A Man For All Seasons: Mike Portnoy – A Dream Fulfilled

The following interview appeared in part in M.E.A.T. Magazine in September 1995. The following text is the full blown conversation with Mike Portnoy on Dream Theater’s newest effort A Change Of Seasons and everything in between.

Carl Begai: So, are you happy with your new album?

Mike Portnoy: Definitely. It’s new, but it’s also real old at the same time. I’m really happy with it. Are you happy with it?

CB: Absolutely, so much so that I stole the advance copy from Drew [my editor]. Can this album be considered your ‘baby’?

MP: Yeah, I suppose so. Actually, both aspects of this EP are kinda my baby. ‘A Change Of Seasons’ is something that was very close to me, and the whole Ronnie Scott’s thing was something that was pretty much my pet project.

CB: What’s the story on how ACOS finally ended up getting recorded? Was it a case of being bitched at by the fans, the record company.....?

MP: As you know ACOS was written back in ‘89, and I don’t think a day’s gone by where a fan hasn’t asked me about it, and we had been wanting to record it for many years but the timing was never right. We never thought it would be appropriate to put it on a full length album, and we wanted to record it as an EP to sort of give it its own little life. Recording ACOS came about because we went to the record company and said “hey, this is what we wanna do,” and we got a lot of support from fans on the Internet. There’s a Ytse Jam bulletin board on the ‘Net, and one person even started up a petition, and we received hundreds of letters and requests to record it. Our manager brought this to the record company’s attention and that was pretty much the icing on the cake.

CB: How much has ACOS changed since 1989?

MP: We’ve changed it a lot musically, I’ve altered it lyrically, and James changed a lot of it melodically. In every respect we’ve really reworked it; we decided that when we got the green light to go ahead with it that we should rework the whole thing and put the 1995 touch on it. It was cool because it was our first recording with Derek which gave us the chance to do some writing and arranging with him for the first time, and it was good for me because ACOS was the first song I ever wrote lyrics to. I think I’ve improved in six years, so it gave me the rare opportunity to go back and change lyrics that I felt were no longer as relevant now as they were then.

CB: It sounds great, especially when you hear the studio version next to the bootleg versions.

MP: Well, songs are usually meant to be recorded in the studio [laughs]..... It’s cool for the fans that have bootlegs of the original so they can pick out all the changes that we made.

CB: Was there any pressure from the record company to shorten the song at all? After all, 20 minutes is usually longer than they like.....

MP: Not at all. Obviously this wasn’t going to be a radio hit, so the record company accepted it for what it was, and when we went and changed things in the song. we actually made it longer. The company knew that this was something strictly for the fans and ourselves. and if we gain some new fans out of this, great, but nobody’s really expecting that.

CB: How about playing ACOS live? What’s the reaction been like so far?

MP: After recording it in May, we went back to Europe to do a small tour playing some festivals, and we filled in the gaps between those festival dates playing one-off shows in clubs which gave us a chance to premier ACOS for the European fans. I think it went over great; obviously it’s a big risk playing a twenty minute song [laughs], but because of the reputation of ACOS the fans really anticipated it, and even though it’s tough to take in that much music at once, the fans really dug it. As soon as we announced that we were about to play it, the crowd went nuts and twenty minutes later they still went nuts, during the song they pretty much sat back and took it in. I think the fans definitely appreciated the fact that we played it. I don’t know how often it’ll appear in the set because it’s a pretty demanding piece to play, but who knows.....?

CB: With the rest of the EP, since that’s as equally important, was there ever any consideration to putting studio cuts on it, like ‘To Live Forever’ or maybe some brand new stuff?

