Mike Portnoy: Pull Me Down Under

Mike Portnoy is a founding member of undisputed kings of progressive metal Dream Theater, and OzProg were lucky enough to be the only Australian website he spoke to while on the 2006 G3 tour with John Petrucci!

Salty - So this isn’t your first time in Australia?

MP: I was here in ‘96 I think it was, about ten years ago for a clinic tour. So every ten years we will start adding another member [of Dream Theater to the tour] and then I guess over the course of 50 years we’ll eventually all make it.

Did you enjoy it when you were here?

MP: I don’t remember it that well, it was ten years ago, my wife came along with me and it was just drum clinics and I had a good time. I don’t have a vivid recollection of it. I was still drinkin’ back then, so... [laughs]. I remember really liking Sydney, I thought it was a beautiful city and I also played in Melbourne and Canberra... and maybe one or two other cities, but it was fun.

And touring with G3 and smaller tours, how does that differ from touring with Dream Theater in terms of like, I think you said in an email you’re just a drummer on this tour.

MP: Well it’s different on two levels, as far as for me and John, it’s very different because we’re not playing to a Dream Theater audience and we’re playing John’s music, it’s not Dream Theater music, but for me personally it’s a big adjustment because with Dream Theater I’m used to running the show and overseeing every step of every operation and every decision, whereas on this tour I’m, I guess that I’m just a drummer. I’m just a “D” in a world of “G’s”. And I actually enjoy that. At first it was a real adjustment for me when we did the G3 tour the first time in 2001 and I quickly adjusted to it you know? Now it’s nice, I just play drums and I don’t have to make any decisions.

Was it hard to pull back?

MP: At first it was hard to pull back, yeah, but now I think I’m used to it now. And you know, I’ve gone on to do tours with like Neal Morse where I’m just kind of a hired gun side man, so every once and a while it’s fun to do that. I wouldn’t want to do it all the time but as long as it’s just a once in a while thing it’s fun.

And working with other people, do you have any side projects or anything coming out that’s exciting that you can talk about?

MP: Well my biggest project right now is my new instructional video which I’ve been working on hard for many months now, and... just about finished with it, that should be out in January and it’s like a seven hour, three DVD package so it’s a massive, mammoth project.

Does it come with a vial of talent?

MP: [laughs]

Alright, you said before about being a “D” in a world of “G’s”, if you were going to organise like a D3 tour, who would you have on it if you were organising it?

MP: I think Terry Bozzio is always fun to watch, he’s somebody that could carry a whole show by himself you know, just playing drums, he’d be a good one.

Zappa Plays Zappa is coming here next year.

MP: Oh, it’s amazing... yeah I saw it in America, it’s absolutely phenomenal. I guess, well you need a third D... Neil Peart would be great, but you know he would never go for such a thing but I guess being this is a fantasy question, then I may as well say him. He would be a great third one.

And talking about Neil, Rush you’ve mentioned as a big inspiration for Dream Theater, on the Score DVD documentary you talk about it. Do bands that influenced you guys back then, still influence or inspire you now, the bands who are still going?

MP: I’d say they still inspire us, but not really influence us now, I mean, our Rush influence and bands like Rush and Yes and [Pink] Floyd and Metallica and [Iron] Maiden, they surely influenced us when we were younger... now we still respect and admire them, but I can’t say that we go home and like listen to Piece of Mind or 2112 at this stage in our lives. But you know, we surely recognise their influence on us as, from when we were much younger. Personally for now the bands that influence me now or inspire me now are more modern bands like Muse or Opeth, bands like that.

Are there any new bands that are coming out that you think are really good?

MP: Well like I said, Muse and Opeth and Lamb of God and Mars Volta, those are some of the bands I really like right now.

On the Score DVD again you talk about how Dream Theater got started off you sent tapes around, did the whole tape trading thing. With how technology has advanced now days with the internet, MySpace, do you think that makes it easier for bands to get a break?

