Regression 1993

Foreword by Richard Parker

Back in the heady days of the early 90s, one of Voices UK’s members, Fraser Meldrum, was involved in the production of a melodic/progressive rock-oriented fanzine, AOR classics. In November of 1993, contributor Ian Crawford scored an interview with John Petrucci and Mike Portnoy of an up-and-coming progressive rock/metal band by the name of Dream Theater(!). The interview was conducted just before the band’s show at the Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, on 28th November. This was the last of the dates on the second UK tour leg of that year (the first leg in April having featured the Live At The Marquee gig) and marked the closure of touring for the Images And Words album. Unbeknownst to everyone at the time, it turned out to be Kevin Moore’s last ever gig with the band.

The interview covered such topics as the current tour, Images And Words, their plans for the future (and the recording of what would become Awake) and their thoughts on the emergent grunge movement and where Dream Theater stood in the musical climate of the time. Thanks go to Fraser for contributing this rare interview – enjoy!

How has the British leg of the tour been progressing to date?

JP: First question’s the hardest. Well, the UK is a tough nut to crack for us but it’s definitely better than the last time we were here about six months ago, so it’s gotten better. I think the best date we’ve played so far was in Manchester which is, like, a really energetic crowd. Most of the UK crowds are really reserved and not as vocal especially after coming from Germany, Scandinavia and Italy when they were, like, crazy you know, and plus the venues are a lot smaller. But it’s definitely been an improvement over last time with a lot more fans coming along.

So what’s next for Dream Theater?

MP: Well, tonight’s the last night and we go home and take a little Christmas break. And then we’ll immediately start writing in January. Hopefully that’ll only take a couple of months, so I figure if we’re done writing by April so, we can be in the studio, and if that’s on schedule then the record could be out by the end of the summer, but that’s in a perfect world so we’ll have to see what happens. Tonight is actually the end of a fourteen month tour, so you guys may be witnessing a little craziness tonight with everyone celebrating the end of the tour.

JP: Might not be your normal shit.

So are you sad in a way to be finished?

MP: Sad but happy, fourteen months is a long time on tour so everyone’s looking forward to going home and having a nice long break, but after two days at home everyone’s gonna be itching to be back out there playing again!

Looking back at it now do you feel that Derek Oliver took a big risk when he signed you to Atco, particularly with mainstream corporate rock still being a force to be reckoned with and the rise of grunge on the horizon?

JP: He definitely went out on a limb, especially as there was nothing out there to tell him we’d be a success, although Queensrÿche and Metallica really skyrocketed, so that opened up a different area, but besides that there really wasn’t anything happening.

I put the point about the progressive aspect of DT music and that that was what attracted Derek Oliver.

MP: Derek was always a progressive rock fan as I guess you’ll know if you read the stuff he did for Kerrang! But he definitely took a chance with us; I mean he had to do a lot of persuading over at the label to get people to believe in us. In fact, I don’t think the rest of the label really believed that this could happen for a band like us until they actually started seeing the sales figures and the radio numbers and the touring figures, and then everybody at the label patted Derek on the back like he invented a new soda or something.

JP: Also, at the time Derek Shulman was at Atco before he left, and he was the gentle giant and I think he was a plus on our side.

Did the way “Pull Me Under” took off take everyone, including yourselves by surprise?

MP: It was a total shock. Originally, “Pull Me Under” was just going to be a ground-based metal track, just to start a buzz just within the metal circles. We always thought “Another Day” was the song with the radio or MTV potential and “Pull Me Under” just flew out, off out from nowhere. It started on metal college radio like they have in America and all of a sudden the AOR and rock radio stations picked up on it and it was on the rock radio charts for like three or four months. It was a total shock for us and it just took the record to a whole other level and really helped keep us out on tour for as long as we’ve been.

Was “Another Day” a calculated move on your part to give the band that cross-over commercial potential?

