Dream On

Energised by founder member Mike Portnoy rejoining after 13 years away, prog metal legends Dream Theater have returned with a breathtaking new album, Parasomnia, that’s quite possibly the greatest achievement of their nigh-on 40-year career. To celebrate their status as Rock Candy Mag cover stars Howard Johnson speaks to all five band members about the long road they’ve travelled and why they’re more excited than ever by the band and their future together...

John Petrucci

Given all of the accolades that have come guitarist John Petrucci’s way since he first created waves on Dream Theater’s debut album, 1989’s When Dream And Day Unite, it’s remarkable that the 57 year old is so grounded. Petrucci is as unassuming as they come. Send him an email and he’ll always respond. Ask him for an interview and he’s generous with his time, whether it’s sharing his love for Iron Maiden, discussing his phenomenal technique, or talking about his main musical preoccupation which is, of course, Dream Theater. Petrucci talks quietly, without hyperbole or any sense of self-aggrandisement, and he listens attentively. But the man who’s been referred to as ‘one of the most celebrated and popular guitarists in the world of progressive metal’ and ‘arguably the most versatile and proficient player in his realm’ also has a steely determination that suggests you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him. It’s this combination of humility and absolute focus that’s helped Petrucci drive Dream Theater – the band he founded with bassist John Myung and drummer Mike Portnoy as Majesty back in 1985 – to become one of the most enduring and successful prog metal bands of all time. As guitarist, writer, and producer, Petrucci has spearheaded Dream Theater’s rise to prominence over the course of 16 studio albums that have yielded a total of over 12 million worldwide record sales, three Grammy nominations, and one Grammy win for ‘Best Metal Performance’ with the song ‘Alien’ from the 2021 album A View From The Top Of The World. It’s an achievement he tells me – with typical understatement – that he rates as “not bad.”

Petrucci’s latest contribution to the Dream Theater canon comes in the form of the band’s new studio effort, Parasomnia, an eight-song prog metal extravaganza that our very own Dave Ling described in this issue’s review as an album that has “exceeded all expectations” and “might even be their defining statement.” It’s high praise indeed, and to celebrate this milestone achievement, we at Rock Candy Mag are delighted to bestow the honour of cover star status on Dream Theater.

No doubt this moment is particularly sweet for the magazine’s owner Derek Oliver. Why? Because it’s no exaggeration to say that Derek is one of the single most important and influential figures in the history of Dream Theater. It was Derek who signed the band to Atco Records in 1991 when he was working in the label’s A&R department in New York. And it was that major label deal that proved to be the springboard for the group’s enduring success.

“I don’t honestly remember how we first came into contact with Derek,” says Petrucci. “But what I do know is that he’s an absolutely integral part of our story. It was because of him that Atco felt like the right label for us. Derek really understood the kind of band we were. He got the prog thing. He got the metal thing. We were lucky to have him.”

And now here we are, more than 30 years later, celebrating Dream Theater’s incredible career through the lens of new release Parasomnia. Isn’t it great when things work out?

Howard Johnson: John, it’s well known that your musical journey started early in the Kings Park area of New York. But can you set the scene for us?

John Petrucci: Sure. When we were kids, [keyboardist] Kevin Moore lived right around the corner from me, and we became friends really early on. I started playing guitar when I was 12, and Kevin played piano. One of the first things that I ever played was at Kevin’s house. He had some friends over and there was a guitar there. I don’t even remember if it was mine or not, and they were playing, ‘Hey Hey, My My’, the Neil Young song. I jumped right in and played the main guitar line. And then Kevin and I formed this incredible friendship through our mutual love of rock music, and we were best buddies for years. We were big fans of The Who and The Doors, Rush, and Pink Floyd, lots of stuff. So then fast forward to middle school and that’s when I first met John Myung who lived nearby but in a different neighbourhood. Suddenly I started to become aware of all these guys from a little further afield who all had long hair and were into Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. This whole world opened up to me, and John and I clicked right away. We played together all the time. We made a pact whereby we had to practise six hours a day no matter what. At the weekend you couldn’t be seen at a party if you hadn’t got your six hours in. And if the other guy wasn’t there, then you knew it was because they were still practising.

HJ: That doesn’t seem to be a great recipe for having a girlfriend...

JP: And yet we did have girlfriends. I don’t know how we managed, actually! But I was so happy to be in that environment. Looking back on it now, the suburbs we grew up in on Long Island were crazy. There were so many kids who played, so many drummers and so many guitar players. That’s how I cut my teeth. I would go to these different neighbourhoods and there’d be different sets of guys that liked different kinds of music. There were these two dudes who loved Hendrix and the Dead, and we’d sit there and jam for hours. I actually have recordings of those jams that we made on a boom box. Then there was this other guy who was really into the Scorpions and all this European stuff that I’d never heard before, and we’d get together and jam on that. John and I knew this other guy, and we’d jam together on Rush and Maiden. We had a band called Centurion and we played everything from Mötley Crüe to Led Zeppelin to Rush. Everybody played. It was crazy and cool. It was the late ’70s, early ’80s, and rock radio stations were really popular. So we were getting turned on to Def Leppard, to Ozzy, AC/DC, and Sabbath. All of that was on the radio, and it all became a major influence as well. I honestly don’t think I’d have the career I have now had I not grown up in that environment.

HJ: You were clearly talented, but at what point did this enthusiasm for playing rock guitar really take root?

JP: As I started getting older, graduation and the thought of college came up. I definitely had it in my mind that guitar was what I wanted to pursue. I remember looking at the players I was listening to a lot at that point, guys like Al Di Meola and Steve Vai, and finding out that they’d been to Berklee College of Music in Boston. I didn’t know what Berklee was. But there was a music teacher in my high school who taught band. I wasn’t in the school band, I just played guitar. But I’d go to the teacher’s music room during my off periods and practise. He heard me and immediately had a conversation with my parents, “You’ve got to send this kid to Berklee.” To be honest, my parents didn’t want me to go to music school. I was a really good student in school. I had great grades, and my father was one of the early pioneers in computer programming and software development. I’d worked for him for a short period and my parents wanted me to have something solid to fall back on. Looking back now, I can understand that. A career in music didn’t seem particularly realistic and they were worried that I was throwing my life away. But you know how you are when you’re a teenager. I was convinced that it would work out, so in the end I won out. My parents took out a loan to send me to Berklee, and I had to pay it back over the years. But of course back in 1985, Berklee didn’t cost what it does now. I know that through bitter experience because my own son is now a Berklee graduate!

HJ: And your friend John Myung ended up at Berklee too, right?

JP: That’s right. I’d applied and got in, but John was still a little bit on the fence about what he wanted to do next. And then in the late summer before the first semester, John finally decided he wanted to go there too, and he got in. Things were so different back then, Howard. I remember John pulling up at my house in his van at something like four in the morning, and the two of us drove off to college together. It wasn’t the parents driving up there with you and setting you up in your room. But it was great, and within the first couple of weeks we were meeting different kids from all over the world. We made a whole bunch of really good friends really quickly, mostly the rock guys.

HJ: And Mike Portnoy was one of those guys...

JP: Mike was one of them. I’ll never forget it. They had these practice rooms, and John and I peered into this one room and saw a guy playing drums. I think he was wearing a Talas shirt. We were like, “Oh my God, this guy’s amazing.” So we got talking to Mike, and it turned out that he was from Long Island too, maybe an hour away from where John and I lived. We just hit it off. We were into all of the same bands, but Mike had an even wider range. He was into Zappa and thrash and all this other stuff. The three of us started playing together literally every day. At Berklee you had to reserve a room to practise in the evening, but to reserve it you had to be at the front desk to wait in line and sign up for it at something like six in the morning in order to make sure you got your room. The three of us would take it in turns to wait in line to sign up. Mike had this cart that he used to wheel his drums around in because he had to set his kit up and break it down every day. That was really the beginning of Dream Theater.

HJ: But before too long you dropped out of Berklee. Why on earth did you do that?

JP: Kevin Moore didn’t go to Berklee. He went to a state school up in New York called Fredonia. But after that first semester we all got together for the break and played together. Straight away we all went, “Oh man, this is it! We need to leave college, and this has to be our band.” So after a year at Berklee, John, Mike and I left – and that led to an interesting conversation with my parents. “Remember this whole music college thing I was so determined to do? Well, I’m dropping out.” To give my parents credit, they took it on the chin. They even let us rehearse at their house.

HJ: You recorded some demos with a singer called Chris Collins in 1986, yes?

