A New Beginning

CD1

1. Metropolis

This is one of two new songs we demoed in instrumental form during the summer of 1989. (the other was “A Change Of Seasons” which I did not include here as it is the same demo that we used for Chris Cintron’s backing tracks at the end of this disc)

Metropolis was a sign of where we were heading at this stage of our career. It’s an epic song with a middle section that is quite possibly still THE defining musical passage of our catalog. Even 15 years later, it still remains a fan favorite – being consistently voted into the top 3 of DT songs in polls worldwide.

This song was written while Charlie was still in the band and was performed live with him several times in ‘89 (see the “When Dream And Day Reunite” DVD).

As you can hear on this demo, the song did not go through many changes throughout all of its incarnations. (the only real noticeable differences would be us actually “playing” the intro to the song and there being no accents underneath the bass solo in the middle)

2-3. Take The Time & Learning To Live

These two songs were written and demoed in the spring and summer of 1990 while we were still actively searching for a new vocalist. It was a very scary and depressing time for the 4 of us where the future of the band was often in doubt. We would often arrive at rehearsal, talk about the latest singer prospects (or lack of them), discuss the latest legal and business affairs (which were always nothing but disappointments and frustrations) and end up completely drained and depressed.

The only thing that kept us together would be when we finally got back behind our instruments, we were writing songs like these two... and then we would remember why we were in a band to begin with – for the love of this magical music we create together.

These 2 songs were played live in their instrumental form at the two instrumental shows we did in 1990. (Take The Time’s instrumental title was “Grab That Feel” and Learning To Live’s was “Creep With Tonality”). These demos actually do show a lot of very interesting differences from the versions they later became on Images And Words and you can also tell we had nothing but time on our hands during this demoing period as there are so many various overdubs crammed onto 4 small analog tracks!!

4. Under A Glass Moon

This demo was done shortly after James had just joined the band at the start of 1991. It marks the very last recording we were to do on my trusty ‘ol Tascam 244 analog 4-track recorder. After this demo, we were to make all future demos and recordings in “real” studios or on “real” recording gear!

The original instrumental working title of this song is one of my all-time favorites: “The Battle Of Jimmy Cocoa And Fishface”! And in case you are wondering what it is I am yelling during the intro – we used to rehearse next door to a Taco Bell (which fueled all of these songs) and I guess some employee that didn’t speak very good English was in charge of the marquee out front that day as it read: “thank for eat taco”! Well, at least I found it amusing!

5-6. Don’t Look Past Me & To Live Forever

We received literally hundreds of vocalist tapes throughout 1990. About 20 of them made it to the auditioning stage... and only about 4 or 5 of them became actual prospects that we spent some time working with.

John Hendricks was the first hopeful. Although he did not have the “look” we were searching for, his voice was unique enough that it caught our ear. (Kind of a strange cross between John Arch and Thom Yorke.) In February 1990, we flew him up to New York and after a few days of auditions and rehearsals, we went into Garrett Studios in Lynbrook, NY – a 16 track recording studio – to record two of the newer, more commercial songs we had written.

Don’t Look Past Me was brand new and an obviously more commercial tune to balance out all of the epics we had recently written. To Live Forever had already been around for a while by this point. (An earlier version with Charlie Dominici can be heard on the “When Dream And Day Unite Demos” CD.)

In the end, John had a very unique voice and was a really nice guy – but just wasn’t the all-around package we were looking for...

7. To Live Forever

In June 1990, we found ourselves working with another singer that was looking very promising. Seattle’s Steve Stone (or Stephan Michael Stone as he sometimes called himself) seemed to have everything we were looking for. He looked and sounded like the perfect cross between Geoff Tate and Steve Perry (two of our favorites singers at that time).

After working together in rehearsal for several days. we felt strongly enough about him that we decided to re-enter Garrett Studios and have Steve overdub his vocals to one of the tracks we recorded back in February. After a bit of a struggle in the studio, we were still excited enough about him to decide he was everything we were looking for and we extended the invitation for him to join the band. It seemed as if our search was over!

At the time, we already had a live show booked for June 9th (it was to be an all-instrumental set opening for Marillion at Sundance in Bayshore, Long Island) and we decided this would be a perfect opportunity to unveil our new singer! So after instrumental performances of Learning To Live, Ytse Jam and A Change Of Seasons, I went to the front of the stage and introduced Steve Stone as the new singer for Dream Theater. We then performed Metropolis, A Fortune In Lies and The Killing Hand with him singing. It looks and sounds great here on paper doesn’t it??

Unfortunately, it was a complete disaster... Steve was so incredibly over the top in his stage persona (likely to make an impression after years of Charlie’s more disappointingly subdued stage presence) that he threw his voice out by the midway point of Metropolis. His on stage antics also seemed terribly out of place (we were opening for Marillion!!) and almost embarrassing at times. And the icing on the cake was that he kept yelling “Scream for me Long Beach” while were actually playing in Bay Shore! (It didn’t help that I had lent him a copy of Iron Maiden’s Live After Death to prepare for the gig...)

Well suffice to say, things fell apart after this live disaster. We came to the realization that he was not everything we thought he was going to be and decided to part ways and continue looking elsewhere. Coincidentally when we broke the news to him, he claimed that he felt the same way and had already booked a flight home for the following day... Oh well, back to the drawing board!

8. A Change Of Seasons

This song was actually written and demoed a year earlier in 1989 and it was our first venture into a full album side-length epic in the tradition of Hemispheres, Close To The Edge or Supper’s Ready. Like Metropolis, it is still to this day regarded as one of the quintessential DT epics and is often cited as the #1 fan favorite.

