John Petrucci, James LaBrie interview

Barbara Caserta: You’re here presenting the new album, Distance Over Time, 14th album in 33 years. A long, long journey, I must say. What’s the scenery of this leg of this magical Dream Theater journey?

John Petrucci: There was some really good scenery around this new album because the whole band went away to a private spot in upstate New York in the Catskill Mountains by Woodstock. We were in a beautiful studio that was a converted barn. It had big windows so we could look outside and see deer, badgers, trees, bears and everything else, so it was a really very peaceful and very cool vibe that we had during the writing and recording.

BC: Was this the first time that you actually worked like that – nights and days together, and sharing pretty much 24 hours writing and doing it all – was it the first time for Dream Theater?

James LaBrie: Yeah! The closest we came to that was when we were doing Images and Words, we lived together in a house, but the music was already written. The difference with Distance Over Time [was that] from the inception of the album, we were there living together. I think the advantage to that was when we weren’t even writing or in the studio, we were still engaging in conversation and hanging out just like we’re brothers. We’ve known each other for so long, so whether we’re talking about life, it would ultimately come back to the music. I think that was great because it was always furthering the experience and ultimately the music.

BC: Were you doing [it] all by yourselves? I mean [was] there somebody of you cooking for the others for example?

JP: We were cooking for each other, so we did make breakfast a few times, we had barbecue. James cooked, I cooked, Mike Mangini cooked. But we did have our engineer there and we had my guitar tech, Maddi, who does everything for us, so when we didn’t want to cook, which was most of the time, Maddi would be the one to go grocery shopping and make sure to go and get it. And it was actually really good food up in Monticello, New York where we were. We were eating Greek food, Italian food and barbecue and—

JL: But we started out thinking, “Hey, we’ll take turns every day, and we’ll cook!” No! It’s not gonna happen!

BC: You have stuff to do. Monticello actually sounds like an Italian kind of place. Why that place? Why New York? Was there any special reason? Actually why close to Woodstock?

JP: It all kind of worked out, that kind of area of the East Coast. It could have been anywhere – Pennsylvania, New York, even New England – there’s a lot of beautiful areas at that time of year where you get nature, mountains and lakes. But it just happened to be Monticello because there was this property with the perfect structure; there was this barn that was built to be a film and recording studio, but the previous owner sold it and took all the equipment out, so it was just this empty beautiful space with a little house on the property. So it just happened to be the perfect place for us to live and then write the record. Ultimately, we ended up recording it there as well, which we didn’t plan.

BC: So it wasn’t planned.

JP: No! We were just gonna write and then move out of there and go into maybe a Manhattan studio, but it was so nice and we were like, “Why are we leaving?!”

JL: It sounded amazing – the room.

JP: It’s already a studio, but there was no equipment, so we told Maddi and Jimmy T, our engineer, “Turn it into a recording studio!” and they brought everything in, God bless them. They did an amazing job and we turned it into a recording studio.

BC: What about in instruments? Did you have everything set up already? Did you compose as a band?

JP: Yeah.

BC: OK, so this time was really a total absolute experience for Dream Theater.

JP: Yeah. If you could see some pictures, the place was packed – filled with the guitars and drums and basses and keyboards everywhere. We set up all of our live equipment and we just played loud and live, and wrote the record that way. That’s why the record has so much energy and it has a lot of fun to it. A lot of spirit.

BC: Which was the longest track to finish from the beginning to the end? The toughest one?

JL: It’s so funny when you tell people, “Well, what was it, three days?” Was it ‘Pale Blue Dot’?

JP: I’m not sure. It’s a funny thing, because the writing pace that we have – and it’s always been this way – it’s pretty quick. Once all the guys are together, we’re kind of locked into an idea and everybody starts to think and trade ideas, it happens really quickly. We can start an idea at the beginning of the day, and by the end of the night, it will either be done or almost done, and it’ll spill into the next day. Like James said, maybe three days at the most. I’m trying to think which song took the longest... Maybe ‘Pale Blue Dot’... But I’m not sure. We wrote all the music in about 18 days.

BC: Do you ever fight over ideas?

JL; [joking] Oh we get in scraps every day!

BC: Or was [it] like, “Yes James, you were right. This was what I was thinking about.”

JL: No! There’s no contentious situation that’s going on, none whatsoever.

BC: What about the lyrics? Was there a toughest lyric to write for you or did they come fluently and smoothly?

JL: I guess we’re all different when we approach lyrics. If I’m speaking on my behalf, when I write a lyric... It’s only happened maybe three times where I’ve written a lyric in a day. But generally speaking, it’s two to three weeks because I write a thousand words out, and then I start seeing lines that make sense to me, and then I fine tune it.

BC: But is it getting harder over the years?

