Mike Portnoy, John Petrucci, Kevin Moore, John Myung interview

Mike Portnoy: Obviously we have high expectations because there’s a lot of potential in the music. It’s just a matter of how people will accept it. And we’re prepared for a long career, and it’s probably most important that we’re at least given the tools to be able to work and function as an active band. That’s the most important. Obviously, we’d like to break through and be very successful, but that’s not an immediate necessity. We just want to be kept busy, tour and be given the tools and stuff like that.

Bill Pulice: What about touring? I was talking to Derek, and he said he doesn’t want to put you on a club tour. You missed your break with Rush. I’m sure Alex would have dug this.

John Petrucci: I think everybody’s thinking the same way. They know that we have to be built from the ground up – like, the core fan base. It’s gonna be a major element to our success in building that and maintain the musical image of the band. So touring is going to be f***ing majorly important. I mean, at the same time, there’s a couple of songs on the album that could possibly be radio-oriented.

BP: Like what?

JP: What songs? Like ‘Surrounded’ or ‘Another Day.’ You never know. I mean, they’re not formulated for it, but it’s a possibility. It’s not like the whole album is psycho-progressive.

BP: To enter this market, you’re gonna have to do ‘Pull Me Under’ first.

MP: Well, it’s tough because every song is so different. It’s like, the audience can hear one song on the radio but not have any idea what the real spectrum of Dream Theater is. If they’re gonna hear ‘Another Day’ on the radio, they’ll get one impression, but if they heard ‘Pull Me Under’ they’d get another. So it’s important for people to hear a lot of different songs to realize the diversity in the music.

BP: That coincides with playing live, because you have the show based on your material.

JP: But you’re right in so far as the metal, the underground or whatever, ‘Pull Me Under’ is the track. That and ‘Under A Glass Moon’ if that would ever be played on the radio. And maybe AOR-oriented is ‘Take The Time’...

BP: It’s an interesting record to work. Marketing-wise, they’re gonna have their hands full. How the hell did you accomplish the sound on this record? I heard you had some problems – you banged a little heads with Dave and his style a bit. I was talking with Derek – he said, “I could do things” or whatever before communicating with you guys a few times, and he’s had some problems with that. But the guitars are way up, the bass is more clear, the drums – you hear every little [thing]. It’s one of the most sonically brilliant albums I’ve heard. And this is what, a sixth-generation tape or something you sent me?

JP: To tell you the truth – maybe I shouldn’t be admitting this – but I had nothing to do with the sound of the guitars. It was between him [Dave Prater] and the engineer, they’re just, like, psycho – they knew what they wanted. “Plug this in!” and “Plug this in!” and “Plug that in!” And I’m just playing. And then they would say, “Does that sound good?” “Yeah. It’s great.”

BP: So it was an overall improvement. What was the difference between the budget and the studio, in the last record to this record?

[someone audibly scoffs]

MP: It’s the difference between a homemade dinner and a McDonald’s cheeseburger.

BP: What was the budget for this one?

MP: The actual budget on the recording of the album was $180,000, as opposed to $25,000 from the last album.

BP: Major labels – that’s great! I wanted to know about the keyboards – your involvement with the writing and stuff. It seems like you’re more of a base than an enhancer to the writing, especially this album. Could you elaborate at all on that?

KM: I guess I was more involved in the writing process on this album.

BP: All the keys sound good. Two of the songs were written around the keyboards, right? ‘Surrounded’...

KM: ‘Wait For Sleep’.

JP: The whole reason why you’re hearing that is because that’s something we never did before. Kev wrote ‘Surrounded’ and brought it in, and we “Dream Theater-ized” it, and we did for ‘Wait For Sleep’, too. It means you have a whole other person’s perspective.

KM: It’s just the way it happened to work out as far as writing.

BP: Now, you were talking about the guitars, but it’s evident that you matured as a guitarist and sound-wise. But you’re not taking too much credit for the sound?

JP: Well, so far as the guitar are concerned, Ibanez is really cool in trying to nail the sound that I was looking for, which they totally did, because I was able to get more clarity. But so far as the sound, I had my amp – my Boogie – but then he would use his customized Marshall, and the engineer would do his equalization thing. But they always deferred to me, like, “Does that sound good?” And they would compare it to Metallica and Pantera, and try and see if it was heavy enough.

BP: But the prep work for this album is much better. Your preparation going in. You even got flamenco and your solo on ‘Under A Glass Moon’ is a well-thought-out solo. It just seems like you had a lot of time to do exactly what you wanted to do.

