full band interview

James LaBrie: Our whole reason coming down here was more an introductory tour; it’s not like we’re actually promoting Falling Into Infinity, which was our latest release. This is more or less to come down here and give the people a live show from Dream Theater and then at a later date, come down – maybe back in ‘98 – and play some new material.

John Myung: I think the new album is very groove oriented. It’s our most groove oriented album. It’s completely different from anything we’ve done. I think it’s just an evolution that we’ve gone through up until this point over playing ten years with each other.

Mike Portnoy: It’s not techno or industrial, if that’s what you mean. I mean it’s got elements of it, just like it has elements of anything else. The song ‘New Millennium’ has an industrial type section.

Derek Sherinian: There’s like a little bit of Nine Inch Nails, as Mike was saying, on that song, but I don’t think we’re gonna be sequencing like what you were talking about.

MP: The metal scene is almost non-existent really. I mean the metal bands that are there, like Pantera or what-have-you, are almost going back underground, because even the high profile metal bands like Metallica, Megadeth or whatever, they’re very different sounding – they’re more alternative than metal. The problem in America is the styles and the trends are constantly changing from day to day, from month to month, and the minute you try to hone in on one of those trends and try to sound like it and jump on that bandwagon, the next thing you know, by the time your album is out, the trend is gonna be changed. So the only way to really have any longevity in this day and age is just to forget about what’s going on out there and do what you want to do.

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Gastão Moreira: Let’s talk about the new album, Falling Into Infinity. I would like to know, is it different from the rest?

Mike Portnoy: It’s exactly the same. We actually just took the exact CD master of Awake and just put a new cover on it and changed the song titles. [laughs]

GM: Just the lyrics? You changed the lyrics?

MP: No, actually the lyrics are the same too. Different titles.

GM: What can you tell me about this, musically talking?

John Petrucci: Well, this time around we had Kevin Shirley producing the record and the style in which we recorded it was a lot different than we normally do. We recorded one song at a time, really kind of focused in on each song. And also this is our first full-length album with Derek, playing and writing with us, so his influence has brought some new things into the band; I think those are the main differences. Other than that, it’s just the natural progression of where we are as musicians and songwriters, and we’re really psyched about it.

GM: You said that you recorded one song – like you did drums, bass, and you finished the song, and then you start the other one?

JP: Yeah, I mean, sometimes we would be working on a couple of songs at the same time, but we actually would record during the week and then on the weekends, Kevin Shirley would go in and actually mix the song, and it would be mastered on the Monday morning, and that’s how we did it. So we were really able to zone in on each song individually, so there’s a real dynamic character that goes throughout the album.

GM: Do you think people listen to an album that’s 75 minutes? Because I think that most part, just listen to one or two songs and...

JL: Well hopefully in our case they do, or else they’re really not going to catch the essence of Dream Theater. With our kind of music, it’s just like Mike was saying earlier: you can’t listen to one song on the album and go, “Oh yeah, I know what kind of band that is.” It’s not. It’s a whole journey kind of situation with the music that’s incorporated on one album. It’s very diverse.

GM: And songs are very long. There are some very long songs like that. Do you think this is a good point?

JP: Well actually, we discovered that you get paid for the length of music. [laughs] We just make more money that way. No, I think that the way that we write, a lot of times there’s no real structure going into a song. I mean, sometimes we do have a beginning and an end, but for the most part, we don’t really have an end and we just kind of write in what we like to call stream of consciousness, where whatever happens, happens, the arrangement develops as we’re in there. And I think as a result, before you know it, seven minutes have passed and we’re still on the second verse. The songs that are shorter are written with a conscious form in mind, and this way you have parameters that you’re working with, and you can keep the time down.

GM: Your concerts last for two hours and a half, three hours. How do you do in a festival that you must play like 45 minutes?

JL: We knock off some of the other bands. We get them knocked off and then we take their time slots.

MP: Actually, originally, the reason we’re here is we were originally asked to do the Monsters of Rock this year before it was canceled. And we were very excited, of course, to come to South America because we’ve never been here. But it was... kind of unsatisfying in the fact that the people’s first impression of us would be this 40 minute set, and for us that’s like two songs. So it worked out well that that ended up getting canceled and we were able to come to do our own shows, so everybody’s first impression of us is to actually see what Dream Theater is all about, see the full two and a half hour shows and make up for lost time, make up for all the years that we hadn’t been able to come here.

GM: It takes so long to choose a new singer. Was it difficult?

JP: Yeah, it was real difficult because we were really looking for a very specific thing. The problems that we had were that we wanted somebody that had a lot of range and a strong voice and had a character and a personality to their voice, and was able to add something to our music that was going to be a main part of our sound. And there were some guys that had some pretty good voices, but then the other thing was we wanted to stick to a certain sort of look and image. We never kind of got both.

GM: The image and the technique.

JP: Yeah. And we needed somebody that was real musical because the style was very progressive. Fortunately, James LaBrie came along and had all those qualities that we were looking for. He was into the band and it worked out.

GM: In the beginning you talked about kind of autobiographic stuff and lies and people that are betrayed – why that? What happened the band that time for you to write this kind of lyrics? Like in Awake and Images And Words they are very strong lyrics.

MP: I think it’s always like that. I mean you’re going to write about what you’re living through. I think each one of our albums – if you had a break down the lyrics – they represent the period leading up to the release of that record – for the most part, that’s a general statement. But one other good thing about the way that this band writes is that everybody writes the lyrics. So even though musically we have a very collective writing where everybody’s putting in ideas, when it comes to the lyrics, it’s a very individual style for each particular song, because one person is getting to express their ideas, and do it in different ways. My lyrics are very different from John’s or from James’s or from John’s. All of our lyrics have a very different style, different voices, different ideas.