JL: No, it’s always been that process with me; it’s always been like that. So it’s really nothing new. I come to expect [those] little moments of frustration. I’m like, “Why can’t I get past this line?! I know what I wanted to say,” or “Why can’t I say what I’m thinking?” It’s really very strange at times writing lyrics, but that’s my experience with lyrics.

JP: Actually, [for] this one, I had a really easy time; I hate to say that. The hardest thing sometimes it’s trying to think of a topic, but for me, once I kind of latch on to a topic – what this song is gonna be about – it’s usually pretty smooth. Sometimes when you have all this music written and then you think about “OK, we need lyrics for everything—”

BC: So for you it’s always the music first.

JP: Yeah, it’s always the music first, but sometimes it becomes a little overwhelming, like, “Oh my God! We gotta come up with all these lyrics!” But this time it was really fast – I don’t know – it might have been the setting; maybe the peacefulness of the environment. It went very quickly for me.

JL: It’s funny you say that, but it’s always been the music first. With me, even though I’ve written out words, I’ll go, “This would be a great idea,” to do lyrically, I’ve had things that I’m absolutely sure is gonna be my next lyric, and then when I hear the song and the melody – because I always feed off of the vocal melody to construct the lyrics – I can’t tell you how many times I’m just, “Forget that subject! I’m not even going anywhere near it, because it’s the way that the music first and foremost moves me, it almost dictates what I want to write about, and then the melody itself is almost a must for me before I even write the actual words.

BC: And John, you also produce the record. Do you live a sort of dualism or I must say trialism between composition recording and producing, and in which role you are the most demanding with yourself and with the band?

JL: Every role!

JP: Yeah! [laughs] It’s a really good way to put it. In fact, when the record was being mixed by Ben Grosse, sometimes we’d have discussions about certain parts of the sound of the record, and he would say to me, “Well, are you wearing your producer hat right now, or your guitar player hat?” because he would say, “Your producer hat would definitely leave it alone right now,” So for me, the producer role [has] a lot of details involved with that: working out how we’re gonna do the record, where we’re gonna do it, who we’re gonna hire... Logistics like that, and then following through to this is the kind of record we talked about doing. Now I feel like my biggest job is to make sure we stay on track to do that. So by the time we’re done, we can all look at each other and say, “We accomplished what we set out to do,” so that’s my biggest role, and I guess I’m the most demanding with that. But when I’m in guitar-player mode, then I’m really demanding with that, because I want it to all be as good as it could be, so I kind of like to sort of switch. But as a producer, I think my biggest thing is to be able to step back and be able to see it as a big picture and make sure that we’re staying on track.

BC: You are still mainly defined as progressive metal. Do you think that it still fits Dream Theater or is it in some way too limiting at this point?

JL: No, I think it’s always fit Dream Theater, from the very beginning – especially in this album. I mean, progressive metal speaks for itself. Those have always been the predominant elements in Dream Theater musically – that we are a progressive band, we have a direction that we go in musically and that influence in each and every one of us, but there’s also where we’ve been hugely influenced and we’ve always wanted to be a part of metal. So it’s natural for us to be a progressive metal band in many ways.

BC: What is most metal in your attitude? Is it just the sound or there’s more? Also, prog is considered in a sense as the evolution of classical music; do you agree on that?

JL: I think it all stems from classical music, if you think about it. And then even [the] blues came from it if you read back on some of the earlier blues artists. There was at some point where they were listening to classical music and jazz and stuff like that, and then blues morphed into rock. Led Zeppelin – one of the greatest bands ever – who were rock/metal as far as I’m concerned, but a lot of their roots are blues.

JP: The thing that to me defines the metal part of it is in the sound; the sound and the attitude. Because the progressive part, and everybody maybe looks at this differently – I know in Italy there’s a big, big history of progressive bands and the culture embracing that. For me growing up, I associated it with a lot of the UK prog, so Yes and Genesis and all that. But all those bands had, especially in in the guitar side, like a softer sort of sound, and so the whole metal thing comes from the heaviness, whether it’s drop tunings or whether it’s just the type of guitar sound and the aggression; the same with the drums. So the way that you treat the guitar sound, the drum sound and bring that attitude into the songwriting style, that’s the metal part of it. This is like easy for me to say as a guitar player, but if you look at rock music, the guitar sound in the music determines the style of the band.

BC: Also the dynamics of the drums.

JP: You know, you’re a hundred percent right, I agree. So those two instruments really—

JL: They’re kind of feeding off of one another.

JP: Yeah. And then shape the sound of the band; you can take it in certain directions. So if you’re going with a heavy Metallica kind of guitar sound and that sort of drum sound you’re describing, it’s gonna have a metal edge to the sound, whereas you could if you go more like UK prog, whatever, and it’s kind of like more of a Steve Howe/Yes guitar sound and more of a jazz sort of inspired drum sound, it’s gonna go in that direction. To me that’s a good way of looking at it.

