Mike Portnoy interview

[plays ‘Night Terror’ and Mike Portnoy gestures at 1:36 in the song]

Tom Power: Dream Theater with Mike Portnoy on drums are back; they’re also back on the road and it’s a great pleasure to welcome Mike to the studio right now. How are you?

Mike Portnoy: Good. Thanks for having me.

TP: It was cool to watch you hit the...

MP: ...the bell? ‘Night Terror’ was the first song we wrote coming back together and starting this session, and it was the first song we released. I knew that one of the very first things that had to be heard was that infamous bell. Somebody made a compilation on YouTube – there’s a great video of every one of my albums chronologically – all my bands – that single bell makes an appearance in almost every album I’ve ever made, and I’ve made about 100 albums at this point, and that’s like a signature thing. But truth be told, I stole it from Neil Peart. That actually was the first time I ever heard that – like a band stop and a *ding*! was from the Prelude of ‘Hemispheres’. So yeah, I politely stole it from him and have used it ever since.

TP: I’m glad you brought up Rush cuz I was hoping to talk to you a little bit about them. But first, welcome here man. The tour’s feeling good?

MP: The tour has been amazing. We started in October, we did a full European leg, we did a South American leg, and now we’re on the North American leg and it’s been amazing each and every show, everywhere we’ve gone, it’s been just incredible.

TP: It looks to me bigger than ever.

MP: It is. It’s definitely the biggest tour the band has done, and we’re celebrating our 40th anniversary since three of us formed the band back in ‘85 when we were teenagers at Berklee College of Music. But yeah, here we are 40 years later, and me being back in the band, it’s been a just a very exciting tour. Everywhere we go, people are just excited. It’s been about 15 years since this lineup has toured together and made an album together, so it’s very exciting.

TP: When you were starting out, when you when you playing drums at the very beginning when you were a kid, what did you want to learn how to play first? Everything I could read was that the Neil and the Rush stuff came later. But Bonham or Keith Moon or...

MP: Bonham and Keith Moon were two of the biggest, and still to this day, are two of my biggest heroes, but before them came Ringo and Charlie Watts as well for that matter. But Ringo was a big one. I was brought up on the Beatles from day one. I was born April 20th, 1967 which was the day that they completed Sgt Pepper, and then it came out 6 weeks later and I was listening to it when it came out 6 weeks later. My dad was a rock and roll DJ and just surrounded me with rock music from day one, and the Beatles were the biggest. So in answer to your question Ringo, was my first drum hero. Then a few years later Keith Moon and John Bonham were two big, big ones for me. And then a little later, growing up as a kid in the mid-70s in America, Kiss had a big impact on me, so Peter Chris was a big one too. This all predated the prog stuff. Once I discovered Neil and Rush and Genesis and King Crimson and Yes and all that stuff, that turned me upside down and made me become the drummer I am today.

TP: Is Ringo an underrated drummer?

MP: Oh my god, yeah. He was really the first drum hero. Before him, nobody even knew who the drummer was.

TP: People like to give him a hard time though.

MP: A lot of my heroes get hard times. Like Lars Ulrich from Metallica was a big one for me, and people give him a hard time, as well. I mean people like Lars and Ringo... it goes beyond just their drumming. They had an impact on me because of their personalities and their importance in their roles in the band. Peter Criss is another as well; you could add Peter to that list. All three of those guys were personalities. Before the Beatles and before Ringo, you never knew who the drummer was. Suddenly they came out a Hard Day’s Night, Ringo was the star of the movie. He was the one with the personality and the storyline. All four of them sang and it was the same with Kiss – all four of them sang. So to me it always went beyond just the drumming itself; it was about if a drummer had an impact with his personality or his role within the band. To me that role within the band goes beyond just drumming. That’s kind of how I tailored myself with Dream Theater; it was more than just the drumming, it was everything being a part of every aspect of a band.

