Mike Portnoy interview (excerpts)

Craig Garber: You’re also proficient at bass and guitar? How the hell’d you find time to learn that?

Mike Portnoy: I wouldn’t say proficient. I mean I could get around and I could convey ideas, but I’m not really a great player. I taught myself those instruments the same way I told myself drums really. I always wanted to be more than just a drummer. Even when I started as a kid, I started on the piano and even though I migrated to the drums, I was always interested in the bigger picture of music, in general. And that’s when I went off to Berklee for college, it was not about the drums it was about all the other stuff: music theory or harmony, sight singing, ear training, arranging – I was taking all those classes. So for me, it was never about the drums; to me it was about music in general. So picking up a guitar and a bass was obviously a natural thing for me to do because it was never about the drums – it just happened to be the seat I sat in and ended up going down that road.

CG: Very cool. It’s great that you’re talented to do all three. You ever considered doing anything else besides music, or was it always like you knew? Because I know you got turned on to it young by your dad.

MP: Yeah, I would say I have just a big a passion for a film as I do about music, but I’ve never done anything. I mean I’ve always directed like all the Dream Theater live DVDs. And even the DVDs I’ve put out with Sun Of Apollo or any of the other bands I’m a part of now. I’ve always overseen the concert portion of performance videos and stuff like that. But anyway in answer to your question, my biggest love beyond music is film. I mean filmmakers and directors – people like Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson, the Coen Brothers... I mean those guys are as big of a artistic inspiration on me as my musical heroes, and I spend probably just as much time watching films and well-made TV these days as I do listening to music.

CG: You never wanted to be like an accountant or anything like that.

MP: Oh no no no. I can’t do anything – anything other than drumming. You ask my wife. If I had to change the lightbulb in the house, it’s a four-hour process. But thank God I know how to play drums, because I definitely can’t do anything else.

CG: [laughs] I want to say one thing: when you left Dream Theater, I really give you a lot of credit for doing that, because ending a 25-year relationship – whether it’s professional or personal – is not an easy thing to do. Honestly that took a lot of balls. I was curious, if you’re comfortable answering: how long did it take for you not being in Dream Theater for that to be your new norm, and what did you learn from that experience of leaving, like as a personal growth thing for you?

MP: That’s funny you said I have balls, because I had a lot of friends that when I did that, that was their response. I remember talking to Scott Ian from Anthrax like the day after or whatever and that’s exactly what he said. He’s like, “Man that takes balls. I admire your balls.” I mean, yeah, it was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make. Twenty-five years, it was my baby, from formation to all the way. The level that the band was at, at that point, twenty-five years later. And there was a lot of perseverance to get there. So to walk away from it was one of the hardest things I’ll ever have to do, really. It was something I had to do. And during that time, I was always the most hands-on guy in the band. I think since then, they’ve gone on to delegate things and share things, but it’s easy to forget at this point that at that stage, I was the one that was overseeing the merchandise and the fan clubs and the web sites and the music and the lyrics and the melodies and the production – all that stuff, and it was exhausting. I just needed a break. I was burnt – I was burnt out on all of that. I don’t want to get into the whole breakup in the split, but it was something I had to do, or else I would have been regretful. People ask, “Do you have any regrets about that?” I love the quote that “it’s better to regret something you have done than something you haven’t done.” And I think that’s where I was at – I was at a point where if I had stayed, I probably would have been resentful for all the things that I was not able to do, because I was starting to feel trapped. And they wanted me to commit to a certain date to start the next record, and I just wasn’t ready. And it became a Mexican standoff, really. And I went with my heart and said, “Look, I’d rather regret something I have done than something I haven’t.” And I’m not saying I do regret it, because I don’t, because look at what I’ve done since then. I mean, I look at the last decade; since I left, I’ve made like 40 albums with dozens of different bands. I mean look at the list that you listed at the top of the show! I would say 80% of those things that you listed are post-Dream Theater things that I’ve been able to do and people have been able to play with... I can’t remember what your specific question on this topic was, but...

CG: It was how long does it take for that to become the norm for you, and what did you get out of that experience?

