Memories Of Inner Turbulence

On September 27th, 2001, Dream Theater’s final day in the studio, Denis and I had a conversation with Mike. On the verge of the coming Transatlantic tour and Dream Theater’s new studio album, as well as the release of Live Scenes From New York, the timing was right for another look into the past, present and future.

Roots: First of all, how are things over there, I mean, how’s life in general after the horrible events from September 11th?

Mike: It’s been really shocking. We actually started the mix here in New York City the day before the attack! It’s just been such a strange feeling here in New York. Very, very sad and shocking. Everybody’s still shocked and now the anger is starting to set in. I guess we are all kind of just waiting to see what the next move is going to be. But here in NY it’s starting to get back to normal, slowly but surely.

Roots: Were there any losses in your direct environment?

Mike: Nobody close to me, but there is one person that I did know that is missing, so... but nobody very close or families, which goes for all band members.

Denis: Thank God.

Roots: That’s a relief.

Mike: Yeah, it’s all just... you know... it’s incredible. But it’s part of life I suppose. There’s always going to be tragedy and you just have to do your best to overcome it.

Roots: What is your world view on this? I’d like to get into this a bit deeper, as it’s affecting everyone. Also here in Europe, you’ll be amazed how many people are walking around just as shocked!

Mike: I know. I mean, this isn’t just a NY thing, it’s not even an American thing, it’s definitely a world issue.

Roots: Yeah, which is why I’d like to know your feelings about this. Are you for instance sharing the blind fury of ‘let’s kick everyone’s ass there in the Middle East’ or...

Mike: Well, I’ve been watching a lot of news, more than I ever have actually. Now I’m starting to learn a lot about the Taliban, Bin Laden and everything that’s going on in the Middle East. All things that I never heard about actually. I have got to say I do stand behind the president in some sort of retaliation being absolutely necessary. And when I say retaliation I don’t mean it should be looked at as revenge, because I don’t think that taking one tragedy and creating another and taking innocent lives, like they did to us, I don’t think “that’s called for. I think the better term is self-defense.

Roots: It’s basically written in the Bible to turn your other cheek... so to speak.

Mike: Well, I think something absolutely has to be done. They can’t make a statement like they did and get away with it. And now the things that I see on TV about the Taliban, that kind of behaviour and those kind of actions, that they live their lives by cannot be tolerated in this world. It’s almost like seeing news reels from the 40s of the Nazis. You have to put a stop to that before it gets any more tragic than it already has. So I do stand by Bush’s and apparently the rest of the world’s feelings that this has to be stopped and action absolutely has to be taken.

Roots: Without bringing to much revenge into it, that’s maybe...

Mike: ...hopefully it will be done without the expense of innocent lives, like they did to us, because surely two wrongs don’t make a right. But hopefully the world can focus the attack on the appropriate parties and not have to go far beyond that.

Roots: Are you feeling too that the whole world has changed after September 11th?

Mike: Oh absolutely. I mean, this was a major event in world history.

Roots: The world’s points of view are polarizing...

Mike: Yeah, I don’t want to sound pessimistic, but I do have a strange and bad feeling inside that this could possibly be World War III or the start of World War III. I have been reading a lot of history books over the past couple of weeks. And WWI started over a much more petty thing than this! And the same with WWII, I mean, America became involved as a result of Pearl Harbor and this is... five times more tragic than that.

Roots: And it affects us all as it is not just America against a Middle East country, but more like democracy against Muslim fundamentalism.

Mike: Absolutely, so I do have a bad feeling that this could possibly be the beginning of something that’s going to take many, many years and another thing I’ve noticed is that there seems to be a 30 year cycle with major wars. WWI started in 1914, 30 years later came WWII, 30 years after that came the Vietnam War and now here we are 30 years after Vietnam. That’s actually a strange cycle that I noticed and never even thought of.

Denis: Have you spoken with the band about the future of Dream Theater, because I read on the internet that John Petrucci has cancelled his clinics?

Mike: Yeah, actually we have talked a little bit about it and in fact, more than anybody in the band, John Myung seems to be the most shaken up by this and he actually expressed some concern which I hadn’t even thought about: what if we do go to war and this is something that lasts for many years? It’s going to seriously affect, well... not only us, but any bands or entertainers making a living, especially the ones who travel, like we do. I never thought about it, but it has the potential to really disrupt the way that we live our lives. Future tours of us in Europe could possibly be jeopardized by the actions that are going on.

Roots: That’s what came to mind: will Transatlantic still come over to Europe this November?