JP: Mike had a four-track recorder, and we did some stuff at Berklee and then at my house. We’d been looking for a singer, but nothing had really worked out at Berklee. Then one day we got wind of this guy who could sing ‘Queen Of The Reich’ by Queensrÿche, a really tough song to sing. So we got Chris in, and he was amazing. Turned out he lived in the same neighbourhood that I lived in. We called the band Majesty, and I remember exactly when we came up with the name. When we were at Berklee we were in line queuing for tickets for Frank Zappa. We could hear the Rush song ‘Bastille Day’ playing somewhere, and we were all big Rush fans. One of us said, “Oh, that’s so majestic sounding,” and we immediately went, “Oh man, Majesty is such a cool name”. So we recorded our first demo with Chris, but it ended up not working out for whatever reason. Then we got this guy Charlie Dominici in on vocals, through an ad I think, and Charlie was very, very entertaining. He was significantly older than us. We were in our early 20s, and he was something like 36... an old man! But he was so charming, and he had history. He’d been in all these different bands like Franke And The Knockouts. He played guitar and sang and played keyboards, and he’d sit there and play Beatles songs. We thought he was great, and we used some of the early demos we made with Charlie to shop the band around the record companies and eventually signed to our first label Mechanic [in 1988]. Charlie recently passed away, which is really sad.

HJ: When did the band change its name from Majesty to Dream Theater?

JP: When we signed to Mechanic we recorded all the music for [first album] When Dream And Day Unite. We even had the artwork ready, and then we heard that another band had a trademark on the name Majesty, and they wouldn’t give it up. That was catastrophic news. It was our first record deal, and the album was done. What were we going to do? We realised we’d have to change the name, but we really, really laboured over that. We had the worst ideas. We almost called ourselves Camera. We almost called ourselves Glasser, which was the surname of one of our music attorneys. But nothing felt right, and we were losing our minds.

Mike’s dad Howard lived in the Monterey area in Northern California, and there was a movie theatre near him there called the Dream Theater. If you Google it you can see the original sign from the movie theatre that’s since closed. Now we were rehearsing in the basement of a hairdressing salon on Long Island every night. One evening Mike came in and said, “My dad came up with this name Dream Theater.” And as soon as we heard it, our eyes lit up. We were like, “That’s it. That is a great name for a band.” It was done, signed off.

HJ: But when When Dream And Day Unite came out on Mechanic in 1989, it didn’t really light a fire, did it?

JP: I do remember hearing it on metal radio for the first time and losing my mind; we did a bunch of interviews to support the album, and it got some great reviews too, including one from Derek Oliver in Kerrang! That’s when he first started becoming a believer and a supporter, and he would eventually sign us to Atco. But we didn’t tour the record so it didn’t move the dial at all, and fairly quickly we started to get a bit disillusioned. Eventually we decided that we didn’t think Charlie was the right guy for us. We were listening to Maiden and Priest and Queen, but Charlie didn’t sing like the singers from those bands. He sang more like an R&B guy, so we let him go and then we were singerless again. So we started auditions.

HJ: And how did that go?

JP: We had some crazy people. There was a guy who called himself The Crazy Viking...

HJ: I would have taken him in a heartbeat...

JP: He actually ended up splitting his head open on my guitar, and there we were with his head in the sink of the hairdressing salon and us trying to wash the blood out! Then there was a guy from Greece who came to the audition with his entire family; wife, kids, grandmother... In the end there were a couple of guys who were almost in the band. We actually wrote music with them and even announced one of them, a guy called Steve Stone, on stage in Long Island after doing half a set instrumentally. And then, even at that late stage, we suddenly decided that he wasn’t right either. It was a really weird time. And to make matters worse the Gulf War was happening and we honestly thought we were going to get drafted. We were still with Mechanic, but we were thinking, “Oh, is this it? Are our dreams over already?” We kept at it, though, and eventually we got turned on to a press pack of a singer by the name of James LaBrie.

HJ: And was that a lightbulb moment?

JP: It really was. Somebody from Mechanic turned us onto him, and straight away we wanted him. But I felt bad about it because we had that other singer and we’d kind of told him he was in. And then James’s thing turned up. We saw his promo photo and he looked like [Italian model and actor] Fabio! He looked great, and then we heard his singing... It was amazing. He sounded like Steve Perry mixed with Geoff Tate. So we got James down from Canada and we were really excited with how that went. Straight away we said, “You’re in.”

HJ: But despite the energy boost of having a new singer you all loved...

JP: Yeah, it just seemed like nothing was happening with Mechanic. There were other bands on the label like Bang Tango, Voivod, and Trixter, and all of these labelmates were off touring, making videos, and doing all this stuff. We were doing pretty much nothing. In the end we decided that Mechanic wasn’t the label for us. We knew we had to leave.

HJ: And did that prove difficult?

JP: We had to negotiate some sort of departure, but to be honest I don’t think they fought very hard to keep us. But once we got off Mechanic we didn’t really know what we were going to do. I don’t even remember how we ended up connecting with Derek Oliver at Atco, but once we did we felt something was right about the relationship. Derek was a fan of prog rock and metal.

HJ: And Atco’s president was Derek Shulman, who’d previously been the vocalist in prog rock legends Gentle Giant...

JP: Well I hate to admit this, but at the time I didn’t know who Derek Shulman was! I didn’t know Gentle Giant at all because I was this kid from Long Island listening to Iron Maiden and Rush. But once we’d learned about Derek Shulman’s background, we felt that everything kind of fit because we were a prog metal band, and Pantera were already signed to the label. But even so, we had to sign a demo deal at first because the label didn’t know how we’d sound with James fronting the group. So we recorded three songs with James, David Prater produced, and when Atco heard those tunes they signed us straight away. It felt right.

HJ: Didn’t you sign a ridiculous deal for seven albums or somesuch?

JP: We did, and believe me, you should never do that. Don’t do it, people. But we were young, and we were excited, so we signed. Still, history shows that the label renewed every single option until that deal was over. Atco never dropped us. Even when Derek Oliver left, and then Derek Shulman left, and then Atco changed to become EastWest and eventually Elektra. By then the label wasn’t in any way the same label that we’d signed to, where there were people who understood what we were about, who got the whole prog thing and who got the metal thing. But for whatever reason, the label kept renewing the options and we kept making records for them.

HJ: How do you think things would have panned out with Atco if the song ‘Pull Me Under’ from your first album for the label, Images And Words, hadn’t been a U.S. radio hit?

JP: Most likely we wouldn’t be having this conversation now. Nobody in the band knew that ‘Pull Me Under’ would ever be any sort of hit. For starters, it came out in 1992 when the musical climate had completely changed from the wonderful ’80s when some of the best guitar albums and guitar music ever recorded came out, from Joe Satriani to Rush to Ozzy Osbourne. And then all of a sudden there were no more guitar solos, and there was no more dressing up. The days of hair metal were totally gone. Suddenly the only thing you heard on the radio was Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Nirvana, all that kind of stuff. But against all the odds ‘Pull Me Under’ became a rock radio hit. I was living in New Jersey at the time, and if my wife and I were driving to get groceries we’d turn on the radio and you could bet that ‘Pull Me Under’ would be playing.

HJ: So why did your song buck the trend?

JP: I really don’t know, Howard. It started on college radio. They were getting tons and tons of requests for the song, and it took off from there, maybe because it was so different to what had been before and what was happening then. It wasn’t Poison or Mötley Crüe, and it wasn’t Soundgarden or Pearl Jam. It was something nobody had really heard before. It kind of sounded like Rush, but then again it kind of sounded like Metallica too. So it was its own thing, and maybe that was the reason why it poked out. Eventually we got our first gold record, and after all that time when we were afraid we were going to get drafted into the army, when we didn’t have a singer, and then we didn’t have a label, all of a sudden the future was bright. We started touring, driving ourselves around in a van, paying our dues, but eventually we ended up with a tour bus, we ended playing sold-out shows, traveling to Europe and Asia, playing festivals. Our career bloomed as a result of Images And Words and as a result of ‘Pull Me Under’. If that hadn’t happened then we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

HJ: Just before your next album, Awake, was due to be released in October of 1994, your childhood friend Kevin Moore announced that he was leaving Dream Theater...

JP: And that was devastating for me. Kevin was my best friend. We grew up together, and then we were in this band together. The band gets signed, not once, but twice. And then we have a rock radio hit where all of a sudden our music video is on MTV. This was it. We’d made it. And then Kevin decided to leave, and it felt like the rug got pulled out from beneath me. Not only was my best friend leaving, but he was a major writer in the band and an incredible lyricist. He wrote the words to ‘Pull Me Under’ and all of a sudden he was gone. Obviously we weren’t going to stop, though, so we moved forward one step at a time. First Derek Sherinian came on board, and eventually Jordan [Rudess] would end up joining for [1999’s fifth studio album] Metropolis Pt 2, Scenes From A Memory.

HJ: Did you feel pressure to maintain after coming so fast out of the blocks?

