Mike Portnoy comments (excerpt)

When When Dream and Day Unite came out in ‘89, vinyl was still the norm; vinyl and cassettes, were the norm. It was actually exciting for me to have a CD with my music on it cause nobody had done that yet. CDs were brand new. But still, When Dream and Day Unite came out on vinyl. And here’s an interesting fact. This is the way that the cover was supposed to be, with “Dream Theater” on one line along the top. Somehow, along the way when they did the CD artwork, I guess it slipped through the cracks – I didn’t notice it until it was too late – they put “Dream” on top and “Theater” on the bottom. Almost every CD of When Dream and Day Unite has “Dream” on top and “Theater” on the bottom which makes me nuts. It was always intended to be along the top like [the vinyl version]. But in any case, this is the original, MCA/Mechanic Records, came out March 6, 1989, so over 30 years now since our debut album. Of course, Charlie Dominici and Kevin Moore were in the band back then. Not my favorite Dream Theater album, but surely so many great memories. It was so exciting to be making our first record, and we went off to Kajem/Victory Studios in Pennsylvania, where Queensrÿche had just done Operation: Mindcrime, and we were all huge fans of that album, so it was exciting to be in that same studio that they were just in for Mindcrime. In any case, we made it quick; the whole thing was done in like three weeks, including the mix, so it was kind of low-budget, but a good learning experience, and still some good moments in some of these songs. Only a Matter of Time I love, and Ytse Jam is still great. So there you go, this is where it all began.

And this is where it all took off. What can I say about Images and Words that you don’t already know and haven’t heard me say a million times? I mean, it changed our lives. It put us on the map. When this came out, we were already a band for seven years, struggling and waiting and trying. Mistake after mistake, and we just kept stepping up and brushing ourselves off, and stuck at it. All that perseverance finally paid off and this came out. And when it came out, it came out in July of ‘92, it sat around for a few months doing nothing. It took a few months before anything happened. We didn’t even start touring until September, and it wasn’t ‘til it started getting radio traction and MTV play around September/October/November, so it was actually many months after it came out before anything happened. And it was our first album with James in the band, and look at us. This was the height of grunge, and somehow we survived. I guess maybe because we were so different from that, it made us stand out, and thank God it did because here I am, still able to talk to you about it after all these years.

This was recorded on the Images and Words tour. This is Live at the Marquee. This is once again the original pressing from Korea. When we went to Korea, they had it on vinyl, so I was excited to get that. And this has Another Day... If I remember correctly, one version had Another Day and one version had Surrounded. Yep – that’s right. So this version has Another Day and this version has Surrounded. So you’d really have to buy both of these together... I’m not sure what the CDs have at this point. I forgot – it’s been so many years.

Then came Awake. We made this record in the summer of ‘94. We went out to LA and we recorded at One on One Studios, where Metallica had just done the black album, and we spent a few months there. I was preparing for my wedding; actually, I should say Marlene was preparing for our wedding while I was in LA making this. Two things that jump out thinking about those sessions: one was OJ, the whole OJ thing happened in LA when we were there and the Bronco chase and everything – same time. And then the other thing obviously is Kevin Moore leaving the band. We were in the middle of making this record and he breaks the news to us a few weeks into the session that he was leaving. We were so excited on one hand and we spent all those years waiting and waiting and being patient and persevering. Finally, we had a gold record with Images and Words, we’re finally breaking through, and Kevin leaves the band. So, even when we were at the top, we were still having those hardships and that’s what makes a band strong. But we carried on, we went on tour with this with Derek Sherinian filling in, and then eventually joining the band. Obviously, none of this stuff was ever played with Kevin Moore live, the only tour we ever did with Kevin was Images and Words, even though he’s on three albums, that was the only tour cause this tour was Derek.

One of the singles that came out from Awake was Lie. I remember this came out in England. It was a 12 inch single of Lie, and it has the Take the Time demo, Space Dye Vest, and then an edit of Lie on here as well. And it also came with a fanzine – the Images and Words fanzine – which was just starting in England at the time. That’s when the whole fan club scene and fanzine scene was very big. It was right before the internet really broke. So really, the fanzines and the fan clubs were the best way to stay in touch with the fans and do special releases and things like that.

Then came Falling Into Infinity. This was a tough time for the band. As you know, we spent a lot of time waiting to make this record. We’d originally written a double album’s worth of material and the label just kept making us wait wait wait wait. We wrote a version of Metropolis part II which later became Scenes From a Memory. But eventually, we finally got the green light to do this record, but it got chopped from a double to a single, and Kevin Shirley was brought on as a producer and did a lot of chopping to the songs, which was frustrating. But at that point, we just wanted to go again. So, a couple of years after Awake, finally comes Falling Into Infinity. A little bit more of a commercial album, and it was the last time we worked with an outside producer because it was just a tough pill to swallow. But we worked with Storm Thorgerson for the first time and Storm doesn’t work with existing logos or fonts. So some people ask me why Falling Into Infinity is one of the only studio albums without the classic Dream Theater logo – it’s cause that’s the way Storm worked. The guy did all the Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin album covers, so who am I to argue with him, right? But great stuff on here. This is the only full-length studio album with Derek, and when we did Sons of Apollo 20 years later, we did Lines in the Sand, Hell’s Kitchen and Just Let Me Breathe.

