Originally published in Much Music · October 1994
James LaBrie, John Petrucci interview
InterviewJohn PetrucciJames LaBrie1 min read
James LaBrie: It was a dream come true when I met these guys. The unfortunate part of it is like I think Baz [Sebastian Bach] even mentioned, that you’re having to leave your country and go south of the border to really make something happen for yourself. It just seems that the deals down there are more lucrative. They have more money to spend, more money to promote, and things are done on a much bigger scale. I’m not trying to put down anything like it in Canada, but it’s more centered towards Canada, and it’s not in a global situation. – the market up here...
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JL: I think that you're always going to be aware of what's going on around you musically, what's in and all that. I mean, we can't help but not be aware of that. I think that one thing that Dream Theater always tries to do is we try to stay contemporary without becoming a trend or falling into a trend. And we're always trying to keep the diversity and the complexity within our music—at the same time not being so outlandish that it's flying over [people’s] heads.
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John Petrucci: One thing I’ve seemed to notice about the popular music, rock music, in the last three years is that I think fashion is tied into it big time. It’s almost like a culture that’s tied into it, and there’s never really been a fashion associated with our type of music, I guess. And besides all the lights and what James was saying about the production, we recently did a show at Berklee College in Boston where we went and we couldn’t fit any of our stuff in, and it was just a band playing, and that’s what it’s about. Just the performance, the music, the drama of the music, and taking the audience up and down, everything like that. And hopefully we don’t look like dweebs.