JP: Definitely, especially with Awake. We’d had a gold album, our music videos had been played on MTV, our songs were being played on the radio, and we were touring around the world. We weren’t used to that because previously we had no expectations, we had no reputation, and we had no real fan base. Now we knew we had to follow Images And Words with something bigger and better. Now there were Dream Theater fans who wanted to hear the next thing. We didn’t have that before Images And Words, when we were just a bunch of friends writing music together. So all of a sudden it changed. What’s interesting now that we have this long history behind us, what with Parasomnia being our 16th studio album, is that you can look back at all these different phases of Dream Theater’s career and remember how people reacted to individual albums. I definitely remember people responding to Awake in a way that was like, “Oh, it’s not as good as the first one.” It was a lot heavier, which maybe didn’t please some people. But now we get fans coming up to us telling us that Awake is their favourite album, and that they only started listening to Dream Theater at that point. So you really never know. You never know how things are going to be perceived.

HJ: The band’s recording career has already lasted for more than 35 years. Have you ever analysed how you’ve managed to keep going all this time?

JP: I think we had a lot of tunnel vision. We were lucky enough to be able to tour on an international scale from pretty early on, so we always had the ability to develop our career and to make money touring and selling merchandise like our heroes Iron Maiden did. We played everywhere: South America, the US, Canada, Europe, Asia. And because we had that kind of momentum, we always felt we had a career that was established. We always believed that as long as we kept working hard and kept making new music and kept putting on the best shows we possibly could, then we’d continue to build. As the years went by, some of our buddies in other bands started to fall by the wayside. We were the ones who kept going. We were like the Energizer Bunny that kept making records, touring, and working hard. We were very persistent and very positive. I never felt there was a moment when I wouldn’t be able to do this anymore. I never had doubts, right from back when I was a kid telling my dad I was going to make it, that I didn’t need a fallback position. I always looked forward.

HJ: Without doubt the biggest schism in Dream Theater’s career was when Mike Portnoy left the band in 2010.

JP: And from my point of view, looking back, there was nothing that I would ever have thought would lead to him wanting to leave. At that point Mike and I were producing the band’s records together and we were having a lot of fun. We were all getting married and attending each other’s weddings, having kids; we were one big family. So regardless of whatever struggles any band members might have been going through, I never got the feeling that Dream Theater was something Mike didn’t want to do. There had been a general period of frustration before, but I think that was more to do with wanting to retain more control over what we were doing, especially producing ourselves. And when the Scenes From A Memory album came about in ’99, and we started self-producing, it kind of marked the start of a second chapter.

HJ: So when Mike quit, it kind of blindsided you...

JP: Just like when Kevin left, once again it was like getting the rug pulled out from underneath me. Mike was my buddy, we met at Berklee when we were 18, we built this incredible career together. I thought to myself, “How could you possibly abandon this? How could you abandon everything we’ve built? How could you abandon your brothers?” I was in denial about the whole thing for quite a while. But despite Mike’s decision, none of the rest of us wanted to stop. Dream Theater was what we did, and we’d been building our legacy for far too long to abandon it. We were professionals. We loved doing what we did. We were going to carry on.

HJ: How did Mike Mangini’s arrival change the dynamic of the band, either personally or musically?

JP: Mangini’s from Boston, we’re from New York, and we’re all East Coast guys. We were very similar. Mangini knew the metal thing. He knew the prog thing. He was a Rush fan, and at his audition he played our songs absolutely perfectly. I remember playing ‘The Dance Of Eternity’, and he was playing it like we could have performed it live in front of a paying audience that same day. But Mike Portnoy had his arms wrapped around all that is Dream Theater. He loved the fan interaction, and was very concerned about the way that the band was perceived. He put lots of care and pride into that element. So when he left I ended up running the show without having a partner. A lot of those responsibilities fell on me, which I embraced. I rolled up my sleeves and did what needed to be done. Fast forward to today, and I absolutely love producing the band on my own. I’m so grateful that I’ve been able to bring the band to three Grammy nominations and a Grammy win during that period. That’s not bad. So I think I got more in touch with the fans, and with the whole running of the organisation, and with the business side of it, even though I was always a part of that. But not having another person to share the burden was different. Now having Mike back again makes me feel like, “OK, my buddy’s back.” When we were in the studio in working on Parasomnia, I really felt that there was someone who really ‘got it’ on the same level as me.

HJ: Talking of recording, 2021’s A View From The Top Of The World was the first Dream Theater album to be recorded at your own DTHQ facility. What difference did that make?

JP: Having that studio option in New York made a huge difference because it’s a place that feels like home that you can go to at any time. We’d talked about building something for years and years, even back when Mike Portnoy was in the band first time around. We looked into offices and warehouses, but it never materialised. And when we finally decided to get serious about it there were some spaces that fell through. But when this space finally opened up it was perfect. It’s in an industrial park where the buildings are multi-purpose. So we made the space into different rooms; control rooms and recording rooms and what have you. We actually expanded the facility for Parasomnia. We built out a much bigger live room because previously we were all squished into this little space. And now we’re in this brand new giant legit studio. It’s good enough to open commercially if we wanted to. The drum sound’s better, we’ve brought in a real Yamaha grand piano, it’s the real deal. The expansion has made DTHQ way better.

HJ: Tell me about how your old buddy Mike Portnoy returned to the fold in October of 2023?

JP: The fans thought it was a gradual and intentional build to that moment. During COVID I decided to record my second solo album, Terminal Velocity, and of course I knew that Mike wasn’t touring, so I asked him to play drums on my album. He did, and everybody loved it. I loved it too. Hearing him play once again on music I’d written was phenomenal. And then at the same time we had an idea to record another Liquid Tension Experiment album [the side project John had done with Mike, Jordan Rudess, and King Crimson bassist Tony Levin]. And those two albums were both done at DTHQ. So the four of us were having fun writing this record, and the fans immediately thought Mike was coming back to Dream Theater. But honestly, there was no intention of that happening. And then, in 2022, I decided to do my first solo tour ever. My trio was [erstwhile Dixie Dregs man] Dave LaRue on bass and Mike on drums, the line-up that had recorded Terminal Velocity. And once we were out playing everyone was like, “Oh, this chemistry is undeniable. Portnoy’s coming back.” And in interviews I had to keep insisting that people shouldn’t get the wrong idea, and that Mike Mangini was the drummer in Dream Theater. The fact that Mike Portnoy and I were having fun playing music together didn’t mean anything was going to change. And I really meant it. I didn’t want to create any kind of rift or chaos or drama. And then out of nowhere, at one point in the fall of 2023 – and I can’t even describe what it was – we had a 40th anniversary celebration of Dream Theater coming up, we were off tour, and we were looking forward to doing a new album. And Mike Portnoy and I just had a conversation. “I wasn’t thinking about this before, but right now this feels right.” And so we decided to make the change. It was literally that instant and that quick. And when I called Mike Mangini, the way he took the news was incredibly gracious. There was no drama. People might think getting Mike Portnoy back was our intention all along, but it really wasn’t. It was just the right time for it to happen.

HJ: Why do you think Mike Mangini was so gracious about losing his prestigious gig?

JP: It’s never easy letting somebody go, and you never know how the person is going to react to that kind of news. Are they going to be upset? Is there going to be yelling and screaming? Is there going to be drama and lawsuits? Now I can’t put words into Mike Mangini’s mouth. You’d have to speak to him for his perspective. But when I was talking to him, it almost felt like he understood that this would eventually happen. It was almost as if he was prepared for it. He said, “I understand. This makes total sense.” I really don’t know. But I’m really happy that he handled it that way.

HJ: This happened in October of 2023, and by February of the following year you were in the studio recording Parasomnia...

JP: It all happened really fast. I’d had the Parasomnia title for a while already because I always try to set a direction for an album pre-emptively. That way we know what we’re walking into, whether it’s a collection of shorter songs as we did on [2019’s] Distance Over Time, or whether it’s a full-on concept album like Parasomnia. For this one I had the idea of doing a conceptual record lyrically, and all the songs would deal with the subject of sleep disturbance. It was a weird, dark, kind of creepy avenue to go down. And then when we were in the studio writing together, Mike suggested that we take things a step further and make everything connected musically, with reoccurring musical themes throughout the songs. He said we should make it more of a Pink Floyd Dark Side Of The Moon thing where the songs are all interconnected. Mike helped take the concept to a whole different level.

HJ: So Parasomnia wouldn’t have been the same if Mike Portnoy hadn’t been involved...

