full band

MTV: You just completed [your] Japan tour. How did you enjoy it?

Mike Portnoy: It’s great as always. We love it here. This is our fifth tour here.

MTV: So you’re all very used to Japan by now?

James LaBrie: A couple times ago [when] we were here, we went through the big Kobe earthquake, and then today being the third year [anniversary]. So we’ve been here five times and every time it’s been getting better.

MTV: Where were you during the earthquake?

JL: We were in Osaka.

MP: So we felt it.

MTV: Oh that’s close enough, huh?

John Petrucci: We were rockin’. [lots of laughs]

JL: The whole building was swinging – it was literally swinging.

MP: So we’ll forever have that attachment to the Japanese people; we went through that together.

MTV: You don’t usually experience earthquakes do you?

Derek Sherinian: In California. I’m from there so I’ve grown up with earthquakes my whole life. Actually I was in the LA one, one year to the day before the Osaka. So these guys are all from New York and Canada; they’re not used to it, so they were freaking out. I was trying to keep them all cool.

MTV: It’s been about four months since you released your latest album Falling Into Infinity. Do you ever listen to it these days?

MP: Actually we were at the Hard Rock in Osaka a couple nights ago and they played it from start to finish while we were there. It was actually my first time hearing it in a while – it was enjoyable. It’s a pretty good album. [lots of laughs]

JP: [smiling] You should go get it.

MTV: It sounds really great. Have the songs evolved differently since you’ve recorded the album through doing them live or have you ever kept it pretty much the same?

MP: They actually evolved a lot. We did some shows before we went into the studio, and we played about five of the tracks live, and there was a big evolution from the form of those versions until when we recorded it. So there was a big change from the original live to the studio, but then since the studio, we’ve sort of kept them pretty faithful to what’s on the album, with the exception of a couple tracks like ‘Take Away My Pain’ or ‘Hollow Years,’ but we have to play them slightly different because we did a lot of studio overdubs and stuff, so it’s hard to reproduce that exactly.

MTV: I see you’ve spent more than a year for pre-production of the album.

JP: Yeah, we were writing that all that time. In fact we actually wrote a lot more material than we ended up putting on the record, so technically we could tomorrow go record another record – we have that much material that’s still unrecorded.

MTV: The recording itself was really quick, wasn’t it? It was like two months.

MP: Two months, yeah. It was like we spent a year and a half writing it and waiting to start, and then once we started it, it was like a blur; it went so quick. We went from like zero to 100 miles per hour overnight. But we wanted to get it out because we had spent so much time writing it. We didn’t want to rush it, but we did want to make sure we could get it out sometime in ‘97 in order to get on the road. It was the most in-depth recording process we’ve ever had, too. It was shorter than usual, but we spent a lot of time experimenting with different sounds, and we recorded each track completely separately, which we had never done before. So it was actually a pretty in-depth process.

MTV: So usually you record the drum tracks first.

MP: All of the instruments, one at a time, but in this case we did each song at a time.

MTV: Why was that? To give more personality to each song?

JL: Yeah. Kevin Shirley our producer wanted to get more of a live ambiance going on and more energy. If we’re all playing together, there’s more connection, it’s more the way it should be with any band. So we were able to bring the energy that we have when we play live into the studio, and I think it did make for a better, stronger album.

John Myung: I think he did a brilliant job. I think the sound is really clear.

JP: He’s an amazing producer. We’re really happy to work with him.

MP: The sounds, too, vary, because when you have a band like this where every song is very different, you can’t have on a song like ‘Hollow Years,’ which is very subtle very dynamic, it can’t have this heavy, balls-to-the-wall drum sound and guitar sound like you need to have for something like ‘Burning My Soul.’ So if you listen to ‘Burning My Soul’ and ‘Hollow Years,’ they’re two completely different types of songs, and you can’t have the same production for both. So this way we were able to treat every song separately and give them the appropriate production.

JP: You can also get into the proper head space if you’re focusing in on a song from start to finish, because sometimes it’s hard to just change gears going from something that’s real, real heavy and then you have to get sensitive. I think it’s cool like we’re all involved in getting this song done, even Kevin; you really get in the world of that song, you stay there for a while. It’s a quality vacation in a certain spot.

MTV: 78 minutes is quite a long album for one CD, isn’t it? You wanted to pack it in there?

MP: Well, like John said, we had two and a half hours of music written, so we wanted to get as much as we could onto the album, and there’s a definite balance that we need to have on our albums. So in order to have that whole balance between the heavy songs and the poppier songs and the lighter songs – in order to have that balance – it takes time, especially when the songs are long like some of ours are.

MTV: You are gonna be releasing a maxi single in February for ‘Hollow Years.’

MP: It’ll have four live tracks.

MTV: I see. So you’re not planning to release any kind of live album or anything?

MP: The ‘Hollow Years’ single will have ‘Caught in a Web,’ ‘The Killing Hand,’ ‘Burning My Soul’ and ‘Take Away My Pain,’ and all four of those are live versions from ‘96 and they’re all completely different than the versions that are on the albums.

MTV: So these are the tracks before you recorded these songs.

MP: Yeah, so ‘Burning My Soul’ and ‘Take Away My Pain,’ you’re gonna hear completely different versions from what ended up being on the record, and then ‘Caught in a Web’ is more of like an industrial reworked version and ‘The Killing Hand’ has a lot of extended solos and jams and stuff. So all four tracks are offering four very different versions.

JP: They’re also from our own recordings. During the show Mike records, sometimes just on DAT; these particular times are on ADAT, so it’s just eight tracks, so it’s just all live, no overdubs, real raw.

MTV: You’re not gonna fool with it anymore to put any overdubs.

JP: No.

MP: Just raw.

MTV: John you’ve tried out with Chapman’s Stick for this album. How was that instrument?

JM: It was a cool experience. Didn’t really have too much experience prior to it, but I just picked it up and started playing with the band. We wrote a song, ‘New Millennium.’

MTV: The instrument’s very different from bass itself, isn’t it?

JM: Yeah, it’s sort of like a guitar/bass combined as one instrument but it’s not. You play it vertically, so it’s very different in terms of feel.

MP: I was asked in another interview about that, and I realized something – [with] the Chapman Stick, you’re actually playing almost all of our instruments, because it’s got six bass strings, six guitar strings; so you have the guitar and the bass qualities, but you’re playing it with two fingers on the board, so it’s almost like a keyboard in that respect, and it’s also very percussive in the rhythms you tap out and stuff. So it’s almost like guitar, bass, keyboards and drums.

MTV: You can actually play the chords and the bass line and the melody.

MP: So John’s a one-man band. [laughs] He doesn’t even need us.

MTV: In that sense, isn’t it kind of hard to arrange that kind of instrument into the ensemble?

JM: Yeah. Well I approached it with the bass player’s mind that would be supportive, sort of staying in my department.

MTV: Are you planning to take any off days after the tour?

MP: We actually have a month off now following this tour, because James is having another child. So we’re gonna take a couple weeks off.

MTV: Congratulations.

JL: Thank you.