Last Day In Studio

Several months ago, we asked Mike Portnoy if he would give us an interview for the first issue of the Voices fanzine. Dream Theater were already in the studio by this point so we agreed to sort something out early in the new year once recording was further advanced.

As fate would have it, it turned out that the most convenient day for us all to talk was the last scheduled day in the studio! So, with great excitement, the three of us called Mike who took a break from his last afternoon in the control room to talk to us. What followed was conversation that lasted nearly an hour and covered much ground, ranging from the newly recorded album to Live At Budokan, the When Dream And Day Reunite show and DVD and the band’s upcoming tour plans. What follows is that interview in its entirety.

Thanks must go to Mike for having devoted his time to us and given us such in-depth responses.

KP: Today is the last scheduled day in the studio recording. Is that all the instrumentation complete and are you going straight into mixing or taking a little break to recover?

MP: Everything as of yesterday is completely done and on tape and I’m here today with Doug (Oberkircher) tying up loose ends and basically we send the tapes over the weekend to another studio where we begin mixing on Monday. Then we’ll be mixing for the next two and a half weeks and then it is done and ready to be delivered. This is just for the record; now that we’re leaving here I can disclose this information. We did this entire album here at the Hit Factory. We’ve been here since November, so it’s been four months now working here every day, and not only is today our last day at the Hit Factory but it’s the very last day of anybody here at the Hit Factory. This is the very last album to ever be recorded here because they’re closing down. This is the last session of the last album to be done here so I’m walking out at the end of the night tonight and they’re locking the doors behind me and turning out the lights and that’s it. This is a seriously historic place, I mean, everybody from Madonna to Michael Jackson to U2, everybody has recorded here and it’s a big deal that it’s actually closing. We’ll be down in the history books as the last album recorded here. The first one was Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life and the last one will be Dream Theater’s latest album.

KP: What are your initial feelings about the new material? James recently said that he thought that this will be the best Dream Theater album ever – do you feel the same?

MP: Y’know, I’m not generally one to make those kinds of statements, because I always feel like everybody always feels the album they’re making is the best album they’ve ever made. It’s hard to be objective at this stage, but I really do share that enthusiasm and excitement with James. There’s been a couple of times where I’ve sat down and listened to every track in sequence from start to finish and each time I’ve done that I’ve been completely blown away, I mean, like, speechless. And I really do feel like, maybe this is the best album we’ve made, but I don’t know, it’s hard to say, it’s hard to really have a perspective on that. But I will just say I’m incredibly proud of what we have here.

KP: You’ve returned to the combined writing/recording process and we believe that James has been present in the studio much more so than before. Has this approach worked best bearing in mind the direction in which you are aiming to take this album?

MP: Yeah, we came in November and we spent the last four months writing and recording simultaneously. We enjoy doing it like that, y’know, we changed it up for Train of Thought just to change it up, but this is really a very comfortable way to do it. It’s nice to be creative and productive at the same time, and James was here; any time we were writing all five of us were present. Then, when it came time to start over-dubbing and tracking to any particular song, then only me and John Petrucci and whoever was tracking were present, as far as band members go. But if the question is how it inspired the direction of the album, I don’t know. The direction of the album was pretty clear cut before we even started. We knew where we wanted to go and having James around – it’s been great. It really helps the chemistry, it helps the band feel unified, which is a very, very important thing when you’re making a record, making a creative statement. It’s nice to have five of us working together, instead of just three or four at a time.

RP: What has been the shape of a typical day in the studio?

MP: It depends; each day is a different goal. When we’re writing, the five of us will all come in and we’ll throw some ideas on the table and then begin developing them and sometimes we could complete an entire song within one or two days and then in some other cases it took a little more than that, but that’s the pace we work at. We’re not short-changing any ideas because that’s the pace we’ve always worked at. Once we complete writing a song, then usually the next couple of days will be built around getting a drum track, getting a guitar track, getting a bass track. That’s been the general work schedule for the first three months or so, while we were writing and getting the basic tracks done. Once we get the song done we would spend time putting the click track together and then tracking drums, guitar and bass, in which case, James and Jordan or whoever would go home until those things were done. And then we would reconvene to start writing the next song. Once all the songs were written and all the basic tracks were done we did the keyboards and vocals at the end. The reason for the keyboards being done at the end was because it required moving Jordan’s entire rig into the control room and we didn’t want to have to set that up and break it down each and every time we did another track, so we basically did all of Jordan’s in a one or two week period and then we did the same thing with James, mainly for the reason of giving us the chance to write the lyrics and that usually takes time, so all James’ vocals were done at the end, which was basically the last few weeks at this point.

