Plus Ça Change

Interview with Mike Portnoy, courtesy of, and with thanks to Stephane Auzilleau of Your Majesty, the French Fanzine. The Present, the Future, and the Past!

Part 1 – The Rudess Experiment

When did you meet Jordan for the first time?

Mike: The first time any of us met Jordan was when he came down for the audition, before Foundations Forum. That was September of ‘94. None of us had ever met him; we’d heard of him, because he won the Keyboard Player Magazine polls; he beat Kev (Moore) out. I remember that I won the polls, John Petrucci won the polls, and Kev lost to this guy Jordan Rudess. We were like: ‘Who’s this guy?’ So when Kev left the band we said we gotta get as poll winner in this band, so we had Jim Pitulski (ex-manager) find him, and he auditioned, and we took him onto the Foundations show. That was the first time we met him.

Did you want him to join?

Yeah. After we played the one show with him, he was also working with The Dixie Dregs at the time, so he had the choice of going with us or The Dregs. At that time we were still very heavy tourers, the ‘Images & Words’ tour was pretty relentless, and the ‘Awake’ tour we pretty much had a schedule that was very much like that in store for us. He wasn’t ready to leave his family and go on the road for that long time – none of us had families yet at that point – so it didn’t make sense for him at that point in his life. We were sorry that he wasn’t able to join because his talents are obviously incredible and he would have been a great addition to the music, but it was just a matter of the circumstances not being right.

Musically he was a first choice?

Well, I think we auditioned him, Jens Johansson, and we chose Jordan. When it was established that Jordan wouldn’t be able to join us full time, we held another set of auditions and that’s where Derek and a few other people auditioned, and we decided to take Derek out. But Jordan would have been our first choice. We were all blown away – his audition was incredible – we did a lot of jamming and I think we played ‘Take The Time’ and ‘Pull Me Under’ with him and ‘Caught In A Web’ and he actually played a Rudess/Morgenstein song, ‘Over The Edge’ at his audition just by himself, and we were completely floored. That was before he was working with Rod. We actually spent a little time working on a bream Theater arrangement of that song.

What is the main difference between Jordan and other keyboardists?

He’s just unlike any keyboard player I’ve ever seen. Even before we brought him into the band now, I’ve always said this , even two years ago if you’d asked me this, I would say that he’s just the greatest keyboard player I’ve ever seen, much less played with. I think he’s better than Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman; he’s just like the Beethoven of rock. His technical abilities are unbelievable; whereas most players can separate their left hand from their right hand, he can actually separate his pinky finger from his ring from his index finger. He can have all ten fingers doing different things, and so his technical abilities are just astounding, and also he’s got perfect pitch; I’ve never seen anything like it.

When we were doing the second Liquid Tension album, we were listening back to an improv jam, which ended up on the album called ‘Liquid Dreams’ – it was just completely improvised and John Petrucci wanted to learn the chords, so Jordan was able to call out the chords right on the spot just from hearing the tape. It’s like twenty different chords, he heard them and called them out, so his ear is just ridiculous!

With Jordan in Dream Theater, does this mean the end of Liquid Tension?

Yeah, I think so. I think after we release the DT album with Jordan, I don’t want to go back and do any further albums with Liquid Tension, ‘cos there’s no reason for it. Liquid Tension was an outlet for us to play with outsiders. Now that Jordan is an insider, three quarters of Liquid Tension is Dream Theater members, so it’s kinda pointless. That’s the bad news; the good news is that Liquid Tension will become now a real strong element in Dream Theater. I don’t know if we’ll incorporate LTE songs into the DT set or what have you; it’s a possibility, because now we have three members who wrote this music in Dream Theater. Just as when we play Ytse Jam, there is three members who wrote that, so I see it like the two world’s colliding: now taking DT and LTE and colliding and creating something new for the next Millennium.

So we may continue have the opportunity to hear some LTE songs in Dream Theater sets?

It’s possible. You know what I’d like to do? I’d love Liquid Tension to open for Dream Theater on the next tour. I don’t know if that would be with Tony (Levin) or if it would be with John Myung filling in on bass. I don’t know, I’m just speaking off of the top of my head. But I would love to be able to play this material, considering there is three of us now together at all times. Some of this material is great, I’m very proud of it; it would be nice to be able to incorporate it into Dream Theater.

