Mike Portnoy interview

Face Culture: Can you remember your first meeting with the Alcoholic Anonymous?

Mike Portnoy: Of course, I remember it vividly. It was about nine years ago this week actually. I just celebrated nine years of sobriety. I had been drinking and drugging for 15 or 20 years without a single day sober. I mean literally every day and tried to quit hundreds of times and always said, “I’m never gonna drink again. I’m going out on tour, I’m not going to drink on this tour.” Sure enough, come nighttime, I could never say no, never resist. We had just finished up a tour in Europe, coincidentally ending on my birthday, which is the last drink I ever had in 2000, and I went home and saw two doctors the next day, both of whom said, “If you keep drinking and drugging like you do, you won’t reach the age of 40.” My second child was just born and that scared the crap out of me because I did not want to be a Keith Moon or John Bonham – just a rock and roll casualty – and I said, “I got to get myself to a meeting,” and both doctors said, “Here’s the schedule, get yourself to an AA meeting,” and I went and haven’t picked up a drink ever since.

FC: What memories do you have of your last drink?

MP: My last drink was very unceremonial. If I would have known it was gonna be my last drink, I would’ve gone out with a bigger bender. It was the last night on tour, it was my birthday, Spock’s Beard was opening for us and I was drinking with them. Always I would drink with the opening band or Dream Theater’s crew because none of the Dream Theater guys were [ever] big drinkers, so I was always with the opening band or the crew. I remember drinking and partying with Spock’s Beard that night to celebrate the end of the tour, and that was the last night I drank. The next day I got on a plane went home and got sober. But a couple of nights before the end of the tour, I traveled on Spock’s Beard’s bus, and we tore it up with every drink and drug in the book and was one of those nights, but that was my last big bender.

FC: But did your band members already at some point say, “You really have to beware of what you’re doing”?

MP: Yeah, but I was always very responsible. I would never drink or drug in the studio while I was working. It was always at the end of the night. When it came to the band, I always tried to be responsible. it was I wouldn’t start drinking ‘til after the show, and then as time went on it would be, “OK, well maybe I’ll have a couple drinks before the encore.” And then it starts to get earlier. “OK, maybe I could start drinking during the keyboard solo,” and then I would start drinking before we went on and then before the opening band. The next thing I knew by the end of my drinking career, I was f***ed up on stage every night, and I’d be coming off stage with a bottle of Jack Daniels and I’d be doing lines behind the drum set during the show. I knew it was out of hand and the rest of the guys in the band never really confronted me, but I didn’t have to be confronted. I could look in the mirror and see what I was doing.

FC: But at the time when you were starting to these meetings was it true that somebody advised you to get in to make it a creative process?

MP: No, no. That’s why I don’t call [this] series of songs I’ve written ‘AA songs’ – the fans do, but I don’t. To me, it’s a 12-step song. AA means Alcoholics Anonymous, so it’s supposed to be anonymous. You’re not supposed to be out glamorizing it or whatever. I’ve had no problem talking about it and discussing it and writing about it, because the process of recovery has been a big thing in my life. So I’ve had no problem sharing it, but I never try to preach it. I’ve never preached sobriety, I’ve never preached the way that AA is run. To me it’s just about the 12 steps which starts with it getting sober, but really when you get deeper into the steps it’s more about just being a better person, living life and looking at yourself and looking at the way you treat people. And that’s what the 12 steps is really about. It just starts with getting sober.

FC: Could it have been finished earlier do you think or is this really the right time for this all now that you finished the last part?

MP: I only broke them up into five songs because the steps kind of break up into different ways. One, two and three is kind of one process, four and five is another process; six and seven; eight and nine; ten, eleven, twelve. I looked at the 12 steps and broke them up into kind of chapters. But when I had this idea seven years ago, writing these connecting songs, I don’t think I realized what the hell I was getting myself into – that it would take seven years and five albums to complete. It’s been great, it’s been therapeutic to write these lyrics and it’s nice to have done it, but it surely now is a relief to be done with it! It was like I dug myself into a hole that was too deep to get out. I’m glad that the process is over. I think it was a great ending. ‘The Shattered Fortress’ on the new album I think wraps it all up perfectly lyrically and musically.

FC: Have you had reactions from people that they really found it helpful?

MP: Every day when I’m on tour somebody comes to me and thanks to me for writing these lyrics and helping them. That’s what the twelfth step is all about: I am responsible to carry the message and help people that need help. Like I just said, I’ve never been preachy about it, I never preached sobriety. Everybody’s free to do whatever they’d like with their life, but I’m just talking about how it’s helped me and if it maybe help somebody else that’s struggling, then that’s great. But every day I have people thanking me for helping them to get sober or maybe just expressing struggles that they’re going with and then I could maybe give some advice to help out with however it helped me.