MP: Well, there were originally three plans going into this whole thing. The first idea was to record ACOS and then write and record two new pieces of music. With that in mind, we actually wrote a brand new song which was the very first song we wrote with Derek in the band. It went great; it’s a phenomenal piece of music, a typical 12 minute Dream Theater epic. In the end we decided to hold off new material until the next full album. Then we were gonna put ‘Eve’ and ‘To Live Forever’ on it, but that got scrapped for a number of reasons, one being that those songs had Kevin on keyboards and we really wanted to make this the first chapter of the new line-up, and also because any of the die-hard fans out there already had those tracks since they were put out as B-sides.

The final plan was to use the Ronnie Scott’s tape; at first we were a little leery about doing that because we wanted to take those tapes and release them on their own, but then we figured beggars can’t be choosers, and since they were giving us the chance to release this stuff now, let’s go ahead and do it because who knows if we’d ever get the chance to. Those tapes would probably end up being what ACOS was, with fans asking us for the next three years when we were gonna release them.

CB: Any chance of a few more of the songs from the Ronnie Scott’s gig appearing as B-sides like ‘Tears’ or ‘Winter’?

MP: Aside from all the songs on ACOS we actually mixed three extra tracks for B-side releases in the future: ‘Tears’ by Rush, ‘Red Hill Mining Town’ by U2, and ‘Damage Inc.’ with Barney from Napalm Death on vocals. We wanted to hold off on all the special guest stuff because we wanted to keep this EP just us. It’ll end up being released eventually in one form or another.

CB: Is there any progress on new material for the next album, aside from that one song you mentioned?

MP: We have a lot of bits and pieces that we wrote at soundchecks and stuff on tour I constantly have my DAT rolling, and we’ve all got individual pieces and ideas. I think in October we’ll start writing and putting all those ideas together and try to make some sense of them all.

CB: So with Derek in the band, how has it affected the music? Are you guys getting heavier with him in the band? Hearing him play on tour, I thought he was a heavier player than Kevin.

MP: Actually, I don’t think having Derek in the band will make us heavier, but I think it might make us a little more keyboard oriented like we were for Images And Words. I think the heavy edge that Awake had was because Kevin sort of took a back seat in the writing, and now with Derek it’s great because now we have that vibe that we had back with Images And Words with five members all pumped up on the material. Derek is not only a great player, but I think he’s going to be a big contributor into the writing, so I think now we’re going to have a lot more songs where the keyboards are doubling the guitars, harmonising, doing leads. There’ll be a lot more keyboard interplay on this next album, probably more like Images And Words than’ Awake.’

CB: Speaking of Awake, are you happy with how it did?

MP: I think it depends on which country you’re in.

CB: In terms of North America let’s say?

MP: I think North America was a bit disappointing. I think it’s probably a tribute to the simple fact that you’re only as big as your last single in North America. It’s unfortunate but it’s also a reality we’ve come to realise. I think we lost some of the mainstream exposure that we had with Images And Words because the musical environment had changed so much with grunge and punk taking over. In my eyes, the 250,000 that we did sell in the U.S. were bought by real fans, not by people who got hooked on just a single, so that part of it makes me happy. Overseas it was a different story; we sold twice as many.

CB: Germany was nuts when you guys toured there.....

MP: Yeah, Germany’s easily one of our best markets.

CB: When you did the festival dates in Europe, did you still end up with the same die-hards coming to see you when you headlined?

MP: Those festivals were a first for us because we did three years of touring as a headliner, having never once opened to anybody. We jumped at the opportunity to play the festivals in Europe because it’s something we wanted to do for a while, just so we could play for someone else’s audience. We’d never done that before. We played some pretty diverse packages; four shows with Rod Stewart, three with Page/Plant. We got to play for a lot of people that definitely would never had heard us before.

CB: Most bands kill to become headliners. you guys die for the chance to become an opening act!

MP: [laughs] It was kinda weird for us because at one of the festivals we did ‘A Change Of Seasons’ and that’s half our set right there, so it was hard to pick songs to play, but it was a great opportunity, and ultimately, I think it was a good career move. It also gave me the chance to watch Page/Plant for free!