BC: This is your first record on InsideOut/Sony Music. What at this point in your career, determinates the changing of your label; is it different than 20 years ago? Are your choices actually determined by different things or a different approach?

JL: A huge part of your career is who you have representing you, and the people that understand you and the people that are working with you to promote who and what you are musically. You have to have the right team at your side. We were fortunate – for many years, we were with Warner. Our going into someone like Sony/InsideOut, a lot of the catalyst for that was Thomas Waber, who’s been first and foremost a fan of the band back in the Images and Words days. So it was almost like he was always on the fringe and we could always be interacting with him and speaking about music. It was almost like it’s not if it’s gonna happen, it’s when is this gonna make sense to be with someone like this? Over the years, the conversations became a little bit more directed towards, “Well seriously, let’s consider this,” and “This is what I hear from the band,” and “This is how I see the band,” and “This is what I’d like to do with the band.” I think that was a very big reason why we went with InsideOut and Sony was ‘cause they said to us what we wanted to hear and not to be misinterpreted with lip service because there’s a lot of that out there, promising you something that you feel as if it’s too good to be true. But I think you also have to look at the source: where is it coming from and what is their history, and what have they done in the industry? That kind of gives you a good indication; ‘Is this who I want to be associated with?’ because they’ve proven themselves.

BC: But did the deal actually finish or you just wanted to change at this point? What happened? Was it your decision or it actually simply end?

JP: When we were a young band, apart from the very first record we did – from Images and Words on – we very, very stupidly and naively signed a really long record contract.

JL: It was seven albums.

JP: It was eight albums. So we were basically in the same contract continuously for eight albums. And a lot of times with record labels, they’ll do long deals with young bands, but they won’t pick up the next option; they’ll drop the band. They never dropped us.

JL: It’s like, “Let us go!”

JP: So originally [when] we got signed, it was called Atco Records, and then eventually it was EastWest Records, and then it was EastWest America, then Elektra, and we stayed the whole time! So when that deal actually ended, it was time. Then we signed with Roadrunner Records and we did several albums with Roadrunner; we actually re-signed the second time, but we were smarter this time, where we signed shorter deals. So at the end of a three album cycle or two albums, then the contract is up for renewal or looking towards something else. So in this case the Roadrunner deal was up and we started looking at all the options out of there, and as James said, Thomas had been wanting to sign the band for a really long time and the time really felt right. And he’s been fantastic; the label has been amazing. This is all new experiences with the people at Sony and InsideOut; they’ve been great.

BC: Back to the sound of the record; it’s very interesting the choice of Ben for the mix which has a very strong, heavy feel; but you chose for the mastering Tom Baker, which is famous for working with the Stones, Bowie, Santana, so it seems two different worlds; how did you make this choice and why?

JP: As far as picking Ben, I’m a big fan of his, so if you take a look at his discographies, it’s unbelievable. He’s done such a wide range of work, but I love the way that he gets a really powerful and big sound, and based on the kind of record we were doing that was kind of towards the heavier edge that had a lot of power to it, I wanted to make sure that it was mixed that way. There was a fine line – and Ben really understood this – because we didn’t want the album to sound like over-hyped; we wanted to keep the organic nature of the barn, and Ben kept that. But we also wanted it to really speak and be powerful, so that’s why we chose Ben and I couldn’t be happier; he is unbelievable at what he does. He had suggested Tom and we never worked with Tom before, and he did a fantastic job as well. So all new things on this record: new record label, new way of making it, new mix engineer, new recording engineer, and a new mastering engineer. So besides the band members—

JL: Everything else is new except us.

JP: But it’s fun to do that, ‘cause you get new perspectives on your music, and I think in this case, it turned out really well. [I’m] so happy with it.

BC: About the cover artwork, which is great and was created about your longtime collaborator Hugh Syme, who worked with Rush, Iron Maiden, Stone Sour and with you, of course. It brings some Shakespeare reference ‘to be or not to be’; how did he [come] to it and did you have different designs to choose from, or was it just this one? Also, what about The New York Times’ similar; what happened?

JL: We were all flabbergasted. We were shocked! John sent it out to the bandmembers, and of course we’re all like, “What?! What’s going on? Is this for real?!” You can’t help but think, because we had released what the album cover would be two weeks before that was the cover of The New York Times. So we’re like, “Is this a coincidence?” It’s anyone’s guess at this point. Was it somebody who was a fan that worked at The New York Times? That’s my theory. They saw it, “Hey, this is really cool! I’ll just suggest it.” But who really knows? Is it coincidental? I’ve got a hard time believing it. That’s me personally.

JP: It freaked us out.

BC: You can resell it as ‘We were on the cover of The New York Times!’

JP: There ya go!

