Metal Anarchy

During a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Jay Weinberg reflected on getting fired from Slipknot in 2023. The drummer feels like he may have “became a scapegoat for certain things.”

Weinberg said the following about joining the band:

“Yeah. I was 23 years old. Being in the band for 10 years, that’s nearly a third of my life, and the vast majority of my creative life. I couldn’t even tell close industry friends. The fine folks who manufacture my drums, I couldn’t tell them why I needed two giant double bass drum sets and all this. I’m like, ‘You got to just trust me. I’m going to make it worth your while.’

I understood that dynamic of the band because I remember being a fan back in 2000, pre-camera phones, pre-internet largely. There was this mystique surrounding a band like this, honestly. You couldn’t discover any details about the band members. You couldn’t find out what anybody looked like. You could hardly find out anybody’s actual name.

The mystique was certainly appealing and drew a lot of people in, myself included, at a very young age. To capture that energy of this unknowingness, especially in the era of social media and camera phones, was an impressive endeavor. And we kept a lid on it for like a year.”

He continued when asked if he felt like a hired gun:

“If you’re the new guy coming into a band that’s existed for 15 years and developed its identity and dynamic, you’re always going to be the new guy. I auditioned for the band before the world learned that they were moving on from playing with Joey Jordison. We played together for one day, rehearsed all the old songs, and that was one thing of like, ‘Okay, he can play the old songs. Now, what can you bring to the creation of things?’

Whether you’re ‘in the band’ or a hired hand, those are just things that put someone in a box that they occupy. I’m comfortable with that. What matters is the work of what you’re doing, the creative endeavors that you’re going on. I recognize my responsibility in helping provide contributions to the creation of a song or album. Those responsibilities fall on me the same way if I’m ‘in the band’ or ‘not in the band.’ It’s all the same work.

My writing partner for my duration of time in the band was largely Jim Root, guitar player. He’d come up with guitar riffs, and I’d provide my contribution and enthusiasm and effort and energy to shape the song going in any direction. That’s what was meaningful to me.

All that stuff falls away when you do the actual important thing, which is creating things in the studio and playing these things on stage. And I found as our relationship deepened, those efforts and responsibilities became greater for me.

For instance, with ‘The Grey Chapter‘, our first album together, Jim had 14 songs or something. They were loose sketches of arrangements. I added some things to them, since they asked me to help ‘Slipknot‘ them up a little.’ I’m like, ‘Those are my marching orders and this is what I’m bringing to the table.’

We then listen back to our work, and we would be like, ‘So what kind of album do we have here? We’re missing this sort of vibe. Jay and Jim, go into that room. Let’s see what you guys can come up with out of thin air.’

And it was pretty remarkable because in the space of about two hours, Jim and myself created skeletons of ‘The Negative One‘ and ‘Custer,’ both of which got nominated for Grammys and were live staples in our set. For a 23-year-old, that was a dream come true, to be in a co-creating process with one other person and have the efforts result in these songs that we’re proud of.”

He also discussed what led up to his firing:

“…Since 2018, I noticed a significant pain in my left hip while exercising. I notified management, ‘I’m having this thing with my hip. I don’t know what it is, but I’m going to monitor it.’ It didn’t prevent me from playing, but it was something that I was aware of. I got an MRI early on in 2020, when we’re not touring at all. Everybody’s locked down with Covid.

I got an MRI done and I found out that I have what’s called a femoroacetabular impingement, FAI for short, which basically means I tore my labrum in my hip due to running and kickboxing. I couldn’t run for more than five minutes without then being unable to walk for several days.

So I told my bandmates and management what my doctor told me. At the time I was 30, and he’s like, ‘Do this when you’re younger. You’ll have a better chance of snapping right back, give it five, six months recovery.’

So I’m approaching the band like, ‘Hey, we’re not doing anything right now. This would take me six months to recover. Is this something I can do?’ And I was asked to not have that corrective surgery because we’ve got a record to make. We got to be on tour, and this and that. So I can’t hold up this operation.

