The Second Coming!

This is the first of a two part interview with band members Mike, James and John (Petrucci), in London in October, literally a few hours after they had arrived in the country. They were here to promote their second tour of Europe, and with bleary eyes.....

We’ll start off with the early days, tell me about the history of the band, the early years, the formation, when you were Majesty etc. How did it all come about? The story.

Mike: The story! Take it John.

John: Alright. Well, John (Myung), Kev and myself grew up together in Long Island, New York and we played in various bands together. And graduated from the same High school and basically when it came to go to college, John and I went to Berklee in Boston and we met Mike there. It kind of clicked. We formed, we rehearsed all the time and we decided not to go to school after a year and dropped out. We hooked up with Kev, he went to Fredonia in upstate New York and we kept in touch and there was four of us. We recorded demos – we were called Majesty at that point – in fact weren’t we waiting in line for Rush tickets when we thought of the name of our band?

Mike: Yeah. Actually the name Majesty came, was inspired by a Rush song. We were waiting on line for Rush tickets, right outside Berklee, I guess it was on the Power Windows tour in ‘85, and everyone was waiting for tickets and playing Rush tapes, and we were listening to Bastille Day, and it got to the very end section, the guitar melody, and we said this part is so majestic – we were then trying to think of a name for the band – wait that would be a great name for the band.

Then you found out that someone else had that name?

Mike: Yeah. Years later. Then we were just looking for a singer. We had this guy that we grew up with, that we thought was pretty good, so he joined the band at that point, we recorded this demo and then we got rid of him. We played a lot of gigs and he really wasn’t that good.

So Majesty did play live then?

John: Yeah, we played some local shows.

Mike: The summer of ‘86 we were playing, we were playing all the time actually. That was pretty much the only period that Chris Collins was in the band, ‘cos we came home from college in May, he joined the band singing and we did shows in June/ July and then by August it was over for him, and we knew that he wouldn’t work out.

John: Then we did auditions and put ads out looking for a singer so we got Charlie Dominici (vocals on the first album}, and we recorded another demo.

Was Charlie considerably older than the rest of you?

Mike: Yeah. He still is!

What’s he doing nowadays, do you see him, speak to him?

Mike: We’ve seen him like once since we parted ways, he came out to see one of the shows in New York on this album, but basically we don’t keep in contact.

So Majesty didn’t actually record anything other than demos?

Mike: Well, actually the first album was recorded as Majesty. When we signed to Mechanic we were called Majesty and we were booked in the studio, there was press releases, you could see magazine articles talking about Majesty working on the album “When Dream And Day Unite.”

John: The artwork on the album was all done with Majesty on it, we had to change it. You know the brand, our symbol, it’s like an M, for Majesty, we had to change the name, but the artwork was already done. So we figured we’d keep the symbol, and we’ll change the name, so we did. Doesn’t Derek Simon have the original artwork somewhere? Our old manager has in his apartment, the original first cover of the first album with the Majesty instead of Dream Theater on it. It’s kinda neat. Anyway, then what happened? We got signed to the...

Mike: This is the long and winding road of Dream Theater!

John: I’m doing an edited version also. Then we got signed, we did the album, we did a couple of shows with Charlie and it just didn’t work out, for various reasons, and we went on a year and a half long search, through every possible means we could think of and that’s when we finally got James. All the time we were writing, we had enough material for Images And Words.

Where did the name Dream Theater come from?

Mike: It came from a movie theater in Monterey, California where my dad lives and basically we were just trying to think of names for months on end, it was like one of our million dilemmas we went through at the time, and we were just getting so desperate, we wanted to name the band anything. Like: “Coca Cola, yeah that’d be good.” I flipped through our legal files, we did trade mark searches on all these different names, and they were horrible. I can’t believe we spent so much to get these names searched. Actually here’s a bit of trivia that I completely forgot about until this moment. We actually did one show under the name of Glasser. We were called Glasser! That was one of the names, M1 was another one, Magus, I believe Pancake House was also one. Like the most stupidest names, I don’t know what anybody was thinking. But we did this one show and we said the new name of the band is Glasser. Then my dad left a message on my answering machine and he said see how this sounds: Dream Theater. And we were like, we’d done a show with this new name we don’t want to start changing again. Then a couple of days later we thought that’s the perfect name. so we changed it and that’s where it came from.

