“Reflections, Restorations and Revelations” – A Poolside Interview with Mike Portnoy

Early in the afternoon, I arrived at Humphrey’s By the Bay, a small outdoor venue and vacation resort right next to one of San Diego’s many harbors. A little over a year before, I had the chance to see John Petrucci and Mike Portnoy at this same venue, as part of the G3 tour, along with Joe Satriani and Steve Vai. That time around, I bumped into Mike at the venue’s restaurant while having lunch, and I had the chance to ask him a bunch of questions while he was waiting for his order to be prepared (much of this info was posted on Mike’s website and printed in ToD issue #22). This time, not only was I there to see Dream Theater, along with Joe Satriani and King’s X, but also to meet up with Mike for my first formal interview with him.

After checking out the venue and briefly speaking with James, Jordan and John Petrucci, I waited outside (security shooed everyone out) and got to hear Dream Theater’s soundcheck (nothing noteworthy to mention was heard, aside from some sort of jam, which I would end up asking Mike about during the interview). After they finished up, Mike came out to the venue’s entrance to meet me. We searched for a nice, semi-private area in which to conduct the interview and finally opted to do it next to the resort’s pool. How’s that for a laidback approach to an interview? During the course of the interview, we heard King’s X do their soundcheck in the background, and had Jordan, John Myung, Joe Satriani and all the guys in King’s X walk by at various times, on the way to their hotel rooms. Anyway, I tried to cover as many topics as I could think of, several of which came from discussions I had seen on Mike’s message board over the last several months. Here’s how it went:

Scott Hansen: First things first, how was the Rush show?

Mike Portnoy: The Rush show was great; it was good to see them. To me, the highlight of the show was hanging with Geddy and Alex, that was awesome.

SH: Of course, you gotta share what happened at the aftershow! Did you feel giddy like a little kid?

MP: Yeah...well...this isn’t really ‘newsworthy’ for an interview. [laughs]

SH: No, but I think there’s many Dream Theater fans out there that are Rush fans also.

MP: Well, it was definitely exciting. Let’s put it this way: there’s not many artists out there that would make me feel like a kid again, but meeting those guys surely did. I would say that Jimmy Page made me feel that way, Ringo made me feel that way, and these guys definitely gave me that excitement.

SH: That’s cool. Did you guys exchange phone numbers? [laughs]

MP: No, but they were very, very cool. They just welcomed me with open arms. They said to me “it’s a pleasure to finally meet you.” They said that to me! And Geddy was thanking me for always speaking so highly of them in the press...they are both beautiful people. It’s a shame I didn’t get to meet Neil, but I guess he’s just very private.

SH: That’s for another time.

MP: I suppose so.

SH: I just finished reading the article about OSI [Office of Strategic Influence, Mike’s latest side project with Kevin Moore and Jim Matheos] in the new issue of the fanzine. [Issue #26 of ToD] You mention in there that you had asked Kevin to give you suggestions and directions. Do you think any of that would move into Dream Theater, that of taking direction from the other guys?

MP: [major laughs] No – no way! I think it was a one shot deal for me to go in and take directions

SH: Not even in Transatlantic? Because I thought in Transatlantic you had taken a little more direction.

MP: No. No matter what project I’m working on – Dream Theater, Transatlantic, LTE – everybody pretty much stays out of the drum department, which is good for me. I’m a tough person to give direction to. [laughs] I’m not very open minded in that department. But I tried to be with Kevin. It was frustrating for me, but with the OSI thing, I wanted to try something different. If I was just going to do another project, like any of the other ones, then it’s kinda pointless. I wanted it to be something that was different for me, so I was open to taking Kev’s direction. He’s really into working with loops, samples and effects and I have no experience in that department, so there were a bunch of songs where I just played it straight so he could manipulate the drums as he sees fit. And like I said in that diary [in ToD #26], it was a tough adjustment for me to have someone telling me what to play. And it ruffled my feathers a bit, but in the end, it will be good for me because it was something different.

SH: With some of the effects and production stuff, do you think some of that might carry over – some of the experimentation in Dream Theater? Because I know, especially with Six Degrees, there was a lot of experimentation with the guitars, keyboards and even the recording of the solos backwards. Do you think you might consider doing that with the next album, with the drums?

MP: Not to the point that Kev does it. Kev is into drum loops and things like that, and I can’t picture Dream Theater utilizing that. Kev’s into more of the industrial approach, and Dream Theater is more band and ‘real playing’ oriented.