MP: Oh absolutely. Absolutely easier, hands down. I mean it’s, the internet has really really helped a band like Dream Theater just because we can’t really rely on mainstream media to get the word out on us. We don’t get played on radio or TV, we’re not in the mainstream magazines, so the internet has been really really helpful for us on letting the fans know about tour dates and new information and stuff like that so it surely helps us as an existing band. I can’t even imagine how invaluable it would be to a new young band you know?

What I had to do on behalf of Dream Theater 20 years ago, you know, was all through the mail, and now I can imagine it would be really really much easier to promote or self-promote a band when you’re new or young.

Another thing on the technology thing with online digital sales, do you think indie bands now that technology is at a point where indie bands can just sell their music online, do you think the role of a record label is becoming less for bands?

MP: Oh absolutely, that’s why so many record labels are going down, and frankly I’m glad to see it because I think the corporate world is an ugly side to the music business and destroys a lot of bands. It almost destroyed Dream Theater, luckily we survived that and were able to move on, on our own terms, but you know, we’re one of the few that have actually been able to almost be destroyed but then come out on top.

But in answer to your question I think it’s definitely hurting labels, corporate labels, it’s hurting record stores, you know, Tower Records the chain just closed, and it’s hurting CD sales and it doesn’t really scare me because I think Dream Theater, luckily, have established ourselves outside of the need for all of that. We’ve always sold our records and built our career beyond the help of a major label so luckily we’ve developed our career to a point where it’s at where we can probably survive without a label.

And with the new album a lot of people always ask on the forums about whether you guys will change labels or stay with Atlantic?

MP: No we’re definitely not staying with our previous label. We spent 14 years waiting for that contract to end, we’re not going to re-sign again.

And are you shopping around?

MP: Yeah we’ve had several offers on the table and we’re probably about a couple of weeks away from announcing who we’re going with. We’ve already decided, but you know, we’ll announce it in a few weeks.

Are there any Australian bands that you know of or enjoy? In particular Aussie prog bands?

MP: Well, I don’t know any Australian prog bands, the only Australian bands I know are obviously AC/DC and ah... who’s that band, Wolfmother? Aren’t they from down here? Who else is from down here? Virgil Donati is from down here. Who else?

Silverchair were pretty big.

MP: Oh yeah, right.

INXS.

MP: Yeah that’s right.

Do you know Cold Chisel?

MP: No. But you have AC/DC they’re one of the biggest bands in the world so you have a good representative on the scene.

Have you come across any fans of Dream Theater that aren’t musicians, but are celebrities or famous people that you weren’t expecting?

MP: Most of them are musicians, but every once in a while there’ll be one... like Mike Piazza is a famous baseball player in America and Pat Riley is a famous basketball coach, his son’s a big fan so he’s been out to some shows and... I haven’t really met any actors or people like that, no it’s really mainly musicians. It’s always interesting though when you see some of the most unexpected people who are fans of your music... it’s always a cool thing.

In all the years of touring, can you remember the biggest sort of ‘rock n roll’ moment on tour? TV out a window?

MP: Oh man those days are gone, you know, the days of signing tits and destroying hotel rooms, that was in our early years, we’re all sober, old married men at this point of our lives.

What about the biggest ‘Spinal Tap’ moment?

MP: Ahh... well we’ve all fallen off the stage, I’ve fallen off the stage twice, but that’s not as glorious as a singer or guitar player falling off the stage ‘cause I’m in the back and that was the scary thing, the times that I fell off, nobody even knew I fell off. If you really want a Spinal Tap moment, it was on the Scenes from a Memory tour and we were in Cleveland and we went to check out of our hotel only to find our tour bus was gone, and it turns out our bus driver went and, turned out he was a crack head, and he went on a drug deal the night before... and ended up the whole bus got taken over by a bunch of crack heads, and they found the bus a few miles away and... our bus driver was in jail, so our tour driver had to take the bus and drive us to the next show. To think that guy was driving us around all the time, you know?