TP: Let’s listen to what I want to play for you. [begins playing Rush’s ‘Lakeside Park’]

MP: [almost immediately] ‘Lakeside Park’.

TP: So tell us what we’re hearing.

MP: Oh that’s ‘Lakeside Park’ by Rush, Neil Peart; it was their third album, Caress of Steel. I mean, you’re talking to a Rush fanatic here. And Dream Theater was built and born out of our love for Rush. In fact, the first name of the band before Dream Theater, we were called Majesty. We were at Berklee College of Music. It was ‘85. And myself, John Petrucci, and John Myung – we met out of a mutual love for Rush, and that was the type of band we wanted to be.

TP: Like you found one another within Berklee...

MP: Those two went up together from Long Island, and then I went up on my own from Long Island. And we met within the first couple weeks of school. They saw me jamming in a practice room wearing Rush T-shirts and stuff like that. So we knew that that was a common ground for us. And like I was gonna say, we came up with the first name of the band [which] was Majesty. We were waiting in line for Rush tickets, sleeping outside. Back then, it wasn’t like nowadays, where you just wake up and click a button on your laptop, and you get your tickets. Back then you had to go on a Saturday morning, sleep out in front of the Ticketmaster to get your tickets. So we were sleeping out at the Berklee Performance Center outside there, waiting for Rush tickets for the Power Windows tour, and we were listening to that exact album; we were listening to Caress of Steel, and the song ‘Bastille Day’ came on. We were like, “Oh, man, listen to that!” – the ending when they go into the halftime thing and the guitar melody. We’re like, “That’s so majestic”. And we’re like, “Hey, that’d be a great name for the band, Majesty!” And that was where the name of the band was born.

TP: Well A/B pre- you hearing Neil Peart, and after hearing Neil Peart as a drummer.

MP: I mean it was night and day. BNP – before Neil Peart [laughs] – it was Ringo and John Bonham and Keith Moon, like I mentioned. More like classic rock guys...

TP: Four to the floor...

MP: Yeah, 4/4 time. But then once I heard Neil... I came in late in the game. I discovered them in around ‘81, ‘82; so it was right after Moving Pictures and I was around 14 or 15 at that point, and it was just the perfect band at the perfect time for what I needed. I was ready to really become a better drummer, and I wanted to learn more about the drums and develop more as a musician. So Rush’s music immediately blew my mind and I became obsessed with them and became obsessed with Neil. Everything I learned about progressive music – odd time signatures, the giant drum kit, the way to orchestrate drum parts melodically – I got all that from Neil. So once I discovered Neil, it developed me as a drummer and a musician in general. The fact that he was the band’s lyricist as well really inspired me. I ended up becoming one of the lyricists in Dream Theater as well. So at that point, I took the deep dive into Rush and Neil, and from there discovered other stuff, like Frank Zappa’s music or drummers like Simon Phillips and Terry Bozzio, or like I mentioned earlier Yes and Crimson and Genesis and all that early prog stuff. But Rush and Neil were the jumping off point for me.

TP: You got to know Neil; some musicians are OK with people who are really influenced by them, some people keep them at a real distance. I’m sure you’ve seen that before. My understanding is that you and Neil had a really warm, friendly relationship.

MP: I didn’t get to know him ‘til many years into my career, because as everybody knows, Neil was a very private person, and it was hard to infiltrate that bubble. He had a very close inner circle, and to break down that wall and get to him, it took years and years of me trying to. I had gotten to know like every other drummer on Earth, doing drum festivals and things like that. But Neil was always very elusive. And then around 2006 or so is when we met for the first time. I was given free reign for a magazine, Rhythm magazine in the UK. They gave me an issue where I could be the guest editor and take over the magazine and interview... They wanted me to pick four of my biggest influences to interview. And of course, Neil was number one on the list. And it was Neil, Bill Bruford, Lars Ulrich, and Nick Mason from Pink Floyd. But that was my first time meeting Neil. And I was given the opportunity to meet with him at his hotel room in New York. He was on tour, doing a book tour.