MP: Well what did I get out of it was all this amazing musical opportunities I’ve had since then. Being able to be in a band with Billy Sheehan and Richie Kotzen, and being in another band with Steve Morse, and doing another band with Alex Skolnick and David Ellefson, and on and on and on. I could list all the people I’ve played with – you already did! So yeah those are opportunities I’ve been able to pursue and wouldn’t have if I had not followed my heart. What have I learned? I learned that the Internet is a very scary thing, because that first year after the split, I just couldn’t say anything without it becoming these giant clickbait headlines on these web sites. No matter what I said, no matter how tastefully or gracefully I tried to say it, it always got twisted and misinterpreted and turned into some sort of catchphrase clickbait headline. So I learned, especially in that first year after I left, that I had to just really be careful what I said, or don’t say anything at all! I had to start to tread carefully, because we live in this age now where everything is in real time, and people – the Internet trolls – just love to bury you; they love to run with whatever they can. See when I was growing up, if somebody left a band, when Peter Criss left Kiss, you had to wait a month to read about it in Circus magazine. Or you’d join the fan clubs to get the newsletters to get the information on these bands. When I was a kid, you had to really wait to find out the news and find out the dirt. Nowadays, we live in a time where everything is in real time. When I left Dream Theater, I made a post on my web site, just explaining what was happening, and then five minutes later, it just exploded. And people were acting as if I put out some sort of press release. It wasn’t a press release – it was my feelings and my explanation of what happened. So I learned, through that whole process, you gotta be very, very careful what you say, how you say it, or if you should even say something at all or not say anything at all. These days, I try not to even talk about Dream Theater at all. I can already see what we’re talking about here is going to become a headline, and people are gonna be, like, “Why is he lingering on Dream Theater?”

CG: No, I asked you the question. Put it on me a hundred percent. And I really didn’t ask you about Dream Theater; I ask you about...

MP: Well, the point is that people don’t realize, when they see this quote on Blabbermouth, that it’s coming from a thing called an “interview”. And what these things do is a journalist will ask the artist a question, and I like to answer the question as honestly as I can, or don’t answer it at all if I choose not to. But I’m not lingering on these things – I’m answering a question that you’re asking about my career and my life and the split. And that’s what we do – we do interviews. If you can’t be honest, or can’t handle it, then you shouldn’t do interviews. But in my case, I like to be open and honest with the listeners and the fans.

CG: Thank you. I thought from a self-care standpoint, that takes a lot of guts to do.

MP: Well it did, and it wasn’t it wasn’t an easy decision. I had to spend a lot of time with my wife talking about it, but once again, no regrets. Everything happens for a reason and I’m happy and they’re happy and let’s move on to other things I’m doing now! [laughs]

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CG: This is a tough question, knee-jerk reaction: top three musical experiences you had.

MP: Wow! That’s a hard to answer because it’s been such a crazy career. I immediately think of certain concerts. The Dream Theater Score concert at Radio City Music Hall, which we put out as a DVD called Score; it was a 20th anniversary show we played with an orchestra. That was always one of the immediate knee jerk responses for me when I think of a specific show. Also Sons Of Apollo’s show with an orchestra was also amazing; we’ve recently put that out as a live DVD from Plovdiv. We did a lot of really cool covers at that show – everything from Pink Floyd to Led Zeppelin to Ozzy, Van Halen, Rainbow; that was a real special, special night too. Maybe my 50th birthday concerts aboard Cruise To The Edge. We had a series of concerts on that cruise celebrating my 50th birthday, and at them I kind of played with all of my bands. We did a set with Transatlantic, a set with Flying Colors, I debuted my Shattered Fortress project which was playing The Dream Theater 12-Step Suite for the first time with the guys from Haken, I did some Liquid Tension Experiment at those shows with Tony Levin... Once again, it’s just off the top of my head that that 50th birthday concert – or concerts – that’s another one that comes to mind. So that’s three off the top of my head, but man, there’s so many like headlining Graspop or Hellfest to like 80,000 people, headlining with Twisted Sister – that was amazing! Doing the stuff I did with Avenged Sevenfold was amazing. Playing to a hundred thousand people with Stone Sour at Rock in Rio – that was amazing. Being the musical director for Eddie Trunk’s 30th anniversary show and getting to play with like Ace Frehley and Peter Criss, amongst all these other people. So these are just off the top my head these are the ones the concerts that kind of stand out has great, the stuff of dreams for me.

CG: You grew up in Long Beach and then you I think you moved –

MP: Long Beach, New York, not Long Beach, California.