FC: Yeah, because I see it as a personal thing. Another big thing in your life also openly or not openly discussed but mentioned in the album [is] ‘The Best Of Time’ song. Is there something also that you consciously want to do to bring that out in...

MP: I’ve always written about things in my life. My struggle with recovery and addiction. I wrote about the death of my mom when I was a child in ‘A Change of Seasons,’ I’ve written about fights and bad relationships in my family. I’ve written about the band’s struggles with the record company and the industry. Most of my lyrics have always been about things in my life and so throughout the making of this record, one of the biggest struggles in my own personal life was the sadness and the heaviness of dealing with my dad’s battle of cancer, so inevitably it was going to come out in my lyrics. I know when I write about these things it’s like an open book, I would only do it if I’m willing to discuss it in an interview or willing for the listeners to read it or discuss it. I have no problem with that I’ve never I wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t willing to be open about it.

FC: How is it to have somebody else sing it, to hear James – do you listen to it with different ears then?

MP: At first I was wondering how it would be handing these lyrics over to James to sing, because when I wrote the lyrics, I ended up recording the song with the band a version of me singing, and I played it for my dad before he died. I sat at his bedside and we held hands and we cried and it was very emotional, and it was the version of me singing. It was all very personal lyrics about my relationship with my father and all the things we had shared for 41 years. Then after my dad passed away, we played the version of me singing at his funeral as well, so I shared it with family and friends. So I wondered how it would be to hand such a personal subject over to James to sing, and I was concerned about it, but never did I consider singing the Dream Theater version. I mean James is the voice of the band. He’s got the stronger voice and the ability to deliver it in a way that I never could. I was wondering how it would be, but within a couple of minutes of him starting to sing it while we were tracking, I was like, “This is gonna be great. He gets it. He’s going to be able to deliver it with the proper emotion.” And that’s always been his job in this band. He’s always sung other band members’ lyrics, and he has to make them his own and deliver it with confidence and emotion that went into the lyrics when we wrote them. That’s always been his job, he is the voice of the band.

FC: When you sang it in a more personal environment, did you just see it...

MP: Yeah I sang it.

FC: You played it with accompaniment?

MP: It was the music that is on the album because we always write the music first, and then the lyrics always come much later and the vocal tracking is much later. So I basically sang on top of the tracks that’s on the album. There’s a version of me singing the song that maybe I’ll release in the future as a B-side or maybe a fan club single or something, not because I think I sing it better than James – he sings it better than me obviously – but there’s a certain amount of emotion because it was such a personal lyric that made the version that I played for my dad and played at his funeral very special.

FC: When James has to deal with more personal subjects, do you have personal talks with him in the way...

MP: Yeah. Every time James begins to record his vocals, he’ll sit down with me or John and talk about what the lyrics mean. Through the years he’s been the voice of some very personal subjects for both me and John. John’s written about his dad dying with ‘Take Away My Pain’ and I wrote about my mom dying in ‘A Change of Seasons’ and my 12-step songs. For our whole career James has been this voice that often has to convey our lyrics. So James will always sit and talk about it and try to understand what each word means in each phrase and just make it his own so he could deliver it in a way that’s going to really portray the emotion of the lyrics.

FC: You’ve been together already 20 years more or less, but I can imagine that all these personal things and growing older together that it really tightens the bond in that way?

MP: Absolutely. I mean we’ve been together almost a quarter of a century now. We’ve been together since we were teenagers and now we’re in our 40s and 50s with families. There’s a bond and a history between the five of us that you can only have through the test of time. And we get along better now than we ever have. When we were younger, we would bicker and fight over everything and every single decision – whether or not the cup should sit here or the cup should sit there would be a two-hour discussion. That’s the kind of s*** that almost breaks up a band, that’s the kind of stuff that really nearly tore us apart back in the ‘90s. It was only from sustaining that stuff and learning from those experiences did we grow personally, and now the last 10 or 12 years we function very, very differently. There’s a real understanding between the five of us on how the band runs internally, the way that decisions are made. I will call most of the shots without having to discuss it. I will design a T-shirt or the album cover or make a setlist without having to discuss it. And everybody’s cool with that; there’s no resentment because of that. A lot of the fans think, “It’s a dictatorship,” or “Mike or John are running the show,” but somebody’s got to run the show and this is the way it works for us. It runs smooth. Everybody in the band is cool with it, comfortable with it. There’s no resentment. It is the way that this band and business runs smoothly, and we get along better than ever because we don’t have to bicker and discuss every little thing. Everybody’s comfortable with the way it runs. We’re grown men now, we feel a real bond and a real family together that was never there when we were younger.

