Jay Weinberg underwent major surgery — and he’s finally talking about it

Former Slipknot and current Suicidal Tendencies drummer Jay Weinberg discussed his November 2023 outpatient surgery to repair his left hip’s torn labrum and shave off a malformed portion of his femur during an appearance on a recent episode of the Make It Perfect podcast. Two weeks following Slipknot’s announcement that he was leaving the long-running Iowa-based outfit, Weinberg underwent the procedure.

About the summer of 2018, I would go on a run and I was in debilitating pain. I found out that I had a misshapen bone, my femur going into my left hip. I had excess bone on one side of it, so, unbeknownst to me, until the pain and the inflammation started getting to me, it had torn my labrum. So I tore my labrum and just wanted to baby it and protect it. ‘Cause it didn’t bother me when I was drumming; it was only bothering me when I ran, really. And when I was younger, I had done kickboxing and stuff, and I’m sure that that motion didn’t do me any favors. But anyway, so it was summer of 2018, I’d go for a run and I’d have pain. But then I had a surgery to correct it [in] November.

He spoke also about the recovery.

I was given five to six months. I’d be basically on the couch for about a month, month and a half, all while doing physical therapy. I was in physical therapy the next day. But, yeah, it was all right. It was my first experience with a surgery like that.

A major issue was that whether he could play the same.

I think anybody, naturally, when you embark on, like, ‘Okay, I’m doing this corrective thing,’ you do it understanding that there’s no guarantee that you’re gonna have the same mechanics as you knew them to be before you did this. I’m glad I did it. I heavily researched my doctor who was gonna do it. And it was years of planning to go into having that surgery. And I’m really glad that I did it.