JH: Did the fan interest come more from E Street fans than from Conan fans, or vice-versa?

MW: I think there's a crossover between the people who enjoy the work of the E Street Band and people who watch the Conan O'Brien show. The mail here - and e-mail particularly - were from fans of the show who say things like, "We only get to see you play the ten seconds before a commercial and the ten seconds after the commercial. Do you continue to play through the commercial?" We do play through the commercials [that only the studio audience gets to hear]. We actually have several hundred full-length songs and this album represents the stuff that we like to play the most, and also that showcase the individuals in the band and their playing, their soloing and their singing, as well as the arranging of Jimmy Vivino, who's a wonderful arranger. There's a broad cross-section of stuff that we play.

JH: How did you fit the recording into your already hectic schedule?

MW: We recorded some of it before I went out on tour with Bruce Springsteen, which would have been in January of 1999, and then I had a break during the winter of '99, so we did a little bit more then. Then when I was on tour in the spring of 2000, that's when I finished the record in terms of mixing it and mastering it. The actual recording of the songs went very quickly, because we essentially set up in the studio and played live. We come from the era when musicians played together live in the studio and that's pretty much how I've always recorded my whole career, rather than doing individual tracking. We're a performing band, so it works.

JH: How much rehearsal time do you spend with the band on a day-to-day basis for the show?

MW: We actually rehearse about two hours a day for the show. I rehearse with the band and I rehearse the comedy that I do, so there's about two or two-and-a-half hours of that every day. You don't come in at 5:00 to play a 5:30 show. I'm here at 11:00 in the morning, working on music and seeing what we're going to be doing that day.

JH: Is most of the music that you play on the show reflective of the guest or reflective of a particular mood or moment, or is it more randomized?

MW: In terms of the "walk-ons," which is when the guest is announced and they walk out from the curtain, what we try to do is hook a song up with something in their biography that appeals to me. Everybody in the band throws out suggestions as well. If Al Roker, the weatherman from the Today Show, is on, we might play "Stormy Weather" or "Sunshine Superman" or something that will make a reference to that person. For example, Steve Martin was on the show tonight and what immediately came to mind was the Kinks' song "Well Respected Man." But we "swing" everything, which is to say that we put a swing beat to all the melodies that we play.

JH: When you take part in the comedy routines on the show, how much of it is scripted and how much of it is improve?

MW: The comedy bits are scripted, but there is room for improvisation and sometimes during the show we'll change things. Particularly with the music, because if Conan and his guest are at the end of a segment and talking about a certain subject and we have a song that reflects that subject, I'll call an audible, and because we have the music out there, everybody will jump on it.

JH: You've been doing the show for quite a few years now, so it's obvious that you're happy there. What is it about the show that makes it fulfilling for you?

MW: I love it. It's incredible. It's fun, it's rewarding, because there's a lot of work involved. But I love it. I've loved it from day one and this is our eighth season.

JH: How did you originally land the gig with Conan?

MW: After the E Street Band broke up in 1989, I hadn't played in several years. I did other things. I was in the record business for a while, but I wanted to get back to drumming. I had done a little bit of drumming through the years, when somebody needed a drummer for a benefit here or there, or something like that. But I wanted to get out of the business life that I was leading. So one day my wife and I walked out of a deli near 54th Street and 7th Avenue in New York, and right at the corner was Conan. He was standing there, waiting for the light to change, and about a week before he had been announced on Jay Leno's show as the new host of NBC's Late Night, replacing David Letterman. So I went over to him and started to talk to him. He was in the beginning process of putting the show together and we started to talk about music right there on the corner. That led to a series of meetings and he asked if I would audition, so I quickly put a band together and auditioned. This is the same band that I put together for that first audition. At the audition, on our third song—we were playing this funky New Orleans kind of tune—Conan leapt out of his seat and started dancing to it. So I knew at that point that we were in pretty good shape. Literally, a week later, we were on the air.

JH: Is there a little secret society among the late night music directors—yourself, Paul Schaffer, Kevin Eubanks, G.E. Smith?

MW: Well, I've known Paul for years. Paul and I started in New York at the same time, in 1974, playing the show Godspell. He came down from Canada and I was the pit band drummer in that show. I left that show to join Bruce's E Street Band, and Paul left to do Broadway stuff for a while and then he got hooked up with the people from Saturday Night Live. So I've known Paul for almost 30 years. In fact, when I first got this job, I picked Paul's brain deeply for input on how to do this job. He was very, very helpful to me in the beginning. As for a secret society, maybe in the minds of those personalities there is, but not on a daily basis. Although I have to tell you that one of my proudest moments was seeing my name in the same sentence as [former Tonight Show band leader] Doc Severinsen, because there's really only been a handful of TV band leaders and to see my name next to his was quite an honor.

JH: How does doing Conan compare to being on the road and playing arenas every night?

MW: Well, it's a different energy. I'm particularly fortunate because the last two years I've had the best of both worlds—the best of the TV world and the best of the rock world in playing with the E Street Band. Playing concerts is very exciting and very challenging, particularly stamina-wise, with playing Bruce's four-hour shows at my age. The thing is that Bruce fans are really, really dedicated and it's a privilege to play for people who are so into the performance. It really is.

