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Dream Theater:
More ‘silver linings’ than ‘black clouds’
August 18, 2009
Dream Theater has entered uncharted territory. Bands don’t get bigger as they approach their 25th anniversary. But in June, Dream Theater’s latest album, Black Clouds & Silver Linings, their 10th studio effort, debuted at No. 6 on the U.S. Billboard Top 200. The world’s leading progressive metal band continues to grow and shows no signs of slowing. When the band’s Progressive Nation 2009 tour (also featuring Zappa Plays Zappa, Bigelf, Scale the Summit and, for this show only, Queensryche) came to Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Md., Live-Metal.net’s Greg Maki sat down backstage with drummer Mike Portnoy to discuss the band’s success, the new album, Dream Theater’s classic 1999 release, Metropolis Pt. 2: Scene from a Memory, and more.
Live-Metal.net: We used to have a radio station that I guess was out of Baltimore, 103.1 The Underground. I remember back in 1992 hearing “Pull Me Under” for the first time and I’ve been hooked ever since.
Mike Portnoy: Cool.
I was really excited last year when you put out the Greatest Hit compilation to hear the songs from Images and Words with real snare.
Yeah, me too. [laughs]
Is there a chance of ever having the whole album come out like that?
No, that was the extent that we’ll go, those three songs. That’s about it. We played, on the Chaos tour, we did the whole Images and Words in its entirety a few times, as well. But I think that’s the extent of revisiting. It’s funny, there’s something about tonight’s set—[gesturing to the set list on the wall behind him] don’t look if you don’t want to know. But tonight’s a milestone. I’m wondering if any fans will even notice this. I wonder if even my bandmates will notice it. Tonight is the very first set ever to not have an Images and Words song in it. Only because the catalog keeps growing and growing and growing, and how many times can you play “Metropolis,” “Pull Me Under,” “Take the Time,” and there comes a time where you gotta get around to other songs. I realized that as I wrote the set list on the bus last night. I was like, “Oh my god, this is the first—ever.” And I love that album and we’re proud of it, but we have a deep catalog.
Especially when you’re doing a package tour and it’s a shorter set, it must be pretty hard to put the set list together.
It is hard. I don’t know if you know, but I do a lot of research for every set list. When you come through a city regularly—when I did this set list, I looked at Baltimore and D.C., and we regularly kind of hit this area. So everything on the master song list, it’s like, “Oh, well we did that last tour, we did that the tour before.” We had done almost everything, so it’s tough to be able to do a fresh list, be able to cover several albums and give every album a little bit of time and make everybody happy, keep it fresh. It’s like solving a crossword puzzle every night for me.
Do you start out a tour with a bigger list of songs and then draw from them for each show?
Yeah, I’ll kind of write a master song list with maybe two or three songs from each album that will be in rotation. Then I’ll send it out to all the guys and everyone will learn it, our lighting and video guys have to program it, and then once everything is kind of on the master list, then I’ll rotate from night to night.
You’re coming up next year on the 25th anniversary of the band. Are you thinking about doing anything special for that?
Not necessarily. We just had that big 20th anniversary tour, so I feel like we kind of have done the celebrating for now. Maybe we’ll wait to the 30th.
And here you are bigger than ever after all this time.
Still growing.
Yeah. Do you have any theories as to why that is?
I don’t know. I guess if I knew the secret, we would’ve done it long ago.
[laughter]
I think just because as time goes on it’s hard to—love us or hate us, you can’t ignore us. The longer you’re around, the more the name gets around and people recognize you for what you do, and we’ve always stuck to our guns and we’ve never been part of a fad that’s come and gone. We’ve kind of just always done what we do on our own terms. Our fans are very devoted. We finally have a label that helps promote us, so that helps us continue to grow, as well. I guess it’s all those elements. But I think if you do anything long enough and as long as you still care about it and put out good records that you care about, quality records, there’s no reason why you can’t keep growing.
I haven’t gotten to go out into the crowd today, but on the last tour there were young kids coming out, too.
That’s important. We’ve toured with Yes and Deep Purple in the past and we’ve seen their audiences who are essentially a lot of the same people from the ‘70s. We don’t ever want to just have our fans from the ’80s and ‘90s. It’s nice to see young fans that are only just learning about Dream Theater. We want to make records that still sound like Dream Theater but still grow and change with the times, as well. When we see young kids just learning about us, whether it be as a result of Roadrunner or as a result of their parents or maybe a result of Guitar Hero or Rock Band or however they’re gonna hear about us, that’s important for us. We want to keep making new fans.
Progressive Nation—is this something you’ve been wanting to do for a long time?
Yeah, been talking about it for at least 10 years and finally got it off the ground last year.
Do you see this continuing in the future as an annual thing?
Absolutely. Not necessarily annual but possibly biannual. We’ll see. We don’t want to exclusively do this. I know a lot of our hardcore fans really miss the longer Dream Theater shows. I know, I understand that. We don’t want to only do that, we don’t want to only do this. To me, a nice healthy thing for us would be able to mix it up and go back and forth. That’s probably what will happen.
I guess there was a little difficulty in putting the lineup together this year.
Well, the initial lineup was smooth, it was great, it was my dream lineup as I’d wanted. But it’s troubled times in the record industry and the original two bands were on a label [SPV] that ended up losing all their financial backing. It’s just an unfortunate sign of the times. But we were able to plug in two great bands in their place. I still want to bring Pain of Salvation and Beardfish out on a future tour once their label gets it all back together.
Bigelf, you already had them signed up for the European tour.