SH: So I take it that you are still anti-electronic drums?

MP: It doesn’t interest me. I think Jordan has enough technology in his area to experiment in some of those fields, but when it comes to the drums in Dream Theater, it just seems like it should be real playing it just seems like that’s what Dream Theater is about.

SH: Do you think that there will be any live dates, or is this strictly a studio experimentation type project?

MP: Who knows? It’s way too soon to tell.

SH: A lot of fans were bummed out to hear that Daniel Gildenlow wasn’t part of OSI; what was the real reason why he was not a part of it?

MP: It was a real disappointment for me too. I thought he was the perfect musician for that project. Basically it came down to Jim’s taste. It’s Jim’s music and ultimately it was his project, at least at the inception stage. I think Jim’s musical taste have gone away from that progressive, operatic vocalist kind of direction. Jim’s way more into music like Marillion and Porcupine Tree, and vocalists like Steve Wilson or Steve Hogarth, or the Chroma Key direction. I was really pushing for Daniel, and Jim gave me the benefit of the doubt to incorporate him in the project and see if it would work. But I think once he heard Daniel’s demos and ideas, it wasn’t the direction that he wanted to go in. He didn’t want to go in that kind of overly operatic kind of progressive direction.

SH: So is OSI an actual band, or would you consider it to be a Jim Matheos solo project?

MP: No, it’s not a Jim Matheos solo album. It all did stem from Jim’s music, which was not truly collaborated on, in the sense that Transatlantic, Liquid Tension or Dream Theater music is collaborated on. With all three of those bands, I was very much a part of the writing and arranging. With OSI, I don’t feel as much a part of it. My role was more just as a drummer, although I made some suggestions in the arrangement department. But ultimately, they were Jim’s songs. Kevin got very involved with changing the arrangements and doing a lot of post-production. And Kevin also was very involved with the melodies and the lyrics. So it’s a little bit more than a Jim Matheos solo project, but a bit less than a true collaborative side project, so it’s somewhere in between.

SH: Since you didn’t get the chance to work with Daniel in OSI, and I know that you’d want to work with him in a future side project, I was wondering if you would consider a side project involving both him and Devin Townshend? Both of them seem to be entrepreneurial in terms of writing music, just as yourself and both seem to be real expressive in their many ways of writing.

MP: Ya know, not to dis him, as I don’t not like him, but I’ve never been a huge fan of Devin’s. I’m not crazy about that Steve Vai album that he did [Sex and Religion] and the solo stuff that people turned on to me, never ‘got’ me. So I’m not saying that I don’t like Devin Townshend, but he never caught my ear. I would love to do something with Daniel though. I think he’s an amazing talent and I really respect him as a talented musician.

SH: Originally I thought Sean Malone was going to be a full-blown member of this project and now he is referred to as a ‘guest musician;’ why the change in status?

MP: I guess what it boiled down to was his schedule. He wasn’t able to participate in the basic tracks session, which was really the biggest part of the writing and the structuring of the songs. So I guess Jim or Kev made the decision that the three of us should be the perceived as the ‘core’ of the band. And even though Sean’s playing on every song, his tracks were done afterwards. So I guess maybe that’s why he’s looked at in that respect.

SH: If there was to be a second OSI album, do you think he might be a full member of the band?

MP: If we were to do another one, sure. With the recording of OSI, I was trying to instigate everyone to be there. I’m a big fan of the collaboration process. I hate all those side projects that are done through the mail. I’m completely against that way of doing things. It took some arm twisting to convince Jim and Kev of that, because I think Kev would have been happy to do his thing on his own. But I was real pushy in trying to get us together. To me that’s what the beauty of the side project is, the actual personal collaboration. So if we were to do it in the future, I would do my best to convince Sean to be there, as well as any other vocalists that would be involved.

SH: Speaking of the future, what are your future plans, both personally and within Dream Theater?

MP: Dream Theater’s plans are pretty well known: we have this summer tour we are doing, we have one final leg in Europe that we are doing in the fall and then that’s it. We’ll come home and spend Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s with our families, have a little well deserved time off. Then, come the New Year, we’ll start a new album. There’s some talk of possibly doing some dates before we start the next album, in South America, because we’ve been trying to go down there on this tour and so far the scheduling hasn’t worked out. So there’s a possibility that we may hit South America before starting the record, but we’ll see if that happens.

SH: Any chance of some rehearsal/east coast hometown dates beforehand?

