Talking to Infinity – Mike Portnoy Interview

We had the pleasure of meeting up with Mike Portnoy at the 9th Annual Drum Clinic in Tampa, Florida. Mike stopped in, not as a scheduled player, but as a “fan” who was in the area while he and his family visited Disneyworld.

Mike was kind enough to wave his magic drumstick and arrange an interview with us to talk about the new Dream Theater CD, Falling To Infinity.

MNN: We love the new CD, it continues where Awake left off. The style of songwriting did not change as drastically as one would imagine after Kevin Moore left the band.

MP: Actually, for Awake he wasn’t that involved with the writing. Of course he contributed, but it was on a much smaller level because his interest was beginning to fade and he was more into working on his own. I mean “Space Dye Vest” was his and there were moments and definite lyrical contributions. Mostly it was John (Petrucci), John (Myung), and me that wrote the music for Awake. I know the audience and fans are very attached to Kevin, mostly because he was the keyboard player when they discovered the band. To be honest, I wasn’t that concerned with the writing aspect. I knew we’d carry on just fine. In fact, I think even better because now we have an enthusiastic contribution in the keyboard department as opposed to somebody who was becoming very distant.

MNN: We remember Derek (Sherinian) phoning and asking us if the fact he just cut his hair very short would compromise his audition with the band.

MP: When he auditioned he looked exactly like Martin Tupper from Dream On to me. At first I was concerned about it. But if you think about it, Kevin Moore had just shaved his head, Derek had even longer hair than Kevin did at that point. The hair issue is really irrelevant even more so now than three years ago. It’s even more outlandish to have long hair in this day and age.

Derek has brought humor and footwear to this band. He’s brought fashion to this group. He’s the glam boy. He comes from the David Lee Roth school of show business.

MNN: He’s also the only single band member!

MP: He loves that (laughs) because he’s got no competition. When he was on the road with Alice Cooper, Kiss, or whoever, he had to share; he was a sideman. Now he’s got it all! He has no competition. He loves it.

MNN: He moved back west, didn’t he?

MP: Yeah. He had moved to New York to write the album with us, but I think we scared him away. He was not enjoying New York and really needed the California sun so as soon as were done with the album, he moved back there. I think he’ll stay there and commute when necessary.

MNN: It seems as if on the new album your lyrics and songs are more powerful and more abstract, where as John Petrucci’s are more like stories.

MP: In the past, John’s have been more abstract, more metaphoric and mine have always been very straight ahead. John has always written from the Neil Peart school where everything is metaphors and Imagery and mine have been really been from the heart and street level emotion. Much like Roger Waters’ lyrics or even Fish, although Fish always had a real way with words but he was really trying to tap into the human emotion instead of the mind. This time around, I think John’s lyrics have become more straight ahead and his lyrics are more on a ground level and my lyrics on this album tend to be very angry and cynical. The songs I wrote lyrics to, “Burning My Soul”, “Just Let Me Breathe”, and “New Millennium” are all pretty much very cynical and sarcastic and frustrated. They’re written out of the frustration that we’ve had, or that I’ve had, over the past three years with the whole music industry and what the band has had to face on an artistic level.

MNN: Was Derek actively involved in the writing?

MP: Yeah. Derek was a very big contributor in the music department. He was very active in contributing ideas and structuring the songs musically. The way we write is John, John, Derek, and I will write the music together, then we’ll decide to take a particular song and go write the lyrics individually. I guess John (Petrucci) and I ended up taking the bulk of the lyrics and John Myung had his typical one set of lyrics per album, which he’s very comfortable with. James (LaBrie) was starting to write his own lyrics, more so than in the past, so he felt very comfortable with letting us take the bulk of it. He’s trying to take it one step at a time. In the music department, Derek’s contributions were pretty giant steps so you’ve got to give him credit for that.

MNN: Sounds like he didn’t miss a beat. We notice the transition from Images and Words to Awake and now with the new songs you can detect very different sounds, like Spanish guitar and classical influences.

MP: I think we’ve always had very diverse influences. We’ve always tried to incorporate it into the songwriting. I think this time we were able to incorporate it better than ever. I don’t know if it’s maturity on our part or if it’s Kevin Shirley and the production, whatever the case may be, on this album you can hear some of the pop influence that we’ve always had, whether it’s U2, Peter Gabriel, or Elton John. We’ve always had that influence but we’ve had trouble getting it across.

This time I think we really nailed it in that department while still maintaining the heavy side and the progressive side, hopefully balancing the three.

MNN: All of the tracks and their running order is great. The opening track, “New Millennium” is very in your face. We like it as an opener.

