Jordan Rudess interview (excerpts)

You guys are back with a new release, and it’s universally being accepted by fans, which I’ve got to assume for you guys, after the turmoil from the last record, feels really good?

Turmoil? Interesting. Anyway, yes it feels awesome. It’s nice to work on something so hard and then you put it out and have everybody enjoying it and coming back with a positive kind of attitude. It’s great.

‘The Astonishing’ – was this record kind of, like, a reaction to that album? It was a polarizing record, it’s really the first time in your career that you guys kind of had any sort of significant backlash from at least a portion of your fan base. Was this record kind of, like, written as a reaction to that?

Not really. I think of it this way: Dream Theater had a long career and we were at a point where we could try something we wanted to do that was creatively different and enjoyable. So we definitely went down a path that we wanted to pursue. We’re not flying, we’re pretty aware of what’s going on, we knew what we were doing, we knew not everybody was going to love it because it was gonna be a little bit different. But we felt a desire to go down that path and we put together a big show around it – probably Dream Theater’s biggest production ever – ‘The Astonishing.’ No surprise some people came back and were, like, ‘I’m not into it,’ or whatever, because it was not supposed to be that kind of thing. For this album, it’s important after doing ‘The Astonishing,’ which was written by John Petrucci and myself, to go back to what the band’s been about for the, you know, since the onset of the career, which is about the group kind of energy. Return to form, if you will, going more into a core kind of sound what we’ve been known for, you can only depart from that so much without totally not being who you are.

In the past, especially when Portnoy was still in the band, you guys would kind of go into the writing of a record with a specific focus in mind. Like, ‘Train of Thought’ was supposed to be this classic heavy-metal album, ‘Octavarium’ was supposed to be very progressive. Did you do it with this one or was it just kind of, ‘Get in a room, crank it up, see what comes out’?

No, everything is very conscious with Dream Theater, we always make a plan. Sometimes we’ll even have a written game plan that everybody agrees on and that’s one of the things that we’re really true to. I would say one of the talents of the band beyond creating music is to kind of understand what we want or need to create, setting up that goal and really work towards it and, in my opinion, often getting to it and accomplishing it. So we knew with this album that we wanted to create songs that were a little bit shorter in general, more focused, more riff-based, but at the same time keeping the prog, kind-of virtuosic elements that define us. We definitely went in there with that kind of an attitude, if you will, and worked towards that.

Were there any takes that you kind of jammed but turned out so well that it actually ended up in the final mix?

The first thing that comes to mind is that the song ‘S2N.’ At the end of it, there’s an extended keyboard lead that I just played – that was my first try when we were just laying it down to get it so we could record drums; that was my lead. We decided at the end – that was the one.

In addition to Dream Theater, you also have a solo record that’s getting ready to come out. Talk a bit about ‘Wired for Madness.’

Cool. So, ‘Wired for Madness’ is my newest album, it’s coming on April 19th on Mascot Records and it is a huge project for me. It’s a big, kind of like rock, progressive, sometimes even electronic album. All my influences, they’re pouring through it. I spent my whole life in music, in many many different styles, and I really feel a strong desire and inspiration to get those out. So composing for my solo album was a chance for me to explore all my different influences from very progressive things like Gentle Giant, things that wouldn’t necessarily belong in a Dream Theater kind of stylistic mix, to my classical influences to electronic things... So a very big project, very proud of it, had a lot of great guests – as a matter of fact, James [LaBrie] and John Petrucci have guests appearances as well.