Interview with John Myung from Dream Theater

Special thanks go to Emily Sanderson.

Together with guitarist John Petrucci, our today’s interview partner John Myung is the only remaining founding member of Dream Theater, a band that the Rolling Stone magazine considers as one of the best Prog Rock bands of all time, receiving a plethora of awards all over the world, so it was a special honor for us to chat with bass player John about their new album A View from the Top of the World, their next year’s European tour and John’s instruments.

Metal Music Photography: Hi John, are you in New York right now?

John Myung: Yeah.

MMP: Your city was recently in the news for a very sad anniversary. Could you please tell us how you experienced 9/11?

JM: Oh, that was a pretty horrible day! I remember waking up and turning the TV on and I couldn’t believe what was happening! My wife had just given birth to our first son, he was not even a month old.

MMP: The same day the towers of the World Trade Center were burning and collapsing your DVD Live Scenes from New York was released, which had some consequences for the cover artwork.

JM: Yeah, that was pretty bizarre! We had that burning heart image from the album Images and Words and as the new album was recorded in New York, we also had some landmarks like the World Trade Center on its cover. This was pure coincidence.

MMP: You then decided to remove the records from the shops.

JM: Yeah, to do some changes to the cover artwork.

MMP: Your new record will be released on October 22. Can you please tell us something about its artwork? [It shows a famous photo theme in Norway with a big boulder stone jammed between two cliffs, Ed.]

JM: Well, it’s an actual location; I didn’t know that until after. Hugh Syme did this artwork. He came up with the concept and we accepted it immediately. We like the spirit of adventure in it.

MMP: You probably mean Kjeragbolten?

JM: Yeah!

MMP: Hugh Syme added a pair of completely oversized shoes. Do they have a special symbolism?

JM: Ehm, well, that’s his kind of artistic style. For me it works as it’s in relation to mountain climbing and the whole adventure aspect.

MMP: John [Petrucci, guitar player, Ed.] wrote a lot of lyrics in the past. Did James [LaBrie, vocalist, Ed.] also write some lyrics this time?

JM: Yes, he wrote them for the first track ‘The Alien’. It’s about futuristic technology which is an actual theme with Elon Musk and SpaceX. Maybe the future of mankind will be a combination of humans and machines.

MMP: You mean the emergence of artificial intelligence?

JM: Exactly!

MMP: James is the only member who lives far away from the Dream Theater headquarters, so the recording process of the album during the pandemic was different than in the past.

JM: Yeah, he dialed in with Zoom on a big TV screen in the same room as we were while we were writing. It was if he was really there with us.

MMP: Did he record his voice in a nearby studio or did he come to New York?

JM: After our instrumental part was done, he flew down to New York to get the vocals done.

MMP: In April next year Dream Theater will start a European Tour.

JM: Yeah, we will have about two hour shows and we will obviously play some tracks of the new record, but we will also play some songs that we haven’t performed during the last ten years! It’s cool going back and relearning the songs and questioning now why we played them that way in the past. I feel differently now so it will be interesting to see how some of the old stuff translates now. So, we will see how the songs evolve.

MMP: Dream Theater is well known for extended gigs. You even surprised the crowd by playing a whole Iron Maiden or Metallica album as encore. Is there anything special planned for next year that you can reveal now?

JM: The gigs are not gonna be quite as long.

MMP: Some of your tours implied over one hundred shows, so if each one takes two hours you must be exhausted on your return!

JM: Definitely! That’s why we prepare for it seriously, but once we are in the flow it feels natural, the time passes pretty quickly.

MMP: I remember well the Chaos in Motion tour where you played a different setlist on each show, but I can’t recall if you did this ever again.

JM: Yeah, we changed it. Nevertheless, certain core songs were always there, so we didn’t change the whole setlist from night to night.

MMP: Let’s talk more closely about the sound of the new album. Where would you classify it musically in your discography?

JM: Well, the music is instrumental in nature and challenging sometimes too. Every song is really different; it’s not the kind of album where the tracks sound similar. It’s like going to a new place to see something different, as a journey. The title track ‘A View from the Top of the World’ is over twenty minutes long. That’s one of the things we really love to do from time to time. We have the freedom to be adventurous and not be concerned with time. If you have five creative people in a room, you get a lot of ideas, a lot of ingredients for a long song. I think that the longer tracks probably are the better representation of who we are as a band.

MMP: A track of twenty minutes is indeed huge, but another title track – ‘Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence’ – was twice as long! As we’re in the download era now have fixed prices independently of the track length nobody can really say that you were a commercial band!

JM: It’s a secondary thing for us. We just focus on being ourselves. It’s more about being creative and doing something interesting, that’s our initial motivation.

MMP: Let’s come to some personal questions. As a bass player you are well known for your tapping technique. Had you been influenced by an artist when you learned this instrument in the early eighties?

JM: Everything you are listening to will have an impact on you. There’s always something to be learned. Some of my early influences like Rush aren’t even around anymore. I also like Steve Harris from Iron Maiden. Back in my teenage years those guys had an influence on me, but it’s hard to pin it down to only some musicians.

MMP: You also play a rare instrument, a Chapman stick but we don’t hear it often on Dream Theater records.

JM: The main thing that I’m playing right now is a Bongo signature six-string bass. Over the years I have customized both it and Ernie Ball Music Man gave me last year the honor to produce it for the public. The initial color was black and it now came out in a cool silver, which I picked out for the one-year anniversary model, so I got a little bit into product development. I have also been working with Ashdown Engineering to develop the J.M. double drive, a pedal that is great for distortions. I’m looking forward to use it live!

MMP: So, you didn’t feel bored during the pandemic!

JM: No, I’ve been productive, it kept me busy.

MMP: Thanks, John. Your last album was on the very top of the selling charts in some countries like Germany, so I wish you the same success with the new release!

JM: Thanks a lot!