Awake Demos liner notes

Coming off the unexpected success of Images And Words (over one million records sold worldwide and almost 200 live shows), we were faced with a situation we had never experienced before: writing a record for somebody other than ourselves and doing it within a designated time frame.

All of our previous material (the Majesty demos, When Dream & Day Unite and Images And Words) had all been written during periods when the band didn’t have a singer and didn’t have a record deal. Because of that, some of the material was worked on for weeks & months at a time, going through many changes and incarnations.

When the time came at the start of 1994 to begin a new DT record, we suddenly had a “deadline” hanging over our head as the label wanted to have something out by the 3rd quarter of 1994 in order to continue developing (or I should say: cashing in) on the great success of Images And Words.

Not only was there the changed dynamic of an industry eagerly awaiting our next release, but there was also a new situation for us knowing that there was actually an audience waiting for it as well. All of our music in the past was written for 4 people and 4 walls...never knowing if anybody would ever even be listening to it. Now, after touring the world several times over, we saw first-hand the great fanbase that we were beginning to develop and when starting to think about a new album, we didn’t want to let them down. The pressure was on!

In February 1994, we moved into Prince Studios in New York City to begin the writing process. We finally officially retired my trusty Tascam 4-track and upgraded to a new Alesis S-track ADAT recorder. The only existing ideas upon starting were “Puppies On Acid” (the intro to The Mirror – which we were playing live on the I&W tour as an intro to Take The Time), a few bits and pieces of what would become Erotomania (they were originally part of Pull Me Under – see the Images And Words Demos) and The Silent Man (which JP had written at the end of 1993 and he, James and Kev even performed it on Korean TV while we were there for a promotional tour in Jan 1994). The writing process soon began and we were underway. Never at a loss for ideas, the wheels were spinning quickly and the deadline hanging over our head only seemed to motivate us even more.

However, pretty quickly on we were beginning to sense a bit of distance from Kevin. He was always a very quiet, private and sensitive person so we assumed that perhaps his increasing distance from us had stemmed from us having spent so much time throughout 1992/1993 travelling together and being under the public spotlight.

But whereas in the past he was very hands-on and involved in constructing the music with myself and the two Johns, he now seemed content to stand back and just let the three of us do most of the writing and arranging while he sat behind his keyboard reading magazines or books. He only ever really perked up if it involved discussing vocal melodies or production ideas. But when it came to writing the more complex, progressive passages he wasn’t very interested.

When he did really get involved with a contribution (6:00 was 80% his to begin with and of course Space-Dye Vest was entirely his), he usually worked on the musical ideas by himself at home and then brought them into us in finished form. Any of the lyrics or melodies he contributed, he would work on and demo at home and then bring in for James to learn. Even the keyboard solos on the demos, he refused to construct and record with any of us present. It was becoming very obvious that he was no longer interested or comfortable working (and therefore occasionally compromising) within the context of a “band” and now preferred to work privately on his own.

This working dynamic continued throughout the recording of the Awake album in Los Angeles and then ultimately came to a head on July 6th 1994 when he broke the inevitable news to us that he had decided to leave the band upon completing the recording process.

In retrospect. Kev’s lyrics to 6:00 and JP’s lyrics to Innocence Faded show the two sides of the deteriorating relationship and that the writing was surely already on the wall.

The timing of the split could not have been worse and this was the first in a string of devastating blows over the coming years that many (even occasionally ourselves) often wondered if we would ever recover from.

I guess history has shown us all otherwise...

MP

1. Scarred

(original instrumental working title: “The Keymaster”)

2. 6:00

(original instrumental working title: “Beachhouse Reality”)

3. The Mirror

(original instrumental working title: “Puppies On Acid”)

These were the first 3 songs to be written and demoed in February 1994.

Scarred came first. For some strange reason whenever we regroup to begin writing, the first song to come out tends to be very long in length (Raise The Knife, The Glass Prison, In The Name Of God and Sacrificed Sons were all the first tracks written for their respective albums)

6:00 came next and as already mentioned, it was something that Kevin brought in to us in home demo form. As a band, we made some changes to the arrangement and added a few riffs, but it remained pretty faithful to Kev’s original version.