JP: You’re totally right. First of all, we did a three-song demo. Two of the songs that are on [Images And Words] we had recorded fully already with David. So we had those. And then ‘Under A Glass Moon’, just for an example I was able to do four tracks and work it out, because the original solo sucked, and everybody thought it sounded like chaos. So I had to completely work [it] out, to rhythmically work.

BP: You didn’t piece it together, did you?

JP: What do you mean – when I recorded it? No. I mean, the way I did all the solos is just record seven different versions, and took parts of each.

BP: And fly them in?

JP: It was just the way of continuity so I didn’t have to keep punching in.

MP: Actually as far as preparation goes, that’s probably one of the keys, because we did so many demos for these songs before we went in to do the album. I mean, the year and a half that we didn’t have a vocalist, we were doing four tracks for all the songs. And then we went in and did the demos for Atco with David Prater. And then right before we did the album, we did some live DATs with David Prater. We recorded this stuff over and over before we went in and did the album. So we were definitely well-prepared when we came to actually laying down the tracks on the album.

BP: The arrangements on this album, more so than the first... you got a lot of strong parts. If you get a part, do you say, “Oh, maybe we should try to fit it into this song or that song,” or does it come about while you’re writing the song?

MP: It’s all pretty spontaneous, actually. Sometimes somebody will come in with an idea, but it’s not like he hands it out and then we all work on it. Somebody will come up with a riff or a theme or an idea – we’ll all jam on it, and then that’ll spark another idea, and then we’ll go into another area. And then it turns out that the key or the time signature works real well with the theme that was earlier in the song, so we bring it back. But it’s all pretty much spontaneously done in rehearsal amongst the four of us.

BP: What about the lyrics? Was it James, or did you all collaborate?

MP: Well, James didn’t write any of the lyrics. They were pretty much done when he joined the band.

BP: So you all did it?

JP: It’s like whoever feels close to the song. Like, “I have a mint idea, lemme write lyrics.”

BP: [On] the last record there were some that stood out, but [on] this record it seems like every lyric fits perfectly.

JP: It’s also James’ interpretation, too. That could be helping that as well – we never had a singer with such a wide range.

BP: I immediately thought when I heard ‘Another Day’ of possibly dedicating it to Freddie Mercury. I mean, [are you] influenced by him enough to consider that? I would think him hearing that, he would appreciate it.

MP: Well he died actually while we were doing the album. There was a consideration to put a mention on the album. I mean, all the people that had died during the writing and the recording of this album – Freddie Mercury and Eric Carr on one day, Stevie Ray Vaughn and Miles Davis. I mean, that all happened while we were writing or recording this album.

BP: When I talked to John about the first single, the one I thought that would be best radio-wise would be ‘Take The Time’. Would you ever consider editing it down – the middle part – to make it more radio-orientated?

MP: Sure, actually. Well, it seems now that the first single will most likely be ‘Pull Me Under.’ But ‘Pull Me Under’ was the last thing we wrote before we went in to do the album. That actually almost didn’t make it onto the album because it wasn’t ready. And up until that song, ‘Take the Time’ was the most well-rounded Dream Theater song. I mean, it had all of the elements in one – it had a catchy chorus, it had very progressive parts and heavy sections, melodic sections. We always considered that like our ‘Roundabout,’ or ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ or ‘Carry On Wayward Son.’ At least I always thought that was the one song on the album that fell in that old progressive vein, with a lot of different themes. I mean, like we said earlier, any of these songs have potential on their own, but they’re all just so different. But I think ‘Take the Time’ is one of the songs on the album that somebody could hear and probably get a real good idea of the band just from that particular song alone.

BP: Did you do the beginning – the rap edit – in the beginning?

MP: The sound effects. That was Chuck D. from Public Enemy. Frank Zappa. There’s a Beastie Boys sample.

BP: Be a good little promotional thing to give people to figure out.

MP: Either that or it’ll be a big expense when we get sued! [laughs]

JP: A rock band sampling a rap [act]. It’s usually the other way around!

BP: One of the parts I like was in ‘Surrounded’, how you went into a boppy type of feel.

JP: You mean like more upbeat, pop?

BP: Yeah, that’s what I mean. How did you come about moving into that direction?

KM: That was just a song that I arranged first. That was just a keyboard riff. We’d never done that before where the keyboard is doing the rhythm by itself. So it just happened to be poppy, and Van Halen-ish. When I wrote it, I didn’t think we were gonna use it. It just somehow worked.

BP: Nowadays, what kind of band would you describe Dream Theater as? I know you wouldn’t want to pigeonhole as metal or whatever, but do you think you fit into the progressive genre?

JP: It’s hard, the definition of the term has changed.