I should mention, we’re missing A Change of Seasons here, which came out before this. I don’t have it. [laughs] Dream Theater has put it out, reissued it through the years, and I never got sent a copy. So I still need a copy of A Change of Seasons; a song that I wrote. It was one of the first songs I wrote in the band, and it was an important song for me, with the whole Carpe Diem thing for my mom and everything.

Next up is Once in a LIVEtime and once again, Storm Thorgerson’s artwork, so once again the classic Dream Theater logo was not a part of this package. But this was recorded on ‘98 tour. I think it all came from Paris, maybe some it from London – it’s been so many years now, I lost track – but yeah, a live album with Derek in the band. Great setlist. I think there’s some great stuff on here. You have Scarred, Lines in the Sand, A Change of Seasons broken up, Voices... So I think this is a great snapshot of this period in time. And at the time, it was exciting for us to have a double live album, because we had only done Live at the Marquee, so this was nice to really have a real double album for the first time. Well as most of you know – if you know your Dream Theater history – Falling Into Infinity tour in ‘98, that this live album was recorded on, was a tough one, and we almost split; I almost left the band. It was just frustrating, losing creative control. Long story short, you know the story, we eventually made changes. We let Derek go, we brought Jordan into the band, we decided that John and I are going to produce all the albums from now on, that John and I were going to kind of run the band and be the leaders, not having to answer to the label or managers or things like that. And it was do or die.

We set out to make an album that – if it succeeded – it would keep us on that map. If it failed, it probably would have been the end. I’ve heard a similar story with Rush with 2112, and it really was a similar situation with us with Scenes From a Memory. It’s one of my favorite albums of my career from any band I’ve been a part of; so proud of this. It was the first time John and I produced, it was the first real concept album that I had ever done, and the first one that Dream Theater had done, and I loved concept albums. My favorite albums of all time [are] The Wall, Misplaced Childhood, Operation: Mindcrime, Tommy. I’m a sucker for a concept album. And we really got so creative with this, just like down to the lyric sheet being in different fonts for different time periods, written out as if it was a script. I put a lot of thought and creative ideas into this; not just me, obviously, everybody. But for me, it was really a labor of love, and I know it was for all the other guys as well. I know it’s a fan favorite, so I guess it did the trick, and it kept us going for a long time. Even now to this day, Dream Theater was just out recently doing a 20th anniversary, so I know it’s a fan favorite.

On to Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, our first true studio double album. Of course, every band has to have a double studio album in their career at some point on, and Six Degrees was our first, and it’s only six songs. What happened was it wasn’t supposed to be a double album. We had written the first five songs in the album: The Glass Prison, Blind Faith, Misunderstood, The Great Debate, Disappear. That was about 50 minutes or so – 55 minutes or so. We wanted to have one more long one, so we figured, “Let’s write something like A Change of Seasons, like a 20-minute-ish song. The next we thing we knew, we were 42 minutes into it, and there was no way to get it all on one disc. So inevitably, it became a double disc. And I love this album, it’s one of my favorites. I love the experimentation on it. I was going through a heavy Radiohead phase during the making of this album; OK Computer was like my Bible. And even the artwork – I knew I wanted to have something similar to OK Computer. It’s definitely got that Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails or OK Computer vibe. These are handwritten lyrics, those are John’s handwritten lyrics [on the back cover] and just a whole bunch of stuff. But I love the production on this. A song like Disappear or The Great Debate, Misunderstood. There’s just so much ear candy throughout this whole album. It was also the beginning of my Twelve-step Suite. It was the first album we made after I had gotten sober, so yeah, I wanted to write about the 12 steps. We wrote the music for The Glass Prison right after me and John went and saw Pantera, and I remember wanting to model a song after Mouth for War or Holy Wars by Megadeth, which is kind of like three different songs, like going through different phases. So, we kind of wrote The Glass Prison with that in mind, and then when it came time for the lyrics and I wanted to write about the 12 steps, I was like, “Well, this is like three sections, why don’t I just write about the first three steps only and then I’ll continue with the next couple of records?” and there it began. The other thing that began with this was I had this crazy idea of beginning an album where the previous one ended. So Scenes ended with some static, with the record player hitting static, and then Six Degrees begins with the static. Six Degrees ends with the final chord of the title track, and then, sure enough, that’s where Train of Thought begins. So it was a crazy idea I had of just connecting records, even though there’s no lyrical connection to them really other than the 12-step suites.

