Dream Theater: John Petrucci

When Dream Theater signed to Atco Records in the dawn of the ‘90s, it was the era of seven- or eight-album deals. Had the band known the Internet was about to transform the world, we bet it would have played severe hardball during contract negotiations—or it would have said screw it and taken the indie route.

Despite making its splash with 1992’s Images And Words and delivering solid follow up Awake in 1994, label support for the band slipped. From 1997’s Falling Into Infinity on, records were released with little promo muscle behind them. It didn’t help that Dream Theater was shifted among four different labels under Warner Music Group as the industry kept consolidating. The group hoped it would be released from its contract, but Warner was apparently satisfied with the financial return it got from a band it didn’t have to invest much money in.

Some might have bad-mouthed their label at every turn to get even. But Dream Theater’s sound tells you this quintet isn’t remotely like everyone else. Instead, these cats dug in and toured. And toured and toured and toured some more.

Between spending a year at a time on the road and harnessing the Internet’s growing power to keep contact with fans, Dream Theater did not merely survive—it thrived, building its audience, promoting its albums and supporting itself with touring and merch sales. By certain standards it’s an underground band, but anyone who sells product for $80 a pop (anybody want a Dream Theater blanket?) is doing something right. Roadrunner Records agreed, and signed the band in January.

When it was announced a week later that Warner was buying Roadrunner for about $75 million, Dream Theater might have felt like it was tied to a musical mob it couldn’t escape. But drummer Mike Portnoy and guitarist John Petrucci are too excited about the fresh team supporting Systematic Chaos to choke on the irony. And vindication was theirs when it debuted at No. 19 on The Billboard 200, Dream Theater’s best entrance to the chart in its whole career.

The album’s June 5 arrival brought more journey songs for prog heads to slather over. Get ready for ‘In The Presence Of The Enemies’ to take up half an hour of your life, and if you don’t have that much time, ‘Ministry Of Lost Souls’ is merely 15 minutes. In the first of this two-part series, Petrucci discusses the album’s promotion and the prep involved in playing new material on tour. Paris Hilton couldn’t remember that her license was suspended, but this guy never forgets the hundreds of notes he performs during set lists that Dream Theater never plays twice.

Christa Titus: When Atlantic absorbed Elektra, you weren’t able to leave at that point; Warners still held you to that contract.

John Petrucci: Yeah. There were several changes, actually. When we first got signed it was Atco Records and then eventually changed to EastWest and then Elektra, and all are different. So many different people came and went; we had so many different A&R; people, presidents and this and that, but the deal stuck, yeah. They renewed every single option we had. It was an eight-album deal.

CT: It seemed like they put out your record, and that’s it. There wasn’t any promotion.

JP: Yeah. That was a big thing... we sort of felt like that we were a little too self-sufficient, that obviously we were doin’ our job makin’ the best records we can and putting ‘em out. But then at that point, when it was time for the label to take over and promote, do their job, it wasn’t really there. Hopefully, and it seems like so far, it will be different this time.

CT: What kind of things does Roadrunner have set up to promote you guys that’s different or that you haven’t had done for you in a while?

JP: At this point, it’s all promotion... promo tour, doing basically more for us than [has been] done in a long time. And they’re promising us a presence worldwide... we play all over the world, and we need support out there. We play concerts, and nobody’s there from the label... it’s disheartening, so [that’s one thing I’m] looking forward to.

CT: When is the last time you’d say you did this much press for a Dream Theater album?

JP: Ah... That’s actually a good question, you know. When we put out Images And Words and it did really well for us, there was a large presence by the label, and then the setup for the followup was great, but not much since then, really... there’s always been some press and some setup, but this really seems to be the most. The other big thing is that we haven’t done a music video in ages. [The band shot one for first single ‘Constant Motion.’] I think 10 years or something like that. That’s one of the first things that they did with us.

CT: There’s also the special edition of the CD. Have you guys done anything like that in a while?

JP: No, not really. We really haven’t. That’s another thing. Kind of offering more. I think it’s really important to sort of keep up with the demand... People can get things so easily now, you need to constantly be offering things, and the fact that what’s being offered on the special edition is kind of a making-of the album, and it’s really spectacular. So I think fans are, they’re really gettin’ their money’s worth on that... [and] the 5.1 mix as well.

CT: When it comes to writing lyrics, for this album the press materials say they are more fiction-based. Are your lyrics usually more based in reality?

JP: The last couple of albums have been more based on reality, they’re based on family and sort of personal reflections, but I’ve done both. Scenes From A Memory was an entire concept album that was a fictional story, and I’ve certainly written like that before. But this record, I almost wrote from, you know, it’s fantasy. It’s almost like anime and, you know, stories like that. I’ll tell you, it was a lot of fun writing from that perspective, it really was. It kind of gave me a ton of freedom I enjoyed.

CT: Was there anything you were watching or reading or heard about that made you go in that direction?

JP: Not particularly. I just wanted to write something different. I felt that the music was very animated and very dramatic, and that it was really, one of the key elements is that you have to create characters and tell stories in a short song context, not a full concept album, so it was a challenge. But I thought the music really called for that, the drama of the music.

CT: Since your songs are so long, how do you know when a song has hit its end?

JP: Haaaaa. That’s a good question. I don’t know. It’s hard to say. It just kind of naturally happens as we’re constructing the song. Speaking about the longer ones, there will be some point in the song where we start to develop a plan as to how we’re gonna get back, how we’re gonna end it. The time it takes to get to that point might be different, but, you know, some of those longer songs start as very stream of consciousness and very improvised. But they eventually, the structure starts to develop and it kind of dictates how long the song’s gonna be and when it’s gonna end.