MP: Very “Dream Theater”, that one. I pretty much always do the sequencing for the album and also for the live set lists. It’s something that I’m very passionate about. Maybe it’s because I’m such a big movie fan. An album or a concert needs to be paced in a way so you don’t put the mellow songs together. You don’t put the heavy songs together. I try to constantly think about the pacing like I would if I was making a movie. That’s very, very important. I lose a lot of sleep over sequencing and set lists (laughs). Right now, I’m in set list mode and I’m mapping out hundreds of different set lists to see what works best. It’s a very, very important thing. Then I have to campaign it to the rest of the band. I usually win, but it’s always a fight and a struggle.

MNN: It seems as if Dream Theater is one of a handful of bands, and you in particular, that is very fan-friendly. You really take it upon yourself to communicate with the fans. That is so much appreciated.

MP: It’s because I am a fan. I consider myself Dream Theater’s number one fan. I still look at myself as someone in the audience, I just have the best seat in the house. I feel a definite attachment to the audience because I know what it feels like to go see a band that you love ten times on a tour and I know what it feels like to drive five hours to see a band. I drove five hours to see Roger Waters once. I collect bootlegs myself, and still to this day I’m a fan of other bands. To this day I feel a very strong relationship with our audience. I’m usually the band member that is always looking out for them when it comes to putting together the live set list. I’m the one thinking about what the fans want to hear, not in terms of what I want to play but what they want us to play.

MNN: That’s how Mark Kelly is with Marillion. We wish that more bands would take interest/consideration for their fans as you and Marillion do.

MP: The fans are great and a lot of them are the same folks that like Marillion. Our fans are incredible. The fact that they were so vocal to the record company and they were able to get the Change of Season EP released. I always go on the internet and checkout the Dream Theater mailing list and at times there is so much bickering and complaining and speculation that sometimes it gets annoying for me to read, but for the most part how can I complain? These people are great, great hard core fans. That’s what drives a band like this. Our success is totally based on a fan base like this. What we do isn’t the mainstream and if it wasn’t for fans like this our record company would have absolutely no faith in us whatsoever. We have nothing to do with what’s pop today. We’re fortunate to be on a major label. There aren’t many progressive bands in 1997 on major labels and I think the only reason we still have a deal is because our fans are so great. They really support everything.

MNN: The new CD seems to have taken longer to release than the previous releases.

MP: It took much longer to write but it took less time to record. We spent about a year and a half writing most of it, which wasn’t by choice, but because there were a bunch of difficulties and technicalities in the business side that were preventing us from starting the album. The good side of that is it gave us a lot of time to write and we had about two and a half hours of material to choose from. That’s the first time we’ve ever done that, written just for the record. With Awake we wrote the whole thing for three months and went straight into the studio and did it. We were fortunate to have more time this time around. I think it helped the writing process because we were able to refine the songs and work on them and make them the best they could be.

Then the recording process was the shortest we’ve ever done. We actually had to do the whole album in two months. We were suppose to have three months and then the label suddenly took two weeks off the delivery date at the end so we were scrambling to get it done in time because the label had to have it at x date to get it released in September and not miss the window of opportunity for this year and be pushed into next year. We went from zero miles per hour to 300 miles per hours in one leap.

MNN: How did Doug Pinnick of King’s X get involved?

MP: We wanted a different sounding voice that only a black soulful singer could provide with as great as a voice as Doug. He’s a great guy and a great singer. When we were doing the demo for “Lines in the Sand” we knew we wanted this call and response thing in the chorus and on the demo James did both vocal parts. We kept trying to get James to sing the response part with a totally different approach, a more soulful, bluesy kind of approach. We kept telling him, “Think of what Doug Pinnick would do.” Then when we were in pre-production I said, “Why don’t we just call Doug and see if he wants to do it.” We’ve known those guys for years. Whenever we play Houston they come to see us and if they’re in New York we go see them. I just called Doug and he was totally into it. We flew him out and he spent the afternoon hanging out. He just improvised about 30 different tracks and Kevin Shirley compiled the coolest ones and that’s what’s on the record.

MNN: Why not have a different Dream Theater band member sing it?

MP: John (Petrucci) and I actually did a lot of singing on this album, more than ever. Neither of us has a lead vocalist voice. It’s the same question of why didn’t James do it. He could have, and it would have sounded great, but we just wanted a different quality in the voice and obviously John and I can’t sing anywhere near what Doug does, so that’s not even an option.

MNN: How much music didn’t make it onto the album and what are your plans for that material?

