James LaBrie interview

How can I pretend to focus on progressive metal and ignore Dream Theater? The fact is, I can’t. Seems from a memory has caused quite a stir in the progressive community. At the same time, James LaBrie released his first solo album under the moniker Mullmuzzler, entitled Keep It To Yourself, on Magna Carta. Magna Carta was kind enough to set us up with LaBrie. LotFP got a 90 minutes to talk with him. When Metal Maniacs talk to Mike Portnoy, they got 30 minutes. Who’s your daddy, MM? That’s what I thought. Anyhow, to get the best LaBrie interview around, I am listed the services of my cover designer and proofreader (and Dream Theater maniac) DL Burrell to talk to James. And for a first-time interviewer, DL kicks much booty, don’t you think? Enjoy.

DL Burrell: A lot of times a singer for a group comes out with a solo album and it’s a 180 degree turn from what they made their name in. Mullmuzzler has songs which are different but it stays true to the “sound” you come from as well. Was that a conscious decision on your part?

James LaBrie: I don’t think I consciously went into writing this album thinking that I wanted it to have a lot of parallels between Mullmuzzler and Dream Theater but I did go into this album doing what I most enjoyed, the style of music that I most enjoy playing, and that I grew up being influenced by, and that is “progressive”. First and foremost I wanted this album to have, to be a hard rock album with a lot of groove, very rhythmic, and then from there throw in some spice as far as progressive elements that would show themselves throughout the album, and, you know, that’s the album that you’re presented with at this point. It’s everything that I wanted to do, it’s how I wanted to approach it, it’s exactly what I wanted on there, and so far the response has been very positive.

DB: You worked with Matt Guillory on several of the songs on this.

JL: Yes.

DB: A lot of comparisons have been made that Dali’s Dilemma was, well, let’s say highly influenced by the Dream Theater sound. I found it a tad bit curious that you would choose to work with someone, I don’t know, maybe imitation is the sincerest form of flattery to the sound.

JL: Yeah, you know with Matt... well, my first introduction to him was through dollies dilemma. I remember hearing this guy on keyboards. Peter Morticelli from Magna Carta set, “Hey, listen, I know you’re going into write some new material, I want you to hear this band.” I had heard something of Dali’s Dilemma but I had never actually sat down with it. So anyways, to make a long story short, I listen to the material and I was most impressed with Matt, I just thought, “Wow, this guy is an exceptional keyboard player.” I love his melodies, the way he plays. He sings over the top of the music instead of just trying to do a million notes and try to show off and be more or less self-indulgent. He played with a lot of maturity and I really respect that in any type player. So, with that, I called him and I talked to him and introduce myself and he was into it immediately wanting to collaborate with me. And so we actually wrote three songs on Mullmuzzler. We wrote ‘His Voice’, ‘Statued’, and ‘Lace’, that’s the three songs we did. We were going to do a fourth song, but I’d already started getting involved with a few guys from Shadow Gallery, and then also Trent Gardner and myself were already immersed in a couple of songs as well. So I said to Matt, I said, “Hey, save it, and if we do another one, let’s use it then.” We’d already started working on an idea and I thought that by the time we had that idea completed I will have completed all my other ideas so let’s save it.

DB: What I’ve listen to the album, I don’t know, 15 or 20 spends, the three songs which jumped out at me are ‘His Voice’, ‘Shores Of Avalon’, and of course ‘Beelzebubba’ for all kinds of reasons. Which one do you think of as your favorite?

JL: I find it very hard to be objective in that sense because I’m really happy with all of it. If I had to pick my favorite track on the whole album it would be hard to choose between ‘His Voice’ and ‘Shores Of Avalon’. Those two tracks are probably the most special to me, but at the same time, I really thoroughly enjoys songs like ‘Slow Burn’, and ‘Sacrifice’. They just have a completely different feel and they’re very emotional and expressive, so they have special meaning for me as well. ‘As A Man Thinks’, obviously, it was a vocalist’s dream to write a song like that and be able to present it as such because it’s a cappella, really, to begin with, and then it has all this technical side going on in programming. It’s just very contemporary in that sense.

DB: When you were going into this project were you looking to have total control? For instance, when you hear people talk about, for instance, Fates Warning, it’s one person’s project.

JL: Yeah, it’s more like Jim Matheos in writing everything.

DB: Right. Did you want to have that kind of control over this? Did you take that kind of control, or how did attempt to work out?

