John Petrucci interview

Christina Rowatt: The whole premise of this show is going back to the beginning. What was the first band or artist or song or record that you first fell in love with?

John Petrucci: Right. Well, for me, I grew up on Long Island in New York, and we had a rock radio station that played all classic rock, and actually things that really weren’t classic at the time – they were new. One of them was AC/DC, and in that era when the Black Album came out, and Zeppelin, and bands like Boston, and just all the stuff that was kind of being played on New York rock radio on Long Island. It had actually had a big influence on me as a kid, and I started playing guitar when I was 12, so that was kind of the first music I started to kind of listen to and try to learn, and even things like Iron Maiden and Def Leppard and stuff like that.

CR: Well, ‘More Than A Feeling’ takes like a minute and a half for the vocal to kick in. I feel like you’ve taken a leaf out of their book.

JP: Yeah, we don’t follow any rules in that regarding – especially when I started to listen to Rush and Yes and more of the prog. You could tell a whole musical story before the vocalist even comes in. What’s interesting about Boston, just as an aside, when I was a young guitar player – and the same thing goes with trying to learn Zeppelin solos and Jimmy Page stuff like that – I didn’t know how the stuff was done. I remember with Boston specifically, Tom Scholz did a lot of guitar layering, harmonies and things. And as a kid, you’ve got to go back to when there was no YouTube and everything else. You literally have a record, and I’m putting the needle on, trying to learn. I didn’t know how to get that sound on the guitar, so there was all this discovery. And when you finally realized, “Oh, that’s what it was. That’s how he’s doing it,” you had these big aha moments, but at the time, it was just so mysterious.

CR: That’s awesome. You get to have a process that we don’t get in a time where there is a certain monoculture, but there’s also all these cultural kind of things that existed. Was this something you shared with your mates? Because I think the ’70s and ’80s and stuff, like it’s a really interesting time. Like, not someone who was around at that time, but you got like rock and roll in the ’70s and like the big psychedelic kind of stuff, and then you got punk rock. Was it tribal? Because Al Jourgensen came on this show and he’s like, “I used to be a ’70s guy and get beaten up. I’d go to a punk show and get beaten up because I had the long hair” and all that kind of stuff. Did you feel tribal about what you’re into?

JP: Oh, definitely. In fact, the other thing about where I grew up – and this actually turned into the beginnings of Dream Theater, but I know not everybody has this experience – but there were a lot of musicians in my town. Like, there were so many bands. Literally, I could go jam with my friends who were into the Dead, and we would do these ridiculously long song jams and play Hendrix and the Dead. Then I’d go to another friend’s house, and they’re all into metal and the Scorpions and stuff like that. And then me and John Myung – who is in Dream Theater, and we grew up together – we would jam on Iron Maiden and Metallica and Rush. There were just dozens and dozens of bands, and that had a great big influence. So when we really got into a band – let’s just say it was Rush – and they were coming to town and they were playing in New York, it was totally tribal, yeah. We would all just get together and go. It’s funny, because in the way now where information is just out there immediately, if music comes out, you can literally, within seconds, see what somebody’s opinion is of a song that you release or whatever; back then it’s so funny because it would just be us hanging out in a place that we called the Sump which was like this sort of dry sump thing that kids shouldn’t be hanging out at, drinking beers and talking about the new Rush album, whether we liked it or not. And those conversations didn’t go any further than the five of us who were hanging out. Now fast-forward to today, and one comment by one person is seen by everybody everywhere. It’s just so different.

CR: Is it better?

JP: In some ways it is. In some ways it isn’t. Some of those conversations and experiences, and even as a musician playing live on stage or seeing a show, those are moments in time that just existed right then and there, and they’re not things that were relived over and over and over and over and over ad nauseam. And sometimes there are things that just become too public. Those discussions, they’re kind of more just between your group of friends, and then all of a sudden it becomes like this highly opinionated society, so it’s a little weird.

CR: Progressive rock’s a bit eternal as well. It kind of seems to transcend genres and movements and big things. Like, you guys had your first big song with ‘Pull Me Under’ around the time of Nirvana and grunge and all that stuff. What were you guys listening to as all these things broke? Were you into them? Did you smash Nirvana? Were you a Soundgarden guy?