JP: Mike Mangini and Mike Portnoy are two different people, so for sure the dynamic changed. But I think Parasomnia was always going to be a little different. I always prepare well before going in to do a new record, collecting riffs and chord progressions and melodies. For this one I went even further, knowing that it was all going to be dream-based and dark. I started studying different types of chords, especially the Prometheus chord [a six-note synthetic chord and its associated scale], odd modes, eight-note scales, Wagner, Bartok, and John Williams stuff, just trying to get some weird things together. So I had all that stuff to bring in. But when we write, we write together as a band. So we were all in the studio, in this brand-new beautiful room, and Mike was sitting there. And as I started to play these things I’d prepared, these different riffs, I saw that the way that Mike reacts is different to Mike Mangini or any other drummer. His creative side, his way of playing drums, his way of interpreting things is totally unique. The only way I can describe what that moment felt like is that it was exactly the same as when John Myung and I were 18 at Berklee, and we met this kid and started playing together. It was the exact same feeling. And it was at that moment that I truly realised that there’s an undeniable, unspoken musical chemistry and relationship between us where you know immediately when something is right, or when something is wrong. You know it. There’s so much instinctual understanding of music between us.

And the other thing about Mike Portnoy, which I particular realised during the recording stage of Parasomnia, is that he’s very aware of the way that things feel on the drums, and the feel is what’s really important. This means that when Mike plays a certain section of a song, it might have a different tempo compared to the previous section, even though they sound like they should have the same tempo. He’s really cognitive that way. He’ll say, “This part needs to pull back, to groove more. This needs to be a little bit faster.” Mike’s just brilliant at that. He helps make sure that when you’re going on a recording journey the ride feels natural rather than, “What the hell happened here? Did these guys forget how to use a metronome?” Mike’s natural instinct has a lot to do with the way Dream Theater feels when you’re listening to the music. It’s not just the compositions. It’s not just the notes and the riffs and the vocals. It’s how the music actually hits you and how it feels, and it’s that ebb and flow that I know is very important to him. That’s definitely a big part of the reason why Parasomnia sounds nostalgic, for lack of a better word – even to us. When I listen to it, I think it really sounds like Dream Theater. I can’t explain it any better. It just sounds like Dream Theater.

Mike Portnoy

He’s back! What was probably prog metal’s worst-kept secret was finally revealed on 25 October 2023 when drummer Mike Portnoy returned to Dream Theater, the band he’d originally formed as Majesty with guitarist John Petrucci and bassist John Myung at Berklee Music College back in 1985. It wasn’t because the 57 year old was out of work, though. After leaving Dream Theater back in 2010, Portnoy has been one of the busiest rock musicians on the planet, working on seemingly endless projects including Flying Colors, Adrenaline Mob, Sons Of Apollo, and The Winery Dogs, to name but four. And yet there was always this nagging thought in the heads of fans that Portnoy’s spiritual home was, and always would be, in Dream Theater.

“It wasn’t so much unfinished business as a longing to come home, to be with family,” he tells me. “The two Johns and I started together when we were teenagers, and now we’re creeping up on being 60. So it’s way deeper than just coming back to a band.”

Of course Portnoy’s extraordinary drumming has added a new – or is it old? – dimension to Dream Theater’s 16th studio album Parasomnia, his first studio recording with the band since 2009’s Black Clouds & Silver Linings.

That’s no disrespect to Mike Mangini, the drummer he’s replaced. But there’s something magical about Dream Theater with Mike Portnoy driving the rhythm section that is both hard to put your finger on and hard to emulate. Portnoy knows that he’s coming back into a demanding situation from a technical point of view, though.

“I have to rise to the occasion to play at a certain level that’s expected with Dream Theater music,” he admits. “And knock on wood, so far it hasn’t been an issue.”

So with so much of this homecoming story to cover, it’s time to get started...

Howard Johnson: Mike, do you think it was destiny that you met John Petrucci and John Myung at Berklee Music College all those years ago?

Mike Portnoy: Well it certainly seems like fate given that we were all from Long Island. I met those guys real early on, probably the second week of college at Berklee in September of ’85, and the thing I remember most about them was that we all liked the same bands. I was wearing my Talas shirt, and they both knew that band and [bassist] Billy Sheehan. We quickly realised that we had a common love for Rush and Iron Maiden, and musicians like Steve Morse and Steve Vai. Because we had the same musical taste and a geographical connection, we knew we wanted to play together, and as soon as we did things clicked immediately.

HJ: What had made you go to Berklee?

MP: I was a drumming natural from the moment I picked up the sticks after seeing [The Who drummer] Keith Moon in the documentary The Kids Are Alright in 1979 when I was 12 years old. I never had to put in hours and hours of practice, and I still don’t. So once I’d seen Keith, I knew I wanted to be a drummer and quickly got into all the classic rock guys like John Bonham, Ringo Starr, Peter Criss, and Ginger Baker. But then when I was 14, maybe 15, I discovered progressive music and moved on to Neil Peart with Rush, Bill Bruford with Yes and King Crimson, and Terry Bozzio with Frank Zappa. I wanted to become a more developed drummer and get a little more sophisticated with my style. I got really into giant drum kits and learning all those odd time signatures. I had that prog mentality and wanted to learn as much as I could. And that’s when I knew I wanted to go to Berklee, though it wasn’t only for the drums. I took ear training, sight singing, harmony, theory, arranging, all these classes to round me out as a musician beyond the drums. I was a musical sponge. I wanted to learn as much as I could and be as good as I could possibly be.

HJ: Given your dedication to the theory of music, it must have been a tough decision to drop out of Berklee to pursue the band?

MP: It was. Getting my family to agree to me going to music college was a big battle, and I know it was the same for John Petrucci because our parents were worried we’d have nothing to fall back on. So then having to break the news that we were dropping out after just two semesters was really hard. But we were convinced we were destined. We felt something very special between the three of us, and after we’d spent the year writing together as Majesty we knew we wanted to connect with Kevin Moore [on keyboards], and then we found a singer, Chris Collins. If you want to succeed at Berklee, you have to put 100 percent in. We knew if we wanted to succeed as a band, then we’d have to put 100 percent into that. Something had to give. We decided to go back to Long Island to pursue the band.

HJ: You were incredibly disciplined in the pursuit of your objectives, weren’t you?

MP: We were driven, and we continued the very strict rehearsing regime that we’d established at Berklee back on Long Island. We’d practise six hours a night, five nights a week, writing the music that ended up becoming the When Dream And Day Unite album. All of the early Dream Theater albums came about through very intense periods of rehearsing and writing, and a very regimented schedule of work.

HJ: Do you look back and think you missed out on some of the fun of being a young guy?

MP: What did we miss out on? Frat parties? I had a girlfriend, and I was still able to drink and smoke and do all the fun things that kids my age were doing. I didn’t have to sacrifice too much. We knew we needed intense focus if we wanted to get a record deal, make an album, and get our music played on the radio. You had to be great, and you had to make connections. It took perseverance.

HJ: Just how hard was it to achieve all that?

MP: The first seven years from ’85 to ’92 were tough. There were a lot of ups and downs, and a lot of false promises made. There were a lot of learning experiences, what with our first record deal with Mechanic going bad and our first couple of singers, Chris Collins and Charlie Dominici, not working out. And then, even after we signed to Atco and worked on the Images And Words album in ’91, it was still tough. We had to learn how to conform to a record company and to a producer like David Prater, and it wasn’t easy. On the one hand, the ball was finally starting to get rolling. But on the other, the process involved a lot of compromises. And when the album finally came out in the summer of ’92 there were many months where it just sat on the shelf with nothing happening. It wasn’t until Images And Words had been out for five or six months that we actually started touring and finally got some radio traction with ‘Pull Me Under’. Those first seven years were the biggest test for us.

HJ: Were you always dedicated to the craft, come what may?

MP: We did it completely and solely for our own self-gratification. We just wanted to be the best musicians we could be, in a band writing music that was really moving us. At the start we didn’t have an audience, so clearly we were doing it for ourselves. When we finally hit, it was very satisfying simply to have an audience. We didn’t have visions of selling gold records and playing sold-out shows. That really wasn’t on the agenda for us, though of course it was a nice bonus once it started happening.

HJ: Were you surprised when it did because Dream Theater music was so deeply unfashionable around that time?

MP: We didn’t care about what was popular. We were trying to fill a void for ourselves. By the late ’80s, the prog bands we’d grown up listening to were all playing polished, short, commercial songs. But we were still longing for stuff like Rush’s Hemispheres and Yes’s Close To The Edge. The classic prog bands were not only way more commercial by that time, but they also weren’t very heavy. And I was a huge metal fan. We all liked Iron Maiden and Judas Priest and Black Sabbath. But my taste was going much heavier with thrash metal. I was listening to Exodus and Testament and Flotsam And Jetsam, and was trying to incorporate much heavier stuff into this world of prog that we were dipping into. I introduced the guys to Metallica and the band became this melting pot of prog and metal. But we were just writing for ourselves. If we’d been looking at what was popular and trying to conform to that, then we would have immediately died when those fads died. Going our own route made it more difficult at the start, but in the end it gave us more longevity because we were genuine. We were following our hearts and not a trend.

HJ: During that formative period, you went from being young guys to mature adults. How did that affect the band dynamic?

