Mike Portnoy’s Drum Theater – Part 1

It’s amazing for me thinking back, that it was August ‘97 when I wrote my original piece with this title – the publication of which followed in the Fall/Winter issue (number 15) of the then Images and Words DTIFC fanzine run by Neil Elliott. I have a lot to thank Neil for as times have moved on apace, and since he got me my first meeting with MP in December ‘97 in London, I have gone on to write extensively on Mike’s drum kit changes issuing regular updates on kit developments and DT gear related topics ever since, including interviewing MP twice and being lucky enough to be welcomed into the ever growing DT family AND be even luckier to be published in Images and Words and more recently in Theater of Dreams. I feel privileged and very fortunate. I even have my own nickname given to me by MP of Eagle Eye Al because I have an uncanny knack of being able to spot the smallest details relating to MP’s kit (as you’ll see when you read this piece!) Anyways, I decided that with DT in the studio for the most part of 2001, the time was right to update the original instalments I did on MP’s kit and pull everything together to provide the definitive kit history on all MP drum related happenings. Stick with it (pun intended!) – there’s plenty here for drummers and non-drummers alike!

The story starts with a return back to WDADU, with information provided direct from Mike when I interviewed him in October 2000 – I wanted to get some background on the VERY early DT days mainly for a collaboration I was working on with the Italian Dreamers on Mike’s kit history so let’s get Mike to open things up – enjoy!

Over to Mike!

I used to base my kit heavily on Neil Peart’s set-up at the time, and Neil had 6”, 8”, 10” and 12” concert toms to his left and I had 6”, 8” and 10” Rototoms in the same position. And if I remember correctly, I had the two 24” kicks with I think 13”, 14” and 15” rack toms across the top with 16” and 18” floor toms, and I had a fourth which I believe was a 12” angled up like the rototoms to my left. This kit was my black Imperial Star which I used on WDADU and Images and Words, I’ve had that kit since day one of Dream Theater/Majesty.

I used Zildjian cymbals, which again was the Neil Peart influence. I guess any drummer – when they’re starting off – will model their kit on the drummers that they admire. But for me with Tama, it wasn’t just Neil that played them; Bill Bruford, Stewart Copeland, Simon Phillips also all played Tama back in ‘82 or whenever, but Neil was top dog for me. There was no question that Tama were the drums I wanted to play.

Cymbal wise, it was always the two 18” crashes out front and I had another 18” or 20” crash to my left and also another (18”) crash kind of over the ride right front. The ride was positioned over the two floor toms and this idea was carried through to the Mapex kit too; then two Chinas left and right and some splashes. It was always a very similar type of setup – just little things that got changed over the years. I think there was an 8” or 10” splash I used to have over the ride to my right too. I wore drummers gloves ‘cos we were posers back then! There was even some purple handkerchiefs hanging off the hardware too!

I’ve also been lucky enough to never have had to set up my own kit, even way back when I was in Junior high school. Playing with Intruder at St. Mary’s church, there were still friends that were willing to help out. Even back in the early Majesty days, I had a couple of guys, one of which was back in high school with me with Rising Power; then the first Dream Theater tour I had another friend of mine do the first couple of months with us and then that’s when Jose (Baraquio) came on board.

The only period actually in my life when I set up my own drums was throughout the time at Berklee. Me, John (Petrucci) and John (Myung) used to rehearse EVERY NIGHT for six hours at Berklee from 6:00pm to midnight and every night we had to set up and break down our gear every single night. So they came by my room at 5:00pm and we’d go have dinner in the cafeteria; then we’d go up with one of these pushcarts and we’d go to my room and take my drums and go down to the rehearsal room which was E19 and I’d set up the kit, play on it, then at the end of the night, break it down and bring it back to my room. I played a smaller kit back then too and I was only playing with two toms in the center, just because I had to set it up every night, so it was much more compact.

When Drums and Sticks unite!

I doubt very much if there is anyone who has heard Mike’s playing that hasn’t been amazed at his incredible technique and originality on the drum set, whether it be drummers, other musicians, DT fans or not – this guy is a genius! There have been three kit styles since WDADU and what I’ve done is deliberately left the exact specification out as this has been listed many times – I’ve concentrated on the things that may have not been so obvious!

