King Gizzard brings Max Weinberg on stage as a stand in for his son

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard delivered a remarkable moment on Friday August 21 during their show at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens. Instead of their regular guest drummer Jay Weinberg, the former Slipknot drummer who has joined the band on stage several times before, it was his father Max Weinberg who showed up: the legendary drummer of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. He made a special trip from Atlantic City to Queens to fill in for his son.

Guitarist Joey Walker explained to the crowd midway through the show how it had all come about. "In continuing with the tradition that we started over the last year or so, where we get our friend Jay Weinberg to come out and play a song with us. It'd be rude not to. But Jay's busy, he's down in Nashville, so Jay made a call: 'Alright, I'm going to call dad.'" Walker added: "So, we got Max Weinberg, drove all the way from Atlantic City to come up and play a song with us, so give it up for fucking Max Weinberg."

Max Weinberg then played alongside regular drummer Michael Cavanagh on an extended version of "Hot Water," taken from the 2014 album "I'm in Your Mind Fuzz." The elder Weinberg's appearance fits into a recurring tradition the band started about a year ago, when Jay Weinberg first sat in during a show in Nashville in 2024. Just a week earlier, Jay had been on stage at the band's three day Field of Vision II festival in Colorado, where he played along on "Hell" and also performed a solo drum clinic.

The Queens show was the second of three nights King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard played at Forest Hills Stadium this year, marking the first time they played three consecutive nights at the venue. It is also the fourth year running that the Australian psych rock band has performed there. The nights of August 20 and 21 were focused on rock, while the third night on August 22 closed out with a fully electronic rave set. On Sunday August 23 another rave show followed at Brooklyn's Under the K Bridge Park, after which the band heads to Australia in October for a run of dates including a show at the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney.

The Queens shows coincide with a particularly productive period for the band. Earlier this year they released "Alien Metal," their 28th studio album. Before that they had already caused a stir by pulling all their music from Spotify in protest against founder Daniel Ek's involvement with the investment firm Prima Materia, which has invested over 600 million euros in Helsing, a German company developing drones and artificial intelligence for military use. After their departure from the platform, a Spotify page called King Lizard Wizard appeared featuring tracks that some fans suspected had been generated by AI, with frontman Stu Mackenzie listed as composer. Mackenzie responded via The Music: "Trying to see the irony in this situation. But seriously wtf we are truly doomed." The band has since made their albums available through Bandcamp, where fans can name their own price.