JP: Absolutely, yeah. I liked Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Nirvana. We were definitely into whatever was happening at the time. As long as it was good music, we were into it. It’s so funny, the way that happens with music, because the style and the sound of bands from certain eras just become so time-stamped sometimes, but it doesn’t mean that it’s good or bad, it’s just like your opinion and your experience with it. There’s a lot of ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s music that I love, and yeah, even though we were playing prog metal, even though prog metal at the time wasn’t a thing when we started – it is now, but to us, it was just this weird music we were playing. It didn’t mean that we weren’t still listening to U2 and Nirvana, and whatever bands were happening. We weren't elitists.

CR: No, but grown people will continue to gently weep and quietly headbang to prog forever, and that’s a beautiful thing. What was the first music you listened to that you couldn’t get into, you’re like, “Nah, this isn’t my thing”? Where did you draw the line? Because people are obsessed with music – I think they have strong feelings about this stuff.

JP: Let me think about that for a second. I wouldn’t say I was into everything. Especially as I started to get more into guitar playing, I gravitated more towards guitar music, so not only bands, but it went on to just guitar players like Alan Holdsworth and Al Di Meola, and stuff like that. I couldn’t really wrap my head around like this super, super poppy ‘80s glam stuff – I wasn’t a fan of that. When I go back and I listen to, if I hear some of that stuff on the radio now or whatever, I’m like, “This is not that bad, it’s not as bad as I remember it,” but it was more of a stylistic thing that I wasn’t into. I think there will always be bands of different levels of musicianship, and I really don’t think that it’s right to be judgmental of people’s playing abilities because it’s all music. We all enjoy it, and all different styles of music have different levels of technicality. So I guess it was more of the songs. I think it was too bubble gummy to me, I couldn’t get into it, it wasn’t intense enough.

CR: Well, the stuff that you’ve spoken about has a lot of depth to it with the artistic and the visual and the conceptual. I mean, obviously you’ve incorporated an enormous amount of that stuff throughout your career. What kind of records really struck you in terms of the visual stuff? And I know back then you would have had vinyl, the art, and it was another level of stuff. What kind of struck you about that kind of stuff? And you’re an artist as well as a kid, you liked it and stuff.

JP: I was, yeah. That was the first thing I got into as a kid, as I was into drawing and painting, and moved away from that and got into music. But all the bands that I was into had unbelievable packaging. Like we mentioned before, Rush and Hugh Syme, who we’ve worked with numerous times and who did the latest Dream Theater album cover – so all the Rush album covers and packaging, same with Iron Maiden, same with Yes. I used to love really diving into those worlds. The other thing about it is that when you go to see one of those bands live – and this is something Dream Theater has tried to do as well – is that you’re all of a sudden walking into that world as an environment. So bands like Iron Maiden and Rush have done this so well theatrically, where they’ve taken the theme of a record and you walk into the venue and all of a sudden there is that world, and they make it come to life, and you’re sort of transported. And we try to do the same thing, stealing a page from that book. I think it all goes hand in hand – art, music, visual and audio, for sure. It’s all about the experience.

CR: You’ve got even like Nicko McBrain has his doll on his drum kit, which is thematically matched to the record. They have little details that make the difference. What was the soundtrack to your first heartbreak? Was there a record? Was there a record that was the soundtrack to that?

JP: It probably was Journey or something like that – Journey Escape or something like that. That music was so awesome and just the perfect music to be sad to when you needed it.

CR: What were you listening to when you’re kind of finding who you are as a person? Did you define yourself as a guitar player young like, did you kind of go, “This is who I am”?

JP: I really did. I started playing when I was 12, and it kind of just grabbed me. Before long, I would be playing guitar all day long, six hours a day. I was pretty young, probably 14, 15, when I realized this is all I want to do. Like, I’m going to do this with my life. And I would even look to the bands that I was into and just think, “What do I have to do to make that happen for myself?” And I think because of the kind of bands I was into – we mentioned Iron Maiden, Rush, things like that – because of their whole level of the way that they are with their fans, the way that a band like Iron Maiden toured internationally and had such a global presence – I looked up to that so much and just wanted to do that. And it just set the tone. Like, it gave me a direction.

