Drummer Max Weinberg had lifesaving heart surgery

Bruce Springsteen drummer and 17-year Conan O'Brien musical director Max Weinberg Thursday revealed that a long-put-off half-day of open-heart surgery was the primary reason he chose not to follow O'Brien to Los Angeles for the talk-show host's upcoming TBS late-night program.

"On Feb. 8, I came to the end of a 26-year watchful, waiting odyssey that culminated in 12 hours of massively invasive open-heart surgery," Weinberg told Adam Buckman of the TV-focused website FanCast.com.

He'd learned he needed heart-valve repair around 1984, he said. "At the time, there was not much they could do and it wasn't as serious as it became. As I got older, it got worse. Fortunately, the protocols for dealing with it became much more advanced and I found a wonderful doctor in New York who specializes in repairing valves. Two years ago, it became life-threatening," Weinberg said. He had the surgery two weeks after the January end of O'Brien's "Tonight Show."

Also factoring into his reluctance to work in L.A., he said, is that "I do prefer living in New Jersey . . . I love playing in L.A., but my kids and my wife are back East, and we live part of the time in Italy, so it was hard to structure my life" around a cross-country job.Weinberg became part of rock royalty as the primary percussionist on the classic Springsteen and the E Street albums "Born to Run," "Darkness on the Edge of Town" - the subject of an HBO documentary that premiered lastThursday night - and many more by Springsteen and others. Note: Need to specify ALBUM "Born to Run" since, ironically, Ernest "Boom" Carter played drums on the actual SONG "Born to Run"His latest project is the 15-piece Max Weinberg Big Band, which plays mostly American Songbook standards.

In September, O'Brien's house band guitarist-keyboardist Jimmy Vivino told the Riverfront Times, a St. Louis alternative weekly, that he was succeeding Weinberg. "I'll be leading the band, and James Wormworth will be playing drums now," he said.