Mike: Yeah. As of now we still are and it’s not a problem, but as you saw John had to cancel his clinics and we had to move the G3 show and that is just the aftershock of the NYC tragedy. If a World War begins or even a war simply against Afghanistan it’s going to affect travel, it’s going to affect international flights, so it is something that is going to seriously affect our livelihood as musicians that need to tour for a living.

Denis: Let’s hope it won’t happen...

Mike: If not, then we have to become like the Beatles or Steely Dan. We just have to constantly make records and then when the war is over we’ll have to like embark for a 5 year tour! To play all the material that we built up in the studio!

Denis: Well, that’s an idea....

Roots: Ok, let’s talk a bit about the freshly released Transatlantic album “Bridge Across Forever”. As soon as the first album was released you could read and hear that there was going to be a continuation of Transatlantic. Was that something that you guys knew for sure already while working on “SMPTe”, or did it gradually grow?

Mike: A little bit of both. As soon as the first record was out we knew there was potential for future work together, because I think that the music we created together was really significant and special, so we knew that there was potential for future activity. I guess the next step would be to see how it was received. And it was well received by all the fans as well and we ended up... taking little steps, you know. We did the American shows and then slowly the suggestion came up to do another one and there was no reason not to. All of our schedules worked out, the four of us enjoyed the music that we made and we knew we could continue to make some great music. And for the record company it was a success from their point of view in terms of sales.

Roots: Yeah, it even entered the charts in Germany!

Mike: Yeah!

Roots: You recorded the album at the beginning of this year. Can you tell a bit about how that came into shape?

Mike: Well, I was offered a spot to play at the NAMM show by Tama Drums. They were putting on a showcase for their new range of signature snares. Steward Copeland, Lars Ulrich and myself. So Tama wanted me to perform and suggested I’d do it with Transatlantic. So we had that commitment already locked in on the calendar and figured being that we have to get together and rehearse for that, why don’t we schedule the making of the next recording around the same time and we could just kill two birds with one stone. So we ended up scheduling a two or a two and a half week period before the NAMM show, we got together and did the album then. We decided we were going to do it in Nashville. Neal had made that suggestion and everybody agreed that it was a good idea. So basically we gathered in Nashville and we spent about a week to ten days in Neal’s house, actually writing and putting the material together which was something we didn’t have with the first album. It was a nice bonus to have that extra time to work with the material a little bit more. So after that we entered the studio, a little bit more prepared because of that rehearsal and writing time and that was it. The whole basic tracks, that whole process was about two and a half weeks.

Roots: What struck me was that a lot of people around me and the same goes for yourselves, as could be read on the internet studio diary, immediately labelled this album ‘(even) better than the first one’. That first one is also very dear to me and I would say they are both as good. So what makes you say this one is better than the first one? In what way? Production-wise? Or...

Mike: Well let me start by saying, that it’s in no way an insult to the first one, because I absolutely love the first album as well. I think the songs on there are great, great songs and I’m happy with the production, so it’s in no way belittling the first album. But my personal feelings with what makes this even better is that it was even more of a collaborative effort. The first one was as well, but I would say... to give an example of how the song writing process differed from the previous one: with the first album, demos were passed around, Neal would send a demo of All Of The Above in his form, or Roine would send My New World in his form and basically we got together and we shaped the Transatlantic versions around the individual demos. Meaning we would take the existing song, change a part here, add a part there, but basically we were using their demos as the blue print to work off of. With this album, the same process happened, there were still demos being passed around, like Neal had a demo of Duel With The Devil, which was Dance Of The Devil and he had a demo for Stranger In Your Soul, which was originally called Hanging In The Balance. But rather than just reshaping those songs we actually ended up taking Neal’s demos and songs and we would take bits of Roine’s demos and songs and combine that together. We basically were taking everybody’s individual ideas and making one huge, giant picture. I don’t know if that makes sense, but... from the inside it was a bit different. I think everybody’s ideas are more represented in a kind of band context. And even the vocals were split up a little bit more, which was important for us because we didn’t want it to sound like a Spock’s Beard or a Flower Kings record. I think we were consciously splitting up the vocal parts a little bit more. And at the end of the day I think a song like Stranger In Your Soul or Duel With The Devil... they just ended up coming out like really amazingly well. In terms of composition, I think the bits and pieces really came together to make some real magical pieces of music.

Roots: Well it seems more coherent than the first one because of all the recurrent themes. Stranger In Your Soul, although in a different key, even starts the same as Duel With The Devil!