MP: It made us stronger as a unit. The two Johns, Kevin Moore, and I had stuck together through thick and thin, and that made it very confusing when Kevin decided to leave after we’d recorded [third album] Awake in 1994. We’d gone through so many tough times together, and then once we finally had some fame and some success Kevin decided to walk away from it. It was shocking, but it made us both stronger people and stronger as a unit.

HJ: Your first period with Dream Theater lasted for 25 years, and you recorded a huge amount of music with the band. It was a really intense period...

MP: And I was never just the drummer either. For those 25 years I was the band’s gatekeeper. I was very, very protective of my baby, very much a control freak going way beyond the drums. There was the writing of the music, the lyrics, the artwork, the merchandise, the fan club, and so on and so on. I looked at the drums as just one of 20 different roles I played in the band.

HJ: So did that burdensome workload contribute to you leaving in 2010?

MP: I’d say so. By 2010, it had been 25 years non-stop of write, record, tour, write, record, tour, and I was overseeing every aspect of the band. It was definitely starting to burn me out. I needed to have other things in my life to feel like I was truly living and exploring other things that I wasn’t able to pursue because of the intensity of Dream Theater. Looking back now, I think I only ever really wanted a break. I didn’t want to leave the band. But having said that, at the time when I left I was very much at peace with the decision. I remember thinking that if I didn’t leave, then I’d probably spend the rest of my life regretting all the things that might have been. And after I finally left, I really was able to explore all sorts of things. I made dozens of albums with dozens of different bands and musicians, and so looking back today I now think it was better for me to have done those things, and not to have stayed and maybe end up being resentful towards Dream Theater for holding me back. Leaving wasn’t at all easy, though. Some fans were bickering and making comments, and I was going through a lot of legal stuff, which happens when you leave a band. The first couple of years after I departed were very tough on both sides. But we all went through that period, and I was able to have some incredible experiences on my own, and the guys were able to have some incredible experiences without me.

HJ: Were you nervous about a life without Dream Theater?

MP: Strangely enough, I wasn’t. I was on tour with Avenged Sevenfold when I made the decision, I’d just done a great tour with Transatlantic, I’d already been doing all these different things with other bands, and so I knew I had other outlets. Plus, even though a lot of Dream Theater fans were broken-hearted, a lot of fans were incredibly supportive. I had a lot of social media followers that I knew would be behind me. So I went from opportunity to opportunity, and all these things started opening up for me. I started playing with other bands, then I got calls to play with Stone Sour and Twisted Sister. There was no shortage of work, and all of that helped me to be very comfortable with the decision I’d made.

HJ: Once you’d left, did you follow the career of Dream Theater?

MP: I did from afar, but to be honest that was always very painful for me. When they put out a new album, I’d give it the once over and listen to it just to see where they were at and what they were up to, but not much more than one listen per album. I’d maybe look online to see what the live set list was, but it was always very painful. It’s a clichéd metaphor, but it was like seeing your wife with her new husband. You don’t really want to look at that. That’s what it was like for me with Dream Theater.

HJ: Good job you were keeping so busy, then...

MP: I couldn’t keep up to be honest. I was putting together Flying Colors, Adrenaline Mob, The Winery Dogs, all sorts of stuff, so there was never a dull moment. I’d go from one band to the next after recording and touring. As soon as one band ended, the next one picked up. So the 13 years I was out of Dream Theater was a whirlwind of creativity. I loved every minute of it for a long time. But after about 10 years or so I started to tire of it. I was ready to be with just one band again.

HJ: Why exactly?

MP: It was a longing to come home, to be with family. The two Johns and I started together when we were teenagers, and now here we are creeping up on 60. It goes way, way deeper than just coming back to a band. All I’d really wanted was a little time away, and absence makes the heart grow fonder. In a perfect world I would have had a little hiatus from Dream Theater, and I never would have left the band. But I guess everything works out for a reason, and so here we are back together again.

HJ: How did your return to the band work on a practical level?

MP: It stemmed from me and John Petrucci rekindling our personal relationship way before we made music together again. Once we’d got that back on track, then the opportunities to make music emerged. John asked me to play on his Terminal Velocity solo album in 2020. Then John, Jordan, and I did the third Liquid Tension Experiment album the following year. And then in 2022 John asked me to do his solo tour. That was when we knew we’d mended both the personal and the musical fences. It was very nice to be doing this stuff together outside of Dream Theater, but there was always an elephant in the room. I think there were a couple of late nights on the bus on John’s solo tour where we looked at each other and said, “Man, this chemistry is undeniable.” We were looking out and seeing grown men crying at the sight of the two of us back together again. So we said, “Hypothetically, could this ever work again in Dream Theater?” And it was a touchy subject, because they were very much in a situation with Mike Mangini, and there were a lot of technical and personal issues that would have to be looked at. But I think once John and I had those hypothetical conversations, then the wheels started spinning in his head. And I think they were spinning in Jordan’s head too. But obviously the missing piece of the puzzle was James LaBrie and me reconciling because we’d had our issues in the past. And once that happened, and once we were all talking nicely and calmly and peacefully to one another again, then it was up to those guys to figure it out amongst themselves, to decide if they wanted to make the change. Once I got the phone call from John Petrucci asking me if I wanted to do Dream Theater again, that’s when we started getting into it. How would we tackle the challenges? And once John and I were comfortable, then we continued the conversation amongst all five band members. We all felt really positive that it was the right time. We’re all getting older, the clock is ticking, and there are no guarantees about tomorrow. So in October of 2023 we pulled the trigger.

HJ: When you came back to Dream Theater, was there anything already prepared for the Parasomnia album?

MP: The only thing that existed was the Parasomnia title. It was something John Petrucci brought in and said, “Hey, this could be a good jumping off point because it’s dealing with sleep deprivation and night-related stuff.” That was a natural environment for a band called Dream Theater. But apart from that there was nothing at all. Well, there might have been some riffs that John or Jordan had on their phones, but no songs. All of the writing and arranging was done together and collaboratively, and that’s the way every Dream Theater album I’ve ever been a part has been done. I believe that in my absence John and Jordan were driving the music. But Parasomnia was done collaboratively.

When we got together on 7 February 2024 – a year to the day before the album’s release – we had a completely clean slate to work with. We started jamming on some of the riffs that became ‘Night Terror’, and that got us up and running. But it wasn’t until we started writing the music that I suggested we tie all the themes together musically and do a thematic concept album like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon. Not a proper concept album, but a thematic concept album, kind of like what we did with ‘Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence’ back in 2002. I said, “Let’s make this a true listening experience from start to finish. Let’s start the album with the listener falling asleep, end it with the listener waking up, and everything that happens in the 70 minutes in-between is what’s happening while they’re sleeping and dreaming.” But it wasn’t until we got together that these things really started to connect and make musical sense.

HJ: Does it bother you that John Petrucci now has sole credit as producer whereas previously it was the two of you?

MP: John made it clear that he wanted to maintain the role he’d acquired once I left the band. But the working process and the creative process was exactly the same. It was a bit of an adjustment for me, but at the end of the day it didn’t mean any of my ideas were stifled. The only difference was that John had to sit there every single moment of every day, and frankly, living three hours from the studio I kind of wanted time to be home with my family and with my dog who was battling cancer. It gave me a chance to go home when there were two weeks of keyboard or bass tracks that I really wasn’t needed for.

HJ: Is that production situation set in stone for the future?

MP: We haven’t had that discussion, but I know it’s a role John really likes. I do miss sharing that with him, but if ultimately it means a lot to John, then I’m OK with that. When I came back, it was made very clear to the guys that things like the set list and album sequencing were things I felt very passionate about. So those things were delegated back into my lap. I’d love to be a co-producer again, but it’s not an absolute for me. If John feels strongly that it should be just him, then it’s fine.

HJ: The music world’s such a different place today compared to when you first started. Do you have the same expectations when you release an album as you did back then?

MP: We just have to write for ourselves and make ourselves happy. Dream Theater fans are so rabid, and so opinionated, and so passionate that there’s no way we can please everybody. When we wrote ‘Night Terror’ we figured that it checked all the boxes and would make every Dream Theater fan happy. But in reality, of course not, because some fans like the heavy stuff, some fans hate the heavy stuff. Some fans like the proggy stuff, some fans hate that. Some fans love Mike Portnoy, some hate Mike Portnoy. There’s no way around it. I really care about our fans. I’ve spent a whole career trying to model everything I do for them because I relate to them as much as anybody. The hardest thing for me is to keep an eye on that, but also to look away from it and please ourselves first and foremost. There’s a balance somewhere, though, and hopefully we’re striking it.

HJ: Now you’re back in your happy place, do you dare dream of a future for Dream Theater?

MP: To be honest we haven’t looked beyond what’s on the calendar. Our tour schedule goes to the end of the summer, and we already pretty much know we’re going to do more. But beyond that we don’t really know. You have to take life day by day, especially once you’re at this age. We know we want to do this for the next 5, 10, even 15 years. We’d love to have that kind of career, but we’ll see. Time will tell. We can’t predict the future. You can learn from the past and you can hope for the future, but we really only have today.

