James LaBrie interview

Face Culture: Sometimes at live show you cover whole albums. You did Master of Puppets, Number of the Beast, Dark Side of the Moon, Made in Japan. Which one was the hardest to do and why?

James LaBrie: [pauses] I don’t know. I think maybe Made in Japan just because of our scheduling and stuff like that. We were doing a lot of shows. I was memorizing the lyrics in between and stuff like that. But not musically; it was pretty easy. But I think that one and maybe Number of the Beast; it was the same situation. I mean we’re aware of that. When we’re out on the road and we’re planning on covering a classic album, we’re doing two things at once: we’re concentrating on our shows and our music, as well as learning someone else’s music.

FC: Why these albums?

JL: Because they are albums that we grew up [with], we were inspired by, that we think are classic rock albums of their time, and it’s our way of just saying, “Here’s our interpretation,” and “Here’s us paying homage to a great and fantastic album from that band.”

FC: Is there one that is most special for you?

JL: Actually doing Dark Side of the Moon was pretty incredible. We had Theresa, who was doing all the background female vocals and that; she had been with us on the Scenes From a Memory or Scenes From New York DVD, so there’s a bit of a history there with her. That was kind of cool because it was very deep in that sense, and just had a really great vibe and you could tell everyone was really into it. Not that they haven’t been into whenever we’re doing any, like Master of Puppets or Number of the Beast or anything like that. I mean the people were totally into it.

FC: Any plans for doing that again?

JL: Definitely. It’s just a matter of timing – when we’re gonna do something and when we can do this. But we definitely plan on in the future [to] continue to cover classic albums.

FC: Don’t get this question wrong, but I was thinking you can imagine that people think because you’re doing this, it’s not a little bit disparaging from Dream Theater. It’s not that hard – this music to play.

JL: No, I don’t think it’s that. I mean it’s not a matter of us doing something that we feel is challenging. It’s something that we feel inspired us. It’s something that we respect, so it has nothing to do with whether it’s complicated or technical like we are, because there’s many different sides to Dream Theater as well. It’s not just all about the progressiveness. There’s also metal, there’s also classic rock, there’s also alternative influence in our music, and even pop influence to a certain degree. It’s stuff that we feel is really our way of saying, “This album had an impact on us, and we feel that it’d be really cool for our fans to hear this album with us doing it.”

FC: Your new album, Systematic Chaos – it’s I think a bit more aggressive, louder, maybe darker than the previous ones.

JL: Well, our heaviest album by far was Train of Thought. That was relentless and in-your-face, and it was like that from the beginning to the end of it. With Systematic Chaos, I think that there’s a bit more going on as far as bringing in the other styles of music that have always been a part of Dream Theater, whether it be the progressive elements or alternative elements or pop elements, and they intertwine I think in a very balanced sense. So I think there’s a bit more depth going on stylistically with this album than say with Train of Thought, and whereas Octavarium was a bit more in the progressive sense of the word. I think it’s a really cool situation in the way that we incorporated all the styles that have always been present on each and every one of our albums, but I think that the way that they have really meshed up together is a very focused and balanced way.

FC: You mentioned Octavarium, the previous one; I read some reviews and people comparing some stuff to bands like Muse and U2...

JL: Sure. I’m sure that you could listen to any one of our albums and say, “That’s similar to this band or that sounds similar to that.” I mean we get it all.

FC: Do you listen to that?

JL: Oh yeah, absolutely. Do I love Muse? Yeah, absolutely. I think Muse is great. I love Coldplay as well; there were some comparisons to that. Do I love U2? Of course I love U2. I think they’re an amazing band. They’ve created their own mark in history, and they’re legends. But at the same time, we also get the comparisons “Oh that sounds a bit like Rush,” or “That might sound a bit more like a Deep Purple” or Yes influence or Pink Floyd influence or Metallica influence or... So we get it depending on what that particular song is saying to people, and I think it’s just a way of people being able to identify with what it is. People automatically want to say, “Oh that sounds something like that band or this band,” and that’s cool. I think that happens all the time.

FC: At this moment, new bands, new music that you’re really into?

JL: I think what Lamb of God and Trivium are doing is really cool; Stone Sour’s really cool. I’ve always been into Bjork; I got her latest. Incubus, I love their latest. Even Linkin Park, I’ve been listening a bit of that. I think it’s cool what these bands are doing. I think that they’re still really proving themselves and something that’s similar to us is they have an identity. When you hear those bands you go, “Right on. That’s cool. That’s them.” A band that I’ve always loved is Sevendust; I think that’s an incredible band, and I think they deserve a hell of a lot more recognition than they get.

FC: So is that what you search for in music – identity?

JL: I think that that’s important for any band. I think that you have to create your own sound and your own vibe musically, otherwise you sound like the rest of the heap. Then how can you distinguish between one and the other? So I think it’s important for any band out there, no matter what the angle or the direction you’re going musically is, that you create something that people are saying, “That’s them,” and whenever they hear it, they know it’s them.