JL: No, I never think like that. What I wanted to do was I wanted to achieve the strongest material possible in the way I think that is best achieved is by collaborating and being very open-minded, hearing everyone’s ideas, and then taking it from there, expanding on everyone’s ideas. Slowly but surely you shake that into something that you feel is right. And you know that’s the way I’ve always written, even before I met the guys in Dream Theater that’s the way I wrote. I’ve always stuck to that, I’ve never been the type of person that has to... even though I had an idea of all the ideas musically that I wanted to use, I approach these guys saying, “Ok, here’s my ideas, here’s the riff, so here’s the blueprint. Now let’s take that, and I want to work with you guys. I want to work with you guys because I really like this style, the way that you guys right. Now let’s see what we can do and come up with together.” That’s how I approached this. I really wanted the other writers’ input in that sense. Obviously, when it came time to record the album I wanted certain players on the album that I thought would best, you know, that would do all this music justice in a technical sense. And that’s why, I mean, Matt Guillory plays over everything except he didn’t play keyboards on the two songs I wrote with Trent Gardner, ‘Beelzebubba’ and ‘As A Man Thinks’. Trent played keyboards on that and also played trombone on ‘Beelzebubba’, he’s an incredibly talented man. I love the guy, I think he’s just a terrific guy and we got along exceptionally. He’s just a true professional, everyone was just a real joy to work with. The other three guys that I got to come in and recorded music: Mike Mangini, Mike Keneally and Bryan Beller, we’re just incredible people from the get-go, very open-minded. I told them, “Here’s how the songs are, now throw yourselves in. I want you to do this” you know, I had specific things I wanted them to stay stuck to, and then I said, “Now, that being said, now throw yourself all over it. I want your style of playing, your technical ability to bring it that much further.” It was a real joy to work with these people. It was like, if you don’t learn something from everything that you do, every album you record in every time you go into write music, if you don’t learn anything that it wasn’t right. I learned a lot. At the same time, I guess you’re aware I was producing it, so I was producing, I was writing the material, and then I had to sing on it. At that point, I knew when I wanted to go in and start singing the material that I did need an objective ear. I needed and wanted to work with someone who was an exceptionally seasoned studio maestro and that’s why I gave Terry Brown a call. He was into it immediately and was just incredible to work with. Unfortunately he wasn’t listed, just because of a communication breakdown, as co-producer, but he should have been, even though I produced and saw everything from day one today done, his ears were also really important. In the moments when it came time for me to sing it and I would approach with, “Oh man I’ve got an idea, we’ve got to throw this down on the track.” Because even right down to the recording of my vocals I was coming up with new guitar parts. I called in a drummer the second to last day. Originally we weren’t even going to have drums on ‘As A Man Thinks’, but then I called in this great drummer from Toronto (because I recorded all my vocals in Toronto) and I knew this guy, Greg Critchley. I gave him a call and said, “I want you to come in and do the song and I want you to go crazy on it” and he pulled it off, as well as the bass player, Mike Shannon.

DB: How was working with Terry Brown versus Kevin Shirley or David Prater?

JL: Well for me... I mean Kevin Shirley is a very intense person. I will be quite honest and say that I think Kevin Shirley and I get along, I think, better now than we did when we were recording Falling Into Infinity. We just didn’t really click, didn’t see eye to eye on many things, but now we seem to see eye to eye on all the situations that we didn’t. Kevin and I have kind of results are differences. David Prater is a very intense individual, an incredibly smart person, but I think that unfortunately he lacks in communication skills. His communication skills are very poor, and that’s basically why we never worked with him again after a change of seasons, just because there were some “too close” situations in the studio if you know what I mean. Terry Brown, on the other hand, I had originally worked with when I went into sing background on Fates Warning’s Parallels album. I sang background on ‘Life In Still Water’, I don’t know if you were aware of that, so if you listen to ‘Life In Still Water’, the background vocalist is me, it’s listed there. So I went in and I did a two hour session that day and I remember meeting Terry Brown who was producing that album. I remember thinking to myself, “Wow, this guy’s a real delight.” He’s extremely focused and concentrated, but at the same time he really keeps what is generally a very intense, stressful environment... well, sometimes it can be, sometimes it can be a lot of fun. He seems to keep that environment very calm and cool, and I thought what better way to work when you’re in a creative setting, then when you can have somebody that can keep a lid and keep everything balanced. So I kept that with me right up until the point I was thinking of going into do Mullmuzzler and he’s the first guy I thought about. I wanted to get this guy, even though I was producing, when it came time for me to do my vocals and when it came time to have an engineer and mixed the album, Terry Brown was my man. He came through with flying colors, he was exceptional, and like I said earlier, he was a real delight to work with. He’s filled with so much experience, he’s such a vast wealth of information and just a really great guy. We’d go out and have a couple of beers every night at the end of the session and talk about what we were going to do the next day. I enjoyed working with him so much that I brought him into be there specifically to record my vocals for Scenes From A Memory, the latest Dream Theater album, because we work so well together. I thought this was the guy that I wanted pushing the buttons and pulling the best out of me when it comes time to do the new Dream Theater album. When I told the rest of the guys in Dream Theater that I wanted to bring Terry in they were like, “Wow, great man, is he into it?” and I said, “Yeah, he’s into it.” So we went for it.