James LaBrie

It takes a big voice to fill the widescreen musical background that the musicians in Dream Theater deliver, and it takes a big personality to take on the role of frontman in a group featuring such self-confessed musical alpha males as guitarist John Petrucci and drummer Mike Portnoy. But it’s obvious within minutes of talking to James LaBrie that this is a singer who’s more than capable of holding his own in any company. It’s not that the 61 year old is at all cocky. He really isn’t. But there’s a confidence about the way LaBrie holds himself. and how he answers interview questions, that suggests he’s more than comfortable in his own skin and more than comfortable with his place in the group.

Maybe that confidence comes from knowing he’s got the pipes. After all, as John Petrucci himself says, when he first heard the man from Ontario’s voice his jaw hit the floor, convinced that James LaBrie sounded like a hi-fi cross between Journey’s Steve Perry and Queensrÿche’s Geoff Tate. Having left his band Winter Rose in 1991 to join Dream Theater, LaBrie came on board for the band’s second album, 1992’s Images And Words, and helped the group achieve commercial success thanks to the US radio hit ‘Pull Me Under’. Since then the vocalist has established a giant reputation as the voice of Dream Theater across 14 further studio albums, while also finding the time and the creative energy to record five solo projects – the most recent being 2022’s Beautiful Shade Of Grey – two albums with his band MullMuzzler, and many contributions to numerous other projects.

But life hasn’t been without its struggles for LaBrie. At the end of 1994, he suffered ruptured vocal chords after vomiting during a particularly severe bout of food poisoning in Cuba. Despite seeing various specialists and returning to work, LaBrie has since said that it wasn’t until 2002 that he finally felt back to normal as a singer.

“I must have been a tyrant in a previous life to have had to go through that sh*t,” he says. “Because before the accident I was able to sing everything and anything effortlessly. Effortlessly!”

Fortunately LaBrie says that the voice is now feeling “fricking great” and that he’s “singing amazing” on the latest Dream Theater tour in support of the band’s new album Parasomnia.

“Am I ever going to sing like I did on Images And Words? No. I can’t sing up in the stratosphere now like I used to do. But I’m still hitting some pretty high notes. I feel great.”

That much is abundantly clear on Parasomnia, where LaBrie is on tremendous form, leading from the front and driving Dream Theater to new creative heights more than 30 years after first joining the band...

Howard Johnson: James, take us back to 1990 when you were trying to catch a big break with your group Winter Rose. What was your state of mind at that time?

James LaBrie: Dream Theater really wasn’t in my sights at that point. It was all about Winter Rose. It was a great band with great music that I’d written with [guitarist] Rich Chycki, we had several A&R people from major labels coming out and seeing our shows, and we were on the cusp of being signed. There was talk of Atlantic, BMG were also in there. There were three or four labels that we were really close to signing with, and around about that time Winter Rose went out on tour with [female rocker and fellow Canadian] Lee Aaron. Lee would watch me from the side of the stage every night and asked if I had any CDs of our stuff because she really loved my voice. Unbeknownst to me, she then sent that CD to a couple of labels, and I was contacted by this guy by the name of Pierre Paradis, who was an A&R guy at [Canadian label] Aquarius Records, and he got in touch wanting me to do a solo album working together with [well-known Canadian rocker] Aldo Nova. But then in January of 1991 I got a call from Mike Portnoy. He’d got hold of my stuff through someone at the band’s record label after Pierre had passed it on to them. Mike said, “We’d really love you to come down here to New York. We’re after a singer and we think you’ve got everything we’re looking for. You’ve got the power, you’ve got the range, you’ve got the look.” I said, “Wow, OK. Can you send me some stuff?” I didn’t know anything about Dream Theater. So they sent me [the band’s first album] When Dream And Day Unite and the minute I heard it I was knocked out. My biggest bands were Rush, Queen, Led Zeppelin, Yes, and Genesis on the one hand because I loved the musicianship, and then Aerosmith, Foreigner, and Journey on the other because above all I loved the singing. For me Dream Theater felt like the best of both those worlds. They were young, they were incredible musicians, and I could see how the group would give me the ultimate platform as a singer to jump all over the place with any form of expression, because their music was so diverse and eclectic. It was fate that Dream Theater came along, and of course I’m very glad that it did.

HJ: John Petrucci told me that as soon as he heard you he immediately knew that you were the man for the gig, despite having already auditioned a huge number of potential singers...

JL: Mike Portnoy had told me that the band really thought I would fit in and asked me if I would fly down from Toronto where I was living to meet them in New York. So I sat down with my wife to talk it through. We were high school sweethearts, but we’d only been married for a year at that point. She knew how invested I’d been in Winter Rose for three or four years. But she’d listened to the Dream Theater stuff and said, “I think you’re crazy if you don’t at least try out. Just go down and meet these guys. Go and jam with them. You love their music. There might be magic. And if you don’t like it then you can come back home and say, ‘Well at least I tried, and now I’m sure I’m making the right decision to stick with Winter Rose.’”

So I decided I was going to give it a shot. But then a few days later [Dream Theater keyboardist] Kevin Moore called me and said, “Hey man. We’ve had this singer [Chris Cintron] we’ve been working with for the last nine months, and we’ve decided that we’re going to give it a bit more time with him.” I said, “Really, that’s no problem. I think you guys are awesome and best of luck to you.” Then literally three days after that Mike Portnoy was back on the phone saying, “I know you’re going to think we’re all over the place here, but we’ve listened to your stuff again and now we’re really sure that we need to get you down here.” That’s how it happened, and thank God it did because the moment we first played together – and I think the song we first did was ‘Afterlife’ – we finished playing and John Petrucci looked at me and said, “Man, you’re sick.” And I didn’t understand their lingo. So I said, “No dude, I’m not sick at all.” And everybody started laughing. “No, no. That means you’re f*cking awesome.” So we did another hour of jamming, and it felt great. The chemistry was there. Two days later they said, “Hey man, we want you in the band.” And then really quickly after that I was demoing songs with them. But I told the guys that my one condition was that I wouldn’t leave Toronto because I had friends and family there. They said it was no problem because New York was only a 50-minute flight away.

HJ: Did they offer you money?

JL: No. They told me that they were in the process of leaving their label [Mechanic], but they already had serious interest from Atco that they believed would turn into something concrete. They asked me to be patient, and I said, “No problem. I know the music industry. If you don’t have patience then don’t even bother.” But I was lucky because I had a full-time gig as a lighting tech. I was making good money, and because I was a contractor I could take time off when I wanted to, then go back and continue with my gig. So it was easy for me to go back and forth while waiting for something solid to happen. And eventually Atco paid for us to demo three songs [with producer David Prater] in May of ’91, and by October of ’91 we were in BearTracks Studios [in Suffern, New Jersey] working on what would become the Images And Words album.

HJ: You’d signed a seven-album deal with Atco...

JL: We had to sign the contract that was offered. The music that was happening back then was Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Alice In Chains. We stuck out like a sore thumb. So when the deal for seven albums came up we were like, “Wow, somebody actually believes in us.” There was a lot of naivety involved there, because after a couple of albums you’re looking to change elements of the contract, but then you’re at the mercy of the label and whether they want to play ball or not.

HJ: Given that grunge was so dominant at the time, did you think Images And Words had any chance of mainstream success?

JL: That depends on what you mean by mainstream. I remember listening to rough mixes of the album and David Prater asking me what I thought. I said, “Well, if this thing gets a fair shake I think we’ve got an opportunity to bust wide open. But a lot will depend on the label doing a hell of a lot of promotion to navigate through the quagmire of today’s environment.” David agreed. He felt there was some magic there and that if people got to hear the album then the thing would blow up.

HJ: Had you identified ‘Pull Me Under’ as the song that would do it for you?

JL: No, not at all. When ‘Pull Me Under’ was first released it didn’t do sh*t. And then all of a sudden it blew up on college radio. They couldn’t play the song enough, and then the mainstream national radio stations started to give it a spin too – and the phones lit up. The song blew up and immediately the album started going crazy. But I honestly think that if ‘Pull Me Under’ hadn’t happened like it did, then life would have turned out to be very different indeed. Before that song took off we were touring the album and in some places we were playing to like 50 people, maybe even less than that. But when ‘Pull Me Under’ happened, suddenly Images And Words started selling something like 50,000 copies a week.

HJ: So after such success, did you feel under pressure to repeat the success of that album with your follow-up Awake?