JP: Actually, I think the style of “Another Day” is just as much a part of our writing style as any of the other songs. Even if you have the chance to hear the demos that we might have done, we’ve always had songs that were more commercial, and songs that were more heavy and so on. I think that’s part of the definition of being progressive if you want to call it that; it’s all different types of influences and hopefully you’re not afraid to let those styles out. I mean this band will do anything from new age to thrash and the thing is when you’re playing this type of music you have no boundaries. Hopefully, people won’t think “Oh they wrote that song to sound commercial”. We wrote that song because there was something inside us that had to come out and that’s the only reason.

Do you feel under pressure because the last album did so well to now do something better, or different, or more successful?

MP: Well, the first two are in our hands but being more successful isn’t under our control. Inevitably as writers and players we’re gonna come up with something better and something different as we’re always gonna incorporate different ideas and grow as composers. Through all the touring we’ve done we’ve learnt what works and what doesn’t and what kind of songs come across better live, so inevitably it’s gonna be better because we’re growing. As far as more successful, it’s kind of scary but I’ve been thinking, we’re in the perfect position. I think the level of success we’ve had with this album is totally perfect, we’re in the perfect place because we’ve blown up way beyond our expectations at this stage in the game. The record has been a lot more successful than we expected, I mean, we always hoped it would be but we never realistically thought it would happen this quickly. But at the same time there’s still so much room left. It’s not like we sold a million copies, this overnight sensation and it’s gonna be impossible to follow up, there’s still so much room left for us to grow, so I think it’s the perfect position.

Do you think with your style of music there is that much scope for you to grow without actually having another hit single, a song accessible enough for people to hear on the radio and then go out and buy the album and get into all the different facets of what you’re doing?

JP: There’s always a part of this that’s like a business, like entertainment, but having a hit single has proved to us, beneficial. “Pull Me Under” was our single and it did wonders for us. When we wrote the song we didn’t compromise anything in our style so that was fine as musicians on an integrity level. But what it did do on a mass level was turn on people to our stuff who wouldn’t normally get turned on to it. In other words, radio was playing it and you get all different types of people listening to the radio, and MTV was playing it so you had all different types of people watching you on TV. In that respect, there will always be singles on our albums and that should open up a wider audience to the rest of the record, in the same way that “Pull Me Under” did. I mean, these kids that listened to it maybe never heard Yes or Rush but they listen to “Pull Me Under”, they dig it, they buy the album and then they hear something like “Learning To Live”, a twelve minute song with a jazz section in it and you’ve turned people on to it.

How much were you actually involved in the production side of the “Images and Words” album considering that David Prater’s other stuff sounds radically different to what you did with him?

JP: Basically the songs as you hear them are the way we wrote them in the beginning – the lyrics, the melodies and the arrangements – so in that respect we had everything to do with the outcome. David didn’t come in and just change everything. But what he did do – and you can hear this more on the first album – is that we have a tendency sometimes to overplay on sections or have too much going on underneath a vocal line. So David stepped in and came in with an outside perspective and simplified some of the stuff. From my perspective as a guitar player, I have a tendency to play things that are complicated that don’t come across, so what we did was broke up the parts and orchestrated them, so you have a clean guitar picking things out and a more simple heavy guitar underneath, and in that way the parts are more coherent. And I think that’s kind of what he did for the whole sound. If you listen to the first album and then this one, everybody says the same thing – it’s so much more easily digestible, the instruments are separated, it’s more coherent, the vocals come across more. I think that’s what he did.

So would you use him again?

In unison: No.

MP: We’d like someone who can do all those things but can do it a little bit easier.

JP: Yeah, in a friendlier atmosphere.

If you were looking forward from your time as Majesty and you could see yourselves now would you consider that you’ve achieved what you set out to do, or are there still things you’ve got left to do even from your ambitions way back then?

