This past summer, PBS News Weekend correspondent Ali Rogin took her three-year-old daughter to visit the girl’s grandfather at work. His office is somewhat noisy and was a bit of a hike from DC: The trip took them to several cities in Europe where Rogin’s dad, Max Weinberg, was playing drums for Bruce Springsteen. It’s a job he’s held since 1974, in addition to a 17-year stint as Conan O’Brien’s bandleader. “We took a beautiful picture of [my daughter] facing the crowd,” says Rogin. “She will point to [the photo] and say, ‘That’s the show. I want to go back to the show.’ ” Here, Rogin talks about growing up in a rock family and how she ended up in journalism.
“I grew up in a part of New Jersey that has a high concentration of rock stars. Bruce Springsteen has a house in the neighborhood. John Bon Jovi—we were neighbors with him. So it does seem like there’s something in the water around Monmouth County, New Jersey.
“The E Street Band broke up [for a decade] when I was two years old. My dad got the Conan gig when I was six, and that was as 9 to 5 as a rock-and-roll drummer was about to get. What was wonderful about that was my dad would drive into work like all my other friends’ parents. As I got older and became interested in some of the musical guests, my brother and I would go in and visit. I saw Blink-182, my brother saw Slipknot. We were so lucky we were able to have access to that.
“The Conan show was in the studio across the hall from the local news program. I had always known I wanted to do something that incorporated television. We often tell this story in my family about when I was in fourth grade, for a school project, I made a video where I was a news reporter reporting from the Crusades in the Middle Ages. As I got older, I realized that I was gravitating toward news and politics. I got my start as an intern on NBC Nightly News. I just fell in love with the pace, the content, the ability to interview newsmakers.
“I sing, I play the piano, I play the accordion, but I always knew that [journalism] is what I wanted to do. The career options for accordionists are a little more limited.
“I did sing with a bar band called Space Otters for quite a while. My brother right now is playing with [the thrash band] Suicidal Tendencies, and I saw them at Northwest Stadium when they were on tour with Metallica. Jay has followed in my dad’s footsteps and blazed lots of new trails himself. I like to say I’m the black sheep who has not gone into the family business.”
This article appears in the December 2025 issue of Washingtonian.
Andrew Beaujon joined Washingtonian in late 2014. He was previously with the Poynter Institute, TBD.com, and Washington City Paper. He lives in Del Ray.