DB: How did Kevin react to that?

JL: Well, Kevin didn’t produce this last album for Dream Theater, we produced it, it’s a self-produced album, Scenes From A Memory.

DB: How did that work out?

JL: It worked out really well. I would say that the primary producers that were really overseeing everything while we were all doing our thing would’ve been John Petrucci and Mike Portnoy.

DB: How do you think Mullmuzzler compares with Ray Alder’s [of Fates Warning] project Engine?

JL: well, I’ve only heard a couple of songs from engine and I thought it was really cool. I thought it was, well, the songs that I heard were more like Nine Inch Nails meets Rob Halford on Painkiller. I don’t know it was... I liked it. It’s extremely straightforward, it’s all in 4/4, which is great, but the songs that I heard I enjoyed. But, I don’t know what the rest of the album is like so I can’t really say what I think of it. Have you heard the whole thing?

DB: Um, unfortunately, yes.

JL: Unfortunately?

DB: It was not my favorite.

JL: Is that right, huh? How does he sound on there? Because the two songs that I heard he sounded like he was screaming and kinda getting a little raunchy, which is, I dunno, a little unlike Ray.

DB: I tend to like a lot more clean vocals in what I listen to, and when they started getting an edge to them I start...

JL: Oh, so you must’ve loved what I did on Awake. [laughs] But you see, you know what a lot of people don’t know? I guarantee you if you go back to Awake and you listen to songs like ‘Lifting Shadows’, I sang that incredibly clean. If you were to listen to ‘Innocence Faded’, I sang that incredibly clean. If you listen to... oh, what was the other song there?

DB: Well, ‘The Silent Man’ obviously.

JL: Well, ‘Silent Man’, yeah. And then there was... oh what’s the other one there?

DB: ‘Voices’?

JL: ‘Voices’, yeah. ‘Voices’ was very clean except that one little section in the middle, you know, “Thought disorder, dream control,” you know, all that I started putting a little bit of edge or grind into it. But people tend to focus more on what they hear from the get-go, you know, ‘6:00’ [the first song on the album], and they kinda go, “Whoa!? What the hell?” It was just something I needed to do. I wanted to sing an album like with some raunch happening, and then after I’d done it I said, “Ok, great, now I’ve done it, now let’s go back to how everybody else was introduced to me as.” Have you heard Scenes From A Memory yet? Well, let me just say this to you, and I’ve said it to everyone else that I’ve done interviews with. It is definitely, and I have no reservations about seeing this, it is definitely our best album. I think it’s the strongest material we’ve ever written. It’s better than Images And Words. The interviews that I’ve done, all around the world, everyone is saying, a lot of journalists around the world already have reviewed it, and they’re saying that about the album before I’m saying it. They’re saying is definitely our best album. Most of them are going as far as to say it’s a masterpiece. I know when we were recording this we were all extremely excited because we knew what we were hearing, and we were all going, “Wow, man, we’re really touching on something very special here.” I think that the fans worldwide are going to be very appreciative and very excited about it. It’s the kind of album we’ve been wanting to make for a while and I think that we’ve finally done it. A lot of this came from us listening to Liquid Tension material and we be saying to each other, I mean it was John, Mike, and John Myung would be there as well, and I’d be looking at them and go, “Guys, sorry, but this guy [Jordan Rudess, who played keyboards with Petrucci and Portnoy on the Liquid Tension Experiment albums] should be in our band.” There was a synergy going on with Liquid Tension between Jordan, Mike and John that we needed to bring into Dream Theater because the guy is an incredible keyboard player. I mean, he’s the top of his skills as far as I’m concerned, not just because he’s in Dream Theater now, I thought that for many years since I was first introduced to Jordan’s playing. The guy just blew my mind from the first day that I heard him. And we’re talking about a person who went into Juilliard, was accepted into Juilliard when he was nine years old. He’s just an incredible talent. So we were talking about this, and we knew the kind of album that we wanted to make, and Derek [Sherinian, now ex-Dream Theater keyboardist if you hadn’t guessed] is a good keyboard player, but as far as I’m concerned Matt Guillory blows Derek away. With that being said then you have to say to yourself, “Hang on a second Dream Theater, let’s get the complete package, let’s have it so that everything is exceptional.” And don’t get me wrong here, I’m not trying to come off sounding like a pretentious prick or anything like that, but I’m just saying that in this business there is so much competition, you have to look at the big picture. You have to say to yourself, “Who would best represent this band? What is going to allow us, musically, creatively, and in a live environment, the best possible, the strongest possible thing?” And it was like well, let’s bring in Jordan and it will be complete. It will be Dream Theater as never before. It will be Dream Theater in top form and I think people are really going to see, or first hear that, when they come out to see us live around the world. I really think they’re going to see something that’s going to allow for us to be much more intense on stage.