TP: Did he know who you were?

MP: He knew who I was. At that point Dream Theater had been around for 20 years, and everybody always compared us to Rush and always brought us and Rush up in the same conversation. So yeah, he knew who I was, but we had never met or spoken. And once I had that first opportunity... First of all, it was great that my job was to interview him, because I was able to ask all the fanboy questions I always wanted to know, and it wasn’t inappropriate. You know, if we had met under social circumstances, I couldn’t ask him that stuff.

TP: And you pinned him in the corner, with like, “What’s with the bell?”

MP: That would have been the end of me right there. But the fact that I was sent to interview him, it was great. I was able to ask all these things I wanted to know and it was part of my job. From there he opened up to me and God bless him. For the next 15 years until he passed, we stayed in close touch. He would write me these long emails. His emails were infamous, like reading his books or his lyrics; just really well thought out and well crafted. I’d get these emails from him all the time with pictures of him and his young daughter who was growing up. He would always send me his new books when they came out or when Rush was coming through town, he’d always invite me out to sound check. He was just so gracious like that. Once you get to know him and once he befriends you, he was such a genuine, giving person to people that he was friends with. I’m honored that I eventually got to that point with him.

TP: I’m glad to hear it. Like I said Alex Lifeson was in here yesterday and he was speaking really highly of you. I know Geddy speaks really highly of you, too. And you know they’re jamming? Before I knew Dream Theater were in town, I was like “Is that why Mike’s in town? Is he hanging out in the shed in the backyard?”

MP: What an amazing experience that would be, just be a fly in the wall for the two of them. After Neil Peart passed, inevitably everybody was wondering what those two were gonna do. And inevitably I’d get asked a lot about that, just because we’re in similar musical circles. Every time I would get asked it, the answer was of course, “Yes I would play with those guys in a heartbeat!” Of course, it goes without saying. But then it would turn into clickbait headlines where “Mike Portnoy wants to join Rush” or whatever, and it’s like “No, no! I’m not implying that! I’m not!” They’re my heroes, and I was asked a question, so I’m just answering. Of course those guys are absolute heroes to all of us.

TP: They’re jamming without a drummer is what they told me. They’re just playing Rush tunes just on guitar and bass.

MP: Well that’s good, good for them. It’s great that they’re still doing it. I mean, those two have been together since elementary school or whatever it was, so their relationship obviously goes very, very deep.

TP: When did the switch come from when the band first started, because you guys were doing a lot of covers in the early days, jamming a lot of covers. When did you start writing original music?

MP: We started writing original music right out of the gate at Berklee when we formed in ‘85. So we would spend half the time doing covers. We’d do Rush covers, or Iron Maiden, or whatever we were listening to at that time.

TP: Were you fish out of water at Berklee?

MP: Oh big time. Everybody there were jazz guys. You’d go down the hallway, and you’d hear everybody doing Miles Davis covers, or Chick Corea stuff, or jazz standards, swing stuff. And then, you go past our room, and we’re playing like ‘La Villa Strangiato’, ‘Xanadu’, and doing all these Rush covers. We were definitely the outcasts at that time. Now, you go to Berklee, and it’s all Dream Theater kids. They’re all playing Dream Theater songs. They’re all into this prog metal world that has evolved over the last couple of decades. But yeah, at the time, we were doing a lot of covers – and to answer your question – we started writing our own material right out of the gate as well. So at Berklee, the three of us started writing material that turned into our first demo in 1986, the Majesty demo. A few years later, got our first record deal and eventually found our singer, who was from up here in Toronto, James LaBrie. We were sent an audition tape from him. He was Kevin LaBrie at the time and he’s been in the band since 1991. So that’s been 34 years at this point.

TP: You’ve got more Canadian connections than I thought you did. I got a bigger question: I’ve been asking people why they play the music that they play. [When] the three of you got together, what’s thrilling or exciting about playing sometimes pretty complex, virtuosic, odd time signature… not saying that that’s all your music [is], but that being the thing that you were into.