CG: Right, Long Beach, Long Island. What was your childhood like growing up?

MP: I was born April 20, 1967. That was the day that the Beatles completed Sgt. Pepper, so there was a very certain symmetry there, because I became the biggest Beatles fanatic of all time. I was born the day that they completed my favorite album of all time, so it was crazy. But I grew up surrounded by music. My dad was a rock ‘n’ roll fan; he introduced me to the Beatles and the Stones and The Who and Hendrix and all that stuff when I was literally 6 months old. I was surrounded by records everywhere and that became my passion. My mom and dad got divorced when I was about a year and a half old, so my mom raised me, and I would go visit my dad. He moved out to Carmel, California and became a rock ‘n’ roll disc jockey. But in any case, my first 10 years or so were a normal kind of New York, Long Island suburban upbringing, loving music. Around the late 70s, I got my first drum set, and at that time I was a big fan of Kiss. And then came the whole punk rock movement like Sex Pistols and the Ramones – I was really into that. Then I started discovering progressive rock, and that’s kind of how I went in that direction. But that’s my childhood in a nutshell.

CG: What was your first break musically?

MP: Well I didn’t have a break I guess until Dream Theater broke in ‘92, but at that point we had already been together seven years. My first seven years with Dream Theater – from ‘85 to ‘92 – were spent struggling and writing. We just spent all those years writing and writing and practicing and practicing and writing and waiting for our big break and so many false starts... Our first record deal ended up being horrible. Nothing happened. We ended up changing singers two or three times. So those first seven years were filled with broken promises and failed dreams, and it was the perseverance of those first seven years that made us as strong as we were. I guess the first break was when we finally put out our second album Images And Words in ‘92. Even then, it was out for about five or six months before anything happened, and then all of a sudden out of nowhere, boom! Somehow radio picked up on it and then MTV picked up on it, and we finally had a hit with Pull Me Under. That’s when the ride began. And even after the ride began, there were lots of ups and downs that still continued to follow, but that’s what I would call the quote-unquote “first big break.”

CG: Personally, what kept you hanging in there? That’s a big commitment. Where’d you get your drive from?

MP: I think that there’s a line in the song called ‘Only A Matter Of Time,’ which our keyboard player Kevin Moore wrote the lyrics to, and that song was about that faith, that perseverance we had. There’s a line in there that’s I think quote-unquote “fearless faith in destiny” and that sums it up. We knew we would achieve success if we just stuck by our guns and we followed our hearts and never gave up. I mean that can apply to anybody. That was what we took to heart, and that’s how we persevered. We believed in ourselves, we believed in the music we were writing, and we believed in the musicianship in this band. And no matter how many times we got kicked and knocked down, we just we never stayed down. We would get back up and continue on, and we knew it was only a matter of time as the song goes.

CG: That’s awesome. What were some of the bigger surprises for you early on about the business end of being a professional musician?

MP: Well, we learned a lot about the business in those years that I’m talking about here. You gotta remember the industry back in the ‘80s was very different. So when we were starting out, obviously, there was no internet, so basically you had to have a record deal if you wanted anything to happen. If you wanted to go anywhere, you had to have a record deal, and you couldn’t make a record unless you had the backing of a label to do that. So it was all about getting the record deal, and once you had it, it was all about making the record. And once you made the record, it was about the marketing. You couldn’t go anywhere without MTV back in the ‘80s. So those first many years for us – even once we got that first record deal – it still never clicked. We just had to stick with it, and we learned that the music industry could be brutal. We had to get out of our first record deal in order to sign our deal for Images And Words. We went through many singers, we went through many lawyers, we went through many different ups and downs and lawsuits and we realized that the music business is indeed a business. And a lot of people back then would think that the record deal was – I mean, yes, the record deal was the ultimate goal that you were trying to achieve, but there was a misinterpretation that that was the be-all-end-all, that was the end of the rainbow. But realistically, that was just the beginning of the struggles. [laughs] Once you had that record deal, that’s when it turns into a business. Because everything up until then is just about the music – you’re making music with friends, and you just want to write music. And then once you sign that deal, once there are other people having a piece of your pie, it never goes back to the way it was; it’s never innocent again, it’s never about the music again unless you really fight for it. And usually you don’t get that control back until years down the road where you can have the leverage to get it back. When we made Images And Words, we worked with a producer that just made that recording session very, very difficult for all of us. It was a struggle. For years, we had to work with outside producers and work with labels that were having a lot of opinions on our music, and it wasn’t until about 1999 – almost 15 years into our career – when we were making Scenes From A Memory... We were on the verge of breaking up, and we kind of just put our foot down and said, “Look, if you still want to have a band, you got to back off, get out of our hair, let us do our thing.” And at that point, myself and John Petrucci began producing the albums. I took a much bigger role in leading the band and not listening to anybody else – getting the label and management, everybody out of our hair. We didn’t have that kind of leverage until many, many albums into our career, and almost 15 years to get to that point. So we had to learn the ups and downs of the business, and we got kicked to the curb many, many times. We had to brush ourselves off and get back up, and try again.