JL: They just need to put ‘Dream Theater’ on there.

BC: It was just part of the plan!

JP: First of all, Hugh Syme is awesome. We love working with him – he’s so creative and he’s done so many records for us, so many covers. But originally the idea for Distance Over Time – because the title came from this formula we had for velocity, which is V equals D over T – and so we always had in mind using D over T because it’s kind of a clever; it has two initials of Dream Theater and means ‘distance over time’. So originally Hugh actually started working on a concept which just featured D over T; it was very minimalistic, and he’d done several different versions of it and we had seen a bunch of these things, and the guys were like, “I don’t know about this,” [the] record label was like, “Maybe, I’m not sure,” and Hugh kept saying, “I have something else. I’m just gonna wait to show it to ya.” We were working on this D over T, and I actually loved it, and some of it ends up being in the packaging which you’ll see when you get it. So you’ll see some of the original D over T stuff, so it didn’t go to waste. But when it was being received with a little bit of trepidation, he was like, “All right, I’m gonna show you this other idea,” and he showed this Hamlet, and I was like, “That’s awesome!” and showed it to all the guys and the label, and everybody was like, “Thumbs up! Great! That’s it!” So Hugh’s super creative and super clever, but The New York Times thing, for anybody that doesn’t know here in Italy, like James said, two weeks later, the cover of their weekly magazine or bi-weekly, whatever, was the same thing. It’s just in reverse, and so we were, like, “What the hell is going on?!” There was a tweet that went out where fans were talking about it. I think the art director for The Times chimed in and said, “Oh, sometimes that happens, there’s similarities.” So I don’t know. It’s just bizarre.

BC: Maybe someday you’ll know.

JP: Maybe we will. It could be some bizarre cosmic coincidence. Who knows?

JL: The art director from The Times will get fired, and then he’ll reveal the truth.

BC: About the tour, which starts from the US in March, the news said that you’re going to perform some of the new record, some older songs, and Scenes From a Memory: Metropolis part 2 in its entirety. So it’s going to be a lot of fun of course, but a very, very long show. Why that album in particular to play in its entirety and actually how long will be the show?

JL: Well, it’s the 20th anniversary, 2019, for Scenes From a Memory, so we wanted to give it a nod. The best way to pay homage to it is to play it, so that’s one of the reasons. The other reason [is] it was a fan favorite, it was a huge album for us, and I think we were pretty sure, like, “Let’s take advantage of the moment.” The fact that it is the 20th anniversary, we know that the fans around the world completely embrace that album. It just makes sense. As far as doing the other songs from previous albums and then a few songs from this album or however many it might be, that’s where the difficulty lies. It gets harder and harder as time goes on for this band to decide on a set, or it might have to be several sets.

JP: We have to mix it up. It’s hard with venue door times and curfews, it’s hard to do a show longer than three hours. So with an intermission, two sets—

JL: Not to mention we’re human beings!

JP: It might be two and a half hours only or something like that.

BC: Do you know when Italy will be planned already but you cannot tell?

JP: Right now, the plan [is] North America, and that’s all indoor shows. Over the summer, we’re gonna be doing a lot of festival shows over here in Europe, and intersperse some indoor shows, but it might not be until later on in the year where we bring the full, proper show that we’re talking about now – the indoor version – to Italy. So it will definitely come here, because a Dream Theater tour would not be a tour without coming to Italy, but it might be later in the year; we’re just not sure.

BC: For the festivals, you’ll have a shortage set?

JP: Yeah. Some of those festivals we headline, some of them we don’t. We’re doing Download Festival in the UK, so some of them are shorter where we play an hour, and some of them we have more time – an hour and a half, two hours.

BC: In 2018 one of the most shared April Fools tricks on the 1st of April in Italy was Dream Theater touring with a double drum kit with both Mike’s – Mike and Mike – banging together on the same stage with the band. [laughs] The fact that you John and Mike Portnoy actually remained very, very good friends generated some hope in the fans; do you think that something like that – having two drum kits on stage –is something that could ever happen?

JP: Oh my God! That would be insane! Was part of the April Fool’s that I shaved my beard, as well? [laughs]

BC: [laughs] Yes!

JP: That’s so funny. So that was an actual April Fool’s? That’s hysterical!

BC: Yeah. And it was very much shared, and people started to believe it was true.

JP: Oh my God!

BC: Because it was such a huge news, you don’t care that it’s April first. It was insane, a lot of people [said] “Hey! They’re coming back together with two drummers!”

JP: And part of it was, “The new album is Metropolis part 3!” [laughs]

BC: So that’s something that will never happen; it remains an April Fool? [laughs]

JP: Well, we’d have to have two guitar players, two singers, two keyboard players, two bass players.

JL: There’s gotta be two of everything.

JP: Exactly. [laughs]