Jay Weinberg is the drummer for one of the top bands in the world, Slipknot, but it all had to start somewhere. Weinberg just revealed a piece of Lars Ulrich memorabilia that his wife recently had reframed that had played a pivotal role in his early music career.
"Daaaaamn! My wife surprised me on our day at home with this sick drumhead reframing — with a new addition," stated Weinberg, showing the new encasing for the signed Lars Ulrich drumhead. And while you might initially look and think, "That's nice," it's the inscription Ulrich signed to a very young Jay Weinberg that's of interest here.
Jay continued in his Twitter thread explaining why this particular drumhead meant so much to him. "Back in 2004, my dad @EStreetMax brought me to my first-ever @Metallica gig," writes Weinberg. "@larsulrich and the guys were so gracious and kind — and they put on a hell of an inspiring show. I distinctly remember telling Lars that night that I was starting to play the drums, myself."
As can been seen on the inscription in the tweet below, Ulrich wrote to young Jay, "One day all this will be yours." "I took his inspirational note to heart that night, and pursued a lifelong dedication to music," writes Weinberg.
Earlier this year, Weinberg reflected on his early years and getting into drumming with The Bronx's Matt Caughthran on the Sailor Jerry podcast. During that discussion, he revealed former The Used and current Rancid drummer Branden Steineckert as the musician that initially influenced him to pick up the drums.
"He's the drummer that made me want to start playing drums," stated Weinberg. "That's where the light switch in my head went off. Because music wasn't really something that I was drawn to play. I was very into it, but it wasn't something that spoke to me to pick up an instrument necessarily. I did a little bit. I played guitar when I was nine and then, we'd go take lessons. But lessons were school, and I didn't want to go to school, after school. And so I came to it kind of late, but it was watching Branden at Irving Plaza when I was 12 years old, made a huge impact on me. And that's what made me want to be like, 'I want to do that. Whatever that is, I want to do that.' And oh, yeah, we're best friends to this day."
From there, he started digging in further picking up all he could. "I kind of put myself on this vertical learning curve. Trying to play along and do my best playing along to Slayer records and Metallica records and whatnot," stated Weinberg, who would eventually fill in for his father in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band as well as playing with Madball, Against Me! and Kvelertak before claiming the drum throne for Slipknot.
