Dream Theater

When you think of “hard rock/heavy metal”, high-tech, meticulous and intricate musicianship doesn’t necessarily come to mind. At least not usually, and that is not to knock that genre in any way, it’s just that the underlying theory in metal & hard rock has always been – play hard, play fast, live it up and have fun. But bands ranging from Led Zeppelin (who continue to affect current musical trends), to Iron Maiden and Queensrÿche and now Dream Theater, have taken that brand of music into a whole new realm and in doing so re-educated the average headbanger. Dream Theater has been labeled a “progressive” rock band, and their music is what’d you call borderline when comes to calling them “metal”. What they’ve done is take the speed, energy and drive of metal and interlaced it with heart-stopping melodies and time changes and sweeps of orchestration underneath lyrical content, the likes of which, could make your head spin. I’d hate to underestimate the ability of the average rock fan to absorb and understand this new hybrid of metal. It’s been done before and time has proven that metal fans are probably more attuned to what is happening within their world of music then they are ever given credit for. Will they go for Dream Theater’s brand of “thinking man’s” metal? I think so. I recently got to take a quick look inside this musical machine with Kevin Moore – the band’s keyboardist. So, let us welcome you to Dream Theater...

Christine Black: How about we start with a general run-down on the band – who you are and how you got there?

Kevin Moore: Me and John [Petrucci] and John [Myung] all went to high school together, so we’ve known each other since we were young tots. We played in bands all through high school and we’ve been writing together ever since. When it came time for college, John and John went to Berklee College of Music in Boston and I went to Fredonia School of Music in upstate New York. This was in ‘85. When they went to Boston they met Mike [Portnoy], our drummer, and they formed Majesty – which was our old name. They started writing then, so I guess that was the official formation of the band – in September of ‘85. They wrote all through that year and when we all came back from school we hooked up with each other. It had been planned for that to happen all along. We started writing then as a band and got ourselves a vocalist – Chris Collins – he was our original singer. Now of course, we have Charlie Dominici. We were playing out and we also did a four track demo.

CB: But you guys started out from the very beginning doing only original material? No covers?

KM: Yeah, we really didn’t want to go down that route, you know? We were afraid that if we started doing that, we’d become like a bar band. Good money every night but never getting anywhere.

CB: You guys seem to have such a drastically different sound from other bands that are considered “metal”. I mean I hate to bring up the similarities with that “other band”. But, there is that progressive nature.

KM: Oh, you almost said it, you mean the “R” word? [ed. note: The “R” word = Rush] Yes, there is that nature. I mean we aren’t gonna say that they weren’t one of our major influences... If there’s one band that everyone in this one loves, you know, it’s the “R” word. We don’t really hide that. But I think that if you listen to the whole album... I mean with ‘Status Seeker’, maybe you can make that comparison, but if you listen to the whole thing and give it a chance there really is no comparison. I think the music stands on its own.

CB: Do you think, taking into consideration, your music’s complexity and the heavy emphasis on presentation and delivery, that American audiences, with their state of mind leaning more towards the commercial, will misunderstand or overlook you? Even if it is a beautiful piece of work?

KM: I guess it could be overlooked. I think it might be a little hard to swallow for some people, but that’s not the audience we’re shooting for. Some people just don’t get it – I mean we just got a bad review in Circus [he reads it to me... “...might be a bit much for the average metal head to digest in one sitting with everyone borrowing their musical cues from Metallica, Guns N’ Roses and Def Leppard, Dream Theater have gone the progressive metal route instead... more in the vein of Queensrÿche meets [the “R” word]... and this session might go right past the fans who are used to the lowest common denominator – rock built around second hand power chords... this could be one band that’s going to learn that it doesn’t pay to be accomplished musicians”] – the thing about it is, that this review wasn’t even really insulting to us, but it was insulting to their readers. We’ve really only gotten two bad reviews and like I said, they aren’t even really insulting to us. They say that we’re good musicians.

CB: I think maybe that the musical trends are coming around more for the bands like yours though. People are finally beginning to appreciate and understand the importance of quality musicianship and songwriting – like with Queensrÿche and Joe Satriani.

KM: I’d love to see it, you know. I’d like to see the American audience develop more of an attitude like the Europeans have. Those people look to the music before they look at the image and they listen to what they want to, not to what’s “in”. In America that’s the whole thing – it’s fashion and certain music is “in fashion” or not.

CB: Do you guys practice a lot of discipline to keep the level of your music up to par? Did the background you all gained from your various stints through music colleges play a role in that?

KM: College for us was definitely a great learning experience, even if it was just one year. It was pretty intense musical training. The discipline is our own now as far as practicing. In college there was a great practicing atmosphere – you could do that all day long, ‘cause that’s how it was set up. You could lock yourself in a room and just practice for six hours. It was great.