We know. We’ll realize at some point, “Oh, what we have to do is go here, there and there, and then that theme that we played in the beginning, we’ll do it in the end. It will be grand.” And everyone’s like, “Yeah, yeah, that sounds great.”

CT: When you’ve got to go out onstage and roll out new material, and it’s that long, how do you remember all those notes to play?

JP: That’s a very pertinent question because I’m about to head off to rehearsals [on the day of the interview] for the tour that we’re gonna start, and yeah, it’s almost overwhelming, because when we write music, we write in the studio and then we record right away. It’s not like we’ve been playing for all this time and then we record it. Sometimes we never really even play it, like we’ll do a loose scratch version before we record it. So we actually have to get used to playing the material for the first time, pretty much. That’s what we’re about to start today, and it’s hard.

You just gotta put the hours in and work on cues and special memory tricks that help you get it to the forefront. Then of course there’s the physical stuff where you’ve played the stuff before and it’s difficult, and you have to sit there and practice these new licks. Sometimes I’ll do a solo in the studio and improvise and construct it and whatever, and then I leave it, and I haven’t played these solos for three months. I have to go back and actually learn what I did and then learn how to play it and play it live consistently.

CT: How long will you rehearse before the tour?

JP: As funny as it sounds, we’re only rehearsing five days... If you go in there and everybody knows how to play the stuff, then you just gotta play it through a few times, make sure it all works. It’s not that big of a deal, I don’t think. More of a rehearsal; we’re starting [with] festivals, so we’re not even going to have our production and everything. More when we go back out in the summer we actually rehearse for production purposes to get the show together... if you’re prepared you know it. You’re professional and everybody plays together, it should be fine.

CT: Have you forgotten anything while you’re playing?

JP: Not, not really. I haven’t forgotten; no. No. That’s never happened, thankfully. [laughs]

CT: What is it about Dream Theater that you think has made it the prog band in America, if not internationally?

JP: I think it’s a couple things. When we first started, when we came out when we did, it was during a time where the music scene was changing very much and there was really, if there were people doing similar kind of music, they weren’t really known, so we sort of stood out... I think we’re the kind of band that we carve our own path, we’re very independent as far as what our thoughts are about music and where we wanna go with it and there’s a lot of sincerity in what we do, and... we go out and we work really hard, we make our presence known and because of that, because of that build to success, although there may be a progressive scene, which there certainly is, not only domestically but internationally, there really aren’t a lot of those bands that people know about, and because of when we sort of got in when we did, I think we were put in a very good [position].

CT: What do you think it was about Images And Words that brought you to the mainstream, but subsequently you guys didn’t remain there?

JP: I’m not sure what happened with that. They started playing ‘Pull Me Under,’ and people started calling in. “What is that? What band is that?” It kind of snowballed, and it brought our name to the forefront.

And I think what we had done is, prior to releasing that record we had about a year-and-a-half that we were writing that material, because we were looking for a new record deal, we were looking for a singer and all we did was work on our music, and so, I think because the album’s really deep, I think it has a lot of substance. So when people got really turned on to that one song and heard everything else, I don’t think they were disappointed. I think there was a lot to dive into. It’s really a springboard for us. And who knows how that happens. It’s timing and luck and everything else, you know? But we were very fortunate for that, we really were.

And also fortunately, it didn’t get too big, because I think sometimes you gotta watch for that early in your career because you can kind of fade away very quickly, and fortunately for us that didn’t happen and we were able to build. And now 20 years later – not 20 years since that release but since we started – we have a type of career that bands can only dream about, with lifelong dedicated fans, and that’s not an overnight thing.

CT: What would you say to a guy in a progressive band who came to you and he’s starting out in the business; what mistakes would you tell him to avoid that you guys have made?

JP: Well, don’t sign an eight-album record deal. [small laugh] Eight albums is too much to commit to. I’m not sure about our mistakes; I know that we’ve, like any band in any career, we’ve made a few along the way. But some mistakes that I see or hear young bands doing, and it’s probably the most common one, is that although in a lot of bands there’s a high level of musicianship and technical ability and certainly the elements that makes something progressive rock, but the songwriting is lacking... [There are] tons of bands with insanely sick music but no one will ever know of ‘em.

You have to have the songs there. And that’s why so many people loved and so love Yes and Genesis and Rush and Pink Floyd, Marillion, cuz the songs are so strong... the songs might be long and instrumental sections, there’s a lot of drama and stories being told, but the songs are great. It’s not just a bunch of musicians showing off and going crazy.

CT: What would you say other developing bands could learn from you guys besides that?

JP: It might sound like a cliche, but just stick to what you believe in. Stick to what you’re passionate about as a musical style. Because I’ve seen so many bands trying to fit in with the times, so to speak, and if it doesn’t contribute to your identity or enhance your identity, if it actually pulls from it and sounds unnatural, that’s the worst thing, that people don’t believe in you. And then you lose fans, and you lost the listeners. That’s something that I think is very important. Our latest album is in as much of the style now as the first record is that we ever created together. So I think that’s important. Obviously you have to do things that are new and different, you don’t want to repeat yourself, but you need to protect your identity.

CT: You did the show at Radio City Music Hall last year to celebrate Dream Theater’s 20th anniversary. How do you see yourselves equaling or topping that?

JP: I don’t think it’s something that we really try to really top. It was obviously a culmination of several special events. It was an anniversary for the group, the DVD shooting, and we were playing with an orchestra, so not so much that we try to top it, you know? I think it’s a matter of taking it from that point and trying to continue to do things that are creative and inspiring. Because that’s what that type of thing stems from. It’s like Mike Portnoy came to me one day and said, “I have this great idea. I know how to do our next DVD.” He had this great idea of playing Radio City and doing this whole thing with the orchestra, so you’ve just gotta continue to have ideas like that, continue to be excited about what you do.