Starbucks and the Rising Sun: An Interview with James LaBrie

We met James backstage at Leeds in his ‘compact and bijou’ dressing room, which he said ‘felt like it was closing in on him’ to catch up on with him on Black Clouds and Silver Linings and the start of its touring cycle. As always, James was fantastic company, giving us a very entertaining, animated and frank interview.

Thanks to Rikk for setting it up, James for his time and Greg for his technical expertise.

KP: We start with a bit of a random question; this is the beginning of the tour, obviously, last week you were Kevin, this week you’re James. I’ve always wanted to ask how that is for you, since Kevin Moore didn’t stick around, do you ever wish that you didn’t change it?

JLB: No, I don’t regret changing the name to James at all, coz’ I actually prefer my middle name, but I think when we first started touring 17 years ago that was kinda weird, because I’d be on the road and people would be saying “James, James, James!” and then I’d go back home and it was Kevin. I’m kinda like ‘wow, I really do live in two different worlds’, but if anything I think that made it easier to accept, because it was really evidently so. I’m at home because I’m being referred to as Kevin, whereas when I’m on the road, it’s James. I think the more bizarre thing is when I bump into friends from the past and they know what I’ m doing and they go “Sooo... what do I call you now?” and I say “Well, how do you know me? You know me as Kevin, so call me Kevin.” I wouldn’t want them to start calling me James – that would just seem too weird!

RP: So, moving on, you’ve just played Russia. How was that?

JLB: It was amazing. It was everything that we thought it would be. It was our first time there, it’s hard to believe it took us that long, but it was really a great experience for us. First of all, we had a day off before the gig in Moscow, so we were able to go walking around, see Red Square and stuff like that, which was incredible. The history in Russia is just amazing – it’s a lot like the UK, there’s a lot of amazing history going on in that country. But the fans were just unbelievable. For me, it was exciting for two reasons: one, we were playing in front of our Russian fans for the first time and I knew that they were just going to be over the top, which they were, really animated, singing the songs, and you could just tell they were extremely excited. The other reason I was really stoked was the arena that we played was used in the Summit Hockey Series in 1972, where Canada beat the Russians! Paul Henderson having the famous picture of him getting the winning goal and jumping in the air. So when I walked around that building I was like ‘Oh my God. I remember watching that game on TV and here I am playing today in the same arena.’ Which was kinda cool!

RP: (Referring to James’s previous issues gaining entry to Poland) So the Russians let you in alright?!

JLB: Yeah, no, they were fine – they like Canadians! It was a great experience. The food was amazing too. I don’t know if it was the hotel we were staying at, was amazing, everybody was pretty impressed.

RP: Obviously, the next big gig coming up is the Download Festival on Sunday. How will it be to be back there again, higher up on the bill and obviously on the main stage this time?

JLB: Yeah, well obviously, that’s the great thing about going to Donington this time. First of all, it was great to be invited the last time we were there, for the first time, so we were all pretty stoked about that. But to be invited back and now be invited to the main stage is even better. I guess Def Leppard is ending the night?

RP: Yes, then Whitesnake, then ZZ Top...

JLB: Oh yeah, ZZ, so we’re fourth on the bill, that’s right. So we’re all very excited about doing that gig once again. I think we can tell too, that it’s really benefited this band for the exposure. Not only in the international sense, coz’ I think a lot of people, not just from the UK are there, but people from all over. I mean, I know some friends from Toronto that are coming over for that gig. I don’t know what day they’re going to be there – I would imagine they’d want to be there the day I’m there! But I think the exposure it’s given us for the UK has been amazing – it’s been very noticeable. I remember last time, when we played there, we were on the second stage, but I remember seeing a lot of people when we first walked on, and you can kind of tell who’re your fans and who aren’t (because the fans are freaking out and they’re excited, and that’s always good and then you can see the other people, with their arms folded, maybe hanging back a little going ‘who the hell are these guys?’), but by the end of the show there are people, and even though they don’t really know the tunes [laughs], they’re getting into it! So you go “well, you know what? There’s a strong possibility we just made some new fans.” And that’s REALLY what it’s all about.

RP: I think afterwards. we heard that there was something like 14,000 people squeezed in and around the tent.

JLB: Yeah!

KP: I saw nothing!

RP: It was a bit tight...

JLB: Really?! Yeah, well I remember, it was pretty squished!

KP: Now onto the new album, people have said that Dream Theater’s music tends to be optimistic, even though it’s heavy and it’s dark and deals with difficult topics sometimes, there’s usually some sort of optimism or hope wrapped up in there... Do you think that the new album’s title Black Clouds and Silver Linings is reflective of that?