MP: Not if we can help it. [laughs] We’ve been on the road all year.

SH: I’m asking, because I know many fans would love to see you do a few more headlining shows, and it’s a lot easier for them to travel to the east coast, than to fly down to South America, especially if there’s new stuff added to the setlist.

MP: Well, the South American gigs would just be typical Dream Theater shows, pretty much the same things we’ve been playing because we didn’t play there during the last two tours. So there’s no plans for any sort of one-off hometown shows.

SH: Now with the current leg of the tour, are there any new songs or any new covers that you’ll be premiering?

MP: You’ll find out soon enough.

SH: I’m not asking specifics...

MP: Well, there’s a few things that are being added...

SH: I heard a jam during the soundcheck; was that something new?

MP: Nah, that was just getting the sounds up. But there are a few new things added in to the summer leg. In some cases, we also have to do some editing such as you’ll hear tonight just for time purposes. It’s impossible to play all the long songs when we’re doing only an 80 or 90 minute set. When we were doing an ‘Evening With’ we were able to do Lines in the Sand, Home, Learning to Live all of the 15 minute songs: The Great Debate, Glass Prison. But when you’re doing an 80 or 90 minute set, it’s impossible to get the long ones in. So we’re focusing on the shorter songs, and when we do a longer one, we have to tighten it up a bit. We are going to play different setlists every night. It’s the same routine, it’s just that there’s less songs to choose from, since we’re restricted in that department.

SH: What are all the aspects involved in covering an entire album by another band? For instance, I know you said that there are certain albums you wouldn’t do because you’re the only fan of the band. Do you always take into consideration who else in the band is a fan before deciding what album you’re going to cover next?

MP: As you know, I have the first five covers picked out already. I can’t say that all five of us are fans of all five albums. I don’t know if there are any albums out there that all five of us love. There might be some, but in the case of Master of Puppets, Jordan never had even heard that album. So there’s going to be some cases where not all five members are going to be influenced by a particular album, but the five that I’ve picked out already are definitely ones that have been a part of the band’s history; I guess primarily affecting myself, John and John as the core of the band. And I’m picking out albums and bands that really have to do with the formation of Dream Theater’s sound and style. Also, when choosing the albums, some of these ones that we will be doing in the future aren’t necessarily even my favorite albums by these bands. For instance, the one that we’re gonna be doing in the fall is not my favorite album by this particular band. There’s another one that I would have preferred to do, but I think my personal favorite was maybe a little bit too obscure for an entire audience to relate to. So in some cases, we may be going with a little more commercially known album by a band that was a big influence.

SH: Any thoughts to doing another ‘Uncovered’ type show where you just do select covers from different bands like you did back in ‘95?

MP: No, I think this will fulfill our interest paying tribute to different artists.

SH: With doing covers live, why does Dream Theater pretty much do straight-ahead covers and not inject more of your own style? I think of certain bands that really add their own style to a song; an extreme case of this would be The Cure’s cover of Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze, which is complete different from the original. Now I’m not saying going that far to the extreme.

MP: Did you ever hear A Perfect Circle do Diary of a Madman?

SH: You mean the hybrid one where they combine The Cure’s Love Song with Ozzy, right? Yeah I have. So using that as an example, why don’t you guys add a little more Dream Theater style to the songs you cover?

MP: That’s a good question. I think it’s mainly time restraints for rehearsal purposes. It’s hard enough for us to rehearse these albums ‘straight.’ With Master of Puppets, we had to rehearse every night at soundcheck, and every day or every couple of days we would tackle a new song. We’d have to turn off the PA so that nobody outside could hear what we were doing. We’d have to practice just through our inner-ear monitors. It’s hard enough for everyone to learn the songs as they are, so it’s hard when you’re on the road and have limited soundcheck time to really mess with the stuff too much. But in the case of Master of Puppets, we had to reinterpret the orchestration. We had to figure out who was going to play what guitar part and Jordan had to completely re-approach his instrument.

SH: So it did allow for a little interpretation, but not as much as–

MP: Yeah. That’s a tough question; some people feel differently about that. Some people love complete reinterpretations. I think no matter what we do, it’s going to sound a bit more like Dream Theater, there’s going to be keyboards, and James is going to sing differently.

SH: James is going to sound like James LaBrie and not James Hetfield.