CG: What are some of the low points, the dark periods you’ve had to deal with, and how’d you get through them?

MP: Musically, those are the ones I just mentioned. The time before Images And Words, the time leading up to the Scenes From A Memory – those were the toughest periods for Dream Theater. And then also, obviously, when I left the band, that was tough for me as well, dealing with the backlash with that and recovering from that. So in terms of my career, those were certainly the biggest moments. In terms of my life, I lost my mom in an unexpected plane crash when I was 17 years old. Something like that changes your life forever, like “boom!” at a drop of a dime when you least expect it, you lose your mom and you never see her again. That was a huge, huge thing to go through and learn from and overcome. Losing my dad as well, about 10 years ago when I was making the Dream Theater album Black Clouds And Silver Linings, I wrote a song for him called ‘The Best of Times,’ that I was able to share with him before he passed away. And it was a song that I wrote for him, thanking him for our 40 years together at that point. The fact that I was able to play that for him and hold his hand at his bedside when he was dying, playing the song and cried together, shared that gift with each other before he passed – that was also incredibly important for me. I mean I had both extremes with losing both my parents: one was completely shocking out of nowhere unexpected, and then the other was when you have months and months with somebody struggling with cancer, and you actually have that time to prepare and be with them. It’s two different extremes, neither of them are easy, but I was able to go through both of those experiences with both of my parents.

CG: That was very eloquent and meaningful – how you talked about that with your dad. I’m real sorry for your losses.

MP: Well thank you. There’s also an amazing story of my mom. I don’t want to sound like I’m trying to exploit it – it’s been told before. But I guess for those of you that never heard it, the night that my mom died in a plane crash, earlier that day there was a teacher in class giving a lesson about ‘carpe diem’ – seize the day – and was he was telling us all to appreciate life and appreciate our loved ones cuz you never know what might happen, and he said “when you get home tonight, give your mom or your dad a hug and a kiss, and tell them how much you love them, because you never know what might happen.” Sure enough, that night I go home and my mom’s getting ready to go out and get on the plane for Atlantic City with her boyfriend at the time, and I was ready to go out with my friends. I was about to run out the house, and then I remembered this ‘carpe diem’ lesson. I turned around, went back to my mom, and gave her a big hug and a kiss, and told her I loved her. And at first she was taken aback, like “Wow, what is that? Where’d that come from?” And I was like, “I just wanted you to know how much I love you.” And that was the last time I saw her. That night she died in the plane crash, and if I hadn’t been given that lesson that day, I probably would not have had that moment. So I always tell people this story just so it could change their life the way it changed mine. Me hearing that lesson changed my life forever and gave me a moment that I’ll never, ever have again, and I cherish. So yeah, it was one of those moments that was like life-changing, and I wrote the song ‘A Change Of Seasons’ in Dream Theater. There’s a whole section in the song that’s dedicated to this whole experience. With losing both my mom and dad, I wrote about in Dream Theater songs; one was ‘A Change Of Seasons’ and one was ‘The Best Of Times.’ And in both cases I found that writing those lyrics were very therapeutic to help me grow through such emotional processes.

CG: You’re very good at communicating, especially emotionally. Were you always like that?

MP: Well I think losing my mom at 17 made me grow up real fast, and it was even before that going through divorces and things like that. My mom and dad got divorced when I was a year and a half, and they each remarried and then each went through second divorces. So growing as a kid back in the ‘70s, you didn’t have the tools you have today. You had to grow up quick and learn from these things, and saddle up, get on with life.