JLB: Yeah, of course. Well, there’s optimism and pessimism there; life is just full of your ups and downs and I think if you’re talking about the lyrical content and even the moods of the music, I think what Dream Theater really brings (together is) the two strongest elements that we contend with throughout life and that is we succeed and then we have our challenges. I think life is based around those two things and I think with Dream Theater we talk about how we’ve been affected by those elements throughout our lives. Granted, with Dream Theater the world has been great to us, but at the same time, we still go through anything or everything that everyone else on the planet goes through at some point or another. So I think it’s great that you feel that within the music and you also read that within the lyrics. I think that we’re all pretty much connected to a certain degree.

RP: So we know that you weren’t in the studio during the writing and music recording this time. One question is, ‘why was that?’ And the other is, ‘did it pose different challenges coming in at a later stage?’

JLB: Well, I’ll answer the second part (first): it didn’t pose any challenge to me to just come in, because they would throw the music to me by MP3 as soon as they had it done, so I was familiar with where the music was going and throughout that whole process, I would always email back any comments that I had, so by the time that I went into the studio, I was extremely familiar with everything. And where I wanted to go vocally too, in terms of sounds or characters that I wanted to produce vocally.

As far as not being there? I won’t kid you, it was a little bizarre, it was awkward, but it just seemed to kind of unfold as such. At first I was down there for a couple of days maybe a few weeks into the writing and then I went back home. Then I remember Mike emailed me and said “Okay, well since you went home, we wrote another song, so I’m gonna put down the drums” and then he put down the drums and then somebody would have another idea, whether it would be Jordan or Petrucci, and then they would play something and all of a sudden they’ve created another tune. So it was almost as though it wasn’t conducive to me flying down when they were being very prolific, but that’s how the process basically unfolded. It hasn’t been that way for a few albums now, so we did talk about it. I talked to the guys about it and I said “Well it’s great that everything was moving along and it was as fast and productive as it was, but still, I need to be there.” So it’s not a thing set in stone. And even beyond that, the lyrical contribution came from Mike and John and once again I said “that’s something else that I need to be involved in” because I’m very passionate about lyrics. Anyway, it just is the way that it happened to unfold.

RP: We’ve spoken previously and you’ve mentioned it there about the character thing, how you really like to get into the lyrics and to really understand the meanings behind it all...

JLB: Well, the process hasn’t really changed; it’s the same process that I was using even before I met the guys in Dream Theater. It’s just something that from a very young age I used (to do) – to listen to Queen, to see what Freddie Mercury had to say or to see what Robert Plant had to say or what Jon Anderson or Roger Waters had to say... I always wanted to really listen to the lyrical content of these artists and to see how they conveyed that lyrical message. So to me it was something from a very early age where I thought, “I see what these guys are doing, they’re not just singing or creating words to have something to say on top of the melody. They’re very passionate about the vocal melody to begin with and the lyrical content, they’re conveying it as sincerely and convincingly as possible.” So, that was always my approach when I first started getting into bands, writing originals and writing lyrics; whether they did that or not, I wanted to take that approach. So even with this album, the same thing, I would either sit down with Mike or John and I’d say “This is what I’m gathering from the lyric”, and then I’d be like “Now I need you to be literal with me, as to what you were actually trying to say so that then I can become that.”

RP: Was this album quite ‘heavy’ in some ways, particularly thinking about ‘The Best of Times?’ Was it pressuring...

JLB: No.

RP: Or inspiring?

JLB: Yeah, well, I lost my father in 2005 and I could understand and relate to every word that Mike was saying, because I had a similar relationship with my father. He was a great man. So I was able to automatically and immediately relate to everything that Mike had gone through and everything that Mike was trying to convey. It was like “yeah, you know what? Let me just get in there and I’m not going to be singing about Howard Portnoy per se, I’m going to be singing about my father.” That was my way to really immerse myself sincerely into it.

KP: On this album we get to the end of what is now known as the ‘12 Step Suite’. Do you feel as though you’ve been through the 12-step process now yourself?!

JLB: [laughs] Well, I’ll know what to expect if I ever need to! But, well, I think that a lot of people over the years since Mike started doing this have asked “Well how do you feel about him putting this within the album content and him exposing his substance abuse situation to the world?” I think that there’re more people out there who are going to relate to’ what Mike has gone through personally than not. And I think that it’s therapeutic to him because it’s a way for him to really (exorcise it). I’ve always believed that if you ever had a problem about something, then you’re better to write it down and get it out of your system and then look at what you’ve written and then I think you have a clearer understanding of what it is that you’re dealing with, or where it is that you’re coming from and where it is that you wanna go. I think it’s one of the surest ways of being able to get closure to something and to be able to accept something for what it is and to be able to move on – I think that’s what this does for Mike. I think it’s a way for him to be able to reflect on everything that he had gone through, prior to it, during it and right up to the present. I think that fact that he has a vehicle, the band, to be able to express himself and for hundreds of thousands of people to be able to hear it and read about it, is great because I think that most people can absolutely relate (to it) and know someone, whether it be themselves or someone within their family or friends, that have gone through it.

