Slipknot's Jay Weinberg - Wikipedia: Fact or Fiction?

What’s true and false about Slipknot? Drummer Jay Weinberg joined us to prove and disprove what’s written about him and the band on Wikipedia.

If you see Jay in person, don’t call him “ballbag.” Despite what Wikipedia says, that’s not one of Weinberg’s actual nicknames. However, Jay has a theory on why that got added to his Wiki page.

“That might have come from the period of time when I was still anonymous in the band,” Weinberg begins. “To kick back into [‘Spit it Out’] Corey motions to me to start the song back up. Every night he was saying some kind of different name to me, so that’s probably what that was born out of.”

Weinberg got deep into telling the stories of his first times onstage — performing guest spots with the Bouncing Souls and the Used when he still had very little experience on the drums. In fact, practicing with the Bouncing Souls at his home was the first time his father, legendary Bruce Springsteen drummer Max Weinberg, got to see his son play.

“The first time my dad ever saw me play was when I kinda raised my hand and asked the Bouncing Souls guys, who were at my house playing with him, ‘Hey, can I play a couple songs with you guys?’ We ended up playing two songs together at [an] Asbury Lanes show. Super, super rad.”

Maybe the most interesting piece of information Jay shared with us is about the old story that when he and bassist V-man joined Slipknot, the two were given an opportunity to design their own masks, but ended up created “cartoonish” ones that the band rejected. According to Jay, that never happened, and putting that story out into the press was somewhat of a hazing ritual from the classic Slipknot members.

“While we were making [.5: The Gray Chapter] it was like, ‘This is so much to focus on, I’m not even thinking about [masks],’” Weinberg recalls. “To my understanding, Clown kind of had this idea to give the new guys in the band the same mask, where we would find our identity in that. It was never something spoken, it was never something that was on purpose, it just happened because that’s the way life happens — [V-man’s] mask became more him, my mask became more mine. Our personalities started to show through in the ways that they were decomposing and I would smear makeup on mine and stuff and it just became this new thing. [I used] that as a basis for how I would transform into a new mask.”

The drummer lightheartedly continued, “[The failed masks story] was probably freshman hazing stuff that we went through. ‘Oh yeah, those guys made masks and they didn’t work out.’ That didn’t really happen.”

Watch the Jay Weinberg edition of ‘Wikipedia: Fact or Fiction?’ below and click here to grab a copy of Slipknot’s newest album, The End, So Far.