DB: How do you feel about the fact that after you made Scenes From A Memory available to people early that it showed up in its entirety on the Internet for a little while?

JL: Is that right? Well, you know I thought we were keeping it under wraps. Well, you know I’d heard something to that effect, that some people had started to do that, but I think they stopped, right? I think we got right on top of that and we said, “Whoever is doing this, please respect our wishes. None of this is to be had until the release date.” I think it stopped immediately. The fact that it happen, though, it’s just someone trying to say, as far as I’m concerned someone just wanted to be able to say, “Hey, man that was me who got you that material” or “It was me who got you a little sneak preview” or whatever. It’s unfortunate because I think eventually we got the message across that everybody had to cooperate into please do this for us. We think it’s very important to keep the album fresh and very exciting when it comes time for release. I think for the most part we’ve done that. I’d say for 90% of the people out there that’s exactly what it’s going to be.

DB: Dream Theater went from, at least since you’ve joined the band, from the high of Images And Words to... well, when Falling Into Infinity came out many people didn’t like it very much.

JL: Right.

DB: Did you guys feel much pressure going into this one?

JL: No, not at all actually, it was pretty wild.

DB: I’ve heard it’s your last record on this contract.

JL: No, it’s not, we have two more albums. I’m, let me just say, let’s just back up a bit. I think what happened here was there was a few things going on. First of all there were a lot of personal tragedies going on with the band when we were approaching the writing for Falling Into Infinity. The band was going through some things, and I’ll tell you some of them and I’ll try to give you a quick synopsis. For me personally, Falling Into Infinity is not going to be a very positive memory for me. Just because I knew that the band was in a very fragile state. Mike lost his grandmother who was more like a mother to him because Mike unfortunately lost his mother, his biological mother, when he was I believe 17 or 18, in a plane crash. And so his grandmother, his maternal grandmother, became more like a mother to him, and he lost her while we were actually in the writing stages for Falling Into Infinity. John Petrucci lost his father, and then John Petrucci’s wife lost her father and mother, so there was a lot of things going on. I had my own things, but I don’t think it was anything near that. We all seemed to be going through things. Then on top of that, in the Industry sense, Elektra was going through... we were on EastWest which is all the same. We were on Atco then it was EastWest and then it was Elektra, all the same, it was all the same company. We’re signed with WEA, so WEA really stands for Warner Elektra Atlantic, that’s what it is. It was really just, departments, there were a lot of changes in things, but it was all the same family. What was happening with us was that we were losing a lot of key people, personnel people at the label who were either fired, let go, or moving onto another label. So we’re losing all these very strong, key relationships at the label. We had to establish new relationships with new people who didn’t know who the hell Dream Theater was or didn’t care to know who Dream Theater was. So there was that stress. At the same time we were going through a huge situation with management where we were in between management and the management that we were kind of just feeling out turned out to be real... well, just turned out to not be right, I don’t want to get myself in a being sued kind of thing. They were just completely wrong for the band. So there was all these elements that were really negative just eating at us, like hitting us from every angle. At the same time we had to stay focused and concentrate as a band and write material. And then the label for some reason was getting, because of these new people coming in, were really on top of us and were trying to get us to be a band that we’re not. They were trying to get us to play these radio hits and radio singles and as much as we would try to say to them, “Hey, this isn’t what kind of a band Dream Theater is. We’re not a radio single band, a radio friendly band, we’re an album oriented band. We write albums, we don’t write hits.” You know, in a way, ‘Pull Me Under’ was a curse. It was a good thing, it wasn’t necessary evil I guess because it did get our career off in a very global sense. But then, unfortunately, the label and the people that don’t fully understand a band such as Dream Theater thought that that was the way we were going to go with every other album that came out. The thought that we needed another radio hit smash, we needed another one and another one and another one, right? And that’s just not the kind of band it was. It was just a fluke, it just so happened that that song went right through the roof. So we had all these things going in, and you know Derek was, it was his first full length album with us, and... Derek’s personality and flamboyance and whatever you want to call it, superficiality, really doesn’t fit with the rest of the band members, you know? He’s just from a totally different planet, whereas Jordan, once again, fits in really well with us. He’s more down to earth and he’s laid-back and he’s just a very cool person, very mature. So there was all these things going on. So needless to say, Falling Into Infinity was a very taxing and trying time for this band and I guess in a way it is a reflection of what we were going through as individuals and collectively as a band.