Are you looking forward to hearing the new Rush album?

MP: Sure, yeah... but I like older Rush you know? But I actually met with Neil a few months ago and he told me all about the whole writing process and where they are with the new album, it was really interesting to hear from his perspective...

Does he listen to Dream Theater?

MP: I never asked him. I mean, he was well aware of who I was and who the band was... but I didn’t ask him, “Hey yo! What do you think of me?” You know? So we didn’t really talk about that [laughs]. We talked about you know, a lot of other stuff, but not me.

I know you’re a bit of an aficionado of movies, is there anything movie or TV wise out there you’ve been getting into?

MP: I just saw the new David Lynch film which isn’t out yet, I went to a premiere for it and it was totally mind warping, twisted, it was great, I loved it. It was like a three hour nightmare, it was awesome.

And if you had to think, what is there left in the music scene for Dream Theater and Mike Portnoy to do?

MP: I feel we’ve accomplished most of our dreams, you know, most of my personal dreams, in terms of drumming and stuff like that, and awards and recognition, I’ve accomplished everything I could ever dreamed of in the drum world, and the band has toured with everybody from Maiden to Yes to Queensryche and Megadeth and you know we’ve really done so much that I feel so incredibly fulfilled. I mean of course creatively you want to always keep going, you want to keep developing and growing and progressing, so there’s always room for that and... commercially it would be nice to sell more records as you go on, you know we’ve been doing this a long time I dunno what the scene is here in Australia, if we’re still underground or mainstream, I don’t know what our popularity is down here, but...

It’s getting a lot better than it was. You’re sort of somewhere in between I think, a bit of both.

MP: So yeah, I mean there’s still room for the band to grow in a lot of markets. I assume down here I’m sure would be one of them. There you go! That’s our dream, to play Australia! We still have that left on our agenda!

There was a lot of time when, not so much the last two albums, but I think Six Degrees and Train of Thought there was a big gap of when it was released overseas, and when Warner Australia put it on shelves here, and that seemed like, when we were talking to promoters about bringing you guys out, and saying ‘why aren’t you, why aren’t you?’ and it seemed to be that record sales weren’t that good over here.

MP: We’re not a band you can judge on record sales, our concerts sell out everywhere we go, it doesn’t matter... we had a similar problem with South America for many many years we were trying to get back down to South America and the promoters and stuff, they just look at numbers on a sheet, and you know, in Brazil it’s all black market or whatever so on a piece of paper it may show that we’ve sold 2000 records, but then we show up and play to 10,000 people a night, 20,000 people in Santiago and the promoters were just flabbergasted, they don’t realise that our fan base is not based on numbers on a Sound Scan sheet. Our fans are into the career and the music and we’re not based on a hit single.

It’s hard to convince these promoters who spend their lives taking chances on bands and probably most of the time losing money, it’s hard to convince them until they see with their own eyes and hopefully me and John being down here with G3 will give them a little taste of our popularity. I would assume right now it’s just an assumption, but everywhere else in the world we go we have these tremendously great supportive, devoted fans, so I would assume Australia has them as well.

Yeah, we do. We... we come across so many people that, an album would come out and everyone we know who is a fan has pre-ordered it from Germany or somewhere, and it comes out locally and within weeks it’s in the cheap bin because everyone’s already got it, no one wants to buy the local release because they can get the international one.

MP: That’s why, that’s why Japan always has bonus tracks on their releases, because they try to prevent that, they try to get people to but their albums locally.

Your last two DVD’s have sold pretty well here.

MP: Good!

Yeah, Score came out and I found it really hard, as soon as it come out I couldn’t get it anywhere it just sold out.

MP: Well, we’re about to embark on a new record deal so if the label support has been lacking thus far, you know, throughout our whole career we’ve been on the same label, so... hopefully that will improve with our upcoming album.