So it’s a theatre your father saw where he was living?

Mike: Yeah. And I’ve been there many times myself. It’s like a cult movie theatre, like Rocky Horror and Pink Floyd – The Wall, they show Beatle movies, lots of cult Rock n Roll midnight movies, lot of Avant Garde foreign films and stuff. It’s just a very strange theatre, not your average theatre.

Didn’t you have major contract problems with Mechanic, I think you signed for seven albums or something at one time? You had a real struggle getting out of that didn’t you?

Mike: Yeah that was another struggle. Basically things just fell apart; I mean MCA wasn’t, and still isn’t, the greatest label to be signed to. The proof is in the bands that are signed to that label! They don’t really get behind the bands and we suffered because of that and that’s because we were on Mechanic, which was a new label, a subsidiary of MCA, so we didn’t get any attention whatsoever, so basically the album came, got a little bit of a cult following, but that was the extent of it. We didn’t get support to go out and tour and we didn’t do any videos or anything. Once we started looking for a new singer and during that whole period, we just knew that the situation with Mechanic was definitely over with and once we found James we secretly had been speaking with other labels and basically it was a legal battle to get us off the label. We had to pay some money but we finally got out of the deal.

As we know Rush were an influence on your early career, what other bands do you consider to have influenced you as regards to writing, thoughts, recording and ideas. What inspired you?

Mike: The Dregs, Iron Maiden.

John: Yes. For me as a guitar player, there’s a different range of guitarists, that weren’t necessarily in Progressive bands. Al DiMeola, I got turned on to that Latin influence, Chic Corea, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Vai and all that stuff. That’s just from a guitarist’s stand point.

What about you James, what bands and/or vocalists influenced you?

James: Bands first would definitely be Rush, Aerosmith, Van Halen, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Yes. Vocalists, I would listen to Journey, Foreigner, Starship and actually Deep Purple.

Basic main stream Rock bands with vocalists that were more on the melodic side?

James: Yeah exactly. Powerful voice with a good range.

Onto the live album. Are you pleased with it, the sound of it?

James: No! I’m not speaking for the band, only my point of view. That came together so quick when we did that, it was just rushed into us, like “we are going to do this,” it was a week before we actually got to London to do the Marquee show that it was said we were going to do this. You could tell that day that everything was being rushed and trying to be put together smoothly. But I think we captured something that night definitely, some raw energy, but I don’t know – the sound didn’t freak me out, I didn’t think each guy was represented sound wise as well as they actually did sound that night. The final mix didn’t come out.

John: The venue, it was like when I heard that we were gonna record there, I was like NO, because we had played there the first night of the tour and we were ending up there. I remember it was a nightmare just because the noises on stage and the atmosphere and that there were so many other venues throughout Europe that we played that were so nice and comfortable, and it would have been such a better atmosphere to record. So that was a kind of a bummer, but I think there’s something about it that’s actually cool, there’s some magic things that happened and because we just recorded it on one night, if you messed up something in a song, it wasn’t like you could go to another night and take it from there. So, obviously we couldn’t use all the material, we never intended to anyway, we just wanted to make a short sampling of that tour I guess.

A good idea between albums to get some product on the street.

John: Especially here. We only released it in Europe and Japan. We thought it was too early to have a full-fledged live thing. When we do do that I think we’ll take more care in our choices.

James: We’ll also record more than one night.

So it’s unlikely the remainder of the material from the Marquee will get released in the future?

Mike: I don’t know why we picked certain songs, but I have a feeling that the reason was that some were just bogus, someone might have just messed up so bad... these things happen, untold things that happen live that you can’t control. And if you don’t do any overdubs..... !

There’s a difference between the Japanese version and the European version, one song! Was that your choice or the record companies?