DB: In 1995 you guys did a gig where you did all cover songs, and for a Metallica song [‘Damage Inc.’] you brought in Barney Greenway of Napalm Death to, um, I guess the word should be perform lead vocals. Now, why didn’t you growl the vocals on that?

JL: Well, Barney is a really good friend of the band and we just thought it would be a lot of fun, you know? We just wanted to let the people know that we’re not just the serious self-indulgent people, we like to have fun and we like to bring a little lightness and humor to some of our shows. So we just thought it would be really cool to just throw this one in for the covers thing with a change of seasons. We just thought, “Why not? Let’s just make it completely bizarre and have Barney sing that song.” I mean, hey, I could’ve sung that song exactly like James Hetfield, no problem, and made myself sound just like him, but that would’ve been so obvious. More or alas it was just a fun thing, just letting people sit back and just enjoy it for what it is.

DB: I have the 5 Years In A Livetime video which has that particular performance on it, and I’ve got to tell you that Portnoy seems like he could fall asleep while playing those Lars Ulrich drum licks on that song.

JL: No kidding, huh? Yeah, he could do that in his sleep. Yeah Mike’s a great drummer, a very incredible drummer.

DB: Just to give some real odd things that we wanted to go over, one of the things that interviewees are traditionally asked for Lamentations is what type of hair care products do you use?

JL: [laughs] Come on! Are you serious?

DB: Hey, metal people have big hair, my man, and they need to know how to take care of it!

JL: You guys are crazy. Well... I use Panteen.

DB: I’m not sure, but I believe that’s a very popular choice.

JL: Is that right? I wouldn’t know it, but I use Panteen. It’s this really thick shit conditioner, I have to or I wouldn’t get through my hair. It’s like a three-minute deep conditioner from Panteen that’s amazing. Yeah, that’s what I use. I’m not so picky on the shampoo, but I’m extremely picky on the conditioner, it has to be Panteen three minute conditioner, it has to be or else I’d rip every hair out of my head!

DB: It gives you that great sheen, right?

JL: Yeah, exactly! That’s it, so the lights can shine off it really well! I’ve grown my hair long again, my hair is once again pretty long again.

DB: I’m sure the ladies will be very pleased.

JL: Yeah! Hah! Like this is a ladies band.

DB: Oh come on, there’s one or two groupies out there!

JL: Oh sure, and I think you’re right, I think there’s one or two!

DB: As a Canadian, and you’re going to love this one, is Bret Hart a national hero?

JL: Bret Hart’s cool. Yeah, I guess in a wrestling sense we are very proud of him. I mean hey, the guy has charisma and he’s a charmer. You know, he plays the role very well I would think. I know on the wrestling circuits or in the wrestling rings there’s a lot of people that either love him or hate him, and I know that he’s kind of said some stupid things about the States, but you know, that’s his deal trying to create controversy and it just keeps him in the spotlight.

DB: That’s just to get heat with the crowds.

JL: Yeah, exactly. And they buy into it, everybody is having fun with it. That’s an incredible sport, it really is. I mean those guys, they are... I mean as much as you know that a lot of it is obviously planned out, still the stuff that they do in the rain, I wouldn’t last 10 minutes and I think I’d have a broken back, broken leg, arms, whatever. I mean those guys are really in great shape to be throwing each other around, I mean these are big men! Not to mention the ladies that are wrestling these days could knock the shit out of us!

DB: Do you think it would be a fair fight? Dream Theater vs. some of the better women wrestlers?

JL: Oh Forget it! Yeah, right! Maybe if you were talking to me 10 years ago I’d be stupid enough to say, “Yeah, I’ll go for it.” Because back then I was just, whatever, I was just a wild and crazy kind of guy so I would’ve said sure. Now I’ve got to think, I’ve got a wife and two kids and I can’t be thinking, “Well, hey, I’ll go to the ring and maybe I’ll sit in a body cast for six months, that should work well!”

DB: You guys do well in Japan, correct?

JL: Yeah, we do great! Great in Japan, great in Europe, South America, the south Pacific rim, you know, we’d like to see the States come back around for us. But even in the states, I mean, Falling Into Infinity has still sold 200,000 for us in the States, so... but we’d like to see it get better. I think with this album we’re really set, though, because I think it really does have the potential to bring us up to another level. And that will just allow us to do this for that much longer, you know? It will help ensure our longevity.

DB: Now in Japan, a lot of the progressive metal acts have had their music used as entrance music for Japanese professional wrestlers. Royal Hunt comes to mind obviously, but Yngwie Malmsteen as well. Has Dream Theater had anything lifted for that?