By the fall of 1990, we found ourselves working with another singer prospect. This time, a fellow New Yorker by the name of Chris Cintron. After the disappointment of the Steve Stone fiasco, we were very gun shy of making another hasty decision and spent many months working with Chris – 4-track demoing many different songs both new and old. Although A Change Of Seasons had been written and demoed instrumentally a year earlier, we still had never worked on it with a singer. So in December 1990, we decided to dig into it with Chris.

I had the lyrics written (most of which would end up being drastically changed by the time we properly recorded it in 1995) and I had most of the melodies worked out. But I must give credit to Chris for being the first singer to sing the song and therefore help shape the vocals. As you’ll hear in this demo – not only are a lot the lyrics different, but so is a lot of the music. the melodies. even the movie samples.

As much as Chris had a great, soulful voice (reminding us a lot of Steve Walsh or Lou Gramm), he was a shorter, stockier type with curly dark hair (similar in looks to Charlie) and didn’t necessarily look the part of what we had envisioned as being our ultimate new frontman. We even went so far as to bring him into NYC to meet with Derek Oliver at Atco Records (who had begun courting us) and Derek ultimately told us he didn’t feel Chris was the “full package” and suggested we keep searching.

Around this same time, a tape arrived from Toronto Canada from a singer named Kevin LaBrie. It blew us all away. He seemed to be everything we were looking for.

One night after rehearsal with Chris, we all said goodnight, got in our cars and drove away... Chris drove home, while the 4 of us drove around the block and reconvened at the studio 5 minutes later to talk about this guy from Canada.

Although we felt bad for working with Chris for so long and leading him on, we decided we needed to do what was in the best interest for the band and our careers and decided to fly Kevin LaBrie down for an audition.

CD2

1-3. The Atco Demos

Kevin LaBrie flew to New York to audition on January 19th 1991 (the very same day that the Persian Gulf War began). Within 3 days, we were sure he was the man we were waiting for and the search was finally over! The first thing he did was decide to use his middle name James instead of Kevin as we already had 2 Johns in the band and 2 Kevins would have been crazy.

With a new singer finally in place and an album’s worth of material ready to go, the next step was to get out of our deal with Mechanic and get a new record deal in place. Derek Oliver was a journalist for Kerrang! magazine in England who wrote very favorably about When Dream And Day Unite. He was now living in New York and was an A&R guy for Atco Records. He began keeping in touch with me and expressed a major interest in signing us once we found a new singer. With James now in the band, it was time to move forward.

It took many months of legal entanglements to get us out of our existing deal with Mechanic Records, but we finally were able to buy ourselves out of the contract with Atco’s help. Unfortunately, this meant giving Mechanic a percentage of the sales on our future Atco albums as well as losing any rights to our debut album, but in the end it was OK with us as we simply wanted out.

In May of 1991, Derek arranged for us to record 3 songs with producer David Prater and engineer Doug Oberkircher at Bear Tracks Studios in Suffern, NY. These 3 songs were to serve as a feeling out process for us and Prater and for our music and the rest of the Atco staff who still needed to be sold on us before we could get the green light for a full-on deal.

We recorded Metropolis, To Live Forever and Take The Time and as you can hear, they are very similar to what ended up being recorded for Images And Words months later. In fact, the Metropolis intro (which is something Prater put together) is the same version we used on I&W.

The demos were very well received by the rest of the A&R staff at Atco Records and after many months of negotiations, we were on our way to signing a new contract.

4-9. Images & Words Pre-Production Demos

During the months and months of negotiations and decision making by the powers that be, we found ourselves with several months to write a few more new songs for possible inclusion on the upcoming record. With encouragement by Derek Oliver to write a few more shorter, accessible songs, we ended up writing “Another Day” (from an idea of John Petrucci’s) and “Surrounded” (from an idea of Kev’s).

We felt that both of these songs were stronger than the 2 existing shorter, accessible songs we had (To Live Forever and Don’t Look Past Me) and decided to swap them out on the upcoming track listing.

We also wrote another heavier, more groove oriented piece whose instrumental working title was “Oliver’s Twist” (in honor of Derek’s request to write a few more songs). This was to become “Pull Me Under”... but the early version of this song had an additional instrumental classical excursion in the middle. We eventually decided (thank god!) that it was very out of place and removed the whole passage altogether and put it on the shelf for possible future use (where it ended up finding a home in Erotomania a few years later!)

As October of 1991 rolled around, we knew we were days away from securing our deal and starting the album. David Prater came to our rehearsal room and made a live 2-track DAT recording of us playing the remaining songs that were going to go on the album in instrumental form. He then had James overdub the vocals (and harmonies) afterwards to give us these pre-production demos to prepare ourselves for entering the studio. In addition to what is here, there also was a preproduction version of A Change Of Seasons (which had to be left off of this CD for time restrictions – but it was a rather lackluster production as I think Prater never intended to let us put it on the album to begin with).

Sure enough, on October 14th, we were given the green light to move our gear up to Bear Tracks and finally begin work on our 2nd album!

After all of the trials and tribulations of the previous 2 years, it was a moment we often thought would never come. But we were blessed with the opportunity of a second chance.

The making of I&W was not without frustrations of its own. Upon arriving at Bear Tracks, we were immediately told by Derek Oliver that he refused to allow us to include A Change Of Seasons on the album which really broke my heart and started our session on a major downer. It was the first of MANY compromises that would have to be made throughout this record as working with David Prater proved to be a very difficult task. He had a knack for making the artist feel very uncomfortable and unwelcome throughout the recording process which was very frustrating for several of us.

But in the end, we swallowed our pride and forged ahead making the best record we could under the conditions. We were finally back on course and nothing was gonna stop us or get in our way this time...

And you know what?

For the first time in a long time... everything actually worked out!!

Enjoy,

MP