CR: Did it feel accessible? Did it feel possible? Were you just like, “It’s just between me and practicing this hard every day – I will get to the other side of it”? Or you’re like, “I don’t even know if I’m ever going to get here”?

JP: No, I was stubbornly single-minded. I totally had blinders on. Like, there’s no way I’m doing anything else. And I’ve said this before, and it’s so funny, at a high school, going into college and looking at colleges, I really wanted to go to Berklee College of Music and pursue music because that’s where Al Di Meola went and Steve Vai and guys I looked up to. And I remember my father was really not crazy about that idea, and he would say to me, “You really need something to fall back on.” And I just remember being [a] stubborn teenager, like, “I am not falling back on anything. I’m going full speed ahead.” So fortunately, it worked out.

CR: That is one thing Lemmy once told me, when I’m like, “What’s the Motörhead way?” It’s dogged persistence in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary, which I think is a good attitude to be a musician and to survive in this strange world.

JP: Absolutely. It’s a great attitude. And it’s interesting also choosing the style of music that Dream Theater plays, that I play – this progressive style, by the nature of the music, you’re already swimming upstream against the current. We’re not trying to write three-minute hit songs. We’re literally doing everything the opposite of what you’re supposed to do, writing 20-minute songs and with long solos and everything. And somehow it worked out because my mentality – and this might sound funny – but I always thought classical music existed for so long and was such a popular form of music – and still is – and people still go to see classical concerts and symphonies. Those are long pieces of music with multiple movements, with lots of technical playing and emotional sections and it’s like, there is an audience for that. Maybe just because it’s wrapped in the package of metal or hard rock – what’s the difference? It’s eliciting the same kind of emotional connection. So that was my thought: there’s definitely an audience for this out there. I know there is.

CR: That’s awesome. That’s tribal again – that there was guys out there who felt the same way, and I guess meeting the guys you found in Dream Theater. What did you guys agree on when you first met?

JP: Like I said before, John and I grew up together and went to high school together, and then went to Berklee and met Mike there. And our original keyboard player, Kevin Moore, too, was one of my best friends. He was my best friend growing up, and we all agreed on the music that we liked. We were just such huge fans of the bands that we liked. We were just ridiculous Rush fans, and we loved Pink Floyd and Roger Waters and all that. And when we met Mike, who was also a Long Islander – but he lived about an hour from us in New York – he liked the same music that we liked. So that was the first sort of connection. It was just like, “Oh, you’re a Rush fan. You’re a Maiden fan.” And it brought us together.

CR: Just as an aside what was it like getting back together with him for your solo album and Liquid Tension Experiment? Do you guys feel like you’re kids again? Is it weird to come back after a long time? Obviously you had a lot of time apart.

JP: Yeah, it was actually a lot of fun. We’ve been friends since we were 18 years old. And even though for the past 10 or so years we haven’t been in a band together, we’ve still been friends, and our families are very tight, and our kids all grew up together. And our wives were actually in the same band together when we met them. They were in an all-female band called Meanstreak. It was like one of the first, or the first all-female thrash metal bands out of New York. And so we’ve all been friends. So the only thing that changed was we weren’t making music together anymore. When it came time to do my solo album and I had written that music and I was trying to decide on a drummer, my wife and my kids were like, “Oh, you should get Mike. You should get Mike to do it.” And I’m like that might be fun. And it was right at the start of the pandemic. One of the things that stops musicians from getting together is everyone’s on different touring schedules, and everyone was home. It was like, “Hey, you want to do this?” “No problem.” He got in his car and drove to New York, and it was a lot of fun. We spent about a week of him tracking the drums, and it was really just fun to reconnect in that way. And then we took it to the next level doing Liquid Tension Experiment together, because in that case we were actually writing together, being creative together, making a record together, as we’ve done in the past – in that case with Tony Levin and Jordan. It was nothing but smiles and good times and fun. It was really cool to reunite that way.

CR: That’s awesome. You can sense the good energy that you have in between. The chemistry is everything, right? What else matters?