MP: Exactly. You know you take a risk when you reinterpret things. Like that last Tori Amos album of all covers? I think she went way too off the deep end, almost to the point where you couldn’t recognize half the songs! You don’t wanna do that because then you cross that fine line of paying tribute.

SH: Shifting gears, since re-recording When Dream and Day Unite properly in the studio will never happen, would you guys ever consider performing that entire album as a second set, similar to what you did with the title track from Six Degrees on this tour?

MP: Anything’s possible. Lemme just add that if we were to do that, it wouldn’t just be an arbitrary thing where we just do it. Maybe if it was something significant, like the 15th anniversary or something along those lines. The thought of doing that has crossed my mind.

SH: I think that would be amazing especially if it would be released as part of the official bootleg series. Then there would finally be a proper soundboard recording of songs such as Light Fuse and Get Away, and The Ones Who Help to Set the Sun with James on vocals and Jordan on keys. And on the thought of anniversaries, what are your thoughts on it being the ten year anniversary of the release of Images and Words? Have you accomplished everything that you set out to back in 1992, or are there still a few goals left over even now?

MP: To be honest, I don’t think that there’s many more goals personally, musically or creatively. I think in all three of those departments, we are completely satisfied. We’ve gotten the chance to meet so many musicians and tour with some of the great bands out there. We’ve been able to make the kind of records that we want to, everything from a concept album to a double album. So overall, we are very happy and very, very satisfied with the way things have progressed; some of it has been beyond our wildest dreams. The only thing I might say that is a goal we’d like to accomplish to a fuller extent would be commercially speaking, but this would have to be done on our own terms; we’re not gonna sell out. But surely there is a lot of room for this band to grow on a commercial level – you’re getting a free King’s X soundcheck! [King’s X is blasting away in the background] This is great! You’re getting two things at once: a soundcheck and an interview!

SH: One of the things I’m most interested in that I have to ask is what’s the latest status on the official bootleg project? Is it all up to the record label at this point?

MP: Yeah. It’s a matter of our management sorting out the technicalities with the label; it’s a big waiting game. It’s the same thing with the reissues of the first two Dream Theater videos. These things are more business oriented than anything and are really out of our hands. I mean I’d love to have that whole official bootleg series up and running, and I’d love to have those first two videos reissued on DVD. It’s all in the hands of the record companies and management. So we’ll just continue to wait.

SH: I’m wondering if you have some preliminary thoughts on how Dream Theater will approach writing and recording the next album differently than on previous albums. What thoughts do you have?

MP: We haven’t discussed it, but I assume that we’ll do the same thing: write and record simultaneously. But we really haven’t discussed the process or direction yet; it’s still kind of premature for us.

SH: Do you think you’ll ever do the world-music influenced type of album you originally were thinking of doing before you started working on what became Six Degrees?

MP: Nah. I think that was an idea that came and went – especially now that Vai has done it.

SH: It just doesn’t hold the same interest? Do you have some sort of master plan for what you want to accomplish in terms of musical direction with each Dream Theater album, for instance thinking ‘I want this one to be heavy’ and ‘the next one will be more progressive’ and then we’ll do this and we’ll do that? Do you have the next three or four albums outlined as to what you would like to accomplish?

MP: Oh no, definitely not three or four. Like I said, we’ve just barely discussed the direction or the details of the next record, so it’s impossible to know until we’re doing it. Like that world music thing you just mentioned? We talked about it and thought we were gonna go there, but as soon as we mic’d up in the studio and started actually playing–

SH: Pantera took over.

MP: So you never know where it’s gonna go until it’s going.

SH: With regards to the current style of ‘spontaneous’ writing, do you ever think that this way of writing doesn’t allow enough time for songs to mature, or are you pretty much content with whatever you write on the fly and that’s what you go with?

MP: No, I think writing and recording this way makes so much sense. I’ve seen a lot of fans speculate that we’re not giving the songs enough time to grow, or that we’re writing in a Liquid Tension mode where we’re writing them in five days and recording them. That’s not the case. With Six Degrees, we were in the studio for four, five, six months and the songs did grow in the studio.

SH: Did you go back and re-record certain parts?

MP: We didn’t re-record, but once my drums were laid down, which was the foundation, everything else was able to grow on top of that. A lot of the parts developed on tape; there was time for the songs to grow. And here’s another reason why I think this process makes so much more sense: in the past, whether it was Awake or Falling Into Infinity, we would write a song, demo it and then put it on the shelf for a year. Then when we would go to properly record the album, we were basically learning a song off of a tape. In some cases, it’s almost impossible to reproduce the energy, the excitement and the initial inspiration or spark that was a part of writing that song. It’s almost like just going through the motions and learning a song that you pulled off the shelf from a year ago. To me, that seems pointless. I think it makes so much more sense that when you’re writing something, you’re excited by it, the ideas are spinning and you wanna strike while the iron is hot.