CB: Well, it looks like everyone has input into the songs, musically and lyrically the songs are as complex and intense as the music itself.

KM: Oh, well thank you. Don’t you think it should be that way? At least that’s what we should shoot for as opposed to [starts singing], “Hey baby, you’re what I need”, you know?! The music as you can probably imagine is just everybody – an all for one type deal. What’ll happen is usually someone will come down with a riff that they had in their head and someone else’ll put something to it, and it takes anywhere from two days, (which used to be the standard for us – it took two days to write every song), to who knows. We just finished a twenty minute song that’s not on this album, but it’ll be on the next and it took about a day per minute – [laughs] no, really it took about two months. And it’s not really finished yet, because there aren’t any words to it yet.

CB: If it takes that long to write, how long did it take to record in the studio – just as long?

KM: No, [laughs] it took us three weeks. That’s all we had. If we’d had longer – believe me, we would’ve been in a lot longer.

CB: How was it working with Terry Date? And why have Terry Brown [Rush] do the remixes on ‘Status Seeker’ and ‘Afterlife’?

KM: It was great working with Terry Date. Derek Simon – our manager referred us to Terry Date and we had heard the work he’d done with Metal Church and Fifth Angel – both of whom were low budgets and took small amounts of time and we were really impressed by the sound he got out of them. So we picked him up and it worked out really great. Terry Brown is a production idol of ours – I mean Terry Brown wants to remix ‘Status Seeker’ and ‘Afterlife’ and is willing to do it, should he? No?! Yes, man of course! Even though Terry Date did a great job getting our music down, it still was a low-budget – 3½ week project – it wasn’t like the ultimate sound. And these two songs were gonna be the singles which we hope to do a video(s) for so they needed an extra kind of gloss. And Terry Brown really did that. He just remixed them, but it seems like he put his initials on them, you know?

CB: If you do a video what will it be for?

KM: ‘Status Seeker’ – right now Mechanic and our manager are all over MCA to get us a video budget.

CB: It’s definitely helping to boost a lot of other bands right now.

KM: Yeah but they don’t realize that – they want to see us sell albums before we get a video – and it doesn’t really make sense – like the Living Colour video and even the Queensrÿche video too – look what they’ve done for them. Ultimately, if we had the money we’d like to do a video that was mostly concept and performance – because performance is a big part of our music. obviously because we’re like a musicians type of band. We would definitely get into a conceptual type video.

CB: How do you feel about the whole image issue? Do you concern yourselves with developing a “look” at all?

KM: Well, [laughs] I think it’s safe to say we don’t get obsessed by it. If you look at the pictures on the album, that’s the way we dressed that day and we just walked in. Granted, they put on some makeup, but we look pretty ugly [laughs] if we don’t have any on. It wasn’t like Poison makeup or anything... But then again, we take pride in the way we look – not that we look beautiful – but we try to look good – doesn’t everybody?

CB: You’re more concerned with letting the music do the talking.

KM: Yeah, I mean that’s the bottom line. I said to John one day, and John said I should say this in an interview – one day we were looking in the mirror and fixing our hair and stuff and I said, “I think we’re the only band that plays in 9/8 and worries about our hair”.

CB: So what are the goals for the next record – if it took only three weeks... what are you looking for in the next one?

KM: Four weeks... A little more time, a little more money and the music is gonna be much more refined with a higher standard of writing, but it’s gonna be along the same inspiration that the first one came from.

CB: Where does the inspiration for some of the song topics come from? Like ‘The Killing Hand’?

KM: Well as far as that one goes that’s John Petrucci telling a story. [laughs] Why do I always get stuck talking about ‘The Killing Hand’ those are John’s lyrics – let him worry about those. No really, I know this much, a lot of times he writes his lyrics in short story form. And that is just a weird story. He has a good sense of imagery and analogy.

CB: Do you ever worry about after going into the studio and laying down these 20 minute songs that are incredibly intricate and unique – that it won’t work live?

KM: Uhmm, that’s interesting. This first album – we’ve been playing those songs for like two years... so we aren’t afraid – they were done a good six months before we went into the studio so we were more than confident playing them live. That’s the case of all our music so far. We haven’t written anything in the studio yet so... we’ll have to see.

CB: Anything more you would like to express to fans and would-be fans of yours and the band’s?

KM: I want them to know that I’m 6 foot one, dirty blonde hair, blue eyes and I’m into Johnny Mathis. [we both break into laughter] No, but thanks, really we’ve covered it all and I’m gonna go jump in the shower... [laughs]

Thank you to Kevin for being such a trooper after being woken up for the call and for his humor at such an early hour. Thanks to Charity at Mechanic, Diane at MCA and Derek Simon for all calling to arrange for this interview. They’ve got all the bases covered when it comes to this band, I can tell you. Be sure to check out Dream Theater’s debut LP When Dream And Day Unite – you won’t be sorry.