JP: Chemistry is everything. It’s funny, too – with my solo album, I’d gone in, written all the music, recorded all the guitars, programmed drums, played bass. It was all done, and then I had to go in and get Dave LaRue to play bass on it and Mike to play drums on it. And when Mike started playing drums – I remember the first day he came into the studio and he just started playing to this music that I wrote – it just sounded like the two of us. It just was really nostalgic. Even though we didn’t write it together, we weren’t jamming together, we weren’t even in the same room when I was writing it, but there’s just something about that chemistry that creates this magical sound. One of the things I thought was really awesome with the fans out there was when it came out, it just got such a positive reaction. People were just like, “I’m just so happy that you did this and the music sounds positive and happy.” And this was really all during the heart of the whole pandemic. So it was a very good, positive experience.

CR: We need a positive rock and roll story right now. A positive rock and roll story is exactly what people need. When did you start writing lyrics, and how do you fit this around playing so much guitar when you’re writing around all this guitar?

JP: Well, I guess you can call it creative writing. It was something that I was also really into as a teenager, writing stories and poems and things like that. So, like you mentioned at the start, I was into painting, drawing, writing music, so obviously I’m a creative type, if you want to typecast me. So it just kind of naturally worked when I got into writing music. I said, “Well, there needs to be lyrics to these songs,” and so I got into doing it, and I started doing that very young. When does it happen? It’s funny, because it’s such a crucial and important part of songwriting, is the lyrics and developing that. And especially that I’m not the one singing them, so taking into consideration our vocalist and how he has to sing them – it takes time. I can give you an example with the new Dream Theater album. We always write the music first and then the lyrics after. I’m also producing the record at the same time. So there was a point where the music was done, everybody was starting to track their parts, and I was done with the guitars, and bass was happening, and Jordan was doing his keyboards. And I’m like, “OK, well, I have to write lyrics now.” We did this record in our new headquarters, our new Dream Theater headquarters, and there’s like a loft in the top, and I would go up there and escape and just bury myself in the music while Jordan was tracking down below. I’d need a break and grab a coffee and pop my head in as Mr. Producer and be like, “How you guys doing?” and then go back up. But it almost uses different brain muscles than music writing, because it’s also a creative aspect, but you’re trying to send a message, tell a story. You’re thinking about your vocalist. There’s melodic concerns. And if it’s done well, then the song comes across great. If it’s done badly, then it could really set a listener off. You know what it’s like when you hear a cheesy lyric or a cheesy vocal or a word that’s just awkward. It’s like, “Ehhhh.” It almost makes you not want to listen to the song.

CR: What have been some of the strongest reactions to Dream Theater lyrics? Like, people love it or hate it, just out of interest. I have a feeling Dream Theater fans are quite strong-willed in their opinions for you guys.

JP: Dream Theater fans are very passionate and very vocal. I’m not gonna say this is exclusive to us because so many bands and so many band members I know and talk to experience the same thing. But when music is really dramatic and intense, every little detail of it matters, and sometimes a lyric in a song could reach somebody in a way that you never anticipated, that’s way more over the top and deep than you ever thought of. And you get taken aback, and you’re so humbled like when somebody says, “A song like ‘The Spirit Carries On,’ from Scenes From A Memory – I played that at my father’s funeral.” And you’re blown away by these different emotional connections that people make to a lyric. Sometimes it’s the opposite, where people are like, “Why did you write about this cheesy subject?” There might be something that I’m really into – let’s say it’s something really nerdy and science fiction-ish, and I’ll write a song about that – and then people are like, “What the hell is this?” I remember on Systematic Chaos, on ‘In The Presence Of Enemies,’ I was writing stuff about the ‘Dark Master’ and all this, people are like, “What are you...?” Or another good example was a song called ‘The Count Of Tuscany,’ where I was telling a story about this experience that John Myung and I had in Tuscany in Italy. I wrote this whole sort of fictional – but based on reality – song called ‘The Count of Tuscany.’ It ended up being a fan favorite, but I remember the original reaction was like, “What the hell are you writing about? This is the worst, cheesiest thing! What is this?”

CR: …because it can go so many places. I think it’s really interesting because there’s two schools of thought. I’ve spoken to some heavy metal guys, and they’re like, “Oh, well, punk rock was speaking to a certain sort of thing, and I couldn’t connect to the fantasy of heavy metal anymore.” But then there’s other people like, “No, no, I love that escapism. It’s everything to get into that.” Do you feel the people reflect that back to you, that the escapism is what they need?