Next up was The Mirror which we already had the first minute or so already written from a piece we wrote back in 1992 before kicking off the I&W tour. This was the first piece to incorporate JP’s new 7 string guitar which makes several appearances on the Awake album. (This album also marked the first time JM was writing and recording with a 6 string bass.)

As you’ll hear on this demo, the music for the final part of The Mirror, which ended up later becoming Lie, was originally intended to simply be part of this single song.

4. Caught In A Web

(original instrumental working title: “Squid”)

5. Erotomania

6. Voices

7. The Silent Man

These next 4 songs were the next batch to be written and recorded in March of 1994. Somebody must have bumped into the studio microphones between February and March because the recording quality of this batch was WAY inferior to the first batch!

As you’ll hear on this demo, Caught In A Web probably went through the most changes from demo to album version. For some reason, Duane Baron and John Purdell (Awake’s producers) made a lot of suggestions and changes to the arrangement of this song before recording the album version. (perhaps thinking it was a possible single?) BTW – can you tell I just added a percussion table to my set-up?

Erotomania, Voices and The Silent Man (together creating a trilogy entitled “A Mind Beside Itself”) was always to be the epic centerpiece of the Awake album. We had the idea of doing a trilogy that would be broken up into 3 parts: the 1st part being a crazy instrumental, the middle part being a big soaring epic, and the final part being an acoustic piece to close out the trilogy on a somber note. (in the vein of the endings of Yes’ Gates Of Delirium or Rush’s Hemispheres). What a surprise it was to us when later in the year, Yes used the EXACT same trilogy formula for the closing tracks on their new “Talk” album!

8. Lie

(original instrumental working title: “Kittens On Crack”)

This demo was a live rehearsal recording with overdubbed vocals. We decided to develop the ideas at the end of The Mirror into something that would be a separate song on its own but yet would still sit in the middle of The Mirror.

So we extended some of the riffs into multiple verses and choruses and wrote a bridge and a solo section to create what would end up being the lead off single from Awake. There is a great vocal demo that Kev made of himself singing the song for James to learn – which in some ways I think may have been even cooler that the final version – giving the song an almost Stone Temple Pilots sound to it...

9. Lifting Shadows Off A Dream

(original instrumental working title: “Blowfish”)

10. Innocence Faded

(original instrumental working title: “Fresca”)

11. Space-Dye Vest

This final batch of demos was written and recorded in April of 1994.

With most of earlier songs mostly being on the heavier side, we finished up the writing process with a few more moodier, poppier songs from a few riffs and ideas that were still lying around.

Lifting Shadows was another example of our U2 influence which has shown up on so many songs in our catalog (To Live Forever, Speak To Me, I Walk Beside You).

JM had the harmonics intro and a few progressions that we ended up developing together as a band to create the final song.

Innocence Faded was something that JP had a few parts pre-written and demoed (the intro guitar theme, the verses and the instrumental outro) and once again, we developed the ideas together as a band and created the final song.

Space-Dye Vest was a piece that was 100% Kevin’s. He had begun writing songs and demoing ideas on his own while on tour in 1993. Most of these demos were songs that were obviously not suitable for Dream Theater and were just for his own experimentation. But Space-Dye Vest was something that struck us as something that perhaps DT could record and try to use to take us in some new directions.

Years earlier, we had written an instrumental piece called “Eve” (it was also recorded as a B-side during the Awake sessions) which was also a bit of a step in this different direction (incorporating soundscapes and samples – kind of Roger Waters meets Peter Gabriel meets Twin Peaks).

Having no idea Kevin would be ultimately leaving the band, we were trying to be open minded to his musical interests and direction and embrace some of his new ideas and incorporate them as best as we could while still holding onto our own identity. It was obvious that this was an intense piece of music and could work on the upcoming album, but also one that would be possibly hard for some DT fans to digest... therefore needed to close the CD in order for it to stand on its own.

I’ve often stated that if we had known further in advance that Kevin would be leaving the band, we would have surely left this track off the album. And that since his departure, we would never play this track live without him. But at the end of the day, it seems an appropriate way to have ended the CD and truly close this chapter of the band’s career and move onto the next...