JH: In terms of drummers, you seem to be an anomaly in that there don't seem to be that many drummers who are also band leaders...

MW: Well, there aren't that many on TV. I'm not the first though. Bobby Rosengarden was Dick Cavett's music director in the late Sixties, early Seventies. He was the first drummer/ band leader on TV. But there was Buddy Rich, Gene Krupa, and Chick Webb. There's Phil Collins, although I guess he's more of a frontman now, although he's also a fine drummer. There's not a lot of us, I guess, but there's hope [laughs]. "During the last six weeks of the Bruce Springsteen tour, I was also playing the Conan show during the week and then flying out to play with Bruce and the E Street Band on the weekends. I was going from this little swinging TV ensemble in the day to this hard driving rock band at night." I've always been very comfortable leading something or directing something or being behind a singer or instrumentalist and backing them up. To me, it's all about rising to any occasion and doing the best you can.

JH: For the new album, did you take more of a leadership role or was it more of a collaborative effort with the various musicians?

MW: [Recording an album] is always a collaborative process, but there has to be a definitive final word and that's me on this project. But I work best in collaborative situations and I enjoy people's input. As a drummer I've always tried to surround myself with the best talent that I could, and in this case I think I have with this band.

JH: You also produced this album, so what was your role outside of that as a musician?

MW: Well, the producer is basically the last word. The best producers - and I've worked with some great producers - are facilitators. They create an atmosphere where everybody can play their best and everybody can contribute. In my case, on this album, my role was essentially to pick the songs that I wanted to record, how I wanted them to be presented, and the mastering and mixing, everything. Some producers are great just talking on the phone, while the musicians make the record. I've been involved in situations like that with certain producers.

JH: But as a drummer out in front of the band, is it a different role?

MW: It's a different role doing that on TV, because it's obviously a visual medium so you might do things on camera that you might not do if you were making a record in the studio. You might not make the same musical decisions. Sometimes the "television" aspect of playing music on TV can dictate how you play, which is fine, that's what it's about. But it's essentially the same job. You're to help make the soloist sound good, ease the transitions and be exciting. Bring a pulse to the music that you're playing.

JH: Since you were taking this visual band into the studio, was there any period of transition for the musicians?

MW: Not at all. These are the best players in New York City; there's nobody better. The guys in this band can play anything and everything, and I've had a little bit of experience playing in a studio over the years. What's funny is that during the last six weeks of the Bruce Springsteen tour, I was also playing the Conan show during the week and then flying out to play with Bruce and the E Street Band on the weekends. And when we played at [Madison Square Garden in New York] for ten nights at the end of the tour, six of those nights coincided with the Conan show. So I was playing the Conan show all day and then going down to the Garden and playing with Bruce that night.

JH: So there was a process that you had to go through between those gigs each day?

MW: Yeah, because they're two different things. It's much more of a support role with the E Street Band as opposed to fronting something on TV. It wasn't really hard, but it did take a bit of a conscious effort. So it wasn't difficult to switch between the two gigs, but it certainly was a switch. I was going from this little swinging TV ensemble in the day to this hard driving rock band at night. But during the time that it took me to get from the NBC Studios on 49th Street to the Garden on 33rd Street, I had it pretty well wired.

JH: Do you have a particularly favorite song that you like to bang your sticks to?

MW: It's hard to pick one. Some of the songs on this record, The Max Weinberg 7, are some of the most fun drumming I've ever done, especially groove-wise. The grooves are deep for the type of music they are, which is kind of jump blues, boogie rock, that kind of thing. But throughout my career, I've played on some stuff that I'm very proud of.

JH: Looking at how things are for musicians today, and how there seems to be an elimination of the session player. Any thoughts?

MW: Actually, to me, it seems to me to be a lot like the Sixties where there were lots of bands. There are more opportunities now for musicians than there were ten years ago. People are taking the technology that has grown up around music over the last 20 years and making it work for them. In actual fact, there are a lot more session musicians working today than there were ten years ago. People have gotten away from using strictly synthesized music, particularly in movie soundtracks and TV work. It's very popular now to use full bands, full orchestras and real musicians. Of course, I'm not a young musician and I've been very fortunate to have been in a band for a long time and then when that band broke up I got hooked up with a TV show. I was never that good as a studio musician. I was never really a studio musician type like the studio drummers that I admired, like Jim Keltner, Russ Kunkel, Hal Blaine, Steve Gadd. They really had it locked up, because they're extraordinarily talented.

JH: If you could have lived in any other era as a musician, when would it be?

MW: I would say 1934 to 1946, you know the middle Thirties to the middle Forties. That's when the instrumentalists were king and big bands and swinging music was what it was about. I think my favorite all-time band, however, was the Count Basie band of the late Fifties and middle Sixties. I think that was best band in history and there's no way that I could hold a candle to his drummers, but if I could play with any band, that would have been it.

JH: Does that mean if you had to do it all over again, you would have gone the jazz route instead of getting into rock?