JL: Of course. We had the label going, “OK guys, you’ve had a hugely successful album. Now we want another one.” That’s the nature of the business, right? But we decided we were just going to write the album we wanted to write. So the first single from Awake was ‘Lie’, and it didn’t really hit. But I think Awake is an amazing album. I was very proud of what I did on it vocally with songs like ‘Scarred’. I was able to show everyone what I could do, that I could be raspy or clean. Lots of our fans absolutely adore the album, and when we play ‘The Mirror’ from Awake on our current tour the place explodes. So I’d say sticking to your guns pays off in the end.

HJ: The album that followed Awake, 1997’s Falling Into Infinity, was produced by Kevin Shirley and included a co-write with hitmaker Desmond Child. Was that a direct reaction to Awake not quite hitting the mark commercially?

JL: There was quite a bit of discombobulation within the band at the time. We had a management change, and we lost key people from the label. So all these new people came in who didn’t have a clue about what made us tick. There was a lot of pressure to deliver, and it was hard to stay true to ourselves. When there was talk of bringing in Desmond Child, I remember thinking, “That is not the f*cking answer. This is wrong on every level.” But we had to play ball, and that song [‘You Not Me’] didn’t do sh*t for us because our fans weren’t going to accept it as genuine. Falling Into Infinity polarised our fans and it polarised the band members too. It created a lot of unnecessary friction because there was just too much bullsh*t to deal with. People wouldn’t leave us be. And that situation meant that the next album [1999’s Metropolis Pt 2: Scenes From A Memory] was do or die. That was when we said to the label, “If you don’t let us be what we want to be, then the band’s done because we can’t continue to work under these conditions.” We said, “Let us make the album that we want to make, that we have to make, and let’s see what happens. Worst case scenario, it’s not what you want, it’s not what the fans want, and we’re done. Best case scenario is...” what it became. Scenes From A Memory was a big success, our fans absolutely adored it, and it put us in a position where we felt we could be who we truly are, and where we could continue for the foreseeable future. And obviously that happened, because you and I are still here talking about Dream Theater.

HJ: Are you happy that you made the decision to stay true to yourselves relatively early in your career?

JL: Absolutely, but we’re fortunate because there have been a lot of amazing bands that have fallen prey to the fickle nature of both music fans and the music industry. It’s like any other corporation out there. If you don’t produce and you don’t give them something that’s profitable, then no matter how great you are artistically it’s a case of “see you later”. Look at Jellyfish, for example. They were an unbelievable band and all of a sudden they were gone.

HJ: In 2007 you left your major label to sign with the independent Roadrunner. From the outside that might have looked like a step down...

JL: But it really wasn’t. Roadrunner were totally aware of who we were, what we’d done, and how we worked, and they were 100 per cent behind us right from the get-go. They said, “We’re not going to force you guys to do anything. We’re not looking for a single. We want you to be who you are.” Systematic Chaos was the first album we did for Roadrunner, and I think you can hear integrity on that record. It was a good marriage with Roadrunner. We had people there who completely understood the band and they were 100 per cent into whatever we gave them.

HJ: What was your take on Mike Portnoy leaving Dream Theater in 2010?

JL: We were all shocked because we didn’t foresee it happening at all. Was there some discontent within the band? Yes. When you’re around people long enough you either learn to accept everyone’s idiosyncrasies or change is inevitable. At the time there was a lot of hurt, anger, and disbelief. But the rest of us all knew that we weren’t ready to break up the band. We felt we had to keep this thing going because it was too good to just let it fizzle out. That’s why we did what we did, and I’m proud of all the albums that we made in the period when Mike wasn’t there.

HJ: Is it hard for you to write vocal melodies for songs that are as long and complex as Dream Theater’s?

JL: Not at all. Melodies come to me immediately and fairly often the melody prefaces the music. I’ll have a melody, and I’ll sing it down, and then that helps create the riffs and everything else follows suit. But if the music comes first, then I always have my voice recorder from my phone on. I’ll start hearing a passage and will immediately go into something. And the melody informs my words. I always want a melody before I write lyrics. The words become clear and immediate once I’m able to work off a solid melody. But no, it’s never been a problem. I’ve never gone, “Holy sh*t guys. What do you hear because I don’t hear anything?”

HJ: When the guys are working on instrumental passages in songs, do you go off and get yourself a cup of tea?

JL: Most of the time yes, because there’s no reason for me to be there. But having said that, sometimes I’ll sit and listen to where they’re going because I’m curious. And it’s not just me creating melodies in Dream Theater. It’s John Petrucci, it’s Jordan Rudess, it’s Mike Portnoy again now. If you can be in a collaborative environment, the end result is almost inevitably going to be better.

HJ: How’s your voice right now?

JL: Over the last year I went to this guy in Toronto called Aaron Lowe. He’s a speech pathologist who’s worked with Sting, Trent Reznor, and Sam Smith. He’s all about loosening and repositioning your epiglottis and your larynx and then putting it all back together. I have to say it’s really worked for me and I’m singing amazing on this current tour. I feel great and the band and crew are all saying it. And the fans are saying it too. Now am I going to have an off night? More than likely. The voice is an organic instrument. Everyone goes through it, but I think that’s just part of being a singer. And I’ve always said to other singers, “You’d better have some pretty thick f*cking skin, my friend,” because now we live in a world where you have the Internet and that cesspool of trolls. People can be so caustic and so critical when they’re hidden behind a screen. But as I say, “Go ahead, throw the sh*t. It’ll bounce right off me.”

HJ: Your latest album Parasomnia is Dream Theater’s 16th studio album. How have you been able to record as much music as you have and still feel energised about the possibility of doing it all over again?

JL: It’s very important for us to stay contemporary, to be thinking about what really matters at any particular moment. That’s been our mindset on each and every album, and we’re always trying to transcend the previous work. I think when people hear a new album from Dream Theater they hear how passionate we still are about creating music, just the same as on the first album we did together. When we’re in the studio, we’re all about creating something as if we’re 19 or 20 years old. That’s the focus. The material has to make us feel that even if we were a brand-new band it would land us a deal, and it would garner attention around the world. I think that’s what keeps everything fresh and exciting, and it’s what keeps our fans engaged.

HJ: Mike Portnoy’s back in the band again after a 13-year absence. What’s the general state of happiness in Dream Theater right now?

JL: We’re really happy because it’s what a lot of people believe to be the classic line-up back together. And we’ve matured. We’ve been around for a while now, and we’ve done so much musically. We have so much to celebrate and to be proud of, and the fact that we’re still able to do what each and every one of us absolutely loves... Well, there’s no greater gift than that. So whether we’re flying to another city, or we’re on a tour bus, or we’re in a coach going from an airport to a hotel, the vibe is always great. You learn how to give each other space because we each have our own ways of getting through the day. So now we’re all glad to come together and be around each other. We truly are brothers; we love one another dearly and we’re still able to create together. What a blessing that is. We’re still in it for the right reasons and that percolates through every single fibre of our being. Music is magic because it can move us beyond description. What other force do you know on this planet that brings people together, unites them, puts a smile on their face, and leaves them feeling spirited and rejuvenated? I don’t know if there’s anything else on this planet that does that. I think there’s no greater power than music. So if I ever get to the point where I think I’m punching the clock, then I’ll go away and just be a fan of music rather than a part of the music industry.

John Myung

Howard Johnson: John, is it true that when you were kids, you and John Petrucci made a pact that you were both going to practise for six hours a day?

John Myung: It is true. When we were in junior high, all we talked about was music and bands and looking forward to jamming after school. And on Friday or Saturday nights, if either of us showed up at a party and saw the other one there, then we both trusted that we’d each got our six hours in. To me that was normal. It made perfect sense because if you want to get good at something you’ve got to put the time in. I knew we needed to have drive, and we needed to have discipline, so that’s what we did.

HJ: Did you not look at bands like AC/DC and think there was another way of doing it?

JM: I loved AC/DC, but that wasn’t one of the bands that made me want to play. That was Rush, Yes albums, Iron Maiden, anything that had a demanding element to it. I get it that music is the space between the notes, the beats, the grooves, and AC/DC have it, and it’s powerful. But it was the more progressive bands that drew me in and made me want to be a player myself. That music spoke to me.

HJ: But you didn’t just want to copy your heroes, did you?

JM: The goal was always to create our own blend out of our influences. You immerse yourself in the headspace of each band, and then eventually you come up with your ideas. Some of them are very reminiscent of others, some aren’t. I think inspiration comes from two sources. It comes from your influences, and then it comes from that magical creativity that happens with a specific group of people.

HJ: Do you have to make compromises in your own playing when you’re working with other people?

JM: I think you’re trying to assimilate your own playing with others so that it feels right, so that it feels good, and so that what you are doing makes sense within the bigger picture. I’m very focused on delivering the best performance I can on the bass, and it seems as if with each record I make a little bit of progress. I think things have changed a lot over the years. When I first started out it was all very raw, just playing through a combo in front of a drum set and hammering away in a room. Now everything I do in music is studio-focused using really high-quality gear. The technology has evolved so much that there’s tons of great stuff available now. But finding a useful sound that agrees with you and that works in the context of the band is a really big part of the creative process now because that also inspires the parts. A lot of the music is in the instrument. You just have to find it, and you do that by finding the right gear and finding really useful sounds.

