David Prater interview (excerpt)

(note: the whole interview reads suspiciously similar to one on Eonmusic.co.uk published 5 months earlier that the “author” of this article responded to in the comments – not sure if the same interview or if Dan Warren copied most of the questions from the Eonmusic piece for his own)

DW: Tell us about the transitional period for Dream Theater on “Images and Words” and “A Change of Seasons”

DP: Bear in mind, we are talking about two completely different organisms; the musical DNA between those albums was totally dissimilar. To begin with, keyboardist Kevin Moore quit during the making of Dream Theater’s 2nd album, “Alive”. Most people don’t realize that the reason the first record, “Images and Words” was successful, was due in large part to Kevin’s compositions and creative input into the Dream Theater sound. He’s really brilliant. Without question, he’s a student of songwriting in the traditional sense. He didn’t only listen to Fate’s Warning or Symphony X; he studied a wide pallet of material from a compositional perspective. As a result, on “Images and Words” there was a unique sense of musical texture, melodic structure, melodic phrasing, chord changes and so on. Working with the songs on that record was a joy because compositionally they took a listener somewhere. As a result, it was much easier for me to be able to craft the story line. When each composition ended, I tried to leave the listener with a crescendo: a climax. ‘Change of Seasons’ could not have been more different. First of all, it was 22mins, 5 seconds for one song. That would have been half of ‘Images and Words’ total running time. Regardless, I was deeply appreciative of being asked to produce it for them, however, after Kevin quit things just weren’t the same...