JL: No, no we haven’t. We haven’t even been approached for that. [sounds a bit incredulous] Which is kind of bizarre because we are very, very big over there. So I don’t understand why it hasn’t happened, maybe because they just think that we’re not interested, and I guess it would be a fun thing. We’d have to look on it just for what it is, but I think that probably some people view us as being this very serious band in our music is staying as it is and that’s how it was presented, as that we want to represent it as nothing else but what our sound was the first time. I don’t know.

DB: If you had to pick one of the existing Dream Theater songs to be a wrestler’s entrance music, which one do you think would work best?

JL: What, as wrestling music? Oh God. Well, you know what I think would be a great riff coming into the ring would be the riff that starts ‘Lie’. I think that could be good. I think ‘The Mirror’ would be very cool for them. I think, well, I mean obviously ‘Pull Me Under’ would do something for some people. I think even songs like... like if you had the undertaker, play him ‘Peruvian Skies’ as he’s coming into the rain, something like that. ‘Just Let Me Breathe’ would be kinda cool, it would kind of generates a little bit of excitement. I don’t know, I think those songs would be good.

DB: What’s your favorite song that you’ve done?

JL: Um... well... My favorite, from a vocal standpoint, I think probably this album is probably I think the best that I’ve ever done vocally because it shows all sides of me. It’s a very expressive showing, very soulful, very emotional calling from a vocal standpoint. So I think that once you hear the new album that you might, I would hope that you would agree with me. I mean, aside from that, you know I really enjoy singing songs like ‘Surrounded’. I really enjoyed, you know, believe it or not... I know many of the fans had mixed feelings about ‘Innocence Faded’. I really enjoy doing ‘Voices’, and ‘The Mirror’ to a certain extent I thought was really cool. I think those songs kind of step out at me. I think ‘Lifting Shadows Off A Dream’ I really enjoyed. ‘Take Away My Pain’ I really enjoy singing.

DB: When Once In A Livetime was being put together, well, I must admit I’ve got some MP3s off the Internet of the live show at Rotterdam for the fan club.

JL: Yeah, that’s the video.

DB: Well, yeah, it is in there as well come to think of it. I was wondering why some of those cuts weren’t used for the live album versus cuts, versions that I don’t think are as good. I guess it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other, but...

JL: You mean vocal cuts? Or do you just mean takes from the band?

DB: Like, for example, ‘Speak To Me’ and songs like that.

JL: Yeah, well, I think just because there’s just so much. I mean you sit down and you’re looking at all the stuff and there just comes a time when you’ve got to go, “Well, let’s way the pros and cons to putting this on an album” versus putting on at a later time and presenting it later on. I mean you really can’t satisfy everyone, but I think it was just as simple as that. Those were the songs we wanted on there at that point, and then if later on we are able to present something like this in another five years then we might throw it on. Because, yeah, ‘Speak To Me’ has been really well-received from everyone, I mean everyone has thought that it was a really cool song. And then there was the other one, although I think that that made it, that was... um... Oh God. I can’t remember... [starts humming a melody] Oh jeez, why can’t I remember the song?

DB: Are you talking about made it onto Once In A Livetime or onto the video?

JL: It’s on the video. You know, the vocals go... [sings the tune without words] Oh God! Why can’t I remember the song? It’s very U2-ish.

DB: Oh, I know exactly what you’re talking about, because when I heard it I was thinking, “Damn, that sounds like you ripped it off from Bono.” Not that you would rip anything off.

JL: No, Bono ripped it off from us! He got into our heads before we thought of it and then he threw it onto The Joshua Tree, right? Okay, wait a minute, I’m still thinking on the other thing, it’s... [start singing – and you know it’s a lot harder to transcribe lyrics than just the spoken word, let me tell you] “Feeling sick once again. I’d do anything to be back home, safe and warm inside. I can’t stand the crowd, all the smell that surrounds me. [mumbles through a part] something chastity. Take me back where I can see the way it used to be.” That’s the one! But anyways, there you go, I sang to you. Ok, now what was your question there? ‘The Way It Used To Be’, I really dig that song. That almost made it onto Falling Into Infinity and I wish it did. Whatever, I guess we were starting to think something else. So what was your question?

DB: Just following got up a little, do you ever... I mean you say you wrote that back around Falling Into Infinity, when you’re going into Scenes From A Memory do you ever go back and get that stuff in think, “Well, this could make it onto this new album.” Or do you just want to start fresh?