Do you think it is useful to have these side projects?

It’s good and it’s bad. The goods are obvious – we’re all getting the opportunities to try things and play with different people – this has been really a lot of fun for me and John and Jordan. The Platypus thing has been fun for Derek and John M, but the bad things are it can start to get distracting, I think it’s getting a little bit out of hand, so I’m really looking forward to getting back to Dream Theater. ‘Cos now you hear about Platypus 2, as well as LTE2, James has a solo album, Derek has a solo album – it’s getting a little bit out of hand. I guess one person does something and the others say “if you can do it I want to do it”, and it starts a chain reaction.

One last question on Liquid Tension. What do you feel are the main differences between LTE2 and LTE1?

It’s hard to say. They are very similar, they have a lot of the same type of elements: there’s a John and Jordan duet, there’s a me and Tony duet, there’s some improvs, there’s a couple of really crazy progressive songs, and there’s a couple of more melodic songs; It’s got that same balance that the first album had. I think the biggest difference isn’t even a musical difference, just more of a behind the scenes thing, is the fact that we had two weeks as opposed to one. We had five days for the first album, this one we had a week long session in October, and another session in November, so there was a little more time. One of the songs we are not playing in the live set, ‘When The Water Breaks’ – which is like a 17-minute song. It’s not a jam, it’s an actual composed song; that alone took a lot of time to put together, because it is such a big piece.

How many improvisations did you keep for the record, two?

Four. Well that’s subject to change because I’m going to be mastering and sequencing the album with Kevin Shirley, assuming that it’ll all fit, I’m planning on putting four on there. Two of which are all four of us, and one of which is just me and Tony’s duet which was an improv jam, with Jordan doing some sound effects, and one which is a trio, like what we did for The Stretch. All the jamming on this album was done with just me, Jordan, and Tony, because when John had his baby, we still had the studio time booked. So the three of us stayed in the studio for an extra couple of days and did hours and hours of improv jams, so some of the really cool ones. I sorted through the tapes and picked out a couple of really good ones, and two of them that ended up becoming Chewbacca and Liquid Dreams. John ended up taking the tapes and over-dubbing the guitar parts. So what you hear is me, Jordan and Tony improvising, and John creating parts to what we improvised. This still may change, but as of now I’m going to compile and extra bonus CD of all the leftover improv with the trio, and I think Magna Carta may have that as a mail order or Internet bonus CD that you can order. I wanted to do a double CD but for practical reasons they weren’t too fond of that, but hopefully that’s gonna happen. I’ve been using some of the outtakes as the intro music before these shows so...

What I’ve heard, I think it’s a bit different...

I think there’s more of Tony in this material. Just because after the last project, Tony consciously wanted to have more input with this, so he brought a lot of his sound effects and stuff. In a lot of the improv jams, it was obviously very driven by Tony because he had a lot of space to do some wild things.

During the sessions, did you have some ideas that you kept for Dream Theater instead of Liquid Tension?

No. It was the same as the first album: we came up with stuff on the spot, Jordan came in with ideas that he had on the side, we sorted through them and took notes, and then used those as some starting points. And the contributions that me, Tony and John made were more spontaneous, and if we did something and it felt good we used it. We didn’t know Jordan was going to be joining DT when we were doing the album, John and I were just spontaneously throwing in ideas, we didn’t hold back on anything. There might have been one thing that we started jamming on that we felt it might have been more suitable for Dream Theater, so we said “no let’s tuck that away”, so you’re right – you just refreshed my memory!

Part 2 – The New Album

Do you already have some songs ready for the new Dream Theater album?

The only thing we have, obviously the six songs left over from the ‘Infinity’ sessions: Cover My Eyes, Where Are You Now, Raise The Knife, Speak To Me, The Way It used To Be, we are going to put them to bed now, especially as we wrote them with Derek. So the only thing that we are not going to throw away, because people would shoot us and we’d never hear the end of it is, Metropolis Pt.2. So we’ll hold on to that and we’ll see what we’ll do with that, but for the most part we’re going to start fresh with Jordan and see what happens, and we’re going to do this album spontaneously, like Liquid Tension, just because the three of us had such a great experience writing that way; and I’m sure John and James will be just as excited by it. The only difference is the writing process will be the same but the length of time will be different. With LTE we did it in two weeks but with Dream Theater we’ll have two to three months – a lot more time to really fine tune the recording process and sort through the songs and stuff.

