John Petrucci comments (about Images and Words)

John Petrucci: Believe it or not Images And Words is celebrating the 30th anniversary of its release, July 7th, which is crazy. I don't know how that happened, but it happened! It was a very special album for me and the guys. It was actually the second Dream Theater album – the first one of course was When Dream And Day Unite that came out in ’89. It was put out on Mechanic/MCA.

We went through a period where we were kind of in limbo as a band. We never toured for that record. We decided to change singers, we went on a singer hunt for like a year and a half, and during that time we were writing the music for the record. Eventually we got of course Mr. James LaBrie in the band as our singer and got signed to Atco Records at the time.

They didn’t sign us right away. We actually did a bit of a demo deal period where they had the producer David Prater come in and demo, I think it was three of the songs. They wanted to hear James of course, and when they heard that, they were like, “OK, we’re in.”

And we did something that no band should ever do, but we did it – we signed an eight-album deal when we signed to Atco at the time. Of course every time it was time to do another record, the record label had the option of renewing and continuing with you or not, or dropping you, and they actually renewed every option – all eight options – all the way through, which was crazy.

And during that period of time the record label changed names and everything. It was all part of the Warner group, but it was Atco, it was Atco EastWest, it was EastWest America, it was Elektra – it was all these different things.

We went in with David Prater, like I said. We recorded it at BearTracks Studios, which is in Suffern in New York, and it was a studio owned by Jay Beckenstein from Spyro Gyra. He had this converted barn, which was absolutely beautiful, and we stayed up there. And all those songs, over the past year and a half that we had been writing, we recorded finally.

David’s big claim to fame at the time was that he was having a lot of success with the band Firehouse – totally different style, you know, ‘Love Of A Lifetime’ and all that – that album was just doing incredibly well. And you know, David basically was brought in to take this progressive metal band – even though the term progressive metal didn’t really exist back then – but this kind of proggy band from Long Island that had a metal sound and make us, as they would call it, like “viable sounding.” So he came in and produced it, and I think that the combination of the style of music we play with that approach of production – making everything just sound really great and forward, and in a way have almost a pop production but in this prog setting – I think contributed to the success.

And honestly nobody really knew at the time what the record would do. Nobody had any indication that it would put us on the map or that ‘Pull Me Under’ would become a rock radio hit or anything. These were a collection of songs that were varying lengths but mostly long, non-traditional arrangements, and the fact that it did as well as it did really surprised everybody.

The interesting thing about the track listing is it’s supposed to be in one sitting. I guess I think back, like when we were younger growing up, we’d put on Rush Hemispheres – we wouldn’t just listen to a song, we’d actually put on the whole record and listen, one side and the next, and it would be like an event, like watching a movie. Even though Images isn’t a concept album, the idea of the track listing and how it flows, where there’s just a definite... ‘Pull Me Under’ as the opener brings the listener in right away. We would never think of opening the record with ‘Another Day’ – it would just be too mellow, and you’d be like, “What is this?” And then ending the record with an epic like ‘Learning To Live’ – that sort of flow was so important and it continues to be so important.

So if you listen to Dream Theater records beyond that, you’re going to hear that same kind of arc, where it’s not just a collection of songs but it’s meant to be listened to – whether it’s a concept album or not – it’s meant to be listened to like the way that we used to listen to records.

The interesting thing, like I said, about ‘Pull Me Under’ becoming a rock radio hit – it wasn’t sort of designed or written to do that. The song is unedited in the eight-minute or so running time, and it has all these twists and turns and everything, but I think something about it sort of stood out during that time.

In 1992 there was a major shift, as everybody knows, in the musical landscape. All the hair metal bands and songs with guitar solos and everything – as great as the 80s were, presenting some of the best albums of all time in my opinion – I mean all the albums by Rush and Maiden and Ozzy and Vai, Satriani, all my heroes that were all during that period – but 1992 comes along and it was all about Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Alice in Chains. So I guess something about ‘Pull Me Under’ being very different than any of that made it stand out. And I remember it first started getting recognition at college radio and then blew up, and everything changed from there.

I also remember about that song – this happens every so often where you have your instrument on and you play something, like kind of the first thing that comes to you, and it turns out to be a riff or a theme or a melody to a song just instantly. And ‘Pull Me Under’ was like that. The opening guitar motif was just something I started playing, and it came out that way. It’s like, “Oh, this sounds cool,” and we developed it into the song.