JL: Yeah, we just want to start fresh. Whatever has been written before we actually go in and start writing songs... Now, I mean, that doesn’t mean, like, we do sound checks and sometimes we’re fooling around with riff ideas and whatever when we’re sound checking and usually we record, in fact I think we do, we record all of our sound checks, so we’re able to go back and listen to ideas and then take from that. We might think, “Well that was a very cool idea. Let’s expand on that or do something with that.” And then we start creating from that point or from that idea and we start writing around that for new material, but I don’t think we, well I don’t think, I know we don’t go back and take a song that was written a year or whether it be two or three years before when we go into do a new album and take that and throw it on there. Because you always have so many ideas going on at any given point, so if it’s done then let’s release it as a B-side and let’s create some new music.

DB: Give me some comments on these bands if you have any knowledge of them, okay? Opeth?

JL: Who? O Pat?

DB: O-P-E-T-H. Opeth.

JL: O-P-E-T-H. Don’t know.

DB: Boy, Jim’s not going to like you on that one, that’s his favorite band... from Sweden.

JL: Sweden, well, okay, well tell Jim that I’m sorry I couldn’t satisfy him. Oh, wait, these are Jim’s favorite bands? Oh, they’re amazing! They’re all amazing!

DB: What about Cynic?

JL: Who? Cynic? Oh, I’ve heard of them. I don’t know if this is the same band, but a couple of those guys played on a track when I was doing the Rush stuff, when I did ‘Red Barchetta’. I think the drummer and the bass player played on red Barchetta and they played for Cynic. I think, but don’t quote me. [too late!]

DB: What did you do on ‘Red Barchetta’?

JL: I sang vocals.

DB: Oh! For the Rush tribute album. Jeez, pardon me while I adjust my brain to the “on” position. For a second I was saying to myself, “Wow, I didn’t know Rush brought in people to work on their songs like that.”

JL: Right! Yeah, you know how it was, Geddy gave me a call and said, “Do you wanna sing this instead of me?” Uh, no. [laughs... Thank God]

DB: Okay, what about Blind Guardian?

JL: Blind Guardian, I’ve heard their stuff, kinda cool. I can’t really comment on them as a whole because I’ve only heard a few tracks to be honest with you. You know what, to be honest with you, the kind of stuff I’m listening to right now is nowhere near that. It’s more like Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis. Nat King Cole I’m getting back into again. Even like Tony Bennett and Andre Pucelli, this new singer who I think is very cool. I’m listening to more stuff like that, and I’m listening to old Police stuff right now. I’m listening to Lenny Kravitz, the new Red Hot Chili Peppers, you know, that’s where my head is that right now. So, yeah, that’s really where my head is at right now, and these are the bands that I’m listening to. And even though, like, we have a magazine up here called Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles, I don’t know if you’re aware of that but I’m sure Jim is. Tim Henderson, who is the senior editor of this magazine, he pretty well is an advocate for death metal, speed metal and stuff like that. That’s usually a lot of the stuff that comes through his magazine, and he always puts out a CD sampler of bands here or there, and so a lot of those bands are bands that you just mentioned to me, but I’ve never actually thrown those CDs on. Just because, and it’s no offense to any of these bands, I’m sure they’ve got... I’m sure some of their stuff is really good, but really I am in my own thing right and I’m listening to stuff that I think is really somehow, it’s just important to me right now.

DB: Let me throw one more band out at you. Symphony X.

JL: Yeah, I’ve heard that. Yeah, it’s cool, they’re from New Jersey, are they not?

DB: Right.

JL: I’ve heard some of their stuff, it’s kinda cool! It’s the guitar player [Michael Romeo] and, he sings does he not?

DB: Actually they have a separate singer [Russell Allen].

JL: They do? Well, maybe it was just the guitar player I was focusing on.

DB: Well, that’s pretty easy to do with that band.

JL: Yeah, I thought some of their stuff was very cool. You know, there again, and I have to be honest with you, it’s not like I’m sitting down and listening to a couple of their albums. It might be I’ll listen to three or four cuts and I’ll either appreciate it for what it is or I’ll move on.

DB: What kind of magazines would you suggest that cover your type of music more?

JL: Well, there’s that one magazine that is very impressive called Progressive. It’s huge, I think it comes out maybe once a month or once every two months, but is very impressive, and a lot of the bands that are in there are very thought-provoking and at least touching on this genre of music, progressive or... more technically able, whatever you want to call it. Other mags, I mean I’ve done so many interviews over the last two months that they’re just seem to be a lot of magazines out there who are at least wanting to interview us and shed some light on us. There’s Album Network that’s always been very supportive of Dream Theater, there’s Hit Parader that’s been cool. There’s Metal Edge, Paul Gargano has been exceptionally supportive of Dream Theater, we just met with him last week actually, for a big interview and a photo shoot and all that stuff, when we were down in New York, all of us together. We were rehearsing, because we start the next world tour November 8th. Aside from that I’ve just done a lot of interviews with people like yourself, with magazines or... well, what do you describe it as?