JP: They do, and I kind of go by my own experience, because I like that in media and movies and stuff like that. Both my daughters are actresses, and they probably hate when I say stuff like this, the dramas about real people’s problems – I don’t want to watch. I’d rather watch Star Wars, and things that are made-up fantasies that let me escape and be entertained. Sometimes that stuff has a place, and when it’s done well and done right, it can be so moving and such a great experience. And I have written songs about my real-life tragedies and problems that people have related to, so I get it. So I’m not saying it’s a blanket policy, but I do enjoy storytelling and that escapism. I did that to the fullest extent when we did The Astonishing, which was a story that I wrote, and we turned it into this whole, almost like a musical theater type of album. That freaked a lot of Dream Theater fans out – that was a good example of people saying, “What the hell are you guys doing?”

CR: I think it’s kind of fun that you get to do that, though, and they stick it out, they stay with you. That’s the thing. They wouldn’t get so involved. They wouldn’t have such strong opinions if they weren’t most just so emotionally invested. I like ‘Awaken The Master.’ I feel like it sounds like the beginning, like at the end of a bank robbery, on a really cool one, where there’s eight different people and they’re all doing different stuff, and then they’re in the car, and then it becomes a whole different film later. And the title track feels like a whole movie, and it feels like something, watching a protagonist heroically do that. Do you see anything visual when you’re playing guitar, and when you’re doing all this stuff? Do you have a visual experience of it?

JP: Absolutely, it’s definitely part of it, and I think it’s actually really important in what we were talking about before with music and lyrics, and having that really go together. Now, you can take, for example the title track, like you said, ‘A View From The Top Of The World.’ It’s a 22-minute piece of music. It’s very soundtrack-y and required a subject matter that was going to be fitting to that, to be able to tell during all that time and have the music reflect that. So, yeah, when I’m listening to that song and it’s so cinematic, it almost sounds like the opening sounds like a Batman movie or something. Choosing the subject that I wrote about, which is about what drives certain people to want to conquer seemingly impossible human feats, like scaling Everest or slacklining across canyons or wingsuit diving off of cliffs or deep cave diving – all things that I would never do in a million years, but people are so into that, risking their lives. So that just sounded like such an epic topic that visually went with the way the music sounded. And when you do that right, it makes the whole song work.

CR: That’s pretty fun. You’re kind of giving birth to an idea twice.

JP: That’s why I enjoy the lyric part too, because it’s just like you said, it’s a second part to the creative process.

CR: What are the five songs that changed your life?

JP: To me, I think about the formative years and what made me make these sort of paradigm shifts in my thinking as a young musician. One was the first time I heard Rush, and I just was like, “What?” I just fell in love with it and got really into it, and subsequently got into the album Hemispheres, so the song ‘Hemispheres’ was just one of these songs that just changed everything for me. It opened everything up. Another one like that was Yes’ Fragile. Hearing any song from Fragile, but probably ‘Roundabout,’ because it was just played on the radio in New York and just being like, “What is this?” like, I need to know what this is. I need to get into it. They’re life-changing moments.

CR: Did it feel like it had taken rock further, like those kind of [proggy] bands, than your Led Zeppelins? Did you [say], “I want to be this nuts”?

JP: What it did for me is like I said, I started off just the normal kid in suburbia, playing guitar and trying to learn the music that was on the radio, to finding out, like, “This is something that I think I could do. Well, I want to get more into it.” And then you start getting into other guitars, classical music, more complicated music, and then when you hear a band like Rush or Yes, where it’s like, “Oh, you mean the song doesn’t have to be three and a half minutes? It could be 15 minutes?” And you have all these amazing players playing together in this way, it opened that whole thing up for me, where I was like, “Rock music could be done in another way. It doesn’t have to be just all in four-four time. It doesn’t have to be in this little box. It could be something more.” So yeah, it made me want to do that. And a band like Iron Maiden, the way they would do that well with their big songs, like ‘Hallowed Be Thy Name’ or whatever, but they’d also be telling these stories at the same time – that was just like mind-blowing too, because I’m like, “OK, so I can play songs that are 12, 15, 20 minutes long, have long solos, and also I get to write a story and sing about that.” It made me want to do that for sure.