BP: I need the scoop on how you formed and when you got together. It was at Berklee, right?

JP: Let John describe it. Give him an edited version.

JM: Me, John and Kev played in high school together.

BP: What high school?

JM: Kings Park. We did that for a while, and then we went up to college – Kev to Fredonia, and me and John went to Berklee. And that’s when we put together the three-piece with Mike. We played for two semesters, over the course of a year, and Kev came in during the breaks. We just did a lot of material together – we did a lot of writing and came together, and decided not to go back to school. That’s basically how it happened.

BP: Who are your main bass influences growing up?

JM: Geddy Lee, Steve Harris, Jaco later on, mainly those guys.

BP: You use a fretless at all?

JM: No.

BP: No? You don’t like them?

JM: Well, I haven’t got a chance to buy one yet.

MP: We’ll do our best to talk him into it.

BP: Now, what number tape was James? His demo?

KM: He was the last one.

BP: I mean, like the submissions to you guys – how many did you go through around then?

MP: I would say roughly two hundred or so. I mean, I’ve got a box at home the size of, like, a bass cabinet filled with tapes – it’s just ridiculous. We worked with so many singers. We worked with John Arch from Fates Warning for a while. Well, we worked with a lot of singers and even went so far as to do one live show with one singer. We were just about to take in this singer, Chris Cintron. He was just about to join the band; we’d been working with him for a couple of months. And then all of a sudden, we received James’ tape, and we were just so blown away with his voice. We had to fly him out to audition him. We didn’t want to pass him up. We didn’t want to overlook him because we were working with another singer. And he came out and worked out great.

JP: Actually, we did pass him up. We turned him down.

MP: James?

JP: Yeah. You remember when we turned him down first? Kev called him.

KM: We didn’t turn him down.

JP: Yeah we did, too. We called up James and we were like, “Oh, sorry man, but we already have a singer.” He’s like, “Oh, all right, good luck and everything.” You guys don’t remember that?

MP: No.

JP: Kev, you were the one who called him!

BP: But he was pretty much what you were looking for?

JP: He was exactly what we were looking for.

MP: We couldn’t ask for more.

BP: What does he contribute besides his vocals?

MP: His good looks! [laughs] Well, actually, on this album he didn’t get to really contribute to the writing, because we had so much time to do it while we were looking for a singer. We took advantage of the time to write everything. So by the time he joined the band, everything was pretty much written. But of course he had a lot to do with the melodies. We worked with the melodies together. Whoever wrote the particular lyrics had melodies in mind, but of course James added and embellished on them a lot. So that was pretty much his contribution to this album.

BP: Is this [prog] scene dead? Is it gonna come back?

JP: We’re not bringing anything back, because we’re contemporary. It’s definitely heavy – very heavy. That’s only a recent thing. I think that’s a major difference because none of the bands have that. And I don’t think the band sounds dated. So I think we’re gonna, if anything, start something new. I don’t really think it’s a bringing back – a lot of people say that, but we’re not rehashing anything.

BP: But there is a revival interest.

MP: When [our] first album came out back in ‘89 – it seemed like there was really a movement happening again, ‘cause Fates Warning was around, and Watchtower was around. Bands like King Diamond and Voivod and countless others were all doing the progressive metal thing. And it seemed like it was really gonna blow open. It’s now been a couple of years and nothing’s really happened. But I think Queensrÿche has really opened the door for a band like us. I don’t think we can be perceived strictly as a progressive band. I think what we’re doing is definitely different than what’s out there, and it could almost form a whole new genre on its own.

BP: What’s it gonna take to get it across to the people besides touring?

JP: You know what else? All those bands that Mike mentioned – like Voivod and Fates and King Diamond – I don’t think any of those bands had any pop influence. And we keep mentioning Rush, Yes, Genesis a bit – they were like, eventually, ultimately, pop bands as well as progressive. I think that’s what’s gonna make the difference. We can’t stay in our own little world and just play underground metal and be underground like Watchtower that nobody knows about but they’re amazing.

BP: In other words, you still have a lot of room to progress.

JP: You gotta crossover. That’s why you hear songs like that, that are accessible. Those are influences for us.

MP: We wouldn’t be afraid to admit it. I mean, as much as we listen to all those old progressive bands, we listen to a lot of today’s heavy bands or alternative bands. But we wouldn’t be afraid to admit that we all listen to Paul Simon, or Billy Joel, Elton John, Edie Brickell, Peter Gabriel – any stuff like that. I think those influences show just as much in our music as anything else.

JP: That’s gonna be the difference, because we can’t stay in the underground. I just think it’s maturity.