SH: I do remember reading in another interview that you had done a while back, that sometimes you would only have a day or so to plan out your drum tracks. Do you ever have any regrets about that, because of being pushed to the limit you start to think ‘ah geez, I don’t know about this’?

MP: No, I think I prefer it this way. I’m not like a Neil Peart-type that sits there and fine tunes the drum part over a period of two months and then sticks with it for the rest of his life time. I’m more of a spontaneous type of player. When we’re composing the songs, I’m very in tune with the direction of the drums because it’s such a big part of the composition. So after playing through a new song while we’re writing it, I’m ready to rock, I’m ready to roll tape and do it. If I have too much time to think about it, my part is just gonna become boring to me. I wanna nail it while it’s fresh and inspired.

SH: Have you or will you ever combine using the older method of bringing a demo in and combining it with the spontaneous writing style you now use? Because I know in Transatlantic, there were certain ideas that were brought in from Neal and from Roine originally in demo form, and then you guys worked on that. Did you ever do that with Dream Theater or would you do that in the future? Was everything in Scenes and Six Degrees completely fresh?

MP: I don’t know about the future, anything’s possible. We generally work in the studio, and with both Scenes and Six Degrees, there was very little that we pulled from the past. The only exceptions that I can think of were the 1928 Overture, which was taken from the original Metropolis part II the 20 minute version from 1996. But other than that, for Scenes we pretty much started fresh. And then with Six Degrees, one of the main heavy riffs from The Glass Prison: Da Da Digidada Digidada Dadadada [recites guitar riff found at 1:45 in The Glass Prison] that was something that John Myung and myself jammed on back on the Falling Into Infinity sessions, and I had it sitting around on a DAT. We tried to work it in while we were doing Scenes, but it got brushed aside; and once again when we started Six Degrees, I pulled it out and we finally utilized it. But for the most part, those albums were pretty much written fresh. There are cases where John Petrucci will come in with a progression or an idea – that’s the way Regression, The Spirit Carries On, Through Her Eyes and Solitary Shell began. Or Jordan will have some bits and pieces, and he’ll bring them in. But they’re not demos; they’re progressions, riffs and things like that, that we’ll develop together.

SH: Now I know that James doesn’t write any of the music with you, but if he felt real strongly about a specific musical idea and he sent it to you guys, would you guys consider using it?

MP: That’s an incredibly hypothetical question. That’s like saying “what if Jon Anderson [of Yes] wanted to write a song for us?” Of course we’d consider it, but that’s a completely hypothetical scenario. If he did submit something to us, then sure, we would consider it we’re open minded people, for the most part. But it’s never been part of the Dream Theater formula up until now.

SH: How much freedom do each of the guys in the band have in suggesting when writing and recording a song. For instance, I think of some of Jordan’s keyboard sounds.

MP: Actually Jordan is very open, specifically to John’s [Petrucci] and my suggestions. John and myself, as producers, have a lot to say about those types of things. And Jordan is a beautifully open person when it comes to that. Jordan for the most part will construct his sounds on his own, and then he’ll bring them in and he’s open to suggestion and tweaking at that point.

SH: Do you guys sometimes suggest for him not to use a certain keyboard sound? I think of that keyboard soloing right at the end of The Mirror, right before The Mirror outro as played on Metropolis 2000 tour, that just did not work for me.

MP: You know, I gotta tell ya, that was my suggestion; not the sound itself – that was whatever sound he pulled up. I always hated the piano part that went during that section: ble de de de dum [recites keyboard melody found at 6:16 on The Mirror], I thought that was like Liberace on top of Pantera. [laughs] That always killed me, so when we played it with Jordan, I actually suggested to get rid of that piano part and instead just go off on top of it. So I’m to blame for that. But as far as his sound goes, that’s just his lead sound. But I gotta give Jordan credit – he’s incredibly open minded to direction. It’s a great quality that he has.

SH: With the three last albums Dream Theater did each barely fitting on to a CD, after you were done with the recording sessions, did you have to edit anything down so that it would all fit on to a single CD? For instance, did you always plan on Hell’s Kitchen going right into Lines in the Sand?