CR: Awesome. Do you ever hear three-minute songs and go, “That sounds half-finished,” and I’d like to write the rest of it?

JP: Well, the funny thing about that is, there’s a whole art to that as well, and it’s easier said than done. Sometimes to do something well with that limitation is very, very difficult. So I don’t envy the guys writing that stuff.

CR: Even you can go and let your freak flag fly, as they say. OK, that’s three. We need two more songs.

JP: I would say, as a guitar player, the first time I heard the Dixie Dregs. The Dregs are a bluegrass rock-style band out of Miami. Steve Morse is the guitar player, and Steve is my favorite guitar player of all time. He’s actually in Deep Purple now. When a friend of mine, who knew that I was starting to get more and more into guitar playing, it was actually a drummer’s older brother’s friend – he would come in and, of course, be old enough to go to the bars and watch these different bands. And he’s like, “You gotta listen to the Dregs.” And I remember listening to a song called ‘The Bash’ by the Dixie Dregs. It was a live version of this insane guitar chicken pickin’ thing that just blew my mind. I was like, “I need to know how to do that.” And so that was a major one. Then the other one would be an album called Friday Night In San Francisco, which is Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin, Paco de Lucia – just three acoustic guitar players playing at the Warfield in San Francisco, where Dream Theater’s played many times, and just doing this insane acoustic shredding that again made me just say, “I need to know how to do that. I’ve gotta practice more. This is the instrument I’m going to dedicate my life to.” I mean, there’s so many more, but those are the few I can think of off the top of my head.

CR: That’s a good list. We’re building a monster playlist of everyone’s five, which is really interesting to kind of go deep into these chapters of people’s lives, because no musician hasn’t been transformed by music. What do you think guitarists get out of playing music that other instruments don’t?

JP: I’ve always said that specifically electric guitar is one of the most expressive instruments because it’s something that you could manipulate in a way because it has strings that you can bend and tune and stuff. You could manipulate it in a way that’s just so reflective of your inner voice. It’s not to say that so much emotional music hasn’t been played and written on piano, but when you think about a piano, as you play the keys, as long as the piano’s in tune, it sounds like it sounds when you hit the key. If you think about guitar, and think about young guitar players learning, and why it sounds so not quite right and out of tune until they get the tactile feeling that you don’t have to press so hard, and you could kind of bend a note in or out of tune... And then on top of that, electric modern guitar, with amplifiers and feedback and distortion and everything, you’re just in this world where you could make this instrument really, really speak. I know I’m biased, but I think that electric guitar is really the best instrument for conveying that. And I think that’s why so many people just are in love with guitar. It’s always something that just draws people in. There’s nothing like the guitar solo in ‘Comfortably Numb’ – David Gilmour just standing there playing that – there’s no other instrument that does that for me.

CR: This is true. It strikes an interesting chord. You’ve put out a lot of this into the world. Is there anything you really want to do that you haven’t done yet?

JP: You mean like musically?

CR: What’s some nuts thing you haven’t done yet that you want to do?

JP: I’m not really sure. I think the last nuts thing that I did that was something that I really wanted to do, that was just this overwhelming project, was The Astonishing that I talked about before, because that was a situation where I had written a story. We talked about storytelling as a kid. I finally wrote this whole story, and then Jordan and I went in and wrote the soundtrack to that story in the form of a two-and-a-half-hour Dream Theater musical, almost. And then had it scored by David Campbell, who hired orchestras and marching bands and adult choirs and boys’ choirs and all these different things. And then I worked with a novelist named Peter Orullian, and he wrote a novel based on the story. Then we went on tour and put out this whole insane show with graphics to the entire thing. It was literally the most all-encompassing musical creative thing I’ve ever done that brought everything in line together that we’ve been talking about. So after I did that, it’s smooth sailing from here on out, so I just enjoy playing guitar and music with my friends. It sounds kind of corny, but...

CR: It’s a pretty good life, man. Like, at the end of the day, and your 14-year-old self would probably be pretty stoked. Did you ever envision this as a kid? Did you ever dream about it coming out just like this?

