James LaBrie interview (excerpts)

When Mike Portnoy, who’s always done a lot of side projects, went out to do the Avenged Sevenfold record, did you sense that anything might be different with him? That things were different and that things were gonna change?

No, not at all. I mean, Mike had mentioned that the Rev, Avenged Sevenfold’s drummer, [the late James Owen Sullivan], was heavily influenced by Mike and that it was the rest of the guys’ decision to want to honor his memory by bringing, you know, obviously in his main influence as far as drumming. So we said, “Yeah, you know. That’s a great opportunity and we’re not gonna stop you.” I mean, obviously we all make our decisions and do what we feel is something that is a professional and sound decision, and that’s exactly what it was. At that point it was all about him going there, recording the album. Initially it was just for him to record the album, