum store.

When Bruce Springsteen dissolved the band in the latebe store. When Bruce Springsteen dissolved the band in the late 80s, Max said the news left him, quote, a zombie for about six months. He called Ringo Starr to ask for his advice

on how to go on when the band that has been your whole life has broken up. Ringo said, come stay with me for a while. And he helped Max get out of his funk when the band that has been your whole life has broken up. Ringo said, Come stay with me for a while. And he helped Max get out of his funk.

An amazing thing for Ringo to do. As Max just mentioned, at the time of that 1999 tour, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were just getting back together after 11 years apart. A lot had changed in those intervening years. Steve Van Zandt was starring in The Sopranos, and Max was the leader of the Max Weinberg Seven, the house band for Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

Just as we were finishing the interview, I wondered if it was difficult to find the E Street magic again after all this time, or did it just click? Yeah, like that, like no time. But that's the beauty of this band. That's the kind of band it is. It was actually pretty astonishing. It was literally like we never stopped playing.

It's much better. Yeah, we all got better in the left ages we hadn't played. So it was much better than it was when we left. Max Weinberg still tours with Springsteen to this day. The E Street Band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014. Bruce made a great speech about his band that night, talking about each member individually. I happened to be at that induction ceremony in Brooklyn. My daughter and I

were there because her favorite band, Nirvana, was also being inducted. Springsteen and the band rocked the stage that night. Interestingly,

Brian Epstein was also inducted posthumously that evening with the induction speech given by Peter Asher of Peter and Gordon fame. It was an amazing night. Hope you enjoyed this interview.

And a big thank you goes out to Beatle fan Max Weinberg. I'm Terry O'Reilly. Should we do it? This special bonus episode was recorded in the Terrastream Mobile Recording Studio. Director, Callie O'Reilly. Producer, Debbie O'Reilly. Chief Sound Engineer, Jeff Devine. Tunes provided by APM Music. Follow me on social at Terry O'Influence. This podcast is powered by ACAST.

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