CG: Yeah, but your ability to communicate – that’s a different skill set. Props to you. I appreciate that, because I know that at least for me that has not come easy. It’s tough to do that, so I really thank you for sharing. If you had to go back and give advice to young Mike Portnoy, assuming you’d listen, is there anything that you would have told yourself that would have made your life easier?

MP: Don’t eat the yellow snow! [lots of laughs] I don’t know. I mean, there’s always things you wish you had done differently. But realistically, I have it tattooed right here in my arm: no regrets. Everything that happens, happens for a reason, and even if it’s a setback you learn from it and you grow from it. So what advice would I give myself? I don’t know. I mean I probably wish I had said less during the split with Dream Theater. I don’t regret what happened because it was supposed to happen and it needed to happen, but maybe I regret saying as much as I did. I think maybe my honesty is sometimes a dangerous thing. So maybe sometimes it’s better to say less. All these stories we’re telling here were all learning experiences; losing parents or all the struggles with the music industry or leaving Dream Theater – these are all life experiences that you learn from and you grow from and it puts you in a certain path, and you just got to live that path the best you can.

CG: It’s funny, my wife has many times said to me, “Craig you cannot be so honest.” Because if someone tells me something, I’d rather you be brutally honest with me, because then I know what’s wrong.

MP: In real life I’ll always try to be brutally honest, but it’s when I’m doing interviews that I need to sometimes bite my tongue because not everybody knows the context of what you’re talking about. It’s like that Jack Nicholson quote from A Few Good Men – it’s like “You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth!”

CG: Do you remember the first record you ever bought?

MP: I can’t remember the first record I bought because I was surrounded by records from day one. Like I said, I remember being surrounded by these little 45s with green apples on them when I was a baby. So I had all the Beatles records and I remember listening to Tommy when it came out. I remember listening to early David Bowie albums when they came out, listening to Rolling Stone’s Satanic Majesties Request. I remember all those albums when I was a kid, but which one did I actually buy? I think I remember saving up money to buy the four Kiss albums when they came out – the solo albums in ‘78. So I think that’s the first time I could distinctly remember saving up money and then asking my Aunt Sarah to drive me to the record store to buy the four Kiss solo albums and I bought all four of them. That was I guess 1978, so I was about 11. And the funny thing is, I remember a few days later, I took him to school with me and they were stolen, so I had to go back and buy them again! I hate to say it, but I only bought Ace, Paul’s and Gene’s cuz I really wasn’t a fan of Peter’s. So I had to rebuy them, I only bought three out of four.

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CG: Are you comfortable talking about getting sober?

MP: Sure. We can briefly touch on it.

CG: The reason I mention is because I’ve had so many people talk about getting sober on the show that we had I’ve had literally dozens and dozens of listeners thanking me for sharing stories.

MP: Yeah. When you’re in AA and you’re in the program, the 12th step is about passing on the message. I wrote a series of songs while I was in Dream Theater; through early sobriety I wrote what’s now been called the 12-Step Suite. When I first got sober in 2000 the next record I was making with Dream Theater was the Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence album. When I was in Dream Theater, I was always one of the main lyricists in the band besides John Petrucci, so every album I would have two or three songs that I would always write lyrics to. We were making the Six Degrees album, and it’s like, “Okay what do I want to write about?” And at that point, I was newly sober, and going through the 12 steps was the biggest thing in my life, so that’s what I chose to write about. And I started writing the lyrics to the song ‘The Glass Prison’ and I knew I wanted to write about the twelve steps. But the twelve steps it was just too huge to tackle in one song, so I had this idea of doing a few steps per album, and I would start this ongoing series of songs that would take many songs and many albums and many years to complete, but I would go step-by-step. So for that album I wrote ‘The Glass Prison’ which was steps 1, 2 and 3. Next album I wrote ‘This Dying Soul’ which was steps 4 and 5. Next album was ‘The Root Of All Evil’ I did steps 6 and 7. Then came ‘Repentance’ which was 8 and 9. And then finally ‘The Shattered Fortress’ which was 10, 11 and 12. So it took five albums over the course of seven or eight or ten years or whatever to complete the entire 12-step story, and it was very, very therapeutic to write about each step and focus on each one. It helped me with my step work and then – like you just said – through the years, I’ve had so many countless people come to me and thanked me for those lyrics. If they were struggling with addiction... It doesn’t even have to be alcoholism; addiction could go across the board to everything from gambling to sex addiction to drugs. So writing about those 12 steps and completing those songs meant a lot to me and apparently a lot of other people that it helped as well, which is always really nice to hear. And then in 2017 for my 50th birthday, like I mentioned earlier, I for the first time ever played the five songs together which was always the intention. I left Dream Theater right after completing that process, so I never had a chance to perform it with Dream Theater. So at my 50th birthday show, we did it for the very first time with a group of amazing musicians I put together, and then we ended up throughout the year doing a tour celebrating my 50th birthday and also giving the Dream Theater fans a chance to finally hear these songs played in its entirety just for the sake of completion and getting it out of all of our systems, because it never had had a chance to happen. So we finally did that with The Shattered Fortress tour and it was it was a great experience.