MP: Well I don’t know if you’re alluding to talking about my post-Dream Theater period, but when I left Dream Theater in 2010, I went off and did all these other things, not all of which were rooted in progressive music. In answer to your question, when I went to Berklee, I could have ended up in so many different kinds of bands and been happy. I ended up in a progressive metal band. We formed a progressive metal band in the vein of Rush and Yes, but I easily could have ended up in a thrash metal band. In 1985, I was listening to Slayer and Megadeth and Metallica – that whole scene was just coming around. So I could have easily ended up in a metal band or ended up in a punk rock band. I listened to the Ramones and the Sex Pistols and the Clash, so I could have gone in any direction. The fact that I met John Petrucci and John Myung... Rush was the band that we all loved. So it wasn’t a preconceived deception, “Hey, let’s become a progressive metal band.” We kind of were just following our hearts with the type of music we loved, and the common ground for us was Rush, Yes, but with a heavier side as well. We listened to Iron Maiden and Judas Priest and Black Sabbath, so we wanted to combine progressive music with metal music and put together a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup with the two flavors. But I could have happily went in a lot of different directions, but for some reason that’s where Dream Theater went. It wasn’t an easy road. When we finally broke around 1992 with the album Images and Words – that was our second album – somehow it just broke on American radio and blew up, but that was already 7 years in. We were struggling for many, many years to find our place, and even when it did blow up in ‘92, that was in the height of Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, Jane’s Addiction and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. We were total outcasts. So I think maybe we fell into this musical direction because we were trying to fill a void that wasn’t popular at the time. Most bands will follow a trend and follow something that’s popular to get popular. We went the opposite way. We were like, “OK, we love early Rush, we love Hemispheres and Farewell to Kings and Permanent Waves. We love Yes’s Close to the Edge, and Genesis’ Trick of the Tale and Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. And at that point in mid-80s, all those bands – Genesis, Yes, Rush – they were writing shorter songs, little more traditional arrangements. So we were trying to just fill a void, because by the mid-80s, our favorite prog bands weren’t doing the long, very complex music. So we were trying to just fill a void as listeners, and do something in a style that we loved listening to.

TP: Can we hear that from ‘92? [plays ‘Pull Me Under’] What do you hear when you hear that?

MP: I hear a song that changed our lives forever. I mean, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking with you. I wouldn’t be on tour for Dream Theater’s 40th Anniversary tour if that song hadn’t blown up the way it did in America. And you often hear the story about Rush, how they were like, ‘do or die’ after Caress of Steel. And luckily, 2112 clicked, and they were able to move on from there. It was very much like that with ‘Pull Me Under’ for us. You know, we had been around for seven years. We had so many false starts with different labels, different singers, different managers, and it just never clicked. And for some reason, ‘Pull Me Under’ clicked on American radio, and from there, spread everywhere else, even we got up here to Canada and we would do Much Music. All of a sudden, the floodgates open for us. And it’s strange because ‘Pull Me Under’ is an eight-and-a-half-minute song. It was the last song added to the album right before we went in to record it, and it was the most unlikely hit ever. And to this day, it’s really the only radio hit we ever had. Everything has been built on our own terms since then. Luckily, we have an amazing, supportive fan base that allows us to do what we do. But if ‘Pull Me Under’ hadn’t hit, we probably wouldn’t be here together right now.

TP: I mean this in the best way possible because I really love the song – why did it hit? Any idea?

