Mike Portnoy interview (excerpts)

Niclas Müller-Hansen: First off, I never thought Mike Portnoy would have something in common with Warrant.

Mike Portnoy: Let me see if I can guess! I can do “six degrees” to almost anybody and I’ve played the “six degrees to Kevin Bacon game” and I’m connected to everybody, but you may have stumped me with this one. Ok, what is it?

NMH: Hugh Syme. (cover artwork)

MP: Oh! He did a Warrant album?

NMH: Yes, apparently he did the Cherry Pie album cover.

MP: Well, there you go! Warrant just gained some serious credibility in my book. [laughs] Some serious much needed credibility.

NMH: He’s done some really cool album covers, such as Unruly Child, World Trade, Rush and of course Dream Theater.

MP: Yeah, Hugh’s done everything and as far as I’m concerned, he’s one of the three legends out there. Hugh Syme, Storm Thorgerson and Roger Dean. As far as I’m concerned, those are the three album cover gods. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Storm on two covers and with Hugh on at least six or seven. I used to work with him hand in hand on all the Dream Theater covers. It was pretty much he and I that always worked together on those and after I left Dream Theater, I really wanted to continue working with Hugh and we actually almost had him do the first Flying Colors album, but we had scheduling conflict with a personal issue he was going through, so ended up not being able to do it. Then when it came time to do the new Flying Colors, I reelected him to do it and it was nice to reunite with him and work with him again. Always a pleasure.

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NMH: With all the bands you’re playing with, like Flying Colors and The Winery Dogs, are you more musically satisfied now, compared to your time in Dream Theater?

MP: Oh my god! Yeah, absolutely 1000%! This isn’t a knock towards them, this is merely a factual observation, but in the last four years those guys have made two albums and maybe written a total of 20 songs and that’s it! And then performed those 20 songs over and over. What I have done now has been so unbelievably musically rich and satisfying. I’ve done about a dozen albums in the past four years, with everybody from Flying Colors to Transatlantic to The Winery Dogs to Adrenaline Mob to Avenged Sevenfold to Bigelf and I’ve played on stage with Stone Sour, Fates Warning and with the guys from Megadeth, Slayer, Pantera, Anthrax. If you look at what I’ve been able to do over the last four years, my God, I’ve stuffed five careers into it over the course of the last four years! I cannot express enough of how unbelievably musically satisfying it’s been and each one of these bands and projects and albums and shows and tours are so different from each other. They have given me the chance to explore so many styles in different directions. I think I have been more musically rewarded in the last four years, than the prior 30.

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NMH: I believe you were 22 years old when the first Dream Theater album was released. After all these years in the music business, what advice would today’s Mike Portnoy give to your 22 year old self?

MP: The advice I would give, wouldn’t be applicable to the 22 year old Mike Portnoy, because the 22 year old Mike Portnoy was making music in a very different world. When we were making music at the start of Dream Theater’s career, you needed a record company, you needed a record deal and you needed major recording studio in order to make an album. Now, the world that the 47 year old Mike Portnoy lives in, is very, very different. People can make records on their own and promote records on their own, so the advice I would give, as an answer to your question, would be “maintain as much independence as you can! Don’t give your music away! Hold the cards yourself and don’t give any of that creative or financial leverage to somebody else!”. But like I was just saying, I don’t think the 22 year old Mike Portnoy could’ve done that, because it was a very different world in the late 80’s, early 90’s. Now luckily, I can give that advice to my 15 year old next Portnoy, “Hey, you can make a record in your home, promote it through Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and you don’t need to sign a 7 record deal with a label in order to be heard.” Luckily, kids today can be heard on their own terms, which is a great thing. As much as it sucks that the industry is going through what it’s going through and I feel bad about that, but on the other hand there’s a part of as the artist, that going “Yeah, awesome!” Finally the artists are getting their music back, because throughout the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, for all those years the record companies and corporations were owning the artists and the artists were starving and being fucked. Finally, all these years later, and it sucks it had to happen this way, but finally the artists are getting their music back and not of the mercy of corporate record companies. As much as the record companies don’t want to hear me saying that, but it’s great.

NMH: Do you have any regrets in your life? Any musical regrets?

MP: I don’t think I do. I think there’s a difference between regret and... let me rephrase that. I actually have a tattoo on me that says “No regrets” and I actually try to live by that. I find that there’s lots of actions you take in your life and if it turns out to be something that brings a result that you didn’t want or you weren’t anticipating, it’s not something you should regret, it’s just simply something you should learn from. There’s a lot of things in my life that I’ve learned from and ultimately I don’t regret them, because they got me to where I am right now. I’m as happy as I’ve ever been and as musically fulfilled as I’ve ever been. There’s a quote that I love and I kind of used it in the song ‘Repentance’ and it’s “It’s better to regret something you’ve done, than something you haven’t done” and I absolutely love that! I’m not gonna use the Dream Theater example because I can already see the headlines, so I won’t say it! [laughs] I’ll paraphrase like this, when I came to that crossroad four years ago, if I hadn’t made the decisions I had, I probably would’ve spent the rest of my life wondering what if? “What if I left the band?” I think it’s better to follow your heart and take the risk, than wonder what could’ve been.