Mike Portnoy’s European Tour Diary ‘95

Date: Tuesday – Feb. 21st, 1995

City: Travel Day (Ferry to Helsinki)

Wake up with a horrible hangover. Check out of the hotel, head onto the bus & we split to catch the ferry to Finland. (Nothing better for a hangover than a 16 hr. boat ride!) Today’s ferry ride marks a monumental event in Dream Theater history: me, James, John P., John M., Derek & our tour manager Bill have a nice dinner, at the end of which we welcome Derek Sherinian into the band as a full member of Dream Theater!! He is pleasantly surprised & extremely psyched! Welcome aboard, Derek!! Me & ‘the new boy’ along with some of the crew, spend the night in the casino playing Blackjack. I win about $200 before losing it & eventually break even. Finally pack it in around 3AM & head up to my cabin to crash.

Date: Wednesday – Feb. 22nd, 1995

City: Helsinki, Finland

We all were supposed to wake up at 7 AM to get off the ship, but all of us (band & the crew) oversleep & wake up around 10:30 to a completely empty ship! We gather our stuff & head out to the bus. Hello Helsinki! This is our first time in Finland. We drop off the crew at the ‘Tavastia Club’ & then head over to our hotel to do some press. Go back to the venue for soundcheck & dinner. We go over to ‘Radio Mafia’ (Finnish National Radio) to do an interview & 3 live acoustic songs. (‘Lifting Shadows,’ ‘Wait For Sleep’ & ‘The Silent Man.’) Head back to the venue for the show. Tonight’s club is the smallest venue of the tour (700 people) & is obviously sold-out. Great show! It’s always great playing to people who are seeing us for the 1st time. We throw ‘Damage Inc.’ & ‘Perfect Strangers’ into the set. Take off after the show for another long ferry ride.

Date: Thursday – Feb. 23rd, 1995

City: Travel Day (Boat & Bus)

Get off the bus at 8 AM to board the ferry. Check into our cabins & go back to sleep. Wake up around 3:00. The boat was rocking so bad while I was sleeping, that I wake up with a horribly stiff neck. Walk around the ship looking for everybody else. Find the Fates guys (half of whom are seasick!) & we all grab a bite for lunch. Me, Derek, Jim & Bones from Fates and J.J. & Taco from Fates’ crew get a big money card game of Acey-Duecy together while waiting for the ship’s Blackjack table to open. Once it does, we swarm it like flies on shit & all get wiped out within a 1/2 hr!! Pick up a bottle Grand Marnier from the duty free shop & head back to one of Fates’ cabins for a few drinks. We arrive in Stockholm around 6:00. Travel all night through Sweden, take a quick ferry to Denmark, drive through Denmark, take a quick ferry to Germany & continue all night driving through Germany.

Date: Friday – Feb. 24th, 1995

City: Rendsburg, Germany (Day Off)

Wake up parked on the bus outside of our hotel. (Nobody here speaks English at all!) My neck is worse than ever! I can barely move & am in horrible shape. Bill takes me to a local Physical Therapist to work on my neck. He works me over for about an hour & puts me in a neck brace. (Really cool looking – I hope I don’t run into any fans! I look like an idiot!!) Go back to the hotel & out to eat with the band & crew. Punch out Mark Snyder’s (our guitar tech.) camcorder because he was filming me in a bad mood with the neck brace on! Take the fucking thing off & then me, James, Ho, Vinnie (our soundman), Steve (our lighting director), Todd (our production mgr.) & Mickey (our merchandise rep.) take off for Hamburg on the bus to go see Queensrÿche at Grosse Freiheit. The place was ridiculously packed & luckily I got to watch the last half of the set from the light board. Rÿche was real good, but I wished they played at a bigger place. After the show, we head backstage to say hello to the guys. Spend about a half hour rapping with Chris, Michael and Eddie before splitting. Grab some food & take the bus back to Rendsburg. Get back to the hotel, put the stupid neck brace on and crash.

Date: Saturday – Feb. 25th, 1995

City: Rendsburg, Germany

Pretty uneventful day except for the fact that it’s great to be back in Germany to play a last string of 4 shows here. Check out of the hotel & head over to ‘Nordmarkhalle’ for the soundcheck. Welcome back our German crew and caterers as well as all of our sound & lights that we didn’t take to Scandinavia with us. Run into some Japanese girls who flew out to follow us for the next week’s worth of shows. (Our fans in Japan rule – but where the hell do they get all of their money??!) Do the basic set list tonight. My neck is still killing me, so it’s hard for me to be my usual ham on stage. Hang with the Fates guys after the show & go through a bottle of Jäger. Finally split for Berlin.

Date: Sunday – Feb. 26th, 1995

City: Berlin, Germany

Wake up on the bus parked outside of ‘Huxley’s Neue Welt.’ Meet some ‘pre-toothbrush’ fans on the way into the venue. Head in, have some lunch & grab a shower. Soundcheck for a while & then I get a massage for my neck in the dressing room. It helps a bit. Have some dinner & warm-up in the dressing room waiting for showtime. Great crowd tonight & we have a pretty good show. We do Pink Floyd’s ‘In The Flesh’ as part of the encore. (From ‘The Wall’ – We’re in Berlin – get it? Nevermind!) After the show, I travel with Fates Warning overnight to Bremen. We go through 2 bottles of the almighty Jäger & get pretty smashed. Spend the night listening to old Scorpions (Ulrich Roth-era) & UFO tapes. Sometime during the night, one of the caterers (who travel on Fates’ bus) was obviously drunk sleepwalking and pissed all over the hallway in the bunk area! Giving new meaning to the phrase ‘piss drunk’!!