Mike: Well that was another conscious thing that I actually suggested at the start of the session. To try to have different pieces that cross over from song to song throughout the album. And it’s something that I suggested with Dream Theater too on previous albums. We did it with “Awake” and obviously “Scenes From A Memory”, being a concept album. So with Transatlantic, for instance the intro to Stranger In Your Soul is at the beginning of the album before Duel With The Devil and then within Duel With The Devil you have Motherless Children which reappears in Charlotte Pike. And Lost And Found is introduced in Charlotte Pike, but then comes back again in Stranger In Your Soul. You constantly have all these parts that are jumping from song to song to give the whole thing one giant coherent flow from start to finish. It almost feels like a concept album. It’s not, lyrically at all, but musically you have a lot of that kind of feel. And I thought that was an important thing, because from song to song you have so many themes and ideas and you develop them and bring them back and rephrase them. There is no reason why you can’t do that across the big spectrum of an entire album.

Roots: OK, well it also resulted in Pete Trewavas having a small lead vocal part on Stranger In Your Soul! Did he step up and say “I wanna do this” or...

Mike: Actually I think we had to push him into it! That section of Stranger In Your Soul, which is also almost the same as the closing section of Suite Charlotte Pike, stems from an idea that Pete brought in on a demo, so when we worked it into Stranger In Your Soul, it was natural that he would try to sing it. And then ultimately I think it ended up working, but we actually have two versions. We also have a version where Neal sings those parts. At the end of the day, in the mix, we decided to have Pete sing it the first two times and Neal singing it at the very end. And even though Neal has the stronger voice, which is why we kept his at the end, there is a certain innocence and texture that Pete’s voice kind of adds to that section and we thought it was a nice change of scenery with the voices swapping back and forth.

Roots: Well, it worked for me!

Mike: Cool.

Roots: Let’s swap to another album now. Eeeh... “Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence”... wow! You know, I was wondering, did you guys feel any special pressure after “Scenes From A Memory” being so successful both as an album and tour, when you got back in the studio?

Mike: Well, I’d be lying if I said we didn’t have that constantly in the back of our minds. It was a question that was asked constantly after “Scenes”. ‘How are you gonna top this?’ And when we started making the new record, of course it was in the back of our minds, but we said to ourselves ‘look, let’s just do what we do’. Every time we make a record, we are not trying to compare it to a previous work. We’re just trying to make something new and go in new and exciting places. And that was the approach we had. When we started the record, it was just a bunch of songs and they ended up really starting to shape up the further we got along into the session. And the very last thing we wrote was the 40-minute title track. We weren’t even intending to write a 40-minute song. I knew in my mind and even suggested it to the others: let’s make another Change Of Seasons-type song. And I remember John Petrucci saying ‘OK, but let’s not go past 20 minutes’. So once it came time to the last song, we knew we were going to write a big epic piece, but we didn’t intend for it to be this epic! Next thing we knew, we started piecing the bits together and it was like “Holy s***, we’re 30 minutes in!” And then next thing we knew, at the end of the process it was like “Oh my God, we finished 40 f***ing minutes!”

Roots: Time flies when you’re having fun!

At this point we hear Mike say ‘it’s Kevin Shirley, he’s ripping his penis out... and is putting it in my face’. He’s now walking away. “Nice way to tease me!”

Denis: What? He’s putting his penis in your face?

Mike: He pulled out his... peanuts.

D/R: Ooooh, yeah we heard of those before! (laughs)

Kevin Shirley: (in Dutch, which he speaks a bit) Hi, how are you doing? (switching back to Dutch/English) En die nieuwe album is eeeehhh... f***ing amazing!

Roots: Well, we are already very pleased with the format, being it 6 songs on a double CD set! So the material is coming out great?

Kevin: (joking) Yeah, except for the drums; they didn’t come out very well, so I had to fix them in Pro Tools! (laughs) Here’s Mike again. Keep well!

Mike: You can put your penis away now. Anyway... where were we?

Roots: I wanted to know if six songs on a double album is maybe a deliberate attempt to top “Scenes From A Memory”?

Mike: Ah yeah. No, like I was saying, that wasn’t the intention. When we started writing the sixth song, we already had 55 minutes of music done. So we wanted to write a song that would pretty much clock in at 20 and we figured it would be a single CD set of 75 minutes and that would have been it. But when we got into it, the piece ended up being 40 minutes long, which meant we would have to do a double album. Either that or leave something off and we surely didn’t want to leave anything off. So at the end of the whole writing session, John Petrucci, Jordan and I looked at each other and just started laughing. We were cracking up! Like ‘I guess this is how you top “Scenes From A Memory”! A double album with a 40-minute song.’