Do you have an idea of the schedule of this album?

We’re going in next week, we’re wasting no time, and we’re doing it in spurts as well because I’m having a baby in March; so we’ll start, when the baby comes we’ll stop, then start again. We’re doing a few scattered weeks in February, then stop for March where hopefully my baby will be on schedule; we’ll continue in April through May and stuff. We’re going in without a producer! It’s going to be like Liquid Tension; we’re gonna go in, we’re gonna have a great engineer. We have Doug Oberkircher who did ‘Images And Words’ and ‘A Change Of Seasons’ and ‘Live At The Marquee’ – so he’s gonna be engineering and we’ll be running the show and just making music.

Do you have an idea of the producer?

It’ll be Dream Theater! The only question will be if it’ll be a co-production with, I think James wants to work with Terry Brown on his vocals. So I think we’re gonna work with Doug at Bear Tracks, where we did ‘Images And Words’ – and then when it comes to vocals James wants to work with Terry Brown, because he’s having a good time with him on his solo album.

So we’ll see if Terry will end up with a co-production credit, or vocal production credit, I don’t know. Then when it comes to the mix it may be Kevin Shirley, it may be Terry Brown, or it could be Doug. Right now we have three choices of people to mix the album.

Jordan is known as more of a progressive rock keyboardist. Do you think it means that maybe the new album will be more progressive than ‘FII’, or is it too early to say?

It’s too soon to say, but I would guess that it would absolutely be much more progressive than ‘FII.’ Hopefully it won’t be – I don’t think it will be as commercial – but it will still be as melodic; we’ll always have a strong emphasis on the melodic edge and the vocals and the structure. But because of the nature of Jordan’s playing, it will take the band back to that whole progressive shredding nature with John and Jordan doubling everything and harmonising everything, just because that’s the type of player Jordan is. We don’t want to re-do ‘Images And Words’ – but if you consider that our most progressive album, I think we’ll be going in that direction, because Jordan is that type of player.

One of the reasons Jordan didn’t join before was that he didn’t want to tour too much – is that still true now or do you think he will?

Well, we have lightened up our tour schedule a little bit because we all have families now. So we split it up into smaller legs and get breaks. I think we are all now in that same head that Jordan was in before; we want to tour just as much as we did for ‘Infinity’ absolutely, we want to cover all the ground, we want to play all the places we’ve always played, several times, but we have to spread it out and be considerate to each other’s wanting to be with their families as well.

We can hope to see you in Europe?

It will be no less than we did for ‘Infinity’ – no less than that.

PART 3 – The Past

Your first album was released 10 years ago. Looking back to the last 10 years, can you tell me 2 or 3 major facts that were very important to you?

Just in the past 10 years? That’s a tough one! Are you saying moments that were very important in the progress of our career, or are you talking about moments that I have fond memories of?

Both.

They’re probably different. The first major step was changing vocalists and getting James in the band. Then, the success of ‘Images And Words’ and ‘Pull Me Under’ really gave us our first taste of success, it really got us well known throughout the entire world internationally. The next major step was the loss of Kevin – having to adjust to that. We went through a lot of management changes, so, all the steps have not necessarily been up – they’ve been twisted and all different directions. I mark our career more in terms of special memories, the little things I like – like the Ronnie Scott’s show, playing live on stage with Bruce Dickinson, doing Nightmare Cinema – the fun things or playing with other people, some of the festivals we did with Page/Plant and Black Sabbath, the last Deep Purple tour we did was a lot of fun. So, I look at our career more in terms of memories of just getting to play with other bands, and getting to play in front of big audiences.

Are you satisfied with what has happened over the last 10 years? Did you imagine that when you released the first album?