FC: Systematic Chaos – what do you mean with the title?

JL: [laughs] I love to leave that to the listener to interpret. Basically we pulled a word from this song, and a word from the other song. So you have ‘systematic’ from one song, you have ‘chaos’ in another song. You bring them together. If you think about it, you can look at the ants and say, “That’s looks a little random,” but it isn’t. Ants have a purpose, they’re a community, they work together and they have an actual system. If you look at the chaos, you look at the intertwining infrastructure and the highways and all that stuff, and it’s a little confusing. But I think that we live in a world like that, too. There’s a sense of peace and calm in certain areas of the world, and then surrounding us is also turmoil, tragedy, hatred, misunderstanding and ignorance.

FC: It’s also like the general state of the world.

JL: Yeah. But to be honest with you, we don’t like to get so literal about our titles. It should say whatever the listener and the fan takes from it.

FC: You just got to a new label, Roadrunner. I heard some stuff – I don’t know if this is true – from the ‘90s, is it true that you had some pressure from your record company back then because your songs were too long on some albums?

JL: [laughs] Yeah. Our songs have been too long on every album. Well that’s just us. I think what they’re referring to is around ‘96-’97-’98, around the period of Falling Into Infinity, when that album came out, there was a lot of pressure from the label and personnel there. They tried to steer us down a road that they thought would make us more mainstream and ignite some new level of success. And the thing is, with Images and Words, we had a hit called ‘Pull Me Under.’ It was a fluke! Nobody saw it coming; it just happened. But it’s great that it did happen, because it opened a lot of doors for us and created a situation where we could have a career from it. But the fact is that we never wrote with that in mind, like “Let’s write so that we can have a radio hit.” So it was the matter of us communicating to them that, “You’re trying to steer the wrong ship, and it’s gonna sink if you try and do that to us, because that’s not where we are. You need to leave us alone, you need to let us write the kinda album that we’re gonna write. And if there’s something in there that takes off, great. If it doesn’t, then so be it. That’s just who we are.” And we didn’t wanna be untrue to ourselves or feel that we were alienating our fans either. So that was a very trying time for the band personally, professionally and it came very close to us calling it quits at that point. So it was basically communicated to them, “You need to leave us alone and let us do our own thing, otherwise it’s not worth it for us,” and then we came out with Scenes From a Memory on our own terms, and it was all great.

FC: This is the late ‘90s...

JL: Yeah. About ‘96-’97-’98 – about a three year period of bulls***. It’s alright. It’s in the past; it’s where it should be left.

FC: Is there any regrets from the band that you think, “Ah, we shouldn’t have done that”?

JL: No. At times it can be a little confusing as to what we do, but believe it or not, there’s a method to what we do, there’s a method to the madness. We are very aware of where we want to go, what we want to create, what we think we need to do with each and every album. Before that album is recorded, before we say, “This is going to be the song,” and so on and so on, we know for sure that that’s where we want to be, and that’s what we want to present at that particular point in our career, so we have no regrets. We might have regrets with doing a certain tour here or there or having some people come in and trying to steer us a certain way, but that all goes with the territory and you’re supposed to learn from that and make sure it never happens again, which we’ve done as best we can.

FC: You’re doing this for like 20 years now, as a lyricist, do you think you’ve changed a lot?

JL: Yeah, absolutely. I’m not the only lyricist in the band; you have John Petrucci and Mike Portnoy and they contribute more lyrics than I do, but as far as when I do my solo albums and stuff like that, I’m writing the lyrics. As far as the lyrical content, yeah, absolutely it changes, because you’re in a different mindset as life goes on, or I hope you are, and I hope that you’re able to gain a better insight as to what’s going on around you, whether it be from literature or your personal relationships or whatever; just your experiences in life. I think that you have a little bit more to say as time goes on because you’ve experienced more. Because of that, the lyrics I think become a little bit more interesting.

FC: And deeper...

JL: Yeah. And more profound at times, but not necessarily do they have to be to make your to make your point.

FC: After doing this for so long, what is the biggest challenge?

JL: Not necessarily a challenge, I think the biggest focus is for us to just continue doing this because we love doing it. We’re still very passionate about it. I think it’s imperative for us to want to gain more and more fans along the way, and let more and more people become aware of us and not just pitch and pull us into the fact that a lot of people say, “Oh Dream Theater, progressive.” No, that’s a bit of the picture; why don’t you look at the full picture? I think a lot of people that have taken the time to figure that out have said, “Holy s***! I didn’t realize that you guys were all about what you are all about until I took the time to listen to your music, come out and see you live,” which is a better, broader overview of what our albums and music tends to be like. Our goal is to just make more and more people aware of us around the world and tour extensively.