On the Live in Tokyo video studio footage, we see Mike using the same black Tama Imperial Star kit he talked about in the WDADU days, though by now the toms across the top of the kit were 12”, 13” and 14” with 16” and 18” floor toms, the Rototoms have been lowered to MP’s left and set in more of a flattened attitude. The kit also at this point (during the recording of Images and Words) was yet to have the Majesty symbol applied (this paint job never got done on the kick drums, just the toms). The only endorsement MP had at this time was with his stick supplier Hot Sticks. The Rototoms were to be pensioned off in favour of the LP Timbalitos by the time the studio shot videos of Another Day and Take the Time were done, although on the Pull Me Under video they are clearly on the kit; also by the time of this shoot, the Majesty symbol had been applied. MP is also clearly still using Zildjian cymbals on the PMU video and it’s interesting to note that Images and Words was recorded with Zildjian cymbals almost exclusively. Also by the time of the Another Day and Take the Time video shoot, Mike had bagged an endorsement deal with Sabian for his cymbals (this of course remains); additionally by this point MP had secured a deal with Remo for drumhead supply.

This video shoot also reveals the woodblock to MP’s left with “HO” his drum tech Jose Baraquio’s nickname on.

Mike used this same setup right up to the end of the Music in Progress tour at the end of 1993, so it definitely saw some action! On the Tokyo video, the 16” crash cymbal to his left had an addition of a 10” B8 Pro China Splash, the only cymbal addition since Images and Words up to that point. One other odd thing from the live footage on this video is that the cymbals do not have the Sabian logo stamped on them – just an observation – I never did find out why this was.

Prior to the rehearsal/recording of Awake, Mike was approached by the (then) upcoming drum company Mapex and took on a major deal with them, having a custom black maple shell kit constructed, which saw numerous changes and additions.

A rack system now supported the majority of the drums/hardware. An 8” power tom was added and the drum sizes across the top of the kit were now 8”, 10”, 12” and 14” with the floors and kicks as before. The 14” x 6.5” metal shell Tama snare was replaced by a wood shell Mapex of 5.5” depth and four Octoban style drums were positioned to MP’s left; these were actually smaller in depth to the Tama versions and also had custom holders to mount them in place rather than the more static Tama style of holder for four drums in a group like Mike had them. These were not Mapex catalogue items – they were totally custom for MP and sounded incredible!!

The first publicity shots of this kit (one of which appeared on the cover of issue 6 of Images and Words) showed that MP had not at that point added the 16” crash cymbal to his front left and also when those pics were taken, [he] had not secured his endorsement with Latin Percussion – he still had in place his bar chimes and tambourine from the Tama kit and there were no other percussion toys at that point. He had Remo Pinstripe heads on the toms and the 16” crash which was to his far left on the Tama kit, had gone.

By the time of the recording of Awake, Mike temporarily changed his heads on the toms for coated Ambassadors though the kicks still had Pinstripes, the snare was still a CS coated head with white dot and the Octoban style drums had clear Ambassadors – this head arrangement was in place for the whole of the recording of the Awake album. The splashes had to be slightly repositioned for the recording as you can see if you look closely at the liner notes; the 8” and 10” splashes are WAY higher than normal as is the 6” cymbal disk; presumably this was for better sound separation during the recording.

The coated heads were still in place for the recording of the Lie video too, which saw the new kit in all its glory, though they were never used in a live setting. Also, by the time this video was shot, the 16” crash had appeared to his front left and the 10” China Splash which used to be on top of the 16” crash to MP’s left on the Tama kit, now had its own boom arm to sit on! The LP deal had been secured and Mike was surrounded by much percussion, the tambourine above the 14” tom was now an LP version and had been joined by another to the left of MP’s hi-hat – double row bar chimes were added under the 20” China to his right and 35 bar studio chimes were on top of the percussion table to his left, which also contained LP Granite Blocks, cowbells, tri-bells, triangles, Vibra-Slap and bell tree; congas and bongos were also in evidence on the Lie shoot. The original Mapex logo kick drum heads were still in place and with large holes cut in them. One curious thing was that for this shoot, there were blue backing heads attached inside the front kick heads with smaller holes cut in them, not sure why this was but they added that extra “something” to the look of the kit in that video.

By the time the Awake tour started, Mike had incredible new front kick heads in place of the album cover images, with smaller mic portholes cut in them (using Holz rim supports) and much smaller MaPex logos, with the “M” and the “P” highlighted – a nice touch!!

This kit stayed mainly unchanged throughout the whole of the Waking up the World tour, the only changes coming for the recording of A Change of Seasons when a set of Sabian crotales (mini tuned disks) were added over the floor toms and a 6” splash cymbal appeared over the right hand tambourine; also a Sabian bell disk replaced the 10” China Splash to MP’s far left.