Yeah, I love those guys. They’re my favorite new band. I think they’re doing something that’s really different from what all the other prog bands are doing. So I think they bring a nice balance to the lineup, bringing something different to it.
Are the “evening with” tours ever gonna come back?
Like I just said, it’s possible. We wouldn’t want to exclusively do that. Doing those three-hour shows was grueling. I know our hardcore fans want the three-hour shows, but I’ve sat in the audience for even two-hour shows and I start getting really burnt. So I don’t know how our fans do it. But yeah, it’s possible someday that we’ll go back to that format, but not exclusively. I think we need to mix it up to keep it fresh for ourselves.
Well, the new album, Black Clouds & Silver Linings, obviously there’s the old expression. How does that apply to this album?
It applies to both the music and the lyrics. The lyrics are about heavy subjects, subjects that are difficult but, in all cases, with an optimistic kind of twist. And then, musically, I think it relates to the music, as well. The black clouds are the dark, heavy element of the band, and then silver linings are the more progressive, melodic side. I think it covers both angles of the band.
How did it feel to have it come out and do so well right away—top 10 with 15-, 16-minute songs?
Surrounded by Jonas Brothers and Hannah Montana. It’s a tribute to our great, great fan base. It’s also tribute to our record company for getting behind it and making people aware that it’s coming out. [pauses] What can I say? Shocking, but I’m glad that we did it on our own terms. I’m glad it was an album filled with 15-minute songs and not some sell-out album of five-minute songs. I’m glad that our first top 10 album was one that was as daring and challenging as anything we’ve ever made.
You completed the “12-Step Suite” on this one. How much of a challenge was that to write?
It was just time consuming. I don’t think I anticipated eight years ago that it would take eight years. I had this idea in 2001 to do a multi-song suite that would spread over several albums and it’s still a great idea. I don’t think I can think of any bands that have ever done such a thing. After a while, I started to feel like, “Oh my god, I dug myself into this hole. When am I gonna be done with this homework assignment hanging over my head?” And finally, eight years later, it’s a relief to have it finished and I’m very proud of it.
“The Shattered Fortress,” in particular, was that a challenge to work in parts from all the other songs but still have it be its own song?
Yeah. It was important to look at this song as the finale to a bigger piece of the puzzle rather than its own song. I think ultimately, when the whole thing is played in its entirety, “The Shattered Fortress” really needed to feel like a finale, and what we did is we sat down and listened to the previous four songs and said, “OK, we like this riff, we like that progression, I like that lyric, I like that melody”—made a checklist of what we wanted to bring back, but at the same time also have a unique and original twist on each one of those themes.
Yeah, it sounds good on the album, but I made an iTunes playlist of all five, and when it comes at the end, it’s even more powerful.
I find it really funny that people who aren’t hip to the bigger concept and they just hear “The Shattered Fortress” and they’re like, “Oh my god, why are these guys rehashing the same riffs? I don’t understand. Why is there a bit of ‘Root of All Evil’ in this song?” Some people just don’t get the bigger picture, but I know for the real fans, the big picture—it’s a really cool, unique concept.
Yeah, it really is. Are there plans to play the entire thing live?
Eventually, of course, that was always my intention to begin with, just not on this tour when we’re only doing 90 minutes. I wouldn’t want to eat up two-thirds of the set with it.
“The Best of Times”—first, my condolences to you.
Thank you.
I’m sure that was a very emotional song for you to write.
Very emotional. Probably one of the most emotional experiences I’ll ever have, playing the original version for my dad at his bedside. Being able to play it for him before he died was probably the most important gift I’ve ever been given. He loved the song. I played it at his funeral, as well. So yeah, it was really heavy, heavy, heavy shit. I still haven’t been able to bring myself to put it in the live show yet. I don’t know when I’m gonna be able to play it live. It’s still difficult for me to listen to, but I’m really happy to have done it.
I can’t get out of here without asking at least a question or two about probably my favorite album of all time, which is Scenes from a Memory. When you guys were writing and recording it, could you then sort of feel how special it was gonna be?
We did. We were coming off of a really difficult period for the band and that album was like do or die. We just regained control of our music. We were self-producing for the first time. It was the first album with [keyboardist] Jordan [Rudess]. We felt like we had a lot to prove and if we didn’t prove it, then it would’ve been the end. But we really did feel like it was something special. Jordan being in the band breathed a whole new breath of life into the band and making a concept album, which all of my favorite albums have always been concept albums and I always wanted Dream Theater to make one. So it really did feel like we were accomplishing what we wanted to do.
Would you say that album at that point saved the band?
Oh, absolutely. It’s funny, the two darkest periods of the band, which were the period before Images and Words and the period after Falling into Infinity, those were the two periods that almost broke up the band and in both cases they resulted in probably our two most successful albums, Images and Words and Scenes from a Memory.
When you toured and played the whole album front to back, did that ever get tiring?
Well, if you’ll notice, ever since then I’ve written different set lists.
[laughter]
Yeah, after doing Scenes in its entirety 100 nights in a row, I desperately needed to start rotating set lists. I think the rotating set list was a direct result of the “Metropolis 2000” tour, and one of my biggest dreads of doing another concept album is that once again we’ll be stuck doing the same set every night. But I know it’s important. If you do a concept album, you have to do it in its entirety to really do it right.
Alright, I’m running out of time here.
Thank you, man.
Anything you want to add?
Go watch Bigelf. They’re hitting the stage now.
RELATED LINKS:
www.dreamtheater.net
www.mikeportnoy.com
www.progressivenation2009.com
©2009 Live-Metal.Net
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