Score!

A night to remember for Mike Portnoy and Dream Theater

words: Don Zulaica

These days, most bands are lucky to measure their history in years, let alone decades. Dream Theater celebrated the end of two long decades of perseverance and progressive metal mastery with an emotional concert at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall, complete with a 30-piece orchestra accompanying them through classics like ‘Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence’ and ‘The Answer Lies Within’. All was captured on the DVD and CD versions of Score: 20th Anniversary World Tour Live With The Octavarium Orchestra, and Portnoy was kind enough to give us the scoop.

There are moments, like the fist-pumping throb of the opener ‘The Root Of All Evil’ or final chord of ‘The Spirit Carries On’, that you sense this was a very special moment for Mr. Portnoy.

“It was,” he sighs. “Throughout the months of putting together this DVD, I was able to relive those moments over and over again. Even now, several months removed from it, I pop in the DVD and can still feel that magic in the air. I still feel the chills. We’ve played hundreds, maybe thousands of shows around the world throughout the years and we’ve played to bigger audiences, but there was just something about that night that was incredibly special. It was our hometown, it was Radio City Music Hall, which in itself is a place we’ve always dreamed of playing, and feeling the power of the orchestra behind me for the second set – it was incredible. A lot of times, when you film a live DVD, you wonder if everything is going to go smoothly, and this was one of those nights where it worked on every level.”

Symphonically Speaking

Considering the logistics of putting a 30-piece orchestra into the mix (they performed during the concert’s second set), working “on every level” was no small feat. Still, it was never a matter of if Dream Theater was going to work with an orchestra, it was a matter of when. The plan was first hatched on a few tracks of the latest studio album Octavarium, but of course that grew into a plan to surprise the faithful at Radio City. You’d think, with this kind of complex material, that it would have taken a long time to rehearse, but...

“It was one day’s rehearsal, the day before in New York City,” Portnoy explains. “But really, the pre-production was the key. We spent about a month or two going back and forth with Jamshied Sharifi, who was the conductor and arranger, and he would send demos of some of the orchestral arrangements he was working on. We would make our suggestions and he would tweak it. By the time we got to New York for rehearsals, all the music was already agreed upon and worked out. It was a matter of actually getting comfortable with the physical application of it all, with everybody following my cues, the starts and the stops, all of those little nuances that go into the music. It was matter of them getting comfortable with us, and vice-versa.”

But did the drummer adjust to orchestra, or was it the other way around? “They adjusted to us,” he answers, “and that was one of my concerns from the get go that I expressed to Jamshied. Everything that Dream Theater does on stage is coming off of my cues. The ups, downs, lefts, rights, stops, starts; I’m basically dictating all of that stuff, and I was wondering how Jamshied and the orchestra would adapt to that. He was locked in with our music, he got it, he got us, he loved the music, and said, ‘Just do your thing and I’ll be right there with you.’ He kept an eye on me the whole time, and I had rearview mirrors put onto my kit so I could have eye contact with him in the orchestra at all times. They were mounted on the front of my kit, just like a giant truck, there was one on each side.”

A big, monstrous truck it was, and when asked if there were any particularly interesting memories of working with the orchestra, Portnoy quickly remembers two from rehearsal.

“One was in the middle of ‘Metropolis’,” he smiles, “where we originally had the orchestra doubling the keyboard and guitar unison solo, doing these crazy 32nd-note triplet patterns. It was going so quick, I remember we stopped at one point halfway through the section, and all you heard was the entire orchestra just laughing. To them, it was comical to even try to attempt it. That was funny, stopping and hearing them cracking up and laughing at our music. At that point we realised there were certain limitations in terms of them being able to double some of the really super-fast stuff. So we had to ditch that particular section.”

“The other moment that comes to mind is that there was a cellist sitting in the front row, and every time I would slam a stick or bounce sticks off my snare drum and stuff like that, occasionally they will fly out of control, and one came really close to him; he got really freaked out over that and threatened to walk out. (laughs] These guys are all totally straight-laced classical people who are not used to what we do.”