MP: We wrote that to connect. In fact, that’s why that whole ending of Hell’s Kitchen was written specifically to connect to the key of D to connect to Lines in the Sand. And speaking of Lines in the Sand... [Doug Pinnick walks by and says ‘hi’] That’s a good question...I’d have to think about that. I know that LTE2 had to be trimmed at the mastering stage so that it would all fit. For instance, the intro to Chewbacca was about 2 minutes longer than what’s on the final CD. It just wouldn’t all fit, so we actually had to squeeze it all together. We also had Chris and Kevin’s Bogus Journey where me and Tony did a duet for LTE2 which just didn’t fit, so it never made the album. Also 914 was originally about twice the length, so me and Kevin Shirley had to edit it down at mastering. So with that album, we did have to trim it a bit to fit it within the 79 minute restraint. I’d have to think about Scenes, Infinity and Awake. I think that we just got lucky that all those just fit. I don’t think we did much trimming.

SH: I remember last time we were here at this venue together, you had mentioned to me that you were going to shoot for a double disk. What would the track listing have been if Six Degrees would have had to have been a single disk release?

MP: Once again, it’s a hypothetical situation. That’s a question I didn’t want to have to come up with an answer for when we finished the record, and luckily we were able to sidestep having to come up with a solution. I did lay awake a few nights pondering that thought, and the problem was that we had 95 minutes of music. I think off the top of my head that Blind Faith or Disappear would have been the first to go. But either of them by themselves would still not be enough to bring the album down to 80 minutes, so we would have been stuck in the position of having to cut two songs if Six Degrees wasn’t one of them. It would have been a horrible puzzle to try to figure out, and I’m glad that I didn’t have to come up with a solution to that one.

SH: Conversely, why is War Inside My Head so short? We want it longer!

MP: It’s just the way it came out. We kind of wrote that together with The Test That Stumped Them All, so we wrote those back-to-back. They weren’t supposed to be broken up in to specific lengths time wise; they’re all just sections of the big piece. We weren’t even conscious of the lengths of the individual sections. We were just writing with a vision of the big picture.

SH: Going back to the LTE subject for a moment, have you heard anything more of whether or not Magna Carta still cannot find the master tapes for LTE3 [the extra instrumental jams that Mike, Jordan and Tony did that never made it to LTE2]?

MP: They claim not to know where the master tapes are, and I would believe that that’s absolutely true. Because knowing them, they would have cashed in by now. So I really gotta think that they are clueless.

SH: Do you think what you have on DAT [Mike’s direct to DAT 2-track recordings of those sessions, which keeps for archiving purposes] will eventually be released?

MP: Legally, it can’t happen without Magna Carta’s backing. Originally, when I was on speaking terms with them and they couldn’t find the master tapes, I suggested: “let’s just use these live tapes” which I think sound great. But they weren’t interested, they wanted to have the master tapes so that they could be mixed properly, so I don’t know what will happen. Maybe, one day they will resurface. As much as I am at odds with Magna Carta and I don’t want to support them in any way at all, I do think it’s a shame that those tapes haven’t seen the light of day. It would be nice if one day the do surface and do get released.

SH: So that’s not something you could release under your official bootleg collection?

MP: No, I can’t. They own that, it’s part of their recording session.

SH: Just a moment ago, we were talking about having to edit down an album so that it would fit on one CD. How much material, whether whole songs or just bits and pieces have ended up on the cutting room floor during the sessions, especially for Scenes and Six Degrees, given the spontaneous way they were written? But even on the other albums, how much stuff will you come up with over the course of writing and recording an album that will fall by the wayside, maybe for use on a future album?

MP: Well, one example would be Through Her Eyes, for which we wrote two different versions.

SH: You mean the Titanic version?

MP: Right. We didn’t know if that long version would ever see the light of day, and then we ended up using it for the outro credits on the DVD. There’s not too many examples. Once again, you’re putting me on the spot, and given some time I could probably think of some examples. But one that comes to mind would be The Glass Prison, which originally ended with a drum solo. We ended up cutting it during the mastering stage. Originally, at the very end, right after the vocal line that says: “the door was wide open” – it went into a 20 second drum solo, and then the band came back in to play the final riff one last time. [Mike mimics the same guitar riff he did earlier] And that’s how the song ended. So actually every version of The Glass Prison that was used in the studio always had it, even Kevin Shirley’s original mixes had it. It wasn’t until mastering that we chopped it off and took it out.