MP: I think we were just the wrong song at the wrong time, or the right song at the wrong time. Like I said, in ‘91-’92, this was so out of fashion. And it’s weird we were signed to Atco/Atlantic Records by Derek Schulman who was the lead singer of the prog band Gentle Giant. So Derek Schulman came from this progressive background with General Giant, but in the early to mid-80s, he became a big industry type. He signed Bon Jovi, he signed Cinderella, he signed Pantera. So he had this track record of signing successful bands, and for some reason, he took a chance with Dream Theater, and it was Derek Oliver, as well. Derek Oliver was our A&R guy and Derek Schulman was the head of the label. With the support of those two guys, somehow they heard something in us that maybe they were missing in music at that time, and it was filling a void for them the same way [for] why we were writing this music – it was filling a void for ourselves – and somehow it clicked. I guess there’s always going to be an audience for this kind of music, so it doesn’t matter what’s popular on the radio, it doesn’t matter that at that point, it was all about Nirvana and Pearl Jam. I think maybe people reacted to us because we were the alternative to alternative.

TP: Was there a moment you were like, “Oh, this is getting pretty big now”?

MP: It was MTV at that time. At that time you had to be on MTV to do anything. I remember we started the Images and Words tour [in] September ‘92; we were in a van, just the five of us and a tour manager, slumming it out each and every night, playing tiny little clubs...

TP: ...200, 300?

MP: Yeah, exactly. Well that was the capacity – the people that were there was more like 50 or 60! We started on the east coast, went to the west coast, and we got lucky where we got an offer to play some shows in Japan in November of ‘92. So by the time we got to LA, we flew over to Japan, and while we were in Japan for those couple of shows, something clicked in America, because we came back a week later and then needed to tour from the west back to the east. At that point we were in a van, we could not turn on the radio without hearing ‘Pull Me Under’ every hour, every city we went, every radio station we went. From there, MTV picked up on it, and every single day in the hotel room, we turn on MTV, it was on once an hour and it was the craziest thing. Suddenly now we were stepping up to thousand seat clubs. It was selling out every night. We moved on to a tour bus for the first time, and it began this ride that we’ve been on ever since 30 plus years now.

TP: I only asked because you’ve been open about it, but the road was a bit hard on you, wasn’t it?

MP: Yeah, absolutely. Even once ‘Pull Me Under’ broke and we were now on a bus, the ‘90s were a tough time. We got lucky with this one song and this one album that went gold immediately in America. So we got lucky, but then to have a follow up to that proved to be not likely. We weren’t meant to be a radio band. We weren’t meant to be on the radio or MTV. That was a fluke. So, when we did the follow-up albums, that’s when we started finding out that the label still want that hit single each time. And it’s like, “Well, no, that’s not what you signed.” That’s not what we were ever supposed to be.

TP: You were selling records to die-hard fans. You were selling a lot of records, actually. So their bottom line’s fine, right?

MP: Well, no. I think compared to whatever was happening, by the time we came up with the follow-up to Images and Words, they went from selling 700,000 copies to 200,000... We had a big audience, but we had to fight for it to keep it, and to keep growing it. There were a couple of years in the late ‘90s, where we found ourselves in another tough situation with [the] label, [which] was not giving us the green light, or they were bringing in outside producers to try to shape us to write more hits. And it was like, “That’s not who this band is, we need to be ourselves.” Once again, I bring up the Rush comparison, but it was that Caress of Steel, 2112 kind of scenario that we found ourselves in at the end of the ‘90s, after the Falling Into Infinity album, where we made an album with an outside producer and an outside songwriter, and it just it flopped. And people, the fans, weren’t feeling it. It just felt like a sellout, and we were just doing whatever it took to continue moving forward. So, after that album, I was frustrated. I wanted out. I was like, “Why are we doing this if we can’t do it on our own terms?” And we finally just shook everything down and said to the label and to our manager at the time, “If you want this band to exist anymore, you have to get out of our way. Let us make the record we want to make.” And we made Scenes from a Memory in 1999, and that was the other album that, once again, saved us. It was like that 2112 story that you hear from Rush, it was the same thing with us. That was like Do or Die, and we self-produced for the first time, and we made a concept album. It was like everything the fans could have wanted from us, and everything the label was afraid to get from us, but somehow it worked. And then at that point, we became self-produced for the rest of our career, and we’ve done things on our own terms for the rest of our career since then.