DB: It’s a fanzine for metal music.

JL: Right. I’ve done a lot of them, and I think fanzines are very, very important to bring in a lot of people who would generally not go out and spend 5 or six bucks on a big circulation magazine. They can get just as much information from a fanzine, because they’re very informative and a lot of them are written well. I guess I could just say that, you know, look in those areas and sooner or later you’d see stuff on Dream Theater. Dream Theater, let’s face it, is not your flavor of the month, so you’re not going to see us in a lot of your big, big magazines like Spin and Rolling Stone. Forget about it. Those people probably don’t... well, they’re aware of us, but they wouldn’t give two shits to interview us. Not at this point anyways. If the next album goes through the roof and we were selling millions of albums I guarantee you that we’d start getting calls from them, because now they’d know that their readers are going to be able to identify with us.

DB: And of course then you’d have more people admiring your hair then.

JL: Yeah, well, hey, thank you Panteen!

DB: Hypothetically, if Dream Theater broke up and you could lead either Korn or Manowar, which one would you choose?

JL: What, if I was to go with one of those bands? Well it would be Korn before Manowar.

DB: Why?

JL: Well, to be honest with you, I’m not into either band, okay? I’ve met the guys in Manowar and they’re really good guys, they really are. They’re very nice guys. I’ve never met the guys in Korn, but I’m not into their music, I’m not into their music at all. I don’t like them, I don’t like their music. Manowar, I’m not into that, it just reminds me of a very early 80s heavy metal kind of taste. It almost has a... I don’t know, I’ll kind of more theatrical, comical site to it. I can’t take that music seriously, I can’t. I mean we played monsters of rock last year, it was Megadeth, ourselves, oh God what was that other band?

DB: Was this is the show in Brazil?

JL: Yes. Manowar was there and then there was another van, a big band. I just don’t remember their name. Starts with an S.

DB: I know the one in Italy, I think, had Deep Purple.

JL: No, we’ve toured with them, we’re on the same management as they are. Savatage was on that show, but... it was another band, though, their stuff is like really kind of dark and evil like. The guitar player is bald with tattoos all over him, and then you got the big...

DB: Oh. God. Slayer.

JL: Slayer! Yeah, they were great. But Manowar was on the same bill and they went out, they were playing before us and I remember watching them and I was like, “Oh my God, what the hell is this? This is a flashback.”

DB: How did they go over with the crowd?

JL: Oh yeah, the crowd ate them up. But anyway, to each his own.

DB: Let me ask you one last thing, kind of going backwards. How did you feel in terms of working with Magna Carta versus WEA?

JL: Well, Magna Carta as an independent label has shown me incredible amounts of faith and belief. They put me as a priority under label and I think they’ve been exceptional. I think they’re great. I think the kind of music they support and that they’re behind it totally, I think it’s necessary to have labels like Magna Carta in existence because they really do bring high-quality music to a lot of people. They’re showing two people that would otherwise not be doing something, or otherwise not be getting recordings and it would just stay in the demo form. So, I think they’re great and that’s why I went with them because I’ve respected them as a label. Elektra, Warner Brothers, Atlantic, I mean you’re talking about conglomerate, I mean you’re talking about a huge, huge company. To them, you know, they have a huge overhead. The artists that they are going to sign, it’s a completely different ballgame. They have a lot riding on each and every one of their artists, there’s a lot of money being thrown into these people, and we’re one of them. So you’re playing in a bigger circus, you know? It’s a bigger game, and you either produce for them or you don’t and they just move on. It’s just a difference where a smaller label like Magna Carta can be more focused and more hands-on with their artists because it’s at a smaller, more personal level. At the bigger labels there’s a lot more people working for the label and there is a lot more things going on and that have to be achieved so it’s more like you’re in the big game at that point. You have to play both, you always have to be up top, on top of it, and look for ways to stay in the game. And that generally comes from writing the right kind of music and selling albums. You know generally when our label, Elektra, approaches radio with what will be our first single from our album they get pretty good response, but this time they were calling our management and letting them know that the response in the reception that they were getting to this song ‘Home’ was overwhelming. It’s wild, the label are really, really into it. We’ll see what happens from it, you know? It’s been a very positive reception so far.

DB: Well, I wish you well with Mullmuzzler as well as with Dream Theater. Any less things that you’d like to say out to your fans?

JL: Well, just, really hope that you enjoy the new album, and we’re looking forward to getting out and bringing it to as many people as we can in the live environment. Hope to see you there and I appreciate your loyalty and support. We’ll see you soon.