Mike: No, that was the record companies. They were like we want this one we want that one. It should be stressed that our involvement with this record was very minimal. We don’t look at this album like a real Dream Theater album by any means; it’s just something that came up, we did it and put it out for any fans that would be interested in having it or hearing it, we didn’t really spend any time on it ; I’m not saying that we’re not proud of it, you know, I like it, I think it’s a good souvenir or whatever but, we weren’t really that hands-on with it at all.

John: It’s like a really good recorded bootleg, that’s what it is. It’s just like one night and we didn’t do anything to it, and it was just recorded better than the average thing. I’d rather have that than some cheesy bootleg.

There’s some good bootlegs out there already. Quite a few!

John: Yeah I know there are, believe me. There’s a lot of them.

What’s your feelings on bootlegs?

Mike: Here we go. Get out the boxing gloves.

John: It’s mixed throughout the band. I don’t endorse bootlegs, I don’t think it’s right.

James: Yeah, very mixed. I think there are two sides there. It’s cool for the fans, they can go out and get something that is exactly the way it was that night, you know “I was there.” But I don’t think it is fair for the musicians because maybe they’re not being recorded off of the right type of equipment, it may not truly represent the way that it actually did sound there. Somebody’s recording off of a little microphone, it’s not a true sound of what was really happening that night. It’s not fair to the musicians – what if one of them is really sick that night, not feeling well, it’s, I don’t know it’s very mixed.

It’s something you’re going to accept now, because throughout the rest of your career now, it’s gonna happen night after night. More so as you get more successful. Videos as well.

John: It’s bizarre because you have no clue how these people got these things. To give an example, we played this one show in Copenhagen, this place was as big as this room (very small), and you can see everybody that was in the room, we were this close to the people.

I’ve seen the video and your looking right at the camera, I can’t believe you can’t see the guy recording it.

John: Right, this is what I’m saying. If somebody got a video camera in a situation like that, when we were literally this close to people, how did that happen?

James: We’ve seen it before, I’ve looked over the side of the stage and gone there’s a guy out there with a camera! Remember the guy in Ludwigsburg, the setup he had you should have seen it, behind the stage above us.

Mark (Road Manager): He was gonna shoot a shot from behind the backdrop going passed the drums and out looking into the crowd. He was the house DJ of the club and he was taking a feed off our board into the DJ system, and he unplugged the turntables and plugged in a video camera. So the audio was coming off through his camera from the house and he had the camera going out through it.

James: But I know what you mean, I can’t believe that I didn’t see that, literally this is how big the room was I think that we played, and there’s a guy out there with his camera recording it!

There's a show you did in Holland where the guy has shot it from high on the left side of the stage looking down. There's also Warfield, San Francisco which is very good quality.

Mike: Yeah Warfield is very good quality, I collect them. I feel differently about bootlegs than these guys. I’m supportive of it because I feel that the only people interested in bootlegs are fans. I don’t take the stance that the band is losing money. Obviously you’re not getting the money, but you’re not losing money because these fans just want whatever they can get.

The fans actively seek them out, go out of their way to find them.

Mike: Yeah, I do it myself. I’m a big bootleg collector myself. I have a huge collection and I collect our bootlegs and stuff. When I was in Japan they were just everywhere and I collected them all.

You can do what Frank Zappa did, in twenty years’ time put them all out, beat the boots. Enough about bootlegs. Was there an official video shot in Japan, is it readily available, or will it be?

Mike: Yeah, it will be available. We shot the third night in Tokyo, which was August 26th, and that was real good. The performance that night was really on, we had a good night. The home video is primarily live footage, it’s over an hour’s worth of live footage from that show and it’s got the three promo clips we did for the three songs and it’s got all sorts of home video stuff like recording the album, stuff on tour and everything.

John: It’s also a different perspective so far as the way it sounds as it was mixed by our live engineer, which is something we never did before, the stuff was always mixed by a studio engineer. So it’s a little different. It’s from somebody else’s perspective, from somebody who mixes us every night, so it’s kind of interesting. It’s drier, it doesn’t sound as though it’s processed.