Date: Monday – Feb. 27th, 1995

City: Bremen, Germany (Home of Beck’s Beer!)

Wake up on Fates’ bus parked outside of ‘Aladin.’ Head in for a shower & some lunch. Get brought over to our hotel to meet the rest of the band and then we all head over to Saturn Records to do an instore autograph session. Real good turn-out & a major swag score. (Around 10 CDs each!) Get back to the venue an hour before doors for a quick soundcheck. We check out the final cut of ‘The Silent Man’ video which I’m very happy with. (And surprisingly, they gave me the creative concept credit on it!) Tonight’s show was great. (Although, James had a bit of a rough night.) We throw in ‘Perfect Strangers’ for one of the encores. After the show, we find out that each of us won our respective categories in the Burnnn! Magazine reader’s poll in Japan. (I finally beat that mother-fucker Lars!!!) YA-HOO!!

Date: Tuesday – Feb. 28th, 1995

City: Bamburg, Germany

We arrive at our hotel this morning at around 4 AM. (After our show in Bremen) Checked in & went to sleep. Get up around 3:30 or so. I take a long, hot bath to help my neck which still hurts. Me and the rest of the band (as well as Bill and his girlfriend) get picked up around 6:30 or so to go for an Italian dinner with the record company (who is based here in Hamburg). Totally munch and schmooze for about 3 or 4 hrs. Head back to the hotel & spend the night lounging around with Ho watching the O.J. trial. That’s the end of February as we enter our 3rd different month in Europe with only 2 weeks left to go.....

Date: Wednesday – Mar. 1st, 1995

City: Hamburg, Germany

Wake up around noon & head over to ‘Docks’ in the middle of the famous Reeperbahn to do an interview for ‘Sticks’ drum magazine. Spend a while with the journalist & then we start soundcheck. Finish up, have some dinner & get another massage in the dressing room. (This one helped me big time.) Tonight’s show is well sold-out & marks our final show in Germany on this leg. We go out with a bang! The crowd was great, we played real tight & I even was able to headbang & ham it up again! We throw the instrumental outro to ‘Innocence Faded’ into the set as well as ‘Perfect Strangers’ for the 1st encore. Just when I thought it was a great night, I find out that my CD player & walkman was ripped off from our dressing room! Fucking Bastards! We head back to our hotel & I stay up partying with the crew, drinking the hotel dry, until sometime around 8 AM or so. Danke schoen Germany!

Date: Thursday – Mar. 2nd, 1995

City: Hamburg, Germany (Day Off/Travel Day)

Wake up around 2:30 or so with a call from Vanessa Warwick to discuss me hosting the ‘Headbanger’s Ball’ when we get back into London in about 2 weeks. Attempt to shake my hangover & we check out of the hotel. Me and Ho walk over to ‘World Of Music’ to do a little CD shopping. Pick up Grip Inc., the new Faith No More CD single & a copy of the Inner Sanctum CD that I played on about 10 years ago and never got a copy of! (Don’t go crazy trying to find it, it sounds like shit!!) We board the bus & head over to a restaurant in the Reeperbahn for a bite to eat. Munch out & then begin our 12 hr. drive to Austria. Stop off at around midnight at a truck-stop somewhere in the middle of Germany for a bite. Get into a huge fight with a woman working in the restaurant (who didn’t speak English) who made me pay 10 Marks for two sodas I didn’t even drink, because I touched the bottles while on self-service line. (I swear!!!)

Date: Friday – Mar. 3rd, 1995

City: Wels, Austria (Day Off)

Arrive at our hotel & check in at around 10 AM. We all have some breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Spend the whole day lounging around my room listening to CDs & watching the tube. Find out the incredible news from our manager Jim that I won two categories in the Modern Drummer reader’s polls by a landslide!!! (Best Recorded Performance of the year & Best Progressive Rock Drummer.) This is an incredible honor & the ultimate compliment because I grew up my whole life reading MD which is hands-down the biggest drum magazine in America!! Totally cool! Me & Ho go out to grab a bite, come back to the hotel & nap for a few hours. Wake up, continue to lounge around all night & go back to sleep.

Date: Saturday – Mar. 4th, 1995

City: Wels, Austria

Do a bunch of press at the hotel. Head over to ‘Alter Schlaccthof’ for soundcheck. This is our 1st time playing in Austria, so the venue is pretty small but the show is well sold-out and we set an attendance record for the club. (Breaking Sepultura’s record.) Tonight’s show was a nightmare for me because the place was so packed that there was absolutely no air to breathe. The room temperature has to have been well over 100º & after about 4 songs, I thought I was going to pass-out. I was so drenched in sweat from head to toe that I could barely hold my sticks! We finally made it through the show & split for our 15-hr. drive to Italy. Ray & Frank from Fates travel with us, (Ray’s girlfriend is flying in with my wife & John M’s girlfriend and Frank has family in Rome, so they travel with us to get there quicker because we have 2 bus drivers & don’t have to stop on the way.) about 2 hrs. into the trip, we find our merchandise truck smashed up on the side of the road! It apparently skidded out in the snow & got banged up pretty bad. We get Mick to a local hotel until tomorrow when he can get a new van & meet back up with us in Rome. Continue on & spend the night hanging with Ray & Frank until we crash around 6 AM or so.

Not to be continued next issue! As you can imagine, Mike had better things to do when he returned home after the tour! And the diary was not completed. But I’m sure you’ve all enjoyed reading, first-hand, his own personal account of events on the road. Our sincere thanks go to him once again for its use, and we look forward to see what he comes up with next time!