Stick mishaps aside, there is no doubt that the orchestra gained a lot of respect for the rock band. “I think they were really able to see the classical elements in our music, and appreciate that. I think after the rehearsals they respected us as musicians, and then by the end of the show, they were blown away by the passion of our fans and the electricity in the air. We made 30 new fans that night, with those guys.”

The Bonzo Monster

30 new fans, definitely, but they were probably also staring ahead at the sprawling ‘Albino Monster’ of a drum kit and thinking to themselves, “What in blazes?” The current version of Portnoy’s ‘Siamese Monster’ features a secondary kit patterned after the big drums of John Bonham (we’re talking a 26” kick and everything, folks), which is attributable to one of Portnoy’s many tribute bands.

“I did a Zeppelin tribute in 2003,” he explains, “and Tama made me a custom Vistalite copy kit. I basically only did those two Zeppelin shows on that kit, and then it went into my basement, never to be played again. I thought it was such a waste of a great kit that I ended up bringing it into the studio with me when we did Octavarium, and put it in the corner in case I wanted to sit behind it for a song or two. I ended up using it for more than half the album, just because it’s a fun kit to play. Once it ended up becoming such a big part of so many of the Octavarium songs, I decided to build a new Monster that would incorporate that set-up on the right side.”

Portnoy surprisingly used not only the single-bass-drum setup on much of Octavarium, but notably used a single pedal as well. As the tour commenced, however, it was time to have some fun with older material on the Bonzo kit, and adjustments had to be made.

“I would constantly try to play some of the older songs on that kit,” he remembers, “just to breathe a new spark of inspiration into the drumming. One of the things I found, though, was I had to add a double pedal. Because when I used the Bonham kit in the studio it was just a single pedal, and I actually recorded for the first time in my career with a single pedal and one bass drum. I would have loved to have kept it that way on the touring Monster, but once I started coming over and playing some of the older songs on that side, there were a lot of patterns that require double bass, so I ended up having to put a double pedal on it.”

Overcoming Obstacles

One of the DVD’s big bonuses, besides vintage live performances of ‘Another Day’ and ‘The Great Debate’, is the career documentary ‘The Score So Far...’, where Portnoy, bassist John Myung, and guitarist John Petrucci revisit the old practice room at the Berklee School of Music, and discuss some difficult periods the band had to overcome.

One of those periods was when they were looking for a new vocalist after firing Charlie Dominici, eventually hitting the jackpot with James LaBrie.

“At that point In 1990-91,” Portnoy effuses, “we were coming off of basically a first album that was essentially a failure, I suppose. It didn’t really do anything. At that point we could have easily thrown in the towel, and we spent a good year or year and a half looking for a singer and never could find the right guy or balance of chemistry between voice, personality, and looks. It’s one thing to go through that frustrating period for a few weeks or even a few months, but once you get to a year or more, you start to question, ‘Is this worth it? Is this ever going to pay off?’ We were all working day jobs. At that period in our lives, we had nothing going for us other than being, to quote a previous Dream Theater song, basically motivated by our fearless faith in destiny, and that was it. That was an amazing period to have overcome, and it made the success that we had with Images And Words shortly after, that much more sweet. It was a real payoff at the end of all that turmoil.”

Another trying time came a few years later around 1997’s Falling Into Infinity, where the band had to contend with corporate mentalities, and actually waited a year and a half to get the green light to go into the recording studio.

“Now,” he opines, “we were suddenly a successful band, and we had that behind us, but at that point our frustrations were in feeling the corporate weight of the industry dictating our activities. We went into a holding pattern because the label [Elektra] had gone through a million changes, and all these people that were there throughout our early rise to success were no longer there. It was a whole bunch of new people who were looking to move on to the next fad. They viewed us as a one-hit wonder, they weren’t looking at us as a career band. That was really frustrating, having to deal with that corporate mentality, when we’re not at all that type of a band.”