MP: Funny you should ask. I think there are six songs that didn’t get used: “Speak To Me”, “The Way It Used To Be”, “Raise The Knife”, “Where Are You Now”, “Cover My Eyes”, and the infamous “Metropolis 2”, which is about 25 minutes long. I just had this idea, because I always make the break tapes you hear before we go on and I just had this idea to use the demos of the unreleased songs as our break tape. I think people that come to the shows might be able to hear it in that form. But as far as releasing that stuff, “Speak To Me” is one of the bonus tracks on the Japanese release. “The Way It Used To Be” was mastered and that will probably be used as a b-side. Then the other tracks will end up on b-sides and I think the plan would probably be to do an EP next year with “Metropolis 2” and some of the other tracks. That’s what we would love to do, much as we did with Change of Season. That’s what we’re hoping to do.

We have pretty good sounding demos of everything except for “Metropolis 2”. We spent like a month or two writing it and then finally we finished it and played the whole thing from top to bottom once. I recorded it at rehearsal and we haven’t played it since because it’s too much of a mind warp. There’s no existing demo of that, just the one rehearsal tape, which is pretty bad. I’m going to have to go back and learn that.

MNN: You’re a fan of bootlegs, as well.

MP: I’m a major bootleg collector. I have the biggest Dream Theater bootleg collection there is.

MNN: So we can announce that if anyone has a Dream Theater bootleg, either audio or video, they can send it to you in care of us here at Music News Network. When will Dream Theater tour?

MP: Dates are just getting confirmed now. Hopefully we’ll have them by the end of the week. The plan is to start in America and play until December, then I think we’re going to go over to Europe for a couple shows. We didn’t even want to go to Europe yet because we really wanted to concentrate on America, but the album is just blowing up overseas. It’s unbelievable. It’s entering Top 10 in all the charts over there. In Germany it debuted at #9, Italy #5, Greece #4, Japan #4. It’s going way beyond our expectations overseas so the label wants us to satisfy some of those markets in December rather than making them wait until the spring which was our original plan. Then we’ll take a Christmas break, do some more shows in the states in January. That’s what the plan is now.

MNN: Any ideas about an opening band?

MP: To be frank, my plan was to take out either Fates Warning or Spock’s Beard, and it’s not going to be either of them before you get too excited. I was trying to work those details out but for a variety of reasons, which I won’t go into, we’re taking out a new band that’s on Atlantic. They’re not even a progressive band. We’re just doing the label a favor by taking them out. They’re a good band, they’re just not a progressive band.

MNN: What band?

MP: They’re called Big Wreck and we’re going to do this first leg with them. Luckily we took Fates out on the Awake tour and that was a lot of fun. I really want to take Spock’s Beard out.

Any reasons of not wanting to take them out are political reasons, but like I was saying before, when it comes to band decisions I don’t think that way. I’m the band member that totally thinks of the audience and not of the business side, which is a good balance because some of the band members really think on a business level and you’ve got to have that balance when it comes to making decisions. I’m still hoping to take Spock’s out to Europe. They’re really a great band.

MNN: Would you ever consider playing at something like Progfest?

MP: I would love to, but you know it’s one of those business moves. It would have to work out with our tour schedule. There are a lot of things that have to be in place. If all the elements are in place, I’d love to. I’m a big, big supporter of the whole scene.

MNN: Which is so cool. You’re Mike Portnoy, “ prog guy” (laughter). Can you tell us about the album you just recorded with Jordan Rudess, Tony Levin, and John Petrucci?

MP: This was a really, really cool thing. I’ve been keeping it very low key because I don’t want to take away from the Dream Theater album, but now that it’s out, I guess I can talk about it! Magna Carta approached me about a year ago, the same time they put together the Bozzio, Levin, Stevens project, to put together a project with an improvised, studio “supergroup”, if I may call it that. The idea was kicked around about a year ago and they asked me to put together a wish list of people I’d like to work with. Basically my wish list consisted of two keyboard players, two bass players, and about 100 guitar players.

The bass players were Billy Sheehan, who I had worked with on the Rush tribute, and Tony Levin, of course, who is one of my all time favorites. My keyboard choices were two guys we had worked with In the keyboard audition period which were Jordan (Rudess), who had actually done a gig with us and I consider him the greatest keyboard player ever, and Jens Johanson who auditioned for us a couple of years ago. I really love the playing he did on the new Allan Holdsworth album. Basically at that time Billy and Jens were available and interested. Tony was busy with Terry Bozzio’s project and Jordan was busy with Rod (Morgenstein), so it was going to be Billy, Jens, me, and a guitar player to be named. We went on this endless search to find someone who was (a) interested and (b) available. It never panned out. The whole project kind of fell apart. The time we had closed off so the whole idea was put on the shelf. Then, maybe eight months later, I talked with Pete (Morticelli) and Mike (Varney) at Magna Carta again and it turned out now that Jordan and Tony were available. So let’s go on this pursuit of a guitar player again.