As Live At The Marquee was only released in Japan and Europe, has there been anything that has only been released in North America at all?

Mike: No, you guys are the lucky ones. Everybody out there is shelling out $30-40 to get the imports. The first album, I don’t know about you here in the U.K. but Europe and Japan still has the first album, it’s not available in America. So in America all they have is Images And Words, whereas out here you have three albums at this point.

Bombay Vindaloo, where did the title come from? Who had the curry the night before?

John: Derek Oliver. It was just a jam and you know Derek Oliver right? I asked him “what’s a good Indian dish?” Cos it sounds kinda Indian or Egyptian or whatever. He came up with some curry ideas, and said Bombay Vindaloo. That sounds cool!

Was it the same sort of thing with Another Hand, was that another improv or was that specially written?

John: No we wrote that as a segue to connect two songs – and as it was Another Day into The Killing Hand – it was called Another Hand.

Mike: It doesn’t make sense on the European version of The Marquee CD; the European one has Surrounded and not Another Day so Surrounded is followed by Another Hand then The Killing Hand, whereas the Japanese version follows on correctly as it hasn’t got Surrounded on it!

John: I think stuff like that is cool live. That is stuff I’d rather hear, cos we’re not gonna record Bombay Vindaloo – it wasn’t a song – we’re not gonna record Another Hand. If someone buys it and they’re a fan and they know all our material and they see Another Hand – it’s like “what’s that?”

Mike: For me, for a fan of another band. that’s why I would buy something. Also James’ singing material; doing The Killing Hand, doing A Fortune In Lies, I think they also make the Marquee CD interesting, cos obviously it’s much different.

It gives another perspective of those songs that James didn’t record.

Mike: Yeah that’s right.

Can any other members of the band sing at all? Any thought about backing vocals? Listening to a tape of the live album, knowing the songs from the album, backing vocals may have enhanced the overall live sound if one of the other band members could sing!

John: I just listened to something today that Kev was singing, I’ve been doing demos at home and I’ve been singing on them. I think it’s something that we’ll develop, the only problem is when it comes to the range. If you notice a lot of the background vocals on the CD are high, and if you sing it in like a cheesy falsetto, wimpy voice it just sounds really bad. Maybe it’s something on the next album we can work on our ranges.

James: We really haven’t had time to sit down with each other, acapellically sing with each other. I’d like to work on that for the next tour, I think Mike, John and Kevin can definitely sing. It’s just a question of getting together and working things out; and them feeling comfortable because they’re doing so much damn stuff instrumentally. I don’t want that to ever take away from the instrumental.

John: We toured with the Galactic Cowboys in the States, and all those guys sing. And it was inspiration because, it’s not like they have these amazing voices or anything, but when they put it together it sounds so cool, and makes you feel “we can do that.”

Are you going to play The Ones Who Help To Set The Sun live?

Mike: That’s actually the only song on the first album that we’ve never played on this tour, we’ve played every other song!

James: We’re doing Afterlife, A Fortune In Lies and then Only A Matter Of Time.

Mike: Maybe one day. I’d like to do The Ones Who Helped To Set The Sun eventually. Just because we haven’t done it in such a long time, so maybe next time round but not this time.

The live set has changed quite a bit since you were last in Europe in April, hasn’t it?

Mike: Yeah. We’re always trying to change it as much as possible. Actually the set we’re doing on this tour, we haven’t sat down and figured it out yet. I think it’ll be similar to what we just did in Japan; which included To Live Forever, a piece called Eve which we are doing before Learning To Live, there’s also thing like Another Hand, a little piece that sets up Take The Time, a thing that we call Puppies On Acid – that’s just a working title. So there’s a bunch of new ideas and bits and pieces throughout the set.

John: Plus this thing I’ve been working on over the last couple of weeks, another guitar solo. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’ve changed the guitar solo section every leg of the tour, and so we want to change it again.

The second and concluding part of this exclusive interview with the band next time. When we’ll here about plans for the future; the writing and recording for the new album.

Thanks go to all at East/West Records for setting it all up, and a special thanks go to the guys for their time and words.