“Eventually we overcame that, we got into the studio, but a lot of the making of Falling Into Infinity was compromised because of the handcuffs that were on us. Once we got through that album, by the end of that tour, the frustrations came to a head and I was ready to leave the band. Basically, we stuck it out and put our foot down and insisted on things changing, or else we were going to break up. At that point, we got a new manager who stepped up and made all those changes come to life, and that’s where we’ve been ever since.”

It’s always a brave undertaking for a band to do things on their own terms, but sometimes that is exactly what has to be done.

“You know what, we’re looking at this with the benefit of the last four albums behind us and seeing the success we’ve done on our own terms – everything we’ve done since 1999 has been on our terms and we’ve continued to build and develop the band that way. But looking at it in retrospect, back in 1996, we only had a couple of albums to our names, one of which was a big radio hit single with ‘Pull Me Under’, so the label didn’t have the benefit of what we have right now, and knowing that this band can work on its own terms. They were just looking at it as maybe we were a one hit wonder with ‘Pull Me Under’ and they were ready to move on to the next thing. Now I think we’ve proven to the industry that we are a band that knows our audience, and can develop our audience on our own terms, and just get out of our way and let us do it. Our success and longevity is mainly due to the fact that we’ve called our own shots, at this point. We would have broken up seven years ago if we weren’t able to regain that independence.”

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Tips For Young Drummers

Keep an open mind. Listen to lots of different things. It’s important to listen to everything from Chick Corea to Foo Fighters to Slayer. That’s the way I developed as a young drummer, with an open mind to lots of different styles. Even today, I’m able to apply a lot of those different influences into everything I do.

Always persevere. It’s a very, very tough industry. If you watch that documentary on Score, you’ll get a taste of that. In order to really survive the roller-coaster ride, you’ve got to stick to your guns and persevere no matter how many times you get knocked down. It’s the bands that get back up that are the ones that are still standing.

Play with other musicians. It’s important to not just be a soloist. You can practise in your basement ten hours a day and have chops out the ass, but until you actually apply it with other musicians in the context of music, I think that’s the most important thing. It’s how you utilise what you do within the context of other players.

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Vacation? Ha!

So after the historic finale to the long 20th Anniversary Tour, the quintet went their separate ways to recharge their proverbial batteries. Well, everybody except for Mike. Besides tying up all the loose ends on the Score package, he’s thrown down tracks for Neal Morse’s next solo album, and put together some interesting tribute products available from his website www.mikeportnoy.com.

Some of you speed-guitar freaks and Mr. Big fans may recognize a key ingredient in some of the tributes, guitarist Paul Gilbert. “Me and Paul Gilbert have done four tribute bands now,” Portnoy explains, “The Beatles, Zeppelin, Rush, and The Who. I’m just putting out my Rush tribute DVD and CD. In 2005, Paul and I did a Rush tribute along with Sean Malone and Jason McMaster, and that was called Cygnus and the Sea Monsters.

Then me, Paul, Billy Sheehan and Gary Cherone did a Who tribute at the beginning of this past summer, and that was a band called Amazing Journey. At some point when I have some time, I’ll sort through those tapes and release that on CD and DVD, either later this year or early next year. The Beatles and the Zeppelin ones are already available, those are from 2003.”

That’s not all – also on the horizon is the upcoming drum instructional video from Hudson Music, In Constant Motion. “That’s my first instructional video in seven years,” he says. “We’ve been working on it for the past couple months, and hopefully it will be ready for release by Christmas. It’s a double DVD set, one is concentrating on Dream Theater music, and the other is all everything I’ve done outside of Dream Theater: Transatlantic, OSI, Neal Morse, my tribute bands, footage from everything I’ve been doing over the last seven years.”

Vacation. Right. As for the next album proper from Dream Theater, at press time the band hadn’t reconvened, but when the time is right, “we’ll lock out a studio for four to five months and move in. We’ll go in with a clean slate, start from scratch, and as we write, we hit the ‘record’ button at the same time, and that’s how we work. It should take anywhere between three to five months, that’s the overall process – for us that’s writing, recording, overdubbing, mixing, and mastering.”