JP: Well, the funny thing about you saying that is, I literally dreamt about doing this. That’s the reason I picked up guitars. I would have dreams of being on stage, like a reoccurring dream that I was on stage playing guitar, performing. I don’t know why. I didn’t play guitar. And like I said, I was very sort of single-minded like this was the thing I wanted to do with my life. But I never would have envisioned that it would be at the level that it is and has been. And there are so many musicians in the world and so many guitar players that have a shot and an opportunity to turn it into a career and be successful. I mean, it’s something I’m so thankful for.

CR: I’m always thrilled to see good people go forth and do that. Let’s throw out some random: If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future, or anything else, what would you want to know?

JP: I think that one of the things for me, in wanting to do this as a career, that you don't anticipate at the time is what your adult life is going to be once you start to do the things like find your wife, have kids, start a family, and stuff. And then how challenging that’s gonna be to make the two things work – where you're out on tour and raising a family and everything. And it’s like the crystal ball to look into, knowing that all this time is so valuable and that all these experiences are so valuable while you're trying to make this happen. I mean, that would have been nice to know and to see. Thankfully, in my case with my wife Rena, she’s a musician herself – like I said, she’s a guitar player, and there couldn’t be more of a relationship and family that’s just bound by music and by art. We couldn’t have done it any other way. I mean, I don’t know if a crystal ball would have changed anything, but... it’s something you just don’t think of when you’re 17.

CR: Yeah, focus on the moment. When was the last time you sang to yourself or to someone else?

JP: I should really know the answer to this, because we do this all the time in my house. I don’t know... a couple of days ago? I’m gonna make something up.

CR: Do you guys sing to each other?

JP: It’s funny, because we’ve talked about Boston before, and this wasn’t the other day or anything, but it was a car ride home, and my wife and I got on this Boston kick, and we were singing every Boston song. Somehow, we knew all the lyrics. That was fun. We’ve gone on some good John Denver sing-alongs as well, so you never know what’s gonna happen.

CR: Who would be on your musical Mount Rushmore?

JP: For me, Peter Gabriel would be up there for sure – one of my favorite artists of all time. It would probably be Stevie Ray Vaughan, one of my favorite guitar players of all time. Probably James Hetfield, because I think, to me, when I heard Metallica, even though I was playing prog – I knew the sound I wanted. I was just in love with that sound of metal.

CR: What was it like, Metallica breaking in that world and at that time? Because you had a really, really huge live music scene. I remember I watched the thing with the guy from Public Enemy talking about how Anthrax would play to 3,000 people a weekend just at local shows, and we were like, “Far out. I want to get to be a part of that.”

JP: Oh yeah, it was intense. And actually, at the time, I had just gone to Berklee with John Myung. We were 17, 18 years old, and we met Mike Portnoy, as I said. And the Metallica Master Of Puppets came out, I believe, in the spring of ‘86, so that was within our first year. We only went to Berklee for one year, and then we left – we were dropouts. But I remember listening to that and just being like, “Oh my God, this is insane!” and just being so influential. I was talking recently about U2 and even Rush in the time period from the early ‘80s through the early ‘90s – like that ten-year span – and it was just such an unbelievable time for music, for me. I know there’s certain time periods that people swear by in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and it’s so true, but that period from ‘80, ‘81 through ‘92 – just an insane amount of music that was so influential.

CR: I wonder why it was such a big time.

JP: I don’t know. I think it’s funny because stylistically, if you think about rock and roll, it’s not really that old of a music form. You think about maybe the ‘50s, if you want to talk about the birth of rock and roll. ‘50s, ‘60s, you had a certain sound. ‘70s – and then the ‘80s were like – it’s only a few decades removed from the birth of it, so it’s like all this stuff started to kind of converge. I think the world became smaller, and so then you had a lot of international bands and things. To me, the sound started to mix a bit more, so it wasn’t just about having these progressive bands from the UK or disco bands or whatever. But all of a sudden, it was like that, but mixed with hard rock, metal, and punk, and just making all this stuff happen. It kind of seemed to explode.

CR: Yeah, it happened before I got to enjoy it, but I’m glad it happened. It's great now, being able to enjoy it. What was your first really strange experience on an international tour with Dream Theater, where you're like, "Oh my God, we're in a completely different culture, and they're responding to what we're doing?"