FC: But was there a certain point that you can point out that this changed all of a sudden or was it [a] process?

MP: Oh yeah, I know exactly when it happened. It happened at the end of the Falling Into Infinity tour when basically that album and tour almost broke the band up. I was leaving the band. I had had enough. I had enough of the external bulls*** with the record companies and producers and outside writers. All of that stuff was tearing us away on the inside. Suddenly we were bickering and fighting and disagreeing about everything. I was ready to leave the band and that was the catalyst that basically sat us down and said, “Look, if we want this to continue, things have got to change. We got to get rid of all this outside bulls*** and even internally we need to come up with a system that everybody is comfortable with and we can stop this internal bulls***.” And that’s the point where we decided we were going to self-produce our own records – me and John would produce them. At that point we decided there were certain decision-making processes that would be given to certain people and that’s the way that we would function and it’s been great ever since.

FC: You made it to the 10th album. With all the personal things and the finishing of the whole... is this really one of the most special ones?

MP: No, it’s just the next album. [chuckles]

FC: After the album’s completed you made up the title?

MP: Album title? Yeah the album title is always the last thing to happen. Usually it’s based on the culmination of whatever the lyrics give out. The title this time around I think really tied together all the different lyrical themes on this album. It’s dealing with death and near-death experiences and accidents and all these situations that are like black clouds in life. But [there’s] the expression ‘every cloud has a silver lining’ and you could look at the glass as half empty or half full, and that’s what this title is. It’s all about how you perceive any situation. Any negative situation could be looked at optimistically and you could turn it around and somehow grow from the experience.

FC: Do you think each one of the band members is equally positive when it comes to that, because that’s gonna be a personal thing as well?

MP: Not necessarily. We’re definitely five very different personalities in this band. You can’t look at any of us and say that we’re the same type of person just because we’re in the same band. I mean my personality is 180 degrees opposite from John Myung’s personality which is opposite from James and Jordan. Really we have very different personalities and I think that’s what makes the chemistry of the band. If you were to take any of those personalities out, suddenly everything would change. Some people wonder, “John Myung is so quiet and he’s not writing lyrics anymore and he’s not doing that...” That’s part of the chemistry. He chooses to be quiet and introverted, and if we suddenly had this extroverted bass player that wanted to rattle things up, it would change the chemistry and ruin the chemistry. I think it’s that chemistry of the five personalities – some of which are stronger than others, some of which are loud, some of which are quiet. It’s that chemistry that makes us what we are.

FC: Do you think they present in the media how they are?

MP: I think so. Everybody is very much themselves in this band and comfortable with themselves.

FC: Over the years, have you throughout the career found that you all also progress into the same interest in music to go into the same direction together?

MP: Individually?

FC: Yeah, that you shared the same goal that you wanted to continue this road of progressive metal.

MP: I think collectively we all still have a common vision of what the Dream Theater sound and style is. I don’t think there’s ever been a debate on that. I think even though individually all of us kind of listen to different things – I’ll listen to death metal stuff and some of the other guys will be listening to classical and some of the other guys will be more commercial pop music – so individually we kind of all go our separate ways, but when we come together, I think we know what is expected from Dream Theater. We stay focused on that.

FC: I saw your top 10 lists on the website of the CDs. It’s pretty metal orientated. Is that what you’re really listening to and gives you the inspiration?

MP: I have diverse tastes. I’m the biggest metal head in the band, but I also have a huge classic rock influence. Pink Floyd, The Who and the Beatles and Zeppelin – that’s a huge part of my background. I’m into old-school prog like Gentle Giant and King Crimson and Genesis, but I also love Opeth and Slayer and Sepultura. So my taste is very, very broad. If you look at my top 10 list it’ll range from the Beastie Boys to Bloodbath.

FC: For the artwork, you’re involved with it. The last two CDs had some sort of thing for the fans to dig into – maybe you put some secrets or codes in it. Is that you who comes up with these ideas?

MP: It’s Hugh Syme who I work with. Hugh Syme – who’s done the last five album covers – he’s got a great mind. If we give him an album title or song titles, he can interpret it so many different ways and comes up with these great ideas. And then he and I work together and have a great working relationship and tweaking his ideas. He’s a great guy.

FC: Is there on the CD maybe or on this album something like it for fans to dig into?