I had been conditioned over years with the ever-present threat of, ‘You’re always fireable, you’re always replaceable.’ With that being reinforced in the environment, it’s difficult to then make decisions based on health because you’re like, ‘I’m not going to step outside of the bounds of this because I don’t want to disturb the peace and I don’t want to be replaced.’

A couple of years go on and the pain luckily wasn’t made worse by touring and playing, but it certainly didn’t get better. And so in September of 2023, I had seen in our schedule that we had shows going up until November, and then our subsequent show after that was in April of the following year. I came up with a plan where I would have this surgery in November of 2023, pretty much right after the last show of that year.

I’d expressed to the band, ‘We’ve got this window of time. I will be able to recover before the next show. If we want to be creative in that time, I worked with a company called MixWave, where I created a virtual instrument so that I could have my own drum sounds available to me. If I’m on crutches and I can’t walk, I can’t drum, I can still program things and be in a creative mode,’ just to cover all my bases and got it approved. They were like, ‘Yeah, good to go. Go for your surgery.’

And then I woke up the morning after traveling home from our last show together, and I received a phone call from the band’s manager in which he informed me that the band had made a decision to not renew my contract at the end of the year. I was shocked and full of questions. I was like, ‘Why? What happened?’

It took place, to be quite honest, at the end of a year that was a very difficult year within the band. That might relate to some of those preexisting tensions before I arrived at the band, sort of coming back. But I’m left with no explanation, just that ‘It’s a creative decision and you’re no longer the drummer in Slipknot.’ And what he said from there was, ‘We would like to release a joint statement with you tomorrow. Take the rest of the day to think about it. I’ll be available to you for the rest of the day if you want to talk.’

My world just kind of bottomed out from under me. This thing that I have been dedicated to with complete focus and drive and attention and love and holding on to a dream, despite the difficulties, despite all the things that happen with entering a volatile environment like that and a dark environment at that, to having nothing but questions. So I went on a walk with my wife to clear my head and process what had just happened. And then 20 minutes later, they posted their own statement online.”

He also had the following to say when pressed about his feelings on the situation:

“I mean, how would anybody feel about that? It perfectly encapsulates the confusion of that. And like I said, it came after an extraordinarily tense year for the band, things that I could only see as an outsider in relationships that are 25 years deep. It came without an explanation, no reason. It was confusing then. If I’m perfectly honest, it remains confusing.

As a newcomer, I think being caught in between those preexisting tensions, you find yourself trying to navigate that the best you can. One guy has one way he wants things done, another guy wants another way he wants things done, and amplify that by eight other people, to try to satisfy all of those things. This was my singular focus for 10 years.

I applied myself in every way possible. As a newcomer, and like you mentioned, you’re like ‘Are you in the band? Are you not in the band?’ How do you define that after 10 years? It’s not a short amount of time. But it’s easy for a newcomer, for myself, to be caught in the crossfire there. Maybe I became a scapegoat for certain things.

Processing it over the last two years, I’ve wanted to take that experience and obviously learn from it. I want to experience these new things that I’m now taking on, these many collaborations that I’m doing, playing with as many people as possible, and finding these relationships where it’s all so new to me. I’m going into creative environments, say a studio or playing live, where there is love for one another, and respect for one another, in ways that I’ve never experienced before.

There’s a great band you might be familiar with, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard. I’ve become friends with those guys over the last year and a half. Their drummer Cavs came to a show that I played with Infectious Grooves. These guys opened my eyes to what a positive creative environment could feel like with mutual respect. It’s like finding water in the desert. All these new relationships that I’ve formed over the last two years or so feel like that, certainly Suicidal Tendencies falls within that category.”

He added:

“Obviously the departure from Slipknot was difficult. It puts the period on the end of a sentence that takes up a third of my life. But it’s never been in my nature … Like you said, ‘How do you stay quiet when this person’s talking trash on you on the internet?’ I’ve never wanted to be somebody who throws a pity party for themselves. I don’t think that’s what a creative person’s life is.”