Mike Portnoy interview

Simon Young: Here I am with Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater. Download day 3 – are you excited about playing tonight?

Mike Portnoy: I am! I’m totally excited. I’ve said this already in another UK publication, but we played here two years ago on the second stage and that was really like a cock-tease. Today will be the full penetration. It’s gonna be great to be on the main stage.

SY: What should the crowd expect from the Dream Theater guys?

MP: Usually when we do these festivals, we are kind of like the old guys and we’re usually the least metal. Today, I think we’re the youngest guys and we’re probably the most metal, so it’ll be a nice change of events for us. We’re gonna be the young metal whippersnappers on the main stage.

SY: Which bands are you gonna check out later today – the who’s who of legendary rock acts?

MP: [pauses and laughs] I hate to be the bummer, but man, the band I’m looking most forward to seeing is Trivium. I’m more into like the whole metal thing. I don’t care. Whitesnake, Def Leppard – they’re legends, but not exactly my personal cup of tea. So I’ll be in the tent with Trivium.

SY: How does Dream Theater go about making a festival setlist with songs that are lengthy?

MP: That’s a good question. I write all the setlists for the band. Normally when playing a festival, I kind of have to gear it towards the audience. If we’re doing a festival with Slayer, I’ll do a heavy set; if we’re doing a festival with Elton John, I have to do a mellow set. So today’s set is a little bit more mainstream with shorter songs, the singles – not that we’ve ever had singles – but the little bit more accessible side of Dream Theater

SY: When you’ve got such a vast back catalog at your disposal... a lot of bands just settle on the same setlist for a tour.

MP: No, no, no. I change the setlist for literally every show. I’ll send the guys at the beginning of a tour a song list of 50 songs and then every day I’ll pick and choose different ones. I don’t really do it randomly or arbitrarily – I’ll look at what we played the last time in London, what we played last time in Paris, and try to make the new show completely different from the previous one.

SY: Do you catalog all your setlists?

MP: Yeah. If you to go to my website, there’s a tourography there, so I use that to do all the research for every setlist.

SY: Awesome. So your new album, Black Clouds and Silver Linings is coming out June 22nd through Roadrunner. How do you describe it to people who are not necessarily familiar?

MP: If you don’t know Dream Theater, listening to our new album or any of our albums is gonna be a bit of a journey. It’s not something you just put on the background of the party – it’s more like going to see a movie. You just gotta get into it. And it’s deep and it’s long songs and a lot of s*** going on, so it’s not really meant for a casual listen. It’s really meant for like a deeper experience.

SY: Rush is one of my personal favorite bands and I hear that a lot on the new album compared to previous releases. Is Neil Peart one of your idols?

MP: One of them, yeah. One of many. I mean I have many idols, but Neil was surely one of my favorites when I was younger.

SY: Finally, [your] band played the entirety of Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden and Master of Puppets. If you had the time today, what album would you play as a sort of encore?

MP: Today in particular? [pauses and laughs]

SY: Are there many albums you can play from start to finish?

MP: Well, no. I mean whenever we do those full albums it takes a lot of rehearsal in preparation, and we only do that when we do two nights in the same city. But if we were to do a full album today, I’d probably want to do one of Whitesnake’s or Def Leppard’s albums, because they probably won’t! [laughs]

SY: Which of the two would you prefer?

MP: Like I said earlier, I’m not the biggest fan of this particular side of metal – straight ahead, mainstream – it’s not my cup of tea. I really wish I got to see Slipknot last night – that’s more what I’m into, or Faith No More on Friday. I mean like to play the whole The Real Thing album would be awesome. That’s a classic, classic album.