TP: Do you ever hear that Neil Young quote where he says, “I was being pushed into the middle of the road so I put the car in the ditch”?

MP: I get it. That’s absolutely where we were at that point.

TP: You’ve been pretty open about how the road was kind of tough on you. You had to get sober at some point, if you don’t mind me bringing it up, only because you seem to talk about it, you seem to get something out of it.

MP: Yeah, I can’t get upset about being asked about it because I openly have written about it. I wrote five songs over the course of five albums in my early sobriety. I wanted to write lyrics about the 12 steps because it was such a big part of my life at that stage in the early 2000s. So, yeah, I had this idea of writing about the 12 steps, but it’s such a big subject to tackle. I knew it couldn’t possibly happen with one song, so I decided to write a song about steps one, two, and three. Then the next album, we continued where that song left off musically and lyrically, and then I wrote about steps four and five, and so on and so forth. Over the course of five albums, I wrote five songs which covered the 12 steps. So yeah, I’ve been open about it, and I needed that at that stage of my life in order to still be here talking to you. I mean, at that point in the late ‘90s, early 2000s, I was a newborn father. I had two kids that were born in the late ‘90s, and my drinking and drugging was out of control.

TP: You’re on the road a lot. You were away from home.

MP: Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of the time, I would just drink out of boredom. You’re sitting around, you play a 2-hour show every night, a three-hour show every night, you’re sitting around for 21, 22 hours the rest of the time, just killing time. So, yeah, it was dangerous for me in those early days, and I didn’t want to become a rock ‘n’ roll casualty like my heroes Keith Moon and John Bonham, so I got sober at that stage, and it was a big, big part. Thank God I had the band support. Those guys never had substance issues. It was always me hanging out either with the crew guys or with the opening bands. Once I got sober at that stage, the guys in Dream Theater were so supportive. We would have no alcohol in the buses or the dressing rooms; John Petrucci would come by my hotel room and empty out the minibar. So I had a lot of support from those guys.

TP: Maybe I’m more curious about it. I got a buddy of mine who died on the road late one night after a gig where everyone was chanting his name and everyone was loving him, and then that was it.

MP: It could be rough out there. I don’t know the story exactly of what happened to Chris Cornell, but that’s just one example I’m pulling out of the top of my hat. What you just mentioned kind of made me think of him. Sometimes you could be on stage in front of 10,000 people cheering your name and they love you, but you get back to your hotel room at the end of the night, and you’re all by yourself, and you could be really isolated or lonely. So, yeah, it’s very, very easy to get sucked into that vortex.

TP: When you left Dream Theater, was it hard to get used to that rhythm going away? Like, the rhythm of being on the road, the rhythm of making records, touring with this band, catering...

MP: Here’s the funny thing. When I left Dream Theater in 2010, I left because I was fried from the write-record-tour, write-record-tour, write-record-tour. It was just an endless cycle that was going on for 25 years at that point for me. And I, being the control freak I was, oversaw every element with not just the music and the lyrics and the melodies and the production, but also the merch and the fan clubs and everything, the setlist. So it was all-encompassing, and I was fried. So the biggest irony is I wanted to take a break and we came to a head where I ended up leaving the band because I needed a break. But that’s the biggest irony of all, is that I went off from there to form, like 87 bands! [laughs]

TP: I was looking at that. You were busier than ever.