CG: I guess the primary question again – if you’re comfortable – was what prompted you to get sober?

MP: Well, I would say the biggest thing was back in 2000, and my daughter was 3 years old and my son was one year old –he was just born. I always had an addiction problem, not only with alcohol and drugs, but everything. I mean look at my studio! [shows room] I can’t do anything in moderation. I’ve always known I can’t do anything in moderation. For me everything was done in excess, and that included drinking and drugging. And my kids were just born, and I knew my drinking was out of control. I mean I was literally playing on stage drunk every night and drinking myself to sleep every night. I knew it was very unhealthy activities and I knew I was out of control and I no longer controlled it, it controlled me. I would look at my heroes like John Bonham and Keith Moon that died in their 30s, and at that time I was 33 and I didn’t want to end up a rock ‘n’ roll casualty like Bonham or Keith Moon; I wanted to live to raise my kids and be a responsible father and husband, and I knew I needed to clear up and get sober in order to be able to provide that and to be able to survive. So at that point I surrendered. I admitted I was an alcoholic years before that. I knew it but I just figured “what the hell?” I could handle it. But at that point, I want to be a better father and husband and raised my kids responsibly in sober households. So that was kind of the catalyst. Wasn’t like I lost my job or I lost my wife; none of those things that happened yet, but I knew they were right around the corner if I didn’t do something about it.

CG: One other question: for people who are afraid of asking for help – because that is seems to be the toughest part – what advice or thoughts –

MP: You can’t do it alone – it’s impossible. If you’re an alcoholic, you don’t have willpower. There’s no such thing as willpower for an alcoholic or an addict. So you need a higher power, and that doesn’t necessarily mean God, it just means you need something other than yourself to help you, and that’s the first step. The first step is surrendering and admitting you have a problem and... well the second step is the actual reaching out for help, but it’s imperative. I would not have been able to do it if I didn’t surrender and go to the 12-step program and get a sponsor and have people help me. I’d proven time and time and time again on a daily basis that I couldn’t do it myself, so I had to ask for help in order to actually get over that step.

CG: I can’t thank you enough for keeping everything so real, honestly. Thank you. You’re very sincere guy. [What’s] the most important things you’ve learned about yourself?

MP: Oh God! Well, I guess you could tell from this conversation, I’m just like an OCD kind of obsessive compulsive guy. But I always knew that. I guess I could need to kind of just be comfortable in your own skin. I’ve never tried to be something I’m not. Even in the early days of Dream Theater, our roles were immediately defined by our personalities. We knew immediately John Myung was the quiet guy, John Petrucci was the consummate musician guy, and I was always like the perfectionist, running the show and directing things. And I was always the outspoken one that did the interviews. I had to look at myself all those years and that kind of helped define all of our roles within the band. In terms of my life, we’ve talked about getting sober, we’ve talked about losing people you love. I’m also been fortunate to have a great marriage I’m with my wife now for 30 years and my kids are now 20 in 22. So you have to look at yourself both honestly and know who you are in order to move on in life, but when I did get sober and I did the 12 steps with my sponsor, that was a huge part of looking at yourself and trying to better yourself. You have to make a lot of amends to people you may have hurt or done wrong things, and that process really helped me grow up a lot as well.

CG: Do you have any non-musical superpowers Mike?

