Mike Portnoy interview

Sam Dunn: What was your first exposure to what we might call progressive rock or progressive music?

Mike Portnoy: Progressive rock or progressive metal? Because there’s definitely two different worlds.

SD: Let’s start with progressive rock.

MP: I think progressive rock can probably be pinpointed... Well some would say Sgt. Pepper by the Beatles was the first like art rock album and that was ‘67. Then came things like the Moody Blues and Procol Harum, but a lot of people pinpoint the first progressive rock album as In the Court of Crimson King by King Crimson, which was ‘69. From there came Yes, Genesis, ELP and those were the real big prog rock bands of the early ‘70s.

SD: Is there a particular album that was really inspiring and eye-opening for you?

MP: In the Court of Crimson King was the one where you were really hearing a lot of Mellotrons and some great musicianship, extended instrumentation and orchestration. But if I had to pick a personal album, I think Close to the Edge by Yes was the one. I mean some of the Genesis albums were truly important as well, but Close to the Edge by Yes was the one where all five musicians were just like the best at what they did, and the composition on that album... You have an album with just three songs, three epics. It was a true prog statement.

SD: What attracted you to this kind of music? What really drew you to this style?

MP: For me the immediate attraction to progressive rock or prog was the musicianship; it was always about the musicianship. Every musician was playing their instrument to the fullest capability, and that was the thing that would draw me in. Then once listening, I would start to appreciate the orchestration and the writing and the composition and the epic nature of the songs. But it was always a musicianship that caught my attention.

SD: What was it like being a metalhead at Berklee?

MP: I wanted to be this great musician and go to Berklee and learn as much as I could, but once I got there, I was the only kid walking down the hallways with a Flotsam and Jetsam T-shirt, so I definitely stood out like a sore thumb as this thrash kid from Long Island stuck in this world of jazz at Berklee. Metallica just come out. Anthrax, Megadeth, Slayer, S.O.D., Overkill, Testament, Exodus – I was listening to all that stuff, but at the same time I still had this prog rock side, listening to Rush and Yes and everything. Once I formed Dream Theater with John Myung and John Petrucci, there we were in this practice room at Berklee; while everybody else was playing jazz standards, we were jamming Iron Maiden and Rush tunes. So we stuck out like a sore thumb. If you go to Berklee now, there’s a lot of metalheads and these Dream Theater kids, wannabes, that go there because they want to learn to be like Dream Theater, but when we were there, we stuck out like a sore thumb.

SD: Do you think by the time you guys started to gain momentum, there seemed to be a bit of a void there in this progressive metal style?

MP: Absolutely. I think Dream Theater’s success was because we were in the right place at the right time, or I should say at the right place at the wrong time, because nobody else was really doing what we were doing. Even though Dream Theater started in ‘85, our first album was in ‘89; we didn’t really break till ‘92 with our second album. In ‘92, really all of the bands in the ‘80s – like Metallica, Maiden, Queensrÿche – they were starting to [play] more commercial stuff. Metallica was doing the Black Album, Queensrÿche was doing Empire... So by the time Dream Theater broke through in the early ‘90s, the prog metal bands weren’t really doing it anymore. You had the underground bands like Fates Warning and Watchtower, but none of them had a major label push. Really the mainstream stuff in the metal world was starting to turn to more grunge stuff, so when Images and Words came out in ‘92, suddenly here we were on a major label, a metal band but with real prog elements, and I guess it spoke to people. I remember people saying they first heard Dream Theater on the radio with ‘Pull Me Under’ in 1992, and it was just a breath of fresh air from everything else that radio was playing at that time.

SD: That concept of epic always seems to come up in conversations about progressive music and I would argue that your music has an epic quality to it. Does that term mean anything to you, and if so what does it mean to have an epic approach to your music?

MP: To me, an epic song first of all has to exceed the eight-minute mark – preferably the 10 to 12 minute mark – but I’ll count an eight-minute song. Something like ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ OK, that’s epic but it’s not “epic” the way that us prog people know epics. But to me, a true epic is something that as length, it’s got peaks and valleys, ups and downs, musical twists and turns, something that defies traditional arrangements – not verse-chorus-verse-chorus-solo-out – you want to have different musical passages. All of my favorite songs, all of the classics are the ones that are epics.

SD: What are the strains that you guys put yourself through to perform this music?

MP: I’ve had countless physical incidents through the years as a result of pushing myself musically. One time in Munich back in ‘97, I just bit off more than I could chew with a fill, and I felt like a muscle sprain. I thought I just pulled a muscle, and I looked down and this hand was completely twisted and facing upward; I literally dislocated my wrist and it was facing the other way, and I just turned blue. Luckily it was last song of the show, but I had to continue playing the rest of the show Rick Allen style, which isn’t easy for Dream Theater music, and then immediately went off to the hospital and had to play the rest of the tour in a sling.

SD: How did things change for you after Images and Words in terms of the momentum, the attention, the touring and the growth of the band? How did things change for you guys after that point?

MP: After Images and Words we spent a couple years living in the shadow of ‘Pull Me Under’s success. The record company – on the Awake album the Falling Into Infinity album – was constantly chasing the next single, and we were not supposed to be a singles band. That was never part of our game plan. So for a couple of albums after Images and Words, it was tough playing the industry game, and upon almost packing it in and breaking up as a result of that, we finally put our foot down in ‘99 and told everyone to get out of our way or else we’re going to break up and that’s gonna be the end of it. We started producing our own albums – no more outside producers. We told the record company, “You’re not gonna hear a single note till the record is done. If you don’t like these terms, then we’re done. We’re not interested in doing this anymore unless these are the way we’re gonna do it.” So once we started regaining all of our independence with Scenes From a Memory, which ended up being a great success, it proved a lot to the record company at the time that we could play by our own rules. All the remaining albums through the 2000s, it was just an uphill climb and we suddenly were able to write our own rules. A little later into our career [we] hooked up with Roadrunner Records and were able to have their support and understanding of what we did. Those last 10 years for me with the band were incredibly productive and satisfying in terms of artist development.

SD: Last question and I’ve asked everyone from Iggy Pop to Billy Gibbons to Bill Ward: what does heavy metal music mean to you? What does it do for you and why continue to love it?

MP: It’s always been summed up to me just by three words: “balls and chunk”! I wanna hear music that has balls and chunk. I love progressive music, I love listening to Yes and Pink Floyd and Genesis, but at the end of the day, I wanna just crank up something loud and f***ing head bang, play air guitar and air drums, and I need that adrenalin.