Dream Theater’s Awake Sessions

Our favourite virtuosos, Dream Theater, will soon be enriching our minds with yet another life-affirming album. Awake is the title of the band’s third and very important album, on which the fans are promised “more of everything!” Surely a musical feast, and here’s an appetizer.

Two of the band’s master chefs, guitarist John Petrucci and drummer Mike Portnoy, are finishing this treat up as I call them, just as they’re getting in for another “hard” day’s work at One On One Studios in Los Angeles (where Metallica spent ten months recording their self-titled smash album). Curious of secret recipes and delicious flavourings I let the phone ring about 16569 times before anyone bothers to pick up the call. “Mmm... who is it?” Metal Zone’s Leif Edling, I reply, before politely asking if I did wake him up. “No, not really. The phone has been ringing like crazy for about an hour so I guess we’re all awake by now”, guitarist John Petrucci politely replies. “It’s okay. I’ll be off to the studio pretty soon to finish some guitar parts. We have some left to do.” It’s ten o’clock in Los Angeles, so it’s no big deal, but when you’ve been in the studio to the early morning hours you would want to get as much sleep as possible.

Dream Theater did two world tours for their last album, Images And Words, from 1991. The first one was done purely out of goodwill. They showcased the band, hunted down the press, shook hands and talked to the fans, and also got to show off how shockingly good they are as a live band. The venues were seldom sold out but if only the audience and press could be charmed the band counted on the inevitable buzz of the underground. The rumour that there was an amazing band out there spread, as you might know, like wildfire. Hype is a factor, for sure. No music maniac would want to miss, or in retrospect have to say that he or she missed the next big thing. And since the people surrounding Dream Theater, with manager Jim Pitulski behind the wheel, are as smart as the band’s music, a second tour was conceived to reap what was sown the first time around. I barely have to remind you of the hysteria at the band’s show at Gino in Stockholm, last October. People were hyper-ventilating and had to be crammed in with shoehorns and vaseline. A lot of people know what Dream Theater sound like – Images and Words has gone platinum in Japan and was certified gold in the US, which means more than half a million units shifted, and more and more people are discovering these guys’ fantastic musicianship.

John, however, is moaning a bit when he’s reminded of the Scandinavian leg of the last tour: “We had done some 200 gigs on Images And Words and still we played like crap during those first gigs. But in Germany things went better and towards the end of the tour, in England, we were pretty great”, he comments. He now manages to change strings on his guitar while talking on the phone. “Europe was cool. We got a lot of new fans, had a better bus, better hotels than last time, and so on.”

Seriously, didn’t you feel a bit washed up after 200 gigs?

“Yeah, as a matter of fact. It was sort of a relief when it was all over. The last gig was in Edinburgh in Scotland on the 28th of November, and after that we went home. Apart from one week of promotion in Korea we’ve been on vacation since then.”

Vacation? But what about the new album?

“Well, yeah... I meant that we’ve had time off from doing gigs. We’ve written songs for the album all through the spring, and it has been totally hassle-free. We’ve been able to spend time with our families and relax. The name of the album will be Awake and with this album we’ve done what we’ve done in the past – taking a phrase from one of the lyrics and used that as the title. Some words popped out of the lyrics more than others and Awake was among those. It’s got a good sound to it and it’s also reflecting of the state of Dream Theater today.”

Did you use any of the instrumental things you tried on the last tour, for instance ‘Puppies On Acid,’ ‘Barfbag’ or ‘Eve’?

“We’ve skipped ‘Barfbag,’ but ‘Puppies On Acid’ is in there as a part of the song ‘The Mirror.’ A super-heavy dark thing. We’ve also recorded ‘Eve’ but that will probably be used as a single B-side or for a film.”

So the songs form out of assorted bits and pieces?

“The parts we’ve been working on has been dictatorial to the overall style of one particular song. If something’s been heavy, progressive or soft that has been mostly how the song has remained as a whole. But we’ve been careful to maintain the dynamics of the album. It is a varied album. Not too much of this or that, but just right. Instrumental passages are mixed with experimental stuff and a ballad from time to time. Often a song isn’t a finished product when someone will bring in the ideas, but we jam and experiment with it, all of us, before it assumes it’s final form. One exception from that rule is ‘Space Dye Vest,’ which Kevin (Moore, keyboardist) wrote by himself. The songwriting has worked out very well, we were even surprised how well. The only difficult thing has been the lyrics, which we decided to save for last. So when all music was ready there were barely three weeks until the recording would take place. We think the lyrics should be on par with the music so it was all very difficult but I think it will work out in the end.”