MP: Yeah. In the 13 years I was out of Dream Theater, I made – I don’t know – 50 or 60 albums with dozens of different bands and artists. So that’s the biggest irony, is I suddenly went from doing write-record-tour, write-record-tour with one band to now doing it with a dozen bands and never having a break. And everybody at first was like, “Oh, we thought you needed a break.” And I was like, “Well, maybe I just needed a break from the Dream Theater world.” Then I was very inspired doing all these albums with all these other musicians I admired and loved. And anything my imagination could think of, I was in this great position to put together these bands. I wanted to form a band with Steve Morse. OK, I formed a band with Steve Morse. I wanted to form a band with Billy Sheehan and Richie Kotzen. OK, let’s do that. I wanted do something with Tony McAlpine and Derek Sherinian, or do a thrash metal album with the guys from Anthrax and Metallica and Megadeth. Anything my imagination could think of, I was able to do all these other things with other people. So yeah, it was the busiest, most fruitful decade-plus of my entire career. And I was able to do so many different musical styles. Everybody kind of knew me as the hundred-piece-drum-kit guy from Dream Theater, but suddenly now I was doing classic rock in the vein of Cream or Hendrix with The Winery Dogs, or doing the thrash metal stuff with Metal Allegiance, or even doing hired-gun gigs. I had done a whole tour with Avenged Sevenfold. I had joined Twisted Sister for their farewell tour.

TP: How was that?

MP: There you go – the guy that wrote ‘The Dance of Eternity’ with Dream Theater playing... ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’. I am the most unlikely person that you would ever think would be the guy to land the gig with Twisted Sister for their farewell tour. But I think, if anything, it more goes to show my eclectic taste. Even though I made my name with Dream Theater, doing Dream Theater-style progressive music, I’m still the biggest Beatles fan you’ll ever meet, I’m the biggest U2 fan, the biggest Jellyfish fan. So yeah, I needed to spread my musical wings over those years away.

TP: That leads me to something I wanted to talk to you about in terms of the way you approached drumming. But before I get to that, I can’t not ask you about rejoining Dream Theater. The question I want to ask is not what happened when you rejoined Dream Theater; my question is what did you have to do internally to rejoin Dream Theater?

MP: Well, the first step was I needed to mend the personal relationships with all four of the other guys in the band, ‘cause I know I hurt them when I left them, and I always felt really bad about that. I made a decision that essentially was very selfish, leaving the band at... We had just played Madison Square Garden with Iron Maiden and then, like, a month later I left the band. It’s like, everything was full steam ahead at that point, but I made a selfish decision that I needed to scratch an itch, or else I would’ve regretted not leaving. I love that expression, “It’s better to regret something you have done than something you haven’t done,” and that’s kind of where I was at. It was like, “Man, if I don’t follow my heart and try some other things, I’m gonna forever wonder ‘what if’.” So I needed to do it. But in answer to your question, coming back, I needed to mend the personal relationships with all the guys and make amends for possibly hurting them. And it came slowly. I mean, first myself and John Petrucci started hanging out socially. Our families are our friends. Our wives used to play in a band together. Our kids are friends. So we started getting together for the holidays and just doing stuff with our families. And then it followed suit with Jordan Rudess. Jordan and I would get together. And then John Myung lives literally down the block from me where I live in Pennsylvania. So the personal relationships needed to be mended. And the final piece of that puzzle was James LaBrie, ‘cause I hadn’t spoken to James in over a decade. And he held a grudge with me, and I had tried to make amends many times with him and he just wasn’t ready. And at one point towards the end of ‘22, I think it was, I went and saw Dream Theater in New York and was able to see James in person for the first time, and within a minute everything melted away. Within a minute, it was big hugs, kisses, “I love you. I miss you.” And all of that bulls*** that transpired for years – all the drama immediately melted away. So once we were at a state where the personal relationship—

TP: ...you could be friends again.