SH: Why did you take it out?

MP: Once again, it was my choice. It just sounded so arbitrary to me once the lyrics were added. As you know, we write all the music instrumentally before writing the lyrics. So when The Glass Prison was in instrumental form, the drum solo seemed cool there. But once the lyrics were written and were a part of the song, it seemed out of place. It seemed so much more powerful to just end with a downbeat right after that last vocal phrase.

SH: Speaking of lyrics and vocals, has there ever been or will there ever be a lyric that will inspire the actual development of a song, instead of the other way around?

MP: Not for me! I don’t know about the other guys, I can’t speak for them. But I can’t think of any situations where that has happened to me.

SH: Ever think of writing an album without an “inspiration corner?”

MP: There’s always been an “inspiration corner” – it’s just that we usually don’t share it with people. [laughs] But we’ve never done anything free of influence or inspiration. From day one, there’s always been CDs that we’ve carried with us for inspiration. But it was only with Scenes and Six Degrees where we made it public. It wasn’t even supposed to be a big deal, but it ended up being this big center of discussion between the fans. Instead it really just was supposed to have been a passing tidbit of information, it wasn’t supposed to be this big thing that people were going to use to try to anticipate the direction of the album.

SH: I’d be curious to know what the inspiration corner was for the other albums, when you get the time to break it down.

MP: I don’t even know if I could remember the specifics of each one, but I’ll give it a shot. Ummm, when we were doing When Dream and Day Unite, I remember we were listening to Operation: Mindcrime a lot – it was a big influence on us for that album. When we were doing Images and Words [thinking] Metallica’s black album had just come out; I’m doing this off the top of my head.

SH: Wasn’t Rush’s Hold Your Fire one of the albums that John Petrucci brought in for one of Dream Theater’s albums?

MP: Maybe for the guitar sounds. It’s impossible for me to try to do it off the top of my head and it’s never been a deliberate thing. It’s usually just natural inspiration.

SH: Part of the reason why I brought that up is because you hear about how the fans say that ‘Dream Theater wears their influences too prominently on their sleeves,’ like with Solitary Shell.

MP: Maybe we discuss our influences openly too much. I think maybe if we didn’t mention them as much, maybe it wouldn’t be so obvious to the fans. But, we’re fans of music! We talk about what we like and what we don’t like.

SH: Another reason why I brought this up was because of an article I had just read having to do with Rush, and how they go about writing an album. In it, Geddy mentioned that while they do listen to new music, the influence that it has on them is more subversive than overt. Also it mentioned that Alex will even keep his car radio off while they are working on a new album so that the ideas that come out are truly from the band, and Alex said that he wanted what was recorded to be a true representation of where Rush is at, at that point in time.

MP: That makes sense and I can understand where they are coming from. I can’t turn off my car radio! I have very little time in my personal life to listen to music these days, with children and everything else. I love music too much to turn off my stereo. I don’t listen to the radio, but I do keep up with current CDs. I like listening to what’s out there and staying on top of it. But I can totally appreciate what they are saying there. The other guys in the band might be a little bit more like that. I think if you were to give John Petrucci or James a list of modern bands, they probably wouldn’t know all that many of them. I think they probably are less influenced by outside music than maybe they used to be in the past, which is good.

SH: Interesting. Moving on, I don’t know why Dream Theater split from RoundTable Management, but what do you think of Jim Pitulski heading up the InsideOut music label now?

MP: I’ve always been a Jim Pitulski fan. In fact, the first two verses of Raise the Knife were written about him. I love the guy, and I was upset when we parted ways with him. I think he’s one of the few people in the music industry that really does care about the music and really has a passion for bands that do different things. So it’s nice to see him being able to put that passion to good use.

SH: Speaking of Raise the Knife, will we ever get to hear that song live? At least maybe the instrumental edit you did of it back in 1995?

MP: Anything’s possible!

SH: Gotcha! I remember back when the 1999 Xmas CD had been released, there was mention of how these songs were being ‘put to bed’ – did you simply mean that they were going to put out and that was the end of them, that you would never play them live again, or...?

MP: No. What I meant by ‘putting them to bed’ was more in the context of letting people hearing them. We weren’t going to re-record them. When doing a new album with Jordan, we weren’t going to say: “hey we never used The Way It Used to Be, let’s put it out.” It was for the purpose of getting those songs out to the fans, but not that they would be utilized as new music down the road. But we’re not closing the door on them; we did Cover My Eyes several times on this tour, and Speak to Me was originally on the initial master list of this tour, but we never got around to actually playing it.