Well, we had hoped that we would do everything that we have done, but it’s very nice to see that it has actually happened. There’s still a lot of room to grow, and there always has been, and we’re not Guns N’ Roses or U2 but, we are very proud of the market or the fan base that we have developed in this time, cos our fans are so great and devoted. So that right there is the biggest achievement of all, that we’ve created and maintained that. That’s great.

The next step would be to have another hit single?

I hope not! Whatever. I think that Pull Me Under was probably the worst thing to happen to us in terms of the record company. In terms of the fan base and the exposure, of course it was great. But, with the record company, they immediately expected that to happen every time out, and we knew that we were not that type of band. Even though we were capable of doing it in ’92 because there was ‘Headbangers Ball’ and metal on the radio, in 1999 we are so far from what is radio friendly that I don’t ever really anticipate us having another hit single. If it happened great – and we’re not going to intentionally write them – but with this next album, we’re not even gonna think of that. It’s not what we’re interested in; we’re interested in making a great album not creating a great hit single. So I think we’ll stray further from that than we ever had with the next record.

Are you excited about the next record with Jordan?

I think the possibilities musically with Jordan in the band are endless. It is going to be real interesting to see what happens. I’ve enjoyed the Liquid Tension stuff so much, and that was just a week here and a week there; now to be doing it full-time is going to be very, very exciting.

Can you tell me more about the ELP tribute, what did you do?

I played on two tracks, ‘The Sheriff’ and ‘Endless Enigma’. James sang on a couple of tracks and Derek played on a couple, and Jordan also played on there, so there is officially a fourth Dream Theater member involved with the ELP tribute. There’s nothing to tell, it’s just another one of those Magna Carta tributes all done through the mail; nobody’s playing with each other, and I got a tape of some of Trent Gardner’s arrangements and I went in and just laid down drum tracks and that was the extent of it.

What about a Zappa tribute?

I’m still in talks with Magna Carta now about doing it. I’d love to do it; we’ll see. Obviously my, and our schedules, are tied up through the summer with the new Dream Theater album, so that’s the big focus for all of us.

Do you have an expected release for the new album?

It’s hard to guess, and anything can change, but if I had to guess I would say September or so, if we stay on schedule. Then we’d start to tour.

PART 4 – What Happened with Derek?

As far as what happened with Derek goes, there were absolutely no hard feelings and it was a very hard thing for us to do. All four of us really admire him and like him as a person, and it was a hard thing to do – to let him go – but it was really just a business decision. We decided that Jordan was what we wanted and where we wanted to take the band in the future. After John and I work with him, we thought “why should we work with him part-time? Let’s work with him full-time.” And it wasn’t out of disrespect to Derek, it was just what we thought was better for the band.

And if we didn’t give ourselves that opportunity to try it, we would feel short changed. It’s not like some of our previous members that never went on to do anything, sort of just disappeared, or did very low-key things; Derek has always played with great people, he’s always got great gigs, he knows a lot of people, so we’re confident he’ll continue his career playing with whoever. There were no hard feelings, and honest I’m not bullshitting – there’s no other story behind it! Everyone saw the press release and went: “What’s the real story?” But what the press release says is the real story; there’s nothing else behind it.

Many people may think that this was a John and Mike decision.

Don’t take this the wrong way, but almost everything in Dream Theater is very much a John and Mike decision. We talk things out equally, and that’s not to underestimate James’ and John Myung’s input, but every band has a leader or two leaders, and ultimately we sort of steer the ship. That’s not disregarding what the other guys have to say, but ultimately a lot of the decisions come from the two of us.

Anything you want to add?

I think we’re excited to see the potential of where we can go now. Derek was always a very controversial member. He added a lot of great, great things to the band. He’s a great player, he added a lot of personality – which some people thought was bad. I thought it was pretty good actually. The shows were fun; Nicky Lemons and Nightmare Cinema – that was fun and I had a great time with him around. But it was always controversial because he wasn’t coming from the same world that we came from. Derek’s roots are in Van Halen, Ozzy and Aerosmith. Jordan’s roots are Pink Floyd, Genesis, Gentle Giant, Yes – so he comes from a similar background to us. It’s exciting and we wish Derek the best; a lot of good memories with him. I think it was a good point to make the change, having finished the live album and video, it sort of closes the chapter on the Derek era. Now we start the Jordan era.