Anyway, here comes Train of Thought. We made it in 2003, the tour was in 2004. Another one of my favorites in the catalog. Obviously, maybe the heaviest album in the catalog, and that was intentional. On the previous tour, on the Six Degrees tour, we covered Master of Puppets by Metallica and The Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden, so we kind of were really in that classic-metal headspace when we made this. I love this album. It’s got classics, long, long songs: In the Name of God, This Dying Soul, Stream of Consciousness, Honor Thy Father – just a dark, heavy album – As I Am. I mean it’s a great, great classic album. I love it, and steps four and five of my 12-step suite was This Dying Soul.

The next live album, Live at Budokan, mentioned earlier about what a legendary venue, and I was talking about Cheap Trick. So, for us to finally play the Budokan, we knew we had to film it, release it as a live album. And this is actually a four vinyl disc set, because it was such a long show. But a great, great setlist on this. It really covers this whole era really, really well. Actually, it has Stream of Consciousness and the Instrumedley, so two instrumentals in this show. This was a great, great memory. A great concert.

Then came Octavarium, and this is what I was getting at before. It was funny, because on the Train of Thought tour, which was our heaviest album, we went on tour with Yes. So, we had this heavy album, but then we went on tour with Yes, so I had to write more of a proggy setlist. [laughs] Then we put out more of a proggy album, but once this came out, we went on tour with Megadeth! So the tours and albums were completely mis-aligned. But anyway, Octavarium was our eighth album. I had the idea of utilizing an octave for the concept. And it’s a concept album in the way The Dark Side of the Moon is a concept album; it’s not a story, but there’s a lot of things that are interconnected here. I could go on and on; I could write a whole thesis about this. But if you look [at the front and back of the album cover], this is an octave right here. I guess [the first sphere] was an F, F-sharp; these eight [spheres] are the roots or the main notes. And then the birds are F-sharp, G-sharp, there’s an A-sharp... So that’s what [the cover] represents. All of the songs were written in the keys to these, so the first song, The Root of All Evil, is in the key of F, The Answer Lies Within’ was in E, and so on and so forth. By the time we got to the octave, we were back into the key of F with Octavarium. And there’s just so many things and nuggets – I spent a lot of time with Hugh Syme on the artwork for this, putting all different things like the key signatures and the time signatures all have to do with the keys of the songs – there’s just so much I could go on forever. Especially in the song Octavarium, which is one of my favorite epic songs of the band, I had a lot of fun with the whole, well, two things. First it was the full circle lyrics where I connected each lyric to each other and just like a long giant run-on sentence of pop culture references. And then the other was the interval section where I basically summed up the previous seven songs in the album. This is the first album that broke the chain; when this album ended, we didn’t connect to the next album. The way this album ended is the way it began, and it’s trapped within this Octavarium within itself, so we were able to finally break that connecting album theme.

Score: this was one of my favorite shows I ever did with the band. This was on the 20th anniversary tour. It was recorded live at Radio City Music Hall where I always wanted to play my whole life. And we did it with an orchestra; it was the first time we played with an orchestra. Maybe you don’t know it now, but at the time, we didn’t announce that we had an orchestra playing with us, so it was a surprise. So the curtain went down for the intermission, second set begins, the curtain comes up and there was an orchestra. So for the audience, it was a complete surprise. And then of course the second set with the orchestra, we did all of the giant epics. We did Six Degrees, we did all 42 minutes of it. We did Octavarium. So great, great album. We dug out some rare tracks on here, like Another Won, which is like the very first song we ever wrote at Berklee. We brought that back out to celebrate the 20th anniversary. Raise the Knife, which was never released from the Falling Into Infinity sessions. And the setlist – after the first two songs – then goes chronologically through our career. So a lot of fun stuff with this show, and a really, truly great memory for me.

All right, we’re down to the final two Dream Theater albums with me. Systematic Chaos was our first album for Roadrunner after all these years with Warner and Elektra and Atlantic and Atco; it was all the same Warner umbrella, but we finally signed to Roadrunner, and I love this album. I think it’s underrated, I really do. I think a lot of people don’t immediately think of this album, but I think there’s such great stuff on here. In the Presence of Enemies is great, Constant Motion, of course, The Dark Eternal Night, great, great stuff. I think it’s an underrated album.

This was my last album in 2009: Black Clouds and Silver Linings. Deeply personal stuff on here. Obviously, I finally completed the 12-step suite with The Shattered Fortress, but also I wrote The Best of Times lyrics for my dad who passed away during the making of this record. So a lot of strange emotions with this album. I didn’t know I was going to be leaving the band at the time, so now in retrospect, it’s got a lot of sentimentality for me, being the end of that era, and Wither is kind of fitting to that, The Best of Times is fitting to that. So yeah, a great, great album. I love A Nightmare to Remember. A lot of people gave me a hard time over those vocals, but I don’t know, when we wrote that riff, it needed “RAAAARRRR!!” So I still get a lot of heat for that, but whatever. I had a lot of fun writing a lot of lyrics and vocals and melodies for the band through those times, and like them or hate them, it was what it was, and it was part of the big picture.