This kit then remained the same until it was replaced and appeared in this configuration for all subsequent live shows (mainly festivals) and even stayed the same when Mike embarked on his numerous clinic appearances in 1995, though the Octoban heads sometimes got changed for CS Black Dot variants – even the Awake front kick heads stayed in place. This configuration remained for the shooting of the Progressive Drum Concepts video, but by the time this video was released worldwide (it was originally only shot for the Japanese market) Mike had changed to Tama, so the Mapex logos had to be blurred out! (When the vid was shot MP was still with Mapex.) One other interesting thing I noticed was when you get the opening panoramic shot of the kit is that you can just notice on the ride that there is an MP autograph (I only noticed it as I was looking at it in slow motion – how sad am I!!!) and I asked Mike why this was and he confirmed it and said the reason was that when the video was shot in New York, somehow there was a hold up with some of his regular cymbals so he asked the Long Island Drum Center if they could help as he had not long done a clinic there and they supplied some of the missing items one of which was the 22” ride, which Mike had signed at his clinic as a giveaway – so that was the story on that – check it out!

Tama Times – reconnected

The last live shows the Mapex kit made were the Home for the Holidays shows and changes were already afoot for the return to Tama.

The new Tama deal saw Mike using their top of the line Starclassic maple shell drums. MP went over to power depths on the front toms and replaced the 14” rack tom with a 13” version, the 16” and 18” floor toms got replaced with 14” and 16” mounted power toms, the 16” power tom had a fairly short life on the kit however, as it was part of the original spec on the purple/white/purple US kit and saw live action for the Fix for ‘96 shows and even found its way into the Falling Into Infinity studio sessions. It was soon replaced by a Tama Gong bass drum. This particular variant being mounted on MP’s rack and had two floor tom legs attached to support it rather than the more usual catalogue option of a rollaway stand. The Gong bass drum arrived mid-session for the FII recording.

The snare changed too; it was now mounted using Tama’s patented air-ride system and was sprayed the same purple fade as the rest of the kit. The snare also benefited from a three-way foot controlled snare strainer system originally conceived by MP and built by Tama; the snares were adjustable by a foot pedal to be loose/tight/on/off and this system worked very well and can be heard to great effect on FII.

Mike was also now using standard Tama Octobans (albeit they were sprayed white/purple and were given Starclassic lugs) and he had the four to his left mounted in a more conventional line with two more on the right hand side of the kit – this meant the position of the ride cymbal had to change and this now became more centralised and the right hand tambourine moved more to MP’s right side. This had the 6” splash mounted above it now too. Also the two hi-hats he had with the Mapex kit (open and closed) were replaced with a foot pedal controlled DW version (this varied in the coming years too between DW and Tama versions with the Tama version winning out!) – the hi-hat also was fitted with a drop-clutch device which meant open/closed hi-hat sticking was more accessible.

The 6” cymbal disc which had been a feature on MP’s kits since Images and Words (at least) was removed (this used to be between the 8” and 10” splashes), but extra Sabian Bell Disks were added to MP’s far left and a Sabian Thunder Sheet was added to his right rear. A Sabian 10” China Kang was added above the Octobans on the left side and the 12” splash was raised to sit also above the right hand Octobans.

The first pair of Octobans to MP’s left were not mounted on standard Tama holders (the other two pairs were), these were positioned on custom brackets made by Tama to allow freer placement of the first two drums.

The new purple monster (with 14” and 16” toms) was debuted at the Fix for 96 holiday shows and had the standard black front heads with portholes cut out and supported by the usual Holz protectors. This was the debut to MP singing too on backup vocals!!

Interestingly, the first promo shots to appear of the new kit must have shown it in it’s VERY early days of delivery – it showed Evans heads fitted (standard Tama fitment) instead of MP’s Remo’s. There was also an inaccuracy in the Remo promo ads stating that he used Powerstroke 3 kick drum heads – as far as I can tell Powerstroke 3’s were NEVER used.

Mike came to Europe during March ‘96 to do some Tama/Hoshino clinics and for these he used locally supplied Starclassic kits in natural finish and standard black Octobans. At this point he was still setting the left Octobans in a stacked formation, but this varied from place to place. Similar kits were used by MP, but with sunburst fade finish when DT came to Europe prior to recording FII (April ‘97) – the kit then also had black Octobans and black Gong bass drum. No rack this time (everything mounted on stands with clamps) and no percussion toys either.

About this time too, Mike changed his stick supplier from Hot Sticks to Promark, with that company making MP a signature stick (the 420N) with nylon tip – these remain to this day and interestingly feature the normal Promark “bands” around the CENTRE of the stick rather than two thirds down the stick – this was because with Mike using the butt end of his left hand stick, the bands/logo would get damaged very quickly so they moved them to the centre – cool! (this has now been adopted by Promark mostly throughout their range)

End of part 1