Mike Portnoy interview

Eddie Trunk: So listen, man, you got the live album out right now, Scenes From New York, and I know you’re working on a studio album, but I got to ask you about the... First of all, I don’t have the full-length live album because I know that there was a whole thing that went down with the artwork and everything, so give us the little capsulized version of that.

Mike Portnoy: The capsulized version is that we have the one in a billion or trillion possible coincidence of putting out a CD cover the morning of September 11th containing the big apple on fire with the New York City landscape engulfed in flames. The chances of that are one in a trillion and it was just a crazy, crazy coincidence that was just incredibly unfortunate. Obviously after a day or two of discussing it with the label and figuring out what the hell we should do, we figured it would just be in best taste to pull it all together off the shelves and re-release it with a new cover. So it’ll be back out in about two or three weeks with a new cover. But it was on the shelves for a few days before it was pulled, so I guess there’s a good handful of the hardcore fans that went out and bought it the first day or two, which have the original artwork.

ET: That would actually probably be a collector’s item, too, I would think, at some point.

MPortnoy: Oh, totally. In fact, the day that it was announced that it was getting pulled, somebody was already selling one on eBay for, like, $500, which I thought was totally uncool. I mean, maybe a year from now, of course, that’s going to naturally happen, but right now that’s, like, totally disrespectful.

ET: I was going to say the ID name wasn’t “M. Portnoy at AOL” or anything like that. [laughs]

MPortnoy: You’re not going to believe it, but in order to get one, I found two of them in Tower Records. I bought them off the shelf myself out of my own pocket. Because it was a triple CD, the label didn’t have a lot of comps sitting around. They had to special order them.

ET: A lot of none. I’ve been pulling teeth. I still can’t get one. I got this sampler.

MPortnoy: Kevin Shirley, the producer, just called me today looking for one. Everyone’s looking for them. because the label never stocked them because it’s a three-CD set. So it’s definitely a collective item. The other band members don’t even have them.

ET: I know that this record will be re-released with a new cover, and I found out that you just finished your new studio album today, right?

MPortnoy: We finished it a couple days ago. Mastering was on Tuesday, so about three days ago or so. We actually delivered it.

ET: And that’ll be out, what, early next year at this point?

MPortnoy: Yeah, January. And it’s actually going to be a double CD.

ET: Yeah, I read that one of your songs is like 45 minutes or something. Man, ‘2112’s got nothing on Dream Theater.

MPortnoy: No, like the entire song is longer than the whole entire 2112 album.

ET: Wow. And you have one song that takes up a whole CD, right?

MPortnoy: Yeah, the whole second CD is just this big one song.

ET: And now the other CD, is that a concept or is that just...

MPortnoy: No those are just five completely individual songs, also very long tracks. We definitely went off the deep end with this one, but yeah, those are just five individual tracks and we weren’t gonna get involved with the whole conceptual thing after having done Scenes From A Memory for the last two years. We we’re kind of burnt on it, but once we got around to this big epic track on the new album, it inevitably turned into a bit of a concept thing because the lyrics and everything had to tell a story. So the entire second CD is this big conceptual song, and then the first CD is just five very different type songs.

ET: So there’s a Dream Theater DVD, the live album, which is being re-released, and the new studio album coming out next year. So you guys got a lot going on.

MPortnoy: Yeah, it’s like non-stop stuff. You know, instructional videos and side projects. It’s just like a never-ending whirlwind of product.

ET: Yeah, I know James, your singer, just put out another, is it Mullmuzzler?

MPortnoy: Yep, and I have a new CD with Transatlantic, which comes out next week on Tuesday, which is a side project I have. So it’s just been crazy, but we’ll keep them busy.

ET: Well, that’s good, man. We want to get you back in here when the new studio album comes out. I know you’re local, so we definitely want to get you to come down and hang out in the studio. Last time we had so many fans in the New York area of Dream Theater and so many questions. It’s just amazing, but you guys have an amazing fan base.

MPortnoy: The best in the world. I mean a band like ours, we can’t count on radio or MTV support. It’s just fully fan-based and fueled. The internet has definitely been a great thing for a band like ours because the fans could be so involved. But man, our whole career is just totally a credit to the support of our fans. It’s kind of like Phish fans or Grateful Dead fans; we’re like the Phish of heavy metal I suppose.

Mike Piazza: How do you guys go about putting a song together, because they’re so intricate? Do you start with a basic idea? Do you write acoustically?

MPortnoy: I guess the reason the songs are so long is because we have so many damn ideas, and we do it together – at least the four instrumentalists. The four of us will write all the music. But basically, we just take the clock off the wall. However long the songs end up, we just get all the ideas onto the table, and usually there’s a lot of them. We just take the twist and the turns and put it together as a collaborative thing.

MPiazza: So you guys all write together, or does one guy come in and go, “Hey, I got an idea,” and is it just that there’s no format to it?

MPortnoy: It’s pretty collaborative – at least the intricate songs are completely collaborated on. Once in a while, somebody will come in with an idea, but it’ll be completely developed by the band. And then once we do all the music, then one of us will go off and write the lyrics and the melodies, and then that’s it. Our singer comes down – he actually lives up in Canada – and he’ll come down once the music is done and everything, and that’s the process. I mean, that’s what we’ve been doing all year. We’ve been in the studio since March, and we’ve pretty much spent the whole year making this upcoming record. It’s been great that we actually wrote all the stuff in the studio. So it was completely done, kind of spontaneously as we went along.

ET: It’s funny, too, because when Mike was here, when Scenes From A Memory came out, as we were playing tracks from that, I remember you listening to it and saying, “Damn, how are we going to do this live?”

MPortnoy: Totally. And it took a little while for us to get it. Then luckily, the live recording and DVD was the last US show. It was at Roseland here in New York – that was the last night on the US tour. We had about 100 performances of it up until then to get it right, and then I think we finally got it right by the end in time for the live recording.

ET: So any touch-ups come clean on us? Any touch-ups on the live album, or is it legit?

MPortnoy: The God’s honest truth is that it is 98% live.

ET: That’s two, guys! Wait a minute! That’s two bands in the last two weeks that I got to fess up that their new live albums are 98%.

MPortnoy: 98% is pretty damn good.

ET: It’s really good—

MPortnoy: I’m 100%, our bass player is 100%, and believe it or not, the least likely person to go completely live – the vocalist – is 100%. There were just a couple of moments where Jordan and John – our guitar player and keyboard player – where there was just a blatant wrong note or blatant wrong chord. We’re not trying to fool anybody by fixing it; it’s just like when you’re listening to this damn thing, you want it to be enjoyable to the ear. You don’t want this blatant, horrible luger to pop out like that, so inevitably we have to patch up just a couple of notes here and there. But all the playing, everything, it’s damn live.

ET: I always like to ask that to people because there are obviously live albums that nothing’s live but the applause track. And it’s funny because last week I had Jeff Keith from Tesla on, and Tesla just did a live album, and Jeff’s a great guy. That was the last question I asked him, and he goes, “Well Eddie, I gotta tell you, on a couple tracks, we did have to go see the doctor.” [laughs]

MP: Well, we had the DVD and the video from the same show, so we couldn’t fix too much because we knew it would be blatantly obvious when you’re watching the DVD. So we had that kind of kicking us along that we knew we couldn’t get too crazy in the hospital.