Denis: What was the reaction of the record company?

Mike: They have no idea! They’ll find out when we deliver the record to them next week. I have to say, I don’t know if it’s a result of our record company or our managers pushing the right buttons, but I have to say it has been such a great load off of our backs to know we finally have this kind of freedom to do such a thing. Like I said, I don’t know if it’s different people at the label or our managers doing all the right things, but I thank God that we finally have gotten to this point where we can do whatever the hell we want and actually have them back us, which is great.

Roots: The label here in Holland tried to cross Dream Theater over to a wider audience with “Falling Into Infinity”, which originated of course from Elektra’s policy in the States at that point. But it didn’t work and they told me that they were aware now that Dream Theater is a band that you best let do its own thing.

Mike: Exactly. I have nothing to add to that. It was a bit of that and us going to the label and saying “let us do our thing or else you are not going to have a band, because we are on the verge of breaking up. Unless we could regain our artistic freedom there is no reason for us to even exist!”

Roots: I was wondering, how many records do you still have to make for Elektra?

Mike: One after this next one and then we’re free.

Denis: About breaking up. I read somewhere on the internet that you were actually about to leave the band before the Falling tour. Is that correct?

Mike: Not before the Falling tour. Towards the end of Touring Into Infinity I was definitely kicking around... you know... putting an end to the band or leaving the band. And I actually – to be completely honest and open about it – I actually told the band the day before the Rotterdam show (fan club concert June 1998) believe it or not, that I was going to leave and that was that.

Roots: The day before the Rotterdam show? You kept that a secret very well!

Mike: Yeah. I think it’s been documented somewhere else, I think somewhere on my website, look under FAQ or something like that, but the short version of the story is that I was really feeling the frustration, really feeling the control over the band slip away and it was incredibly frustrating to me. I saw no point in continuing if I couldn’t do the things the way I wanted them done. And I told the band that I had enough of the frustrations and wanted out. They convinced me to stay at least through to do the Deep Purple-tour and then we would re-evaluate after that. So I stuck it through, we finished that tour, talked it over again and decided to make some changes and we switched management and we ended up making the line-up change.

Denis: Does Derek have anything to do with it?

Mike: No no. It has nothing to do with Derek, because I really like Derek a lot. Don’t get that impression, that just happened to be the timing. But the most important aspect of it all was that it was told to our new managers to go into the label and that’s it. Let them know that we need to be able to make our own records, without producers or record company people stepping in and putting their noses in our music. And the only way this band was going to stay together or the only way that I would stay in the band was to give us back our artistic freedom. To do the things our way. And the pieces fell back into place. We were able to regain that and here we are. It all ended up having a very happy ending. I think we had to learn the lessons the hard way like we did through that period of ‘96 / ‘97 / ‘98 in order to get so desperate to put our foot down in order to regain it, like we have.

Roots: I’m glad you did. About the new album, it’s not a concept album right?

Mike: The big piece is a concept piece within itself, but the album is six separate songs.

Roots: Can you tell us a little bit about the themes or inspirations? When, where or how were they born?

Denis: And who wrote what?

Mike: Well, the lyricists are slowly being revealed on my website. Via this game of clues that had been started. So the answer to the lyricists question will probably be revealed in the next day or so. (laughs) Eeeh... ok, I’ll generalize what the songs sound like a bit or fit in, but they are very general descriptions and I do want to leave a lot of room for personal interpretation for when the album comes out. But I’ll go through them. The first song we wrote was The Glass Prison. John and I went to see Pantera the night before the sessions were scheduled to begin, so “we immediately started the sessions with this huge adrenaline, due to the Pantera show. So The Glass Prison ended up becoming incredibly heavy and probably the heaviest thing we’ve written. It falls somewhere between Pantera and Master Of Puppets-era Metallica and kind of Rust In Peace-era Megadeth.

Denis: Great!