JP: That happens a lot, especially the first time you’ve gone to a country. A couple have come to mind. I’ll name two for you, and they're kind of the opposite experiences. One of them is the first time that Dream Theater played in Rome, Italy. Now, when we first went to Europe as an American band, it was all new to us, obviously. And there are certain countries that we went to for the first time – like France, Germany, Italy, Holland – that we still continue to go to today and have such a huge, dedicated, strong fan base. Italy became one of these amazing places for us. But the first time playing in Rome, I remember playing, and it was in support of Images And Words. I remember that the people in the audience were singing louder than the music. It sounds like something the Beatles would experience, but I never had that. I never played a show and had people sing back like they were singing the guitar melodies, they were singing the instrumental parts. It was just so wild, and just an unbelievable experience. There's just this big, big emotional wave of connection that happens in certain countries, and Italy's just unlike no other place.

I also remember the opposite thing happened, where the first time we played in Japan, while we’re playing the music, the Japanese audience is totally animated, totally into it, singing along, smiling, dancing, jumping up and down. And then you’d end the song, and the applause would end really abruptly, and then it’d be silence. Or right before we’d go on stage – and the concerts would always be early in Japan; they still are – like, you'd play at 5 o'clock, 6 o'clock, and you'd be at the venue, and you're backstage, and it’s dead quiet, and you're like, "Did anybody come to the show? Is anybody going to be in the audience?" And you step on stage, and it's sold out, unbelievable amount of people. So that cultural thing was so unique of an experience for us as an American band going to Asia, playing specifically in Japan. It was pretty wild. And again, we developed this relationship with our Japanese fans, and it's so special and has been so long-lived from the first time we went there. We keep going back, and we got to play just such iconic places, like the Budokan and stuff like that. It’s been amazing.

CR: That’s great. What’s been the weirdest experience where you’ve discovered someone you really respected is a fan of yours?

JP: This is a little more in the less expected, not a musician. But one time we played in Utah in the US, and the governor was a tremendous Dream Theater fan, and you would not expect it. And he actually named the day – there's a Dream Theater Day in the state of Utah. And I thought that was so bizarre. That was awesome. And he ended up running for president at one point. I remember seeing him on the stage debating the other candidates, thinking, "That guy’s a Dream Theater fan." You never know who’s going to be a prog fan out there.

CR: I was talking to Misha from Periphery, and I know you've got a family connection with Periphery, but he's just like, “When I heard Dream Theater, I was like, 'Oh, we can do anything, we can put anything there, there's no rules.’” Did you feel like there were rules?

JP: No, I didn’t. In fact, that same thing that Misha said is what I felt when I heard Yes or bands like that. Like, “Oh, I don’t have to stick to this formula, these songs can go on.” One of the things I loved, and Dream Theater does this too, what Rush did – was that the songs had parts to them, like part one, part two. I’m like, “That is so cool”, it’s like these songs could be little movies. So yes, I totally felt like that. In fact, to me, that is one of the key components to progressive music. What is prog? And it’s that there aren’t any rules. They all go out the window.

CR: What a great movement to be a part of. It’ll go forth forever. It probably will.

JP: I’m sure, and Periphery is a great example of just the continuation of this big family tree of prog. You think about the bands that came before Dream Theater that we listened to and that we were into, and then bands listened to us, and then it influenced them, and then these other bands – Periphery now, bands are listening to them. And that’s different, and it’s just huge. Like, awesome family tree of prog.

CR: It all goes back to these majestic bands of the ‘70s and prior to that. Well, thanks for being a part of our show today.

JP: Absolutely. Thanks for having me, and from the mountains of Norway.

CR: Yes! So you guys, check out the new Dream Theater album. It’s out in October.

JP: October 22nd it comes out. I’m assuming it’s the same release date worldwide, so hopefully in Australia, I didn’t mess that up. I think it’s global, and we’re excited about it. And even more excited about getting back out there. The world needs live music. We all need it, as performers and as fans. Like you said, this is fan first, right? We’re all fans, and it’s there’s nothing like that experience, and we can’t wait to get back.