MP: We could be, and that was it. To be honest, even at that stage, when James and I mended fences, if somebody asked me, “Do you think you’d be back in Dream Theater?”, I would even at that point say, “Eh, I don’t know if I would bet on it. I don’t know.” And then there started to be these musical steps that started to feel, “OK, maybe this is inevitable.” I played on John Petrucci’s solo album and did a tour with him for his solo tour. Jordan and myself and John Petrucci did a third Liquid Tension Experiment album, along with Tony Levin. So we started having these musical steps that started to feel, “Well, maybe this is the time and place.” And, we’re all getting older. We’re all in our late fifties, and some of the guys are even in their sixties at this point. And we look at what happened with Rush. And they had done their 40th-anniversary tour and then retired and then, five years later, Neil was gone. So, things like that would make us think, like, “Who knows how much time we have left here personally or collectively as a band?” And with everything kind of coming together with us on personal levels and musical levels outside of Dream Theater, it started to feel, “Maybe this is the time.” And I’m glad it did, because I see stories like Roger Waters never going back to Pink Floyd or Peter Gabriel never going back to Genesis, and I always dreaded, like, “I hope that’s not gonna be the case with me and Dream Theater. I hope we someday reunite and ride off into the sunset together, as it’s meant to be.” And that’s where we’re at. Here we are.

TP: ...bigger than ever. They’re going to kick you out here in a minute. You probably got to go to soundcheck or something.

MP: Soundcheck and then meet and greet...

TP: You’re a really technically proficient player who is admired by technically proficient drummers. When you’re writing parts, especially parts where you might be a little bit more isolated or apparent, do you think more in terms of technical precision, storytelling with the tune or feel?

MP: Absolutely the technical precision is the third on that list. Absolutely, by far. It’s crazy that I’ve made such a reputation of being this technical drummer, because, to be honest, I’m the furthest you’ll ever meet. The way I sit, the way I hold my sticks, the way I play. Everything about it is unorthodox, and probably technically incorrect, if there’s such a thing. I’m horrible with that stuff.

TP: You’re not a good technical... like teaching you... “This is how you should sit.”

MP: Not for drumming. I went to music school to learn about all the other stuff: music theory, harmony, sight singing, ear training, arranging. I did all that at Berklee because I wanted to be a more rounded musician. So that plays into one of the three choices – you said either technical ability, storytelling, or feel. To me, learning all the musical stuff, that goes into the storytelling category. When we’re writing music in Dream Theater, I’m thinking about the song. I’m thinking about the album, the big concept of the album, about the melody, the arrangement of the song, the orchestration of the instruments, the production. I’m thinking about all that stuff before I’m even thinking about the drums. The drums are the last thing I think about. Then the next thing on that list [is] the feel. When I am thinking about the drum part, it has to feel good. There’s a lot of parts on the new album that we just put out where we were working on a super technical riff. The riff is in a crazy, odd time signature. And me as a drummer, I have the artistic choice: do I match that and play all these different odd time signatures, or do I put something underneath it that actually feels good? That an audience, an arena of 10,000 people, will actually headbang to? Anytime the drumming gets over-playing or over-thinking... Billy Sheehan once had an expression that I loved. He said, “If you’re thinking, you’re stinking”, and that’s definitely the headspace I come from. For me, the drums have to feel good first and foremost. I know all that stuff. I know how to play in all these odd time signatures and I could play in 19/16 or 13/8 or whatever. It’s good to have the ability to understand it and know how to do it. But just because you can doesn’t mean you should, and that’s the difference: knowing when to do that stuff and play that way, and when not to. And I feel a big part of my role as one of the songwriters in this band is to do what’s best for the song, and first and foremost that’s always the priority for me as a drummer.

TP: I could talk to you about this all day, but I know you gotta go to soundcheck. Thanks for making the time for coming in. We didn’t even get to talk about the Taylor Swift ‘Shake It Off’ [Drumeo video]. I think it sounded better, by the way.

MP: Yeah the Drumeo videos, it’s crazy. I’ve said this before, but I’ve won 32 Modern Drummer awards at this point, I’ve been on the cover of the magazine I think five times, and it doesn’t matter – all those accolades mean nothing. I am now either the ‘Taylor Swift guy’ or the ‘Hello Kitty guy’. There’s a video of me playing a Hello Kitty kit from a few years ago that went viral, so yeah, these viral videos are now my claim to fame. But those Drumeo videos are phenomenal – they’re doing an amazing job.