Mike: So that’s kind of where The Glass Prison sits. The next song is Blind Faith. Which was actually the fifth song we wrote. In fact the entire sequence of the album is the order we wrote it, with the exception of Blind Faith. If you put that at the end of the first disc, then that’s the actual sequence that we wrote it. Musically it reminds me of a cross between Peruvian Skies meets Liquid Tension Experiment. Universal Mind kind of writing. The third song is Misunderstood. Which to me could have ended up coming off sounding like a ballad, like a more traditional type ballad, but we consciously drove ourselves away from having any ballads on this album. There are two songs on the album that could have been ballads, but we ended up giving them the real Radiohead-type treatment to make them very strange and psychedelic in terms of sound scape. So they don’t sound like traditional ballads. So Misunderstood is one of these two. And I think it almost has a bit of a Soundgarden kind of vibe to it. Black Hole Sun kind of thing. But, that’s a first impression. The fourth song is The Great Debate. The title of this, up until two weeks ago, was Conflict At Ground Zero. It’s actually one of the lines out of the key parts of the song. But when the New York tragedy happened, we knew we had to change the title. Musically to me it’s Tool meets Rush. It’s very progressive and it’s I think the longest song on the album other than the big one. Then the last track on the first CD is Disappear, which is probably the most experimental thing we have done since Space Dye Vest. It’s kind of like Radiohead meets Space Dye Vest. And this is the second song that had a bit of a ballad feel, but we decided to really let it go in a much trippier production place. And then the big piece, what can I say? It’s... everything you always wanted to know about Dream Theater in one song! It’s got EVERYTHING!

Roots: Well it should! It’s forty minutes long!!

Mike: Yeah, that’s longer than the entire “Close To The Edge” (Yes) album!

...for a moment the mutual anxiety filled the room...

Mike: It’s funny. The first CD is roughly 55 minutes and the second CD will be 40 minutes, so that’s kind of like “Master of Puppets” (Metallica) and “Close To The Edge” (Yes) in one album! Or even “Images And Words”. IAW was the length of these 5 songs on the first CD.

Roots: Apart from the format being a bit unusual, do you feel you have explored new areas? Let’s say you have some sort of standard inspiration and capacity as a musician, the range within you guys could make six great songs. Do you feel you maybe expanded your musical view and range on this album? Something never done before? I talked to John Petrucci earlier this year and he told me you guys had taken a few Master classes from World Music musicians just for some inspirational vibes. How much of that outside interest got into the album?

Mike: Well, every time we ever make a record, we push ourselves to try new things. I think this time around, the most obvious way that we did that was in terms of the production. The way the things were recorded and the way that they were produced. And the sounds that were used. I think we really did a lot of experimenting with that this time around. In terms of the playing, the technical musicianship of course we are constantly pushing ourselves to challenge us to new things and in terms of the song writing... every time you write a song, it’s a challenge. You have got to try to do new and exciting things and not repeat yourself and... you know... try to make a full statement. And I think, like any of our albums, I think there’s a lot of it that sounds like Dream Theater, so it’s not that out of left field; but at the same time, we’re always trying to make things a step in a different direction. So I think people will still hear things on the album which are new and fresh from Dream Theater for them. Talking about the Master classes, the original idea that we had for this album... eeeh... we were on tour in Europe last year and Jordan, John and I were on a plane discussing plans to make the album some sort of a World Music album, but still keeping it Dream Theater, keeping it heavy and progressive. What we were going to do was that each song would represent the style or flavour of a different country. And we would make this album and incorporate these different style or sounds, keys, modes, scales or rhythms and try to do different things in a World Music sort of progressive metal way. I think, when John Petrucci and I went to see Pantera, that threw it all right out of the window! (laughs)

Roots: That must have been a key point! (laughs) You already mentioned it explicitly during the stage interview in Paris last May.

Mike: Oh yeah, we went to see Pantera and the next day the sessions began and the first thing we wrote was The Glass Prison. And at that point... (laughs)... we knew we had to just do what Dream Theater does. But we did take a couple of those Master classes and learned some different, weird African rhythms and it was interesting, but you know what? The things that they were teaching us – about poly-rhythms and counterpoint writings and stuff – these were things that we were already really utilizing. So when it came time to try to apply these lessons to what we do. It just turned out that doing what we do is what we do best. So we just stuck with it. And then the biggest irony is that John and I were out on this G3 tour this past summer and Steve Vai’s new live album comes out (“Alive In An Ultra World”) and guess what the concept behind that album is? Every song is representing a style or writing style of different countries! So he ended up doing the exact concept that we were going to do! We would have been totally pissed off if we had spent most of the year making this record and the Steve Vai album comes out and f***s up our entire plan! So it worked out good that we ended up abandoning that idea and just doing what we do.

Roots: Well, that wraps it up I guess, unless you want

to tell us some more.

Mike: No, we’ve got the rest of 2002 to do that!

Damn. He got us curious. Aren’t you?

Roots & Denis