Some interesting recording techniques – this was all done to tape, there was no ProTools at the time, and to get that big sort of chorus-y guitar sound we actually recorded the guitar multiple times and changed the speed of the tape to get an actual real chorus. So I’d play the part once, they would change the speed of the tape, I’d play it again, they’d change the speed of the tape, I’d play it again. I did that like six times or so, and then the different varying speeds and the different way I played it created its own modulation effect, so that’s why those moments are really rich. I also did things like double the acoustic underneath clean parts, which became sort of a signature thing that I’d continue on.

I mentioned that we recorded this at Jay Beckenstein’s studio, and so having him there was fantastic, because as you all know, for the song ‘Another Day,’ Jay contributed the soprano sax solo and melody for that. So that made that song really unique and special; gave it such a, such a great touch.

‘Take The Time’ is interesting for a certain reason, which is the fact that it's the only song on the record where we shared lyrical responsibilities. In other words, with the other songs like, you have ‘Learning To Live,’ where John Myung wrote the lyrics, or ‘Pull Me Under,’ where Kevin did, or ‘Another Day’ or ‘Metropolis,’ where I did – this was one where we all shared lyrical responsibility. So Mike took a verse, I took a verse, Kevin took a section, and I think it made it really interesting and unique. Of course, it’s also another sort of signature thing that we’d end up doing, where you have this song where basically by form it's definitely not traditional – it's not a pop song, it's very proggy, there’s lots of instrumental sections – but it has this really huge, catchy chorus. And that's something that we always felt was very important. No matter what the song was doing, that that was an element that helped bring people in and sort of glue the song together. So ‘Take The Time’ has one of the biggest, catchiest choruses on the album besides ‘Pull Me Under.’

I remember being in the studio recording the song ‘Surrounded,’ and I had this sort of crazy guitar solo in it, and I played it. David Prater came running into where I was, and he kind of got right in my face. He’s like, “That sounds like a bad Van Halen solo!” And I was like, “Really?” [laughs] He absolutely did not expect that. And we ended up doing something that was more what you hear on the record – this sort of rhythmical part that sort of pushed the song along and made it what you hear now. But I wish I had versions of the solo – the original solo that I did – but there were some moments like that where things that we thought were so special just got axed.

Once the record was done, it was mixed – we weren’t there for the mix – and then David left town and it was like, “OK, here’s the mix, everybody listen to it.” So all these things happened that we just didn’t expect. I mean, the intro to ‘Metropolis,’ he had built it up and did all these things and added percussion and all these crazy things, added some vocal “ahh”s to the end, and we’re hearing this all for the first time – all for the first time – when we’re hearing the mix.

I called it ‘Part 1: The Miracle And The Sleeper’ because I always loved that Rush had ‘Part 1’ and then they’d continue on another record. So it was literally doing a “What would Rush do?” So I called it ‘Metropolis – Part 1,’ not knowing ever when Part 2 was going to come. And then, eventually about ten years or so later, of course, we did Metropolis – Part 2: Scenes From A Memory. So that was a little foreshadowing there, and it turned into another very special record for Dream Theater. In fact, Scenes From A Memory we also recorded and wrote at BearTracks.

‘Under A Glass Moon’ – couple things about that song: I remember writing the lyrics to that while sitting in my car outside my house, and it was raining, and the moon was out, and that kind of provided a lot of the imagery that started that song. I also remember the solo section in that song being really wacky and strange to play over, and so I had to spend some time at home kind of figuring out how I was going to navigate soloing over that. And it ended up turning into a really cool solo with all these different approaches and techniques. But I think the reason was because the rhythm part that we wrote underneath it was really unconventional – it wasn’t just like a solo section in ‘Another Day,’ where there’s a chord progression you’re playing over. It had all these weird, wacky things going on.

Of course, ‘Learning To Live’ has its prequel – I don’t know if you want to call it that – its pre-counterpart, which is ‘Wait For Sleep.’ And the themes in that piano/vocal piece carry through ‘Learning To Live.’ So that’s another thing that Dream Theater would eventually use as a big sort of writing and orchestration and arranging tool for many albums to come – where we foreshadow things or use themes in different parts and present them throughout the song. A lot of our favorite bands did that, like Yes and Rush and Pink Floyd.

I remember there was a guitar solo in ‘Learning To Live’ that was supposed to be an electric solo with a little bit of – I doubled some acoustic underneath – and it turned into being an acoustic solo with a little bit of electric!

I’m so excited and humbled by the success and the fact that it was 30 years ago. And I know a lot of you have enjoyed it, and we still enjoy playing those songs live. But [there’s] a little bit of a recap of Images And Words 30 years later.