RP: What is different this time around? In terms of experimentation, is there anything noteworthy that either you or other members of the band have done (equipment, sounds, etc.) that you’ve particularly liked or think people are going to latch onto as being cool?

MP: I think one of the biggest misconceptions right now, which I’ve seen online is that we’re making a progressive or traditionally progressive album. For some reason because we toured with Yes last summer, people think we’re trying to make a Yes, or a Genesis or a Pink Floyd or a Transatlantic-ish album. We definitely have a lot of those elements, as we always have, but I don’t think it’s as clear cut as people are leading themselves to believe. I think this album is really very well rounded; it’s a little bit of everything y’know. It’s a kind of classic Dream Theater album in that respect. It has a great balance of so many different things. There are the traditional prog moments, there are some very heavy moments, there’s long songs, there’s short songs, poppy songs, technical songs. It’s very much in the vein of any great Dream Theater album which has that balance. So I think that any people who are expecting any one type of thing are probably gonna be disappointed, but people that are expecting a lot of different things are going to be able to fully love and embrace the album.

TM: In terms of songwriting/recording (i.e. layering, overdubbing etc.) is it easy to get carried away? How do you know when to stop?

MP: I suppose that’s what mine and John Petrucci’s role are as producers. I think we’re objective enough to know when things are appropriate and inappropriate. When we’re trying to write a more simplistic, straight-ahead song I think we know to be careful not to get excessive, and then there are moments when we’re trying to go over the top, technically and also sonically. It’s up to us to make those final calls, and put our foot down when something is going too far, but generally he and I really do agree on almost everything really, we have a really good relationship in that respect, where we rarely argue on things creatively. The other guys, of course everybody’s got a say, as a musician and as a writer, but the other three really respect mine and John’s opinion as producers and they’ll adhere to our final say if we think something’s going too over. I mean there’s been times where Jordan’s been trying to track strings and organ and piano and sound effects and there are times when that stuff is awesome but there are also times when it’s over the top and it’s gonna throw off the balance of the mix. At moments like that, if John and I think that it’s too much and we say so, Jordan’s always very respectful of that and he’ll never argue it. He trusts us. The same can be said for James – when James is doing a lot of singing he really trusts John and my guidance, whether it be how to deliver a performance or a vocal or the notes that are being sung, there’s a lot of trust in that and that’s the role of a producer, whether it be John and I or anybody else that comes into the studio.

KP: Inspiration corner – we know there’s five albums in it – tell us something we don’t know about it.

MP: It’s funny that this “Inspiration Corner” thing has such a mystique attached to it because it’s not like a deliberate thing where we have this Sacred Shelf where we put these CDs on and then we bow to them and we look at them at the start of each session. [General laughter from interviewers!] Really, it’s no different than any other band that makes an album, where you have a list of albums that you’re listening to at the time that maybe inspire the direction. So it’s not like this Official Inspiration Corner, that everybody seems to always talk about. I mean, there are a list of albums that we’re listening to at the moment that surely have helped inspire us with the making of this album, but it’s really not a formal thing, like everybody kind of makes it out to be. It’s no different than it’s been for any of our albums, or even the Majesty demos 20 years ago, but yes there is a list of albums that have surely inspired the direction of this album or certain songs. But for me to list them now would only create havoc on any of our forums until people hear the songs themselves. So I’d rather not plant that seed in anybody’s minds or ears.

KP: Okay, I guess we’d hoped for a clue! The veil of secrecy: there hasn’t been a veil of secrecy over a new DT album since SFAM – what has motivated it this time? Can we expect a concept album or something with say, common lyrical themes?