MP: Yeah. The artwork on this album is kind of reminiscent to the way our old covers used to be like Images and Words and Awake and A Change of Seasons, where you have different elements from the songs on the cover. But that wasn’t intentional, it wasn’t like we said, “We got to have an album cover like one of our old albums.” This was just the way that Hugh Syme naturally went and it was cool because it really felt like an old Dream Theater album. There’s all different elements from the songs from the inside of the booklet all represented on the cover.

FC: And the three disc special edition, does that any have anything to do with the anniversary?

MP: No. In this day and age record companies are scrambling to think of new ways to market and release records to beat the downloading phenomenon. I guess it kind of works out good for the fans that like collecting stuff because a lot of record companies now are putting out these box sets and collector editions and DVDs, so it’s actually a good situation if you’re a collector. This album is gonna come out regular edition, then it’s going to be out on vinyl and then a three disc deluxe edition and then it’s gonna be a box set with all this other stuff. I basically had the ideas of doing a cover CD and putting out the album instrumentally and then putting out a disc in the box set with the instrumental stems where you can hear each individual instrument. So I had these ideas of how we could release it, but luckily we’ve got Roadrunner’s support to agree and say, “Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s make it happen.” It’s a win-win situation for everybody.

FC: And the cover CD – is it already put out which covers will be on it?

MP: No, we’re keeping it a secret and I think for five weeks leading up to the release one per week will be available to download and we’re keeping it a secret so each week it keeps the fans excited.

FC: You were well known for lengthy songs but was one song done consciously to put one thing out as more with commercial way?

MP: We knew when we were writing this album we had an album filled with epics. There were four songs over the 10-minute mark, so I think we wanted to write one or two songs that were somewhat releasable as a single and that’s when we wrote ‘A Rite of Passage’ and ‘Wither.’ It was very obvious when we delivered this record which the two singles were. We have four epics and then two songs that are under the 10-minute mark, so it was pretty self-explanatory. But with both of those songs we had to consciously try to keep them short. We naturally write long songs. Like the 15-minute, 20-minute songs, that’s never a contrived thing, that’s the natural thing for us. It’s always the shorter songs that are the contrived ones because we have to really be conscious of not going overboard in order to write something that’s five or even eight minutes long.

FC: So that’s purposefully each one in a way.

MP: We never write for radio because we don’t but we never get radio play, so that’s not really our intention. Even ‘Pull Me Under’ which was our biggest radio hit ever was an eight-minute song so it just kind of happened. But we do want to write a couple of shorter songs each album if we can, but it’s never trying to sell out or anything. We just do what we do and hopefully have a balance of heavy songs, light songs, long songs, short songs. We always want to have a balance.

FC: For the long songs, to me it’s like a sort of soundtrack – it’s very visual and maybe cinematic writing in a way. When writing do you get inspiration from visual inputs and translate it into music?

MP: I can’t say we specifically write with a visual inspiration in mind. For me personally, I’m a huge film fanatic. That’s one of my biggest passions. I love film directors and they are some of my biggest inspirations – guys like David Lynch and Woody Allen and Alfred Hitchcock and PT Anderson. These guys are my heroes just as much as any musician, so that’s a big influence for me but I really can’t say as a band that we’ve ever written with a soundtrack or a film in mind. But we try to make each song a bit of a journey, the way you feel if you’re watching a good movie you’re reading a good book. We want to make each song or even an album as a whole as something that feels like a deep experience.

FC: John mentioned the album was almost more gothic. What kinds of words do you use when you’re in the writing process to say, “We have to do more this or that.” Is it all musical terms?

MP: Usually the terminology we use to relate to each other are other band comparisons, and sometimes it comes back to bite us in the ass because the fans will see the chalkboard in the studio where it’ll say the Meshuggah riff or the Megadeth riff. Sometimes that comes back to haunt us, but we’re just using that as terminology off the top of our head. We can have a Muse riff and a Meshuggah riff. Even when we were making this album, we joked and put the Partridge Family riff just to see if the fans would go crazy. So that’s the way we use the terminology when we’re writing. But I saw that Jordan described something on this album as gothic. I don’t see that, I don’t see why you would say that, but I guess it’s all personal interpretation.

FC: That’s true. You will do a tour to present this album, but you play festivals the next time in the summer?

MP: We start with festivals here in Europe in June doing some of the big festivals, and then in between we’ll do our own kind of one-off warm-up shows, get to go to some new places like Israel and Russia, so that’ll be fun. Then we’re going to go back to America and do Progressive Nation in America and Canada, and then come back here in Europe to do Progressive Nation in September, October and November.