MP: No. [laughs] Like I said before, I can’t even change the lightbulb! My talents are only musical and then organizational. I have a movie theater with every film broken down by director and alphabetical and chronological. I guess I apply [my organizational skills] to my music – like I’ve always been the one in every one of my bands to write the live set lists or to sequence the album order. That obsessive compulsive organizational aspect of me, I’ve been able to utilize it on a creative level. With Dream Theater I used to write different set lists for every single show; I would literally obsess in the hotel rooms on the days off doing the research. “OK, we’re in Detroit.” So I would look up the last three times we play Detroit. I’d get the setlist and will never repeat a setlist, ever. So I would write a setlist for every city that was completely different from the previous tours ,and then if we’re playing like two nights in the same town, I would write two different setlist without repeating a song between the two nights. So that’s the way I used to construct the Dream Theater set lists once we had a giant catalog to work with. So I guess that crazy OCD organizational curse was able to be a blessing at least for the fans, in that respect.

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CG: [What’s the] funniest thing that’s happened to you on stage or in the studio?

MP: Funniest... I mean everything that’s happened in Spinal Tap has happened to me. Every one of them. Falling off stages, not being able to find the stages, everything. I don’t know what the funniest is. I mean there’s been multiple times where like the intro tape will be rolling and we’re still in the dressing room, and we can’t even hear that it’s rolling, and then we head to the stage with everybody standing there silently for five minutes already. I mean I’ve had – I wouldn’t say the funniest – but the craziest thing that ever happened to me. It was back in 1997, we were playing in Munich, Germany, and it was the last song of the set, and I guess I bit off more than I could chew with this fill. I just thought I was superhuman and would be able to play the fastest fill ever, and I just go around the toms as fast as I can, and all of a sudden I feel a sharp pain. It felt like I pulled a muscle and I look over and my wrist was snapped backwards – it was dislocated with the palm of my hand facing upwards. I panicked, I turned blue. I was like, “Oh my God! What the f***?” And I had to bang my hand back into position and stick it into a bowl of ice, and finish the show with one hand. I ended up dislocating my wrist and had to go straight to the hospital at the end of the show. So that was the craziest thing that’s ever happened to me on stage by far.

CG: [What’s the] biggest change in your personality over the last ten years and how much of that change has been intentional and how much it’s just a natural part of aging?

MP: We talked about how death changed me, we talked about how sobriety changed me, but if you’re pinpointing it to the last ten years, the last ten years has been my post-Dream Theater career. I left the band coming up on ten years, so I guess that would kind of define the era that I’ve been living and learning from in the last ten years. I guess the biggest thing I’ve had to learn is how to adapt to different situations. With Dream Theater it was 25 years in the same environment with the same people and my roles were very clearly defined. I was the de facto leader of the band, overseeing 90% of the decisions. Not necessarily the songwriting – we did that together – but everything beyond the silent songwriting was in my lap. So after leaving Dream Theater, I had to learn how to adapt to very different situations, and I’ve actually grown to love these different situations. I liked carrying the load in Dream Theater and being the quote-unquote “leader” – there’s something to be said for that amount of control and being satisfied with the results and having that amount of control over the results – but since then I’ve had to learn how to be a team player, because in bands like The Winery Dogs or Flying Colors or Metal Allegiance, Sons of Apollo – in these bands it’s more of a collaborative process where I need to learn how to collaborate and we share the responsibilities in the creative process and we delegate them. So I’ve become I think a much better team player and collaborator and I’ve also had situations where I had to be just a hired gun. Playing with Twisted Sister or Avenged Sevenfold, in those cases I was just there to do a job and play drums and shut up. And I’ll tell you what: I actually really enjoyed that role! In fact, I would welcome more of it. I would love that if another opportunity like that came around, where I could just be a hired gun and play drums, because both of those tours with Avenged, with Twisted Sister were some of the favorite tours I’ve ever been a part of. So yeah, I would absolutely welcome just being the hired-gun type for any kind of situation like that if it arose in the future. So I guess I’ve had to learn how to adapt to different environments in different situations. In some cases I’m I have to play the leader, in some cases I have to be a team player and a collaborator, and in other situations I just am a hired gun and there to do a job. I’ve had to learn how to find each of those roles in every different situation I’m a part of.

CG: You sound like you’re in a good place right now and I’m happy for you.

MP: I am. It’s been a great, great life, a great career and the last 10 years in particular that we’ve been talking about here, it’s been quite a ride and a dream come true really, so I couldn’t be happier.