MNN: Which guitar players did you ask?

MP: Everyone from the guitar players in Pantera and Rage Against the Machine to Trevor Rabin and Steve Morse. Nobody was Interested or available. I always thought John Petrucci would have been perfect for a project like this. He and I would do these clinics where we would do these really great jams together, but there was a part of me that wanted to keep this completely separate from Dream Theater and just let it be my project. Faced with the opportunity of doing something with Tony and Jordan and not having a guitar player I broke down and said, “Why don’t I just see if John wants to do it,” and sure enough he did. Magna Carta had been talking with him about doing a project as well and he said, “Great!” We went into the studio and spent one week doing the album and we wrote and recorded the entire thing in one week. It’s just totally a really amazing thing, if I may say so. I’m very proud of it. The project is called Liquid Tension Experiment. I can’t wait for people to hear it.

MNN: What did you think of Bozzio, Levin, Stevens?

MP: It’s amazing. Bozzio is one of my all time favorites.

MNN: Do you keep in touch with Kevin Moore at all or keep up with what he’s doing?

MP: We pretty much lost touch. He played keyboards on the new Fates Warning album as a session player. I know he’s been recording his own material with a project called Chroma Key. Other than that, I don’t know any more than you and probably even less than you. We were becoming very, very distant even when he was in the band. Being that we were drifting apart when he was in the band, it was inevitable that we would really drift apart when he left the band. Nothing personal, it just happens.

MNN: Have you filmed any videos for the new album?

MP: We really did not want to do a video. MTV just has nothing to do with music videos anymore. It’s all game shows, Road Rules, Beavis & Butthead. For us to spend $100,000, which ultimately comes out of our pocket to do a video which isn’t going to get played, is a complete waste of time and money. We should use that money in other areas like CD-ROMs or tour support. For us it’s a complete waste. Now that being said, “Hollow Years” is doing absolutely amazing on European radio and the label is begging us to do a video for it. If we know they’ll play the video we’ll do it, but I still wouldn’t bet on any airplay here in America.

MNN: What about the grass roots progressive TV shows that are around the country?

MP: There are definitely markets where they’ll be used and on our own long form videos they’ll be used. We still get video play in Europe and Japan. The big picture, however, is here in America. After I dissed MTV so bad in the lyrics for “Just Let Me Breathe”, I can’t picture them playing us now.

I went to Europe to do this promotional tour and I felt like Frank Zappa versus the PMRC or something. Every interview was based around my absolute disgust of the music industry and what’s wrong with it today. I don’t even want to get into it. The record companies have completely lost sight of what it takes to develop a band’s career in long term longevity. They only think in terms of singles and videos as opposed to albums and careers and that’s completely backwards. It’s a shame because there are a lot of great bands making great music and there’s a big, big audience for these bands. but the record companies just won’t even give them the time of day. I count my blessings every night just because we still have a major label deal and we’re able to do what we do.

The unfortunate side is we have to really think of the business side when we’re writing music. We have families to feed. In order for us to continue to make records we have to continue to sell them because that’s all the record label cares about. That all has to do with the industry, not the fans.

MNN: Well said! Have you heard the new Genesis CD?

MP: Actually I have it, but I’ve been so busy the last month I haven’t had a chance to listen to it. I am real anxious to hear it because my buddy Nick (D’Virgilio) plays on a few tracks.

MNN: It reminds us a lot of Tony Banks’ solo work. Are you familiar with his solo albums?

MP: I’m not really that familiar with it, to be honest. The only think I remember is the thing he did with Fish 10 or 15 years ago.

MNN: Is there anything you would like to say about Falling Into Infinity?

MP: I’ve seen a lot of reaction on the internet. It seems there’s the occasional person that’s disappointed it’s not Images & Words part two and I have to say this is our best album, our most mature album, and our most complete album. On the surface this album definitely has some moments that are more straight ahead then anything we’ve ever done in the songwriting department. but I think the album has more depth and dimension than anything we’ve done in the past, especially in the instrumentation and the production. I’m very happy with it. It has a very cool balance and we were able to tap Into some different styles that we’ve always wanted to. I have to stand up for it. It’s not a one hundred percent prog album, but we’ve never been a hundred percent prog. Some people’s definition of prog is 10 minute songs, nine of them instrumentals, and nothing but odd time signatures and virtuoso playing, Yes, that’s one side or one definition of prog, but I think progressive music has other elements to it which diversify from song to song and try to do many different things and include many different influences and sounds. I think we were able to do that more on this album than any other. It’s the next step. I don’t think it’s drastic like Queensryche or Metallica, who drastically altered their sound and style. It sounds like Dream Theater. It’s been three years since Awake. We’re now all in our 30’s with kids and families.