RP: Do you know what inspired the Freemasonry theme of the lyrics in ‘A Rite of Passage?’ And I’ve got to ask, who in DT is a ‘member of the trade’?!

JLB: Yeeeahhhh, errrr. I’m pretty sure none of us are! But I can only imagine that it’s something that John Petrucci stumbled across, whether he saw a documentary or whether he read something about it literature-wise, and it inspired him to write about it. Because it is a secret world, ‘The Da Vinci Code’ related to a lot of that. Da Vinci and a lot of these people who were high up in society hundreds and hundreds or even thousands of years ago, they did have their secret societies, they were able to discuss and be philosophical without being oppressed. So I think it’s cool that these societies do exist because it’s freedom of thought and freedom of expression and I think that indirectly, we all are somehow affected by their decisions and their beliefs.

RP: My Dad is actually a mason and a member of the Knights Templar and all kinds of stuff...

JLB: Yeah? Well, I have a couple of friends back home that are in that as well. I mean, I don’t think it’s as tight-lipped as some people would have you think.

RP: There’s a lot of misinformation as well...

JLB: Yeah and like with those couple of friends, I go out drinking with them and I’m like “C’mon!!! What are you guys talking about?! Give me a f**king break!” and they’re like “Well... I’ll tell you some of the stuff... “ but whether they were revealing EVERYTHING to me or not, it didn’t seem like it was earth-shattering to me.

KP: Well now I’m supposed to ask what the rest of the album is about??!!

JLB: WHAT?! I’m on stage in 10 minutes!!!

KP: We know you’ve discussed with the lyricist the thinking behind each song...

JLB: But the problem with that, and I know that you’re aware of this, because we’ve previously discussed this, is that I don’t like to literally sit down and talk about each lyric that’s written. Because to me, when someone says like “can you tell me about the imagery on the album cover?” I’m like “Oh f**k, just look at the album cover, and what does it say to you? Because if you’re listening to the album there’s gonna be different symbols and meanings behind each thing, that’s being seen by every individual...” and the same goes with the lyrical content. Even when I’ve written the words to a song and I get “So what is this about?” I’d rather say back “Well, what does it say to you? Does it say anything or mean anything to you?” and if it does, then I’d rather just leave it at that...

RP: So, do you have a favourite song on the new album?

JLB: ‘Shattered Fortress’ is my favourite song. It’s not because its Mike’s AA suite, it’s because I think the music is the epitome of what Dream Theater music has been and is. I think it just shows that we maintain who and what we are, because it’s very identifiably Dream Theater to me. I think that it also shows that we’re continuing to grow as a band, as musicians and as songwriters. To me, that song is classic Dream Theater. Then you’ve got the melody and the words and that too is where a lot of our melodies have gone in the past, and the lyrical component is closure to a very long and emotional rollercoaster.

The other one is ‘The Count of Tuscany’, which I think is a fantastic tune. I can tell you a bit about that one. I’ll tell you that so that you don’t have to walk away and say “The guy wouldn’t give us any lyrical meaning!” But ‘The Count of Tuscany’, believe it or not, stemmed from John Petrucci and his then guitar tech, Mark Snyder. We were in Italy, I don’t remember exactly where, but they were invited to go to a Baron’s winery. There were two brothers and they were very eccentric and very odd and they took them down into these cellars, where they saw these great big vats of wine and they saw all these bottles that were hundreds and hundreds of years old... and it was really freaky. John said the whole time he was there he was freaked out, he was like “Oh my God! These guys could kill us and nobody would find us! They wouldn’t even know where to start because we didn’t even tell anybody where we were going!” He brought in a fictional scenario...

RP: ...embellishing a personal story...

JLB: ...in a fictional setting, yeah. It’s cool though. I wish I’d gone! I do remember John mentioning the day before they went that they were going to a winery and I said “Nah, I’m gonna chill out at the hotel or whatever,” so I could have been party to it... I would REALLY have been able to get myself in the headspace! Totally!

RP: I know this is a difficult question too, but how do you think the new album rates in terms of Dream Theater’s catalogue?

KP: We’re not asking you to rank it, like ‘it’s the best’, but more what it reminds you of...