MP: I will say this album has a conceptual feel to it, but it’s not a concept album in the traditional sense of a story being told. It has a conceptual feel more in the tradition of ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ or ‘Sergeant Pepper’ – those two albums didn’t have a lyrical bond from song to song or a story, but they very much felt like a big picture and this album does have that. So the ‘veil of secrecy’ thing, it’s just a thing that is important to me, because I don’t like planting seeds or preconceived ideas in the fans’ ears before they get to hear it and judge for themselves.

KP: But they make it up if you don’t tell them!

MP: I know! But you know what? No matter what I tell them, or what we tell them, if I just say a word, if I say ‘heavy’, you know the word ‘progressive’ was used once in that interview with James and now suddenly everyone has this idea of what this album is gonna be and once you have months and months to speculate and expect something, inevitably it’s going to be a disappointment when it doesn’t live up to what you’ve been building up in your mind all that time. I just wanted to avoid that. The last time we really were very open with the making of an album was the making of ‘Falling into Infinity’ and that was the very start, pretty much, of the whole Internet in the mid to late-nineties and there was a lot of backlash when we put out that album because everybody expected this, or that, or the song lengths to be this long, y’know everybody started speculating on the lyrics and ever since that we’ve found that it’s much better if we try to just keep speculation down to a minimum, let people try to approach each album with an open ear and an open mind, without too many preconceived thoughts.

TM: With Train of Thought, there was an original intention to release a 5.1 mix – what happened to that and have you considered that as an option for the new album?

MP: We do have the 5.1 mixes of ‘Train of Thought’. Kevin Shirley did them when he mixed the stereo version as well and it’s in the hands of the record company at this point. I know that Rhino, who did the old VHS/DVD reissues, I think they’re interested in possibly doing something with it, so hopefully that’ll see the light of day. As far as the new album goes, it hasn’t been decided on yet but I really, really hope we do a 5.1 mix for this album as well. I don’t know if that would be a separate release, or maybe, perhaps, this next album could be released as a Dual Disc, which is a new format which has CD on one side and DVD on the other. In a perfect world, I would love to see that because I think this album is perfect for a 5.1 mix, there’s just so much going on conceptually and musically. We’ll see in the coming weeks and months what the record company decide in terms of marketing and stuff like that, so we’ll see.

RP: Live at Budokan has recently gone platinum in the US. How do you feel about that? What do you think has been at the root of its success?

MP: How do I feel about it? Well obviously I’m ecstatic about it, as is the rest of the band, and as is the label. It’s nice when you can have a band like us have a commercial success as well. What do I attribute it to? It’s completely based on our great fan base. Our fan base has just always been there for us, they support us and its nice when we can do a live project like a live album or a live DVD or a reissue and for it to sell well and it just proves a lot to the record company about our fan base. We don’t need to have a hit single or blah-blah-blah, y’know, everything we’ve always been talking about for years. It’s nice when the record company actually get to see that first-hand and appreciate it. The success of a double DVD package or a triple CD package like that, only enables us to be able to continue to do in-between album projects like that in the future, y’know. It just really encourages the label.

RP: The DVD has an extremely polished cinematic look to it, very different from Live Scenes. Who or what influenced that?

MP: A lot of that had to do with the professional film crew based in Japan. The Japanese people are always very, very professional, very efficient and the cinematographers have great eyes for that kind of stuff. But all along it was my intention for this to be just a great concert video. All our previous home videos have done different things. Images and Words—Live in Tokyo was just concert excerpts mixed together with home video footage. Five Years in a LIVEtime was more of a compilation of all different kinds of stuff: from live to promo videos to behind the scenes to studio. And then the Live Scenes in New York was basically trying to tell a story with Scenes from a Memory. We never really had a true concert video which was a complete concert from start to finish; so it was always my goal from the get-go when we started discussing the whole Budokan DVD to really try to just have the best concert video we could have. I spent some time looking at other DVDs with the label and with the producer of the video, just to give them an idea of the type of video I wanted us to make and I’m totally happy with the results. I think it was nailed on every level; I think it just looks and sounds amazing, really an incredibly well done concert video, something that I’m totally proud of and it was a great concert to capture and a great tour to capture because there’s a lot of eye candy going on with all the video screens and stuff like that so it was really good.