SH: How many other songs were on that original master list, that you never got to playing?

MP: There were about 4 or 5 songs on that list that Jordan even learned that we just felt no need to include, we had plenty to work with as it was, so they ended up falling to the wayside.

SH: So you actually ended up having about six and half hours of material rehearsed for the tour, instead of just six! [laughs] Another band that I’ve been a fan of, just as you have, is Queensrÿche. Lately, there’s been some talk about them with regards to Geoff’s solo album and Kelly’s leaving the band. In fact, just a few weeks ago I got to catch a few Geoff Tate solo shows.

MP: How were the shows? Did he do Queensrÿche stuff?

SH: The shows were pretty good and of the 23 songs in the setlist, 12 of them were Queensrÿche songs, almost all of which were obscure ones, with the exception of Silent Lucidity. And of those 12, about half of them were reworked to varying degrees.

MP: Wow! That sounds interesting. Did you know that he almost had King’s X’s spot on the bill? He wanted this tour. And I was pushing for them. [Referring to King’s X as Ty Tabor and Jerry Gaskill walk by] If King’s X wouldn’t have been able to tour, I think Geoff Tate would have gotten the spot. But I really wanted King’s X, and luckily they were able to make it happen.

SH: Have you heard the new Geoff Tate album yet?

MP: No, I haven’t heard it.

SH: Would you ever consider working with Geoff or Chris DeGarmo, if Chris was to give up flying airplanes and make a return to music?

MP: Yeah, yeah I would. As much as I don’t like what they’ve done musically in the last 10 years, I do have a lot of respect for them. It’s obvious what they are capable of. So if I was to work with them, I’d try to ‘help’ the direction so that it would make me more musically satisfied. But I really admire both of those guys as musicians. I would welcome a collaboration any time.

SH: There also has been a lot of talk about Queensrÿche’s next album, which they are working on right now. With the failure of Q2K, Michael Wilton is doing all the guitars and they are bringing in outside writers and–

MP: Icchhhhhh! I think that’s a big mistake. We did it once, for one song with Desmond Child and it was a huge mistake for a band like ours, or a band like Queensrÿche. I think it’s ridiculous. I think the only possibility for them to rekindle that flame would be to get back with Chris and rethink the direction. Because even Chris’s last album with them was disappointing to me.

SH: Do you think it had more to do with the mix?

MP: No, I don’t think it had anything to do with the mix – I think it had to do with the songs. They were trying to be Stone Temple Pilots. For me, as a Queensrÿche fan, I wanna hear Rage for Order and Operation: Mindcrime; I don’t want them to repeat those albums, but I want that style. Same goes for Metallica. I wanna hear Master of Puppets or And Justice For All; I wanna hear them grow within those kind of boundaries. With Dream Theater, we always want to progress every album we make, we want to go in new places. But we never want to go in those new places at the expense of what is the style and sound of the band. Does that make sense? It’s one thing to expand your horizons, to experiment and try different things, but you gotta keep one foot in the ground where your roots are. As long as you can keep one foot in the ground and grow from there, I think that’s the key. I think both Queensrÿche and Metallica went too far off on a tangent, and it was at the expense of what made them so unique and special.

SH: Since you brought up Metallica, what did you and Lars talk about at NAMM [industry-showcase for the music industry] after the ‘Meet & Greet’ I saw you at, in the beginning of 2001? I’m curious to know if he had seen what you had said in that Metal Sludge 20 Questions or other things you had said about Metallica’s more recent stuff.

MP: Like I said with your questions about meeting Alex and Geddy, stuff like this isn’t really newsworthy. The conversations between musicians behind closed doors is usually pretty tame and friendly. Lars had nothing but kind, friendly things to say. If he had seen any of the things I had said about Metallica, he never mentioned any of it. Actually, at that particular time, we were mainly talking about Jason, since this was one week after they had announced he was leaving the band.

SH: Well, I think that should just about do it. Definitely a nice long interview!

MP: That’s what happens when you get two thoroughly anal people speaking to each other about such things as Dream Theater. [lots of laughs] You’re probably the only person on the face of this earth who’s as anally specific to the details of Dream Theater or any of these projects as I am! [laughs]

SH: Well, thanks very much for the interview Mike, I really appreciate it!

MP: It was my pleasure.