XXXX-XX - Mike Portnoy interview (excerpt)

Martin Popoff: I guess to start with, Mike, you guys were forming Dream Theater right when Power Windows is coming out. What did you think of that record at the time?

Mike Portnoy: To be honest, they started to lose me around that period. I do love the Power Windows album today – it's actually a great album – but, '85, '86, my musical tastes were going more in the metal direction, toward bands like Metallica and Slayer and Megadeth, and the whole thrash movement that was coming around. But of course, once a Rush fan, always a Rush fan. I always kept tabs on what they were doing, and always checked out the albums, and always saw them on the tours. But I wasn't, at that stage of my life, an obsessive Rush freak like I was during the Hemispheres, Permanent Waves, Moving Pictures, and Signals time. It was the late '70s, early '80s, where I was completely obsessive. But come the mid-'80s, once their sound got a little more streamlined with keyboards, I still followed them and kept tabs on them, but my musical taste was changing as well.

I don't know, I think it's just the next logical album. Grace Under Pressure was the first one there , where they were really experimenting with keyboards, and the guitar was taking a back seat to the keyboards. Which, to be honest, was something that didn't appeal to me. But I like Power Windows better than Grace Under Pressure. For some reason, I think they got the balance a little bit better there than they did on Grace Under Pressure or really Signals, for that matter. Yeah, for some reason of all the post-Moving Pictures albums, Power Windows is one of my favorites.

But you’re right about Dream Theater. We were at Berklee College of Music in Boston, and that was the album that came out when we formed Dream Theater. Myself, John Petrucci, and John Myung were all Rush fanatics, and that was the album that came out when the three of us were together and had already formed the embryo of Dream Theater. And we went and saw them on that tour at the Worcester Centrum.

And, you know, back then, to get concert tickets, it wasn’t like it is now, where you can just wake up at ten in the morning on Saturday and go to your computer and punch in a number and have your tickets. In the ‘80s, you would have to sleep in line the night before at your local Ticketmaster or Ticketron to get tickets, so we were sleeping out for tickets to see Rush on the Power Windows tour. And that was when we came up with the name Majesty, which we used briefly before Dream Theater. We were listening to Rush on the boom box, and came up with the name Majesty. We were listening to ‘Bastille Day,’ and at the end of that, we were saying, “Oh, that’s really majestic.” And that’s when we came up with the name Majesty... And I believe Marillion was the opening band; they were touring off the Misplaced Childhood album. And seeing that tour at the Worcester Centrum... it was just amazing.