Max Weinberg Steps Beyond the Kit at Springsteen's Tour Opener

Fifty-two years into his tenure with the E Street Band, Max Weinberg spent most of March 31 doing what he's always done at Springsteen shows: hold the whole thing together from behind the kit. Then, midway through "Hungry Heart," Bruce Springsteen walked back toward his drummer and shoved a microphone in his face.

The moment came during the second hour of what became a nearly three-hour set at Target Center in Minneapolis, the opening night of Springsteen's "Land of Hope and Dreams" U.S. tour. Weinberg, who joined the E Street Band in 1974 after winning an open audition and has anchored Springsteen's marathon productions ever since, sang a few lines of the chorus to the visible amusement of the surrounding band members. It was brief, unscripted-feeling, and completely effective.

That small detour existed inside a massive, politically charged evening. Springsteen opened the show with the entire band stepping out of total darkness, addressing the crowd before a note was played. He urged the audience to choose "hope over fear, democracy over authoritarianism," then launched into Edwin Starr's "War," which rolled directly into "Born in the U.S.A." The pairing landed as a blunt political statement, setting the tone for everything that followed.

Guest guitarist Tom Morello appeared for the opening stretch of the set and returned later for "American Skin (41 Shots)," playing his guitar part from the 2014 High Hopes studio version. The production's scale gave Weinberg room to function simultaneously as the rhythmic backbone of a full arena show and, in those scattered front-facing moments, as a character inside the band's collective identity rather than just its engine room.

For the drumming world, Weinberg's prominence at the Minneapolis opener carries particular weight. Beyond five decades as Springsteen's timekeeper, Weinberg built a parallel career as a television bandleader on Conan O'Brien's Late Night and The Tonight Show, making him one of the most publicly recognizable drummers in American popular music. The "Hungry Heart" mic hand-off illustrates something practicing drummers rarely see demonstrated at stadium scale: a bandleader deliberately pulling his drummer into the spotlight mid-song, not as a drum solo showcase but as a moment of shared stagecraft.

The "Land of Hope and Dreams" tour now carries Weinberg across the country in that same role, foundational and, when Springsteen decides, front and center.