KP: I thought you were going to talk about the Japanese girls then for eye candy! [Laughter] Everyone is currently very excited about the new WDADR DVD from Ytsejam Records – several questions related to that: Talking about the actual show itself, how long before did you have the idea to do it and how hard was it to put together (i.e. getting Derek and Charlie onboard, etc.)?

MP: I came up with the idea of doing the anniversary show I guess before the Train of Thought Tour even began. One day I realised that we were approaching the fifteenth anniversary of our first album come March 6th and I knew we would be on tour around then so I had this idea and I told our manager and booking agent ‘I don’t know where we’re gonna be come March 6th, but if there’s any chance of us trying to book that date in a very cool city like New York, Chicago, LA, London, Paris, if there’s any chance of us landing a cool city on that day let’s do it coz I have a really special idea’. Then I told the other guys ‘look I don’t know where we’re gonna be but just plan on March 6th just doing the entire first album. I wanna do it, I think it would be a cool idea, I don’t want to tell anybody about it, I want it to be a surprise’ and then I started thinking about inviting the old members out to join us. Everybody loved the idea, so we forged ahead with it. Luckily we were able to position the tour so that we would be in LA on that particular day, which worked out really good because Charlie is based there and Derek is based there. I put the invitations out to Charlie, Derek and Kevin and obviously Charlie and Derek accepted the invitation and were happy to be involved. I basically told them which songs to learn, they came down and they were prepared and excited, which was fantastic. Sadly Kevin declined the invitation. He was in Istanbul, Turkey at the time; we offered to fly him out and everything, but I guess he’s just not interested in working with us in that capacity at this stage in his life so he declined, but otherwise it was a great success and a special night for the seven of us that were there and the fans that were in the audience. I’m totally happy that it’s finally gonna be released so the rest of the world can share that special day with us.

TM: Were there any difficulties in releasing it based on DT not owning the rights to WDADU anymore?

MP: No! I mean we don’t own the rights to that album. But I think we do own the rights to our own music and we’re able to rerecord those songs in a live setting. Frankly, to be honest with you we haven’t really done a thorough investigation of what we can and can’t do, but I dare the people who wanna give us the hassle, that own the rights to the first album, I dare them to open up a can of worms with Ytsejam Records over this! You know they haven’t paid us anything for the last 15 years, all the rights to that album and all the royalties were completely taken away from us, so if anything they’re completely in the wrong. I really doubt they’d wanna even consider opening a can of worms on us.

TM: As far as producing the DVD, has it been a challenge to put it together considering how far live at Budokan has raised the bar in terms of production, budget, fan expectations etc.?

MP: First of all, the LA show actually took place before Budokan. Basically, I just arranged a camera crew and an audio crew to come to that show in LA knowing that it should be documented and someday be released. It basically has nothing to do with Budokan, Budokan is a proper, live album and DVD which is out there and will sell hundreds of thousands of copies, whereas ‘When Dream and Day Reunite’ will only be available online and will probably only sell a few thousand copies. So it’s a much more low key thing and I think anybody that buys anything from Ytsejam Records knows that it’s basically for the hardcore fans and the level of production isn’t going to be nearly up to other live albums, or studio albums or DVDs available on retail. I think anybody that gets those Official Bootlegs, knows it’s exactly that – Official Bootleg.

RP: On live at Budokan, you referred to DT’s role as the poster boys for the modern progressive rock/metal genre: where do you see the genre going? Are there any bands associated with it that you think are still pushing the envelope?

MP: Well I think, as far as where I think the genre’s going I think the progressive rock/metal genre already has many different types of areas. Bands like Radiohead can be considered progressive, a band like Mars Volta is progressive but in a much different way or a band like Tool and then you have the purely, more traditional prog bands like the Flower Kings or Spock’s Beard and then you have the more prog metal bands, bands like Pain of Salvation who are really pushing it to very, very cool places. Then you have the more really heavy metal progressive bands, bands like Mudvayne or Meshuggah or Mastodon. There’s lots of different, kind of sub -genres of progressive music, they get twisted and turned in so many different directions, I think the great thing about Dream Theater is that we stand in the middle of all of them. I think we’re able to experiment with each of those sub-genres from song to song, which is nice for us to be able to do.