JLB: Well, like I said with ‘Shattered Fortress’, one of the reasons that that’s my favourite song is that it’s really pulling from the roots... where we’ve come from and where we are presently but it still has a contemporary feel to it. Like, you could throw that tune on and it would sound like a lot of the bands that are going down that direction musically today. It wouldn’t sound like it’s dated. So to me, this album, I think it’s a collection. It sounds at times like Images and Words, maybe like ‘Learning to Live’, it’s like Awake at times – it has those elements. ‘A Change of Seasons’, definitely. And also Scenes From a Memory and Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence. So I think there’s a lot of those elements in this album. I think that’s what really keeps it rounded.

RP: I think there’s a bit of Falling Into Infinity about the middle of ‘A Nightmare to Remember’.

JLB: Yeah, yeah, I can see that. You know what? I think you’re probably right. But I never even... unfortunately, I don’t give too much, or enough, credit to that album. I think we all kind of push it aside because it was such a dark period. But, with that being said, I still think there are some classic moments on that album; there’s no doubt about it. We were still able to pull something out that I’m proud of. But I think that there were so many constraints around that album that I’ll never be able to really separate that from it. There was internal conflict, there was external conflict. Y’know it was really a hurricane at that point. I don’t even know how we got through that...

KP: You’ve actually brought up something we wanted to ask you. When we saw you in Blackburn at the end of the last European tour, that was right around when the book (Lifting Shadows, the DT biography by Rich Wilson) had come out and you’d been reading it...

RP: We felt that you seemed to be in quite a reflective mood, like you were thinking about everything in there...

JLB: Yeah, because what it does is it brings everything right to the front again. The s**t that you went through. The fact that there was a time where I didn’t even know if I wanted to be a part of this anymore, the guys didn’t know if I wanted to and then they were questioning me – “Do you want to stay?” So all this s**t was coming right back at me, full force and it was a little bit like ‘oh f**k, I don’t wanna relive that. I don’t wanna relive Falling Into Infinity, I don’t wanna relive where I was in 2002 – not feeling right about ANYTHING.’ So yeah it does, it pulls on your emotional strings when you just want to be like ‘I just want to put that over there and walk this way and distance myself from that.’ Because, I guess as you get older, you start realizing the best way to go through life is to distance yourself from anything that you feel is negative or is not good for your soul, or your being, or just the way that you feel about yourself It’s just not worth it.

KP: I wanted to ask a little bit about the photo shoot (a girly question!) When you look at the group of promo photos for this album, my impressions was you could almost pigeonhole each photo to a type of rock music... there was maybe a ‘nu’ metal look in one and definitely a power metal look in another...

JLB: Oh really?!

KP: I knew that wouldn’t be the aim, but I wondered how they came about?

JLB: Well, we still want to maintain the fact (that we’re metal) – so what that we’ve been around for as long as we have been – we still feel the energy; we still wanna go out there and kick ass; we still wanna throw the metal in your face! But it’s kind of... when you start getting dressed up like that and you’ve got like a gothic look and a really dark ‘metal’ look – I think a lot of people are thrown off by that. If they look at all the transformations that we’ve had throughout the years, I guess people aren’t expecting us, this far into our career, to still have this aggressive approach visually. But I think to us, we’re like, ‘you know what? I can kinda feel that’ and with the way that this album turned out there’s a lot of energy and aggression in the album – it really spits it out to the people. That coat I was wearing, was fricking long and it looks like I’ll have two rifles stuck in there under that jacket and that I’m ready to go out and spill some blood! It also came about that when we arrived at the photo studio, they had all this stuff there and the wardrobe person, she was like “Oh come here, I’m seeing you doing this, I’m seeing you looking like this... “ and I’m like “nah, let me look through.” Then I ended up with s**t around my neck and that great big coat and all... I’ll tell you what was the really funny thing about this photo shoot was that I had just finished the vocals recently and I remember I was really burnt and really tired. I went in there saying “Do you have any Visene (eye drops)? I’m really freakin’ tired.” So what happened was, that while I was standing there and we were taking pictures, I remember my eyes felt really heavy and the way the photos came out it looks like I was [pulls angry face]... and I was like F**K! And Mike was saying “What the hell? Jeez! Look at you man! You look like you’re so p****d you’re gonna rip someone’s head off!” I was... ARGH!... “What can we do? We can’t go back and redo this...” and he was sorting through them all and he said “Well... these were the ones that I thought were the nicest looks you had on your face...” and I was like “okaaay. Go with it!”

KP: I think some of them look like they’re meant to be very serious arid some look a bit more moody...

JLB: Yeah, but you don’t wanna look p****d off! “Like why the f**k am I here?!” Anyway, I guess it worked out!