MP: We’ve achieved a lot in the past year, but there’s still so much left. As far as short term goals, we’ve achieved everything we could want. We’ve got two records out, we’ve toured the whole world, we’ve shot videos for MTV, just all those sort of things as far as short term goals we’ve definitely achieved them. Thinking back to the Majesty days, if we ever then thought that we would be where we are now it’s all just a dream come true for us, but in the long term there’s so many more levels we can take it to. Sometimes it’s weird though, because we’re actually playing a piece of something from the Majesty demos on this tour for the first time in years and every once in a while we’ll be onstage playing it and it dawns on me, it’s like, God, we wrote this back in 1985 and it’s like, we were onstage in Italy in front of a few thousand people and we’d been headlining the Aardshok festival in Holland in front of six or seven thousand people and it’s like we’re out there and we wrote this back in ‘85 when we were in college and who would have ever thought that we’d be playing this in Holland in front of six thousand people and it’s kind of a weird sensation. We’re just a bunch of kids from Long Island, how do we deserve this, you know?

Do you think you could have done what you’ve done without going to Berklee?

JP: Well, we wouldn’t have met Mike. I think we would have done it anyway. A lot of kids ask how long you went to Berklee. I say a year and they say “you learnt how to play like that in a year?!” and I say no! I knew how to play before I went to Berklee, all of us did. Berklee taught us the analytical side of music from a jazz perspective. It didn’t teach us chops or how to play our instruments or anything like that, but it totally gave us insight on theory. It didn’t change our perspective on how to write music or play our instruments, I think it just enhanced our knowledge and now when we’re writing music we’ve more to choose from, a bigger encyclopaedia. I would have come up with that chord progression whether I’d gone to Berklee or not, but since I went to Berklee maybe I can think more analytically into the chords I’m playing and expand upon it and make them more colourful.

How much of an influence was Steve Vai on your playing John?

JP: He is a big influence, definitely. I think the way he influenced me is how he’s so creative and how he approaches guitar playing; he’s so original. That was one of the first things when I heard him, hearing all the different sounds he could get from his guitar and all the different tricks, but at the same time he’s totally proficient technically on the instrument so that was inspiring. His songs were, like, wild. Then you hear that he transcribed all that stuff for Zappa, so he has this mind about music, so that’s really inspiring that you have such a well-rounded musician who’s creative, intelligent, knows the language, can write it, read it and then be so successful on a commercial level too. He’s inspiring not just from a guitarist standpoint; he’s more like an overall role model.

(John admits to using Vai-ish techniques on “Under A Glass Moon” and both gush about how they got to meet Steve Vai a couple of weeks ago and what a cool guy he was. “He even let us hang out while he was eating dinner” says Mike.)

Are you an antidote to the two chords, no talent and an attitude approach to grunge?

MP: I think it’s become a trend. At first, I don’t think it started that way. There were all these bands and they just happened to come from Seattle. There has always been that sound and simplicity, and as far as us being an antidote to that... (pause) maybe to listeners that aren’t interested in that simple two chord thing. I mean, we’re definitely not a simple two chord thing; we’re more of a complicated fifteen chord thing. It’s not to say that we don’t appreciate that style; I mean, we all listened to Pearl Jam as well as we do to Yes. It’s definitely different and that’s what helps us and also hurts us at the same time is that we’re not doing what’s trendy right now. It obviously helps us because it gives people something to different to listen to, but at the same time, it hurts us because we’re not trendy, so kids don’t wanna hear anything right now unless it’s Nirvana or Alice In Chains.

Do you think that very fact will give you the longevity that these bands will lack?

MP: I think so, as long as we don’t start any trends. All along we thought a band like this could stand the test of time and a band like ours can have longevity because all the bands we’ve always admired and looked up to like Rush, Iron Maiden and Queen have always done music that has been a little bit different and that’s what made them last so long.

Do you think most of your fans are musicians, more than for most bands?

JP: Oh, a majority of them do play, sure. Especially in the beginning when the promotion really didn’t hit and we were playing small clubs there were a lot of musicians. You could tell because you’d meet them afterwards and they’re all guitar players or drummers or whatever. And at the shows a lot of them were playing air instruments or whatever. Not only that, but our coverage on a musician level like in the guitar and drum magazines and with endorsements getting really big. But as we’re growing commercially with the radio and MTV the audience is expanding and you get people who aren’t musicians or who’ve been driving in their car and they’ve heard “Pull Me Under”. So it’s growing but there’s no denying the definite core of musicians that make up our fan base, which is kinda cool because they appreciate what we’re doing.