KP: DT return to the road this June with various European festival dates and several Evening With shows. When can we expect to see you in the UK again?

MP: I don’t know, I was hoping we’d be able to play some festivals in the UK, but it’s not looking like it’s gonna work out that way. I’m not sure if we’ll make a UK visit in June or not. It’s still getting hashed out. It is possible, but I’m not sure if it’s gonna definitely happen or not. Basically that first leg in June is gonna be festivals and then the Evening With shows that we do will be in more secondary markets, in the more obscure places that we didn’t hit with Evening With shows on the ‘Train of Thought’ tour. Then we would do the proper, full on, Evening With tour in all the major European and British markets, probably in the fall. It’s kind of backwards, usually we would start off an album with a headlining run through Europe and a headlining run through America and then do the package and festival stuff on later legs. We’re kind of doing it backwards this time around because we have a summer release date as opposed to a fall or winter date which we usually have. So everything is kind of backwards now. We’re gonna start the tour with the package and festival dates and then follow that up with the proper headlining tours.

TM: You pretty much sold out the Manchester and Hammersmith Apollos last time. Would more dates be likely this time, or higher capacity, i.e. all standing theatres?

MP: In England, I love the Hammersmith Apollo and I think that’s a really great venue for us, I prefer playing the theatre-type places better than the clubs because I think it’s important that people be comfortable for a 3 hour show. I think the next logical step in London, at least would be, maybe the Wembley Arena? I dunno. Our booking agent has mentioned Wembley and the Royal Albert Hall – I would love to do something special at the Royal Albert Hall.

RP: That met with approval here!

MP: You guys would love to see us at Ronnie Scott’s I know, but the fans have to keep growing!

RP: The Train of Thought tour was very intensive earlier on and quite grueling for the band. Has that affected planning for the coming tour in terms of duration, breaks, number of tour legs etc.?

MP: It’s a touchy subject internally because there are certain members that would love to get out there forever and then there’s other certain members that really are very, very considerate about not being away for too long. We have to be very considerate, take each other’s personal needs into it – we are all family men, we all have wives and kids so it’s hard to be away for more than four weeks at a time without getting to come home and see everybody so it just has to do with us just getting older. We try to pace ourselves and if you look at any other band that are in the 20 year mark, you have to pace yourselves, but at the same time of course you wanna be out there and playing for as many people are possible. You gotta strike the balance between the two. I think doing four to five week legs and then coming home for a few weeks and then going out for the next leg, I think that’s very reasonable. You can be very productive with that kind of pace and it’s just a matter of whether we do excessive legs in similar markets. We kinda get tired of playing the major markets several times on each tour. We do wanna hit them once extremely strongly and then not come back unless we have something very different to offer. Our hardcore fans usually travel to see us in several cities anyway, so they’ll be able to get multiple experiences. We’ll see, it depends on what’s happening with the album, it depends on if the label’s behind us or if they’re just letting us run with it on our own. It depends on if there are offers out there with other bands to do packages. There are a lot of variables involved.

RP: Are you aiming to take the full video and light production back out again or are you planning to develop that further? Are there any plans to offer the platinum packages again in the US or elsewhere?

MP: As far as our video and light show goes for the next tour, it’s premature. We haven’t really gone down that road yet, but we wouldn’t be carrying the full production on our festival and summer package runs. It won’t be until we do our full headlining Evening With run in the fall. Come that time, we’ll know what we’re gonna be carrying. I’m sure it will be the next logical step in terms of presentation – that’s very important to us. As far as the platinum thing goes, that’s really up to our manager, that’s really been his thing. I think he wants to continue to offer it so we’ll see what happens.

KP: Is there, or will there be a new monster kit for this tour?

MP: Yes! But it’s a variation of the previous Siamese Monster. It’s basically, kind of a new version of the Siamese Monster. It’s in development right now, I don’t know if I’ll have it out with me now on the summer run or if it’ll wait to be unveiled when we start the Evening With headlining stuff in the fall. But yes, there is a new kit in production.