HJ: Do those ever-evolving advancements in technology mean that recording every new Dream Theater album is a fresh experience?

JM: That’s definitely part of it because recording an album’s a whole different thing to practising in your bedroom, and it’s a whole different thing to getting your music to come across live through a big PA system. That’s been a really big learning curve for me; getting to the point where I’m using the right gear, and having the EQ right, so the music that people experience out front sounds as good as a CD. What I want is for Dream Theater live to sound like you’re listening to a Dream Theater record playing really, really loud.

HJ: How long will it take for you to be able to rate your new album, Parasomnia, against the rest of your work in Dream Theater?

JM: I think the fans are best for gauging that. You know you’ve done something right when the fans are talking about it, and they really want to hear those songs. I tend to walk away from an album feeling pretty good about it, but the ultimate test is to see how it’s perceived. So I think that the fans’ perspective is probably the most valuable.

HJ: From your perspective as part of the Dream Theater rhythm section, what’s the difference having Mike Portnoy back in the band compared to working with Mike Mangini?

JM: Mike Portnoy’s very sensitive to tempos and time, and that’s what music really is; it’s about expressing time and notes. He’s always listened to anything and everything, so he’s internalised a lot of different music, and I think that plays a big part in his understanding of time and the impact that it has. When he was in Dream Theater the first time around, it was our first band. I thought it was just the way it was. And then when he left, I started saying, “Oh, well, maybe it’s not always the way it is.” Mike Mangini was like a metronome, and what he did was incredible, so spot on and so perfect. But all music doesn’t have to be like that. There can be flow to it. It doesn’t have to be perfect. I think that’s what Mike Portnoy brings to the band, and that makes it special.

HJ: Do you make music primarily for yourself or primarily for the fans?

JM: It’s a little bit of both. You have to feel good about it yourself, but you also have to ask yourself, “Is this actually going to work?” I think there’s an interesting tug of war that goes on there. The fans don’t want the same old thing over and over again. They want a different record, a different experience. But how different can it be? That’s part of the journey to me.

HJ: Could you imagine living a life without Dream Theater?

JM: I think I have the best job in the world and I’m really grateful for that. But it’s also a lifestyle, and I don’t stray too far from it to a point where it would be hard for me to feel good about where I am. Pretty much my whole life now is staying in tune with my playing, my music, the band’s music, and making it all work seamlessly together. It’s a full-time job, so I never really switch off completely. There’s always this undercurrent, an underlying thing that I’m very conscious of. There are other things that I like to do besides writing and recording and being on tour and playing shows. But to me, the most important thing is getting rest and letting my hands recuperate. Being on tour is probably the most extreme element of being a musician because it’s constant travel. And then when you play, you play a lot more intensely. You put 10 times more energy into it because you feel like the music needs it. And it doesn’t feel comfortable to you if you don’t. If you’re standing in front of thousands of people on stage and going through a loud PA system, there’s nothing casual about that. It’s a very intense situation. It’s like the ultimate challenge. And the challenge is to go into it prepared, and to walk away feeling like you’ve done your best.

Jordan Rudess

Howard Johnson: Jordan, you attended the famous Juilliard Music School in New York when you were just nine years old. What was that like?

Jordan Rudess: It was a very, very exclusive place for ridiculously talented young people. This one kid from Japan was eight years old and he was writing operas! I studied there up until I was 18 and was looking to go on to the college level at Juilliard, which was a separate division to the pre-college where I was. By the time I auditioned, though, friends had already turned me on to some King Crimson and Genesis. I got in with a scholarship but found that things were very formal and controlled.

HJ: Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s Tarkus album was something of a game-changer for you, wasn’t it?

JR: Absolutely. I was familiar with the harmonies that [ELP keyboardist] Keith Emerson played from the classical music I studied because he was influenced by composers like Aaron Copland and Alberto Ginastera. But listening to Keith made me understand the power keyboards could have when you mixed classical and rock together. I didn’t know anything about playing in rock bands or the rock lifestyle at that time. All I did was practise the piano for hours and hours every day – and I was happy doing it. But suddenly I was thinking, “Oh, wow, there’s more to life than what I’m doing here.” I started wanting a Minimoog.

HJ: So what happened?

JR: I studied at Juilliard with this famous piano teacher called Adele Marcus for about half a year, and she told my parents that I was going to emerge onto the New York classical concert scene. But then something happened. One week she assigned me the ‘Ballade No.1 in G minor’ by Chopin to learn. It’s a 25-to-30-page piece, and when I started to play it for her she took the music away about halfway through. I’d learned to play the piece, but I hadn’t memorised the music, and she told me that if you studied with Adele Marcus, then you had to memorise everything in the first week. I thought about Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and I thought about the Minimoog – and I left Juilliard that week.

HJ: Was it easy to break into the world of rock?

JR: I could always get a gig playing piano in a bar or restaurant to earn money, and after a spell in a very eclectic covers band called Apricot Brandy I got the chance to join a group called Speedway Blvd. that had a deal with Epic. An album came out in 1980 but nothing much came of it, so I got a job in New York with the Korg synthesizer company as a product specialist. I ended up doing music conventions and playing big pieces that I’d prepared. That got me noticed, and I ended up getting some gigs with people like Vinnie Moore and Jan Hammer. I got a foothold in the industry.

HJ: So when did you first cross paths with Dream Theater?

JR: In 1994 a guitarist friend of mine played me something, maybe ‘Take The Time’ from the album Images And Words. I remember thinking how tight the band was. I wasn’t used to hearing rock music with elements of prog and metal played with such technical ability. Not long afterwards, I got a call about auditioning for Dream Theater. We played some songs together and had a really good time, but at the same time I was offered a gig with Dixie Dregs. I was also working for a keyboard company called Kurzweil, and I didn’t know what to do for the best. It seemed like Dream Theater were going to be on the road a lot and there wasn’t a lot of money involved. I had a wife and a young child and decided I could keep my job and do a little bit of touring with the Dregs, so I turned Dream Theater down.

HJ: So what made you join in the end?

JR: I’d started a group with [Dregs drummer] Rod Morgenstein and we ended up supporting Dream Theater in 1996. Then the following year, Mike Portnoy called me asking if I wanted to join what he called “a supergroup”, which turned out to be Liquid Tension Experiment. Of course John Petrucci was also in that band, and I came in as a composer and instrumentalist, which was a great way of getting to know those two guys. We did two albums together and in 1999, while we were in the studio finishing the second one, they asked me again if I’d consider joining Dream Theater. It seemed like a good time to do it. To be honest, I didn’t know much about their world, so it was a real eye-opener. I didn’t know anything about the rock side of what the band did. I knew nothing about Iron Maiden or Metallica, but I quickly understood the appeal. Those things are simpler to absorb and less challenging for people than prog, and while it’s not where I’m coming from emotionally or spiritually, I do like it.

HJ: Are you fulfilled by your contributions to Dream Theater?

JR: I’m pretty flexible, so one of the nice things about Dream Theater is my ability as a composer to enter into their space. I can contribute ideas that can merge with the other things they’re bringing to the table. Everybody’s committed to making this grand Dream Theater stylistic mix work. So even when the guys are working on something heavy that I can’t really relate to that much, it’s still fine. As a composer, any style is fair game. And while the focus is on Dream Theater, one of the blessings of this gig is that I can continue to make solo albums, and play the piano, and be involved with my music technology, which is a big part of my world.

HJ: How excited are you about your latest musical adventure with the group, the Parasomnia album?

JR: There’s been an incredible surge of energy with this one. Musically, because having Mike Portnoy back playing the drums is really cool and sounds great. Personally, because it’s like a welcome home. Mike brought me into Dream Theater, and when he came back it felt so right to me. We have our core band back together again. Diving into this album was a real trip because John Petrucci came up with this meaty subject of dreams, nightmares, and sleep deprivation. That meant I could get into all kinds of weird little sounds and interludes. This album is the result of the paths we’ve all taken, of the lessons we’ve all learned, and of the joy we’ve felt coming back together again.

HJ: Why do you think Dream Theater has been so successful for so long?

JR: Well as much as I’m a prog head, I think the metal part of the band has been key because there are more metal fans than prog fans, even though it’s true that metal isn’t what it used to be. The blend’s worked for us, and the work we’ve done over the years has kept the audience interested. We value what we do, and we respect the fact that this is our livelihood. In rock bands there’s generally a lot of turbulence. There are lots of egos and they don’t last long. But I think that we’re all sensible, mature people and we want to keep this going. I look at Petrucci and Portnoy. They love what they do, and fortunately for us what they love has resonated with a lot of people out there.