Personally, I’m confident it will. Dream Theater are not exactly known to take shortcuts creatively. They are perfectionists. If it takes one summer to get one song down (‘Metropolis’) then it will have to take one summer, so if the lyrics work they’re probably as crushingly good as the album will be. And it has to be! This is the third, important album, the album that does it. Dream Theater is on the same level that once Queensryche was on with Rage For Order, prior to their enormous breakthrough with Operation: Mindcrime. Dream Theater has the capacity and is in tune with the times to be able to do it. The band has a totally unique style which slowly wins over listeners from all groups of people. Can they just keep it together and deliver the goods, then Awake will surely be a big-selling album. John has to do some serious surgery to his guitar and passes the phone over to always-cheerful drummer Mike Portnoy. “Of course I’m happy, we’re making a killer record. This is the album we’ve always been wanting to do, you know what I’m saying? For the first time we’ve been able to write with a goal – that the music will be released for sure”, Mike explains. “The last time we wrote for years until we met James (LaBrie, singer) and got the material released. Now things are different. We’re pumped about Awake and I’m sure that it will go down well with every Dream Theater fan, as well as giving us a new, broader and bigger audience. We’ve taken everything Dream Theater stands for to the extreme. The heavy parts are heavier. John Petrucci has a seven-string guitar and John Myung uses a six string bass to utilise the lower frequencies. The softer bits are more dynamic than before and the progressive parts are ultra-progressive. We wrote approximately 90 minutes of music for this record and we could have gone on forever with that energy we possessed at the time. But we wanted to get into the studio as soon as possible. So from the thirteen songs we recorded, eleven will be on the album. It’ll be 74 minutes of music”, Mike says assuring us we will get our money’s worth.

Does the album contain any of the trademark Dream Theater epic things?

“Of course! And this time it’s been quite easy to rehearse them. Instead of working for three hours a day, for weeks, we rehearsed six to eight hours a day, effectively with one song, so that we’d all put our collective spirit in the songs. ‘Scarred,’ for example, was the first one we got down. It’s about eleven minutes long and it didn’t really take much more than a day to rehearse. ‘The Mirror’ and ‘Lie’ are two songs that are connected, landing around 13 minutes. So when I sat down to check the length of the songs I thought ‘my God, this is crazy!’ But we calmed down and wrote some shorter numbers. Speaking of long songs, there is in fact a piece that is 20 minutes, divided into three parts – ‘Erotomania,’ ‘Voices’ and ‘The Silent Man.’ It can be appreciated as a whole or as individual pieces. The remainder of the songs are around five minutes each.”

How are the lyrical duties distributed this time?

“This is actually the first time that everyone contributes with something. On our first records it was mainly John Petrucci, Kevin Moore and John Myung who wrote but now everyone has contributed. John Petrucci has written ‘Scarred,’ ‘Innocence Faded,’ ‘Voices’ and ‘The Silent Man’ while Kevin wrote ‘6:00,’ ‘Space Dye Vest’ and ‘Lie.’ I wrote ‘The Mirror’ and John Myung wrote ‘Lifting Shadows Off A Dream,’ even James gets credit for ‘Caught In A Web.’”

Do you have a personal favourite?

“’The Mirror’ is one. Not just because I wrote the lyrics, but mainly because it’s the heaviest song we’ve ever done. ‘Puppies On Acid,’ which we did on the last tour, is used in there and it sounds like Pantera meets Helmet meets Sepultura. I also like ‘Voices.’ That’s probably the best song we’ve ever written. A classic, epic song. We played almost like in trance and everything just grew. It was pure magic!”

A new Dream Theater album is going to be in the stores in the beginning of October, if nothing goes wrong, filled with treats, like the instrumental jazz fusion-orgy that is ‘Erotomania’ or Kevin’s introspective and brilliant ‘Space Dye Vest,’ or John Petrucci’s ‘Scarred.’ But the album’s not finished. The last mixing was done at the end of June. Producing of the album was the responsibility of the duo John Purdell and Duane Baron, cool guys that previously worked with Ozzy Osbourne’s No More Tears and Heart’s Desire Walks On. “We had a list of guys we wanted to work with, amongst others Peter Collins, who’s worked with Rush, and Dave Jerden. One day we sat down at the record company offices and went through them. We listened to their records, listened and discussed. We decided we liked what Duane and John did with Ozzy and Heart. It would fit Dream Theater like a glove. The Ozzy album had massive guitars and the Heart album had incredible dynamics. These persons we were looking for should both give us the heaviness and metal edge, but at the same time fit in keyboards and be able to produce softer songs. Dave Jerden had worked with Jane’s Addiction, Anthrax and Alice In Chains but the question was if he could have handled the keys and the big picture we wanted. Chris Kimsey’s work, on the other hand... Marillion and Yes had lots of keyboards but could he handle our heavy guitars and double bass drums? Duane’s and John’s productions featured the parts equally great. And after we met we decided to work with them. It was a perfect chemistry. They’re very creative and musical and at the same time open to our ideas. Great to work with.”

So you do need some other opinions in the studio?

“Absolutely! The problem with Images And Words was that David Prater was too dominating and did that record the way he wanted to. Terry Date, who produced When Dream And Day Unite, on the other hand, didn’t say a word. We had to do it all by ourselves, so that wasn’t good either. We need an objective point of view. Duane and John feel the songs, hear what we have to say and create something from that, with their own input.”

Did they get you to choose One On One and Los Angeles for the recording of the album?

“That’s exactly how it was”, says Mike with a bit of sadness in his voice. Last month he married his wife Marlene. The wedding took place in New York, the 30th of July and the party afterwards featured a performance from Dream Theater’s first singer, Charlie Dominici. “If we had called the shots we’d prefer the recording to have been done in New York. After one and a half year of touring it was quite tough to go away for another three months. But Duane and John had also been away from their respective families for 18 months, on various projects, so they insisted we do the record in Los Angeles. But the studio is killer, our apartment is cool, so everything has worked out for the best.”

It’s also good to get away from all the temptations of home?

“Personally I like to get away for recording. You don’t have to worry about the bills or go shopping groceries with your wife. You are able to concentrate more on getting the recordings to 100%. But, of course we miss our girlfriends.”

Why don’t you fly them to Los Angeles?

“We do that, so I guess we both had the cake and ate it. We were in the studio for three months. I finished my drums in one week, then some days’ of percussion. John’s guitars took about ten days and the bass almost a week. Kevin worked on his things for a week and then James did his last vocal overdubs. Then mixing, it had to be finished before my wedding, ha ha!”

Was the entire band present for the duration of the recordings?

“The only time everyone was there was during my drums. I needed their playing to get the right flow in the playing. After that everyone spent time in their apartments, practising or listening to what had been done. Everyone sort of went and came as they wished when they weren’t playing. I guess I was the only one there for the whole duration. I couldn’t relax and do something completely different.”

Didn’t you take a break at all during this?

“Yes, in fact. My fiancé and I took a trip with our car through the Arizona desert, the Grand Canyon and through to Las Vegas. But that was it. Otherwise I spent my time in the studio – but it’s OK, I like it. What was tough though was the earthquakes! We had a small one on one occasion, I was sleeping at the time. The night before John Petrucci and I had been to a Mexican restaurant and gotten quite drunk so I slept heavily. At six in the morning the house started to rumble and things started falling from the walls. John tried to wake me up: ‘Wake up, we have an earthquake!’ But I had just rolled over and told him ‘Leave me alone, it’s my day off today, let me sleep!’ Ha ha ha!”

What’s the biggest difference between Awake and Images And Words, from a recording point of view?

“Apart from John’s and Duane’s work I’ll have to say it’s the time and money spent. On Images And Words I did all my parts in three days, but were less than satisfied. Now I had a week. In the beginning it was frustrating, I thought ‘fuck, another take, I wanted to get it down on the first one!’ But John and Duane took everything real calm and we worked to get everything perfect. I am 100% satisfied with my drums, and that goes for the other members’ respective contributions.”

Did you at any point feel the urge to just let loose and take the song into a totally other place?

“Yeah! That’s how we work. Nothing is decided drum-wise by anyone else. Some songs develop from a groove or an idea that I’ve got. During rehearsals I might just get into a totally crazy drum groove and that dictates how the song will turn out. We simply do what we feel like.”

Isn’t the mixing a bit of a drag?

“It’s what forms the final product. The foundation is the individual parts but with the mix you can create the full image, change sound from song to song and add those subtle nuances. We add effects. We play a lot with the actual stereo image, so when you’re listening with headphones you’ll hear things flying in and out of your ears all the time.”

With eleven songs and 74 minutes of music, and the name Awake... what will the cover look like?

“We’re working on that right now. We’re using the same guy who did the cover for Images And Words, we were very pleased with that one. And basically the same kind of ideas will be the basis of this cover. A lot to look at, a lot of elements from the songs, but not as colorful as with Images And Words. Awake will be a lot darker, because the music is very dark from time to time. A lot of minor key and scary atmospheres.”

I must admit that listening to Mike talking about the new record gives me goosebumps. Is it just half as good as I think it can be, Dream Theater will shock the industry. Readers who are extra curious about Awake can get a very exclusive preview in the early days of September when Dream Theater are playing the Concrete Foundations Forum in Los Angeles. Something not included on this album is the masterpiece ‘A Change Of Seasons’ – 20 minutes of Dream Theater in their finest form. Mighty, complex, symphonic. It has been performed on some occasions in New York and is available on bootlegs. Rumour has it that ‘A Change Of Seasons’ will be recorded during the fall for a special single release. And if you wonder what happened to the second part of ‘Metropolis,’ I can just tell you that it’s surrounded by rumours. They might release it on their next record or the one after that, even. That’s just the way Dream Theater operate. Until then, October signals the release of Awake. An album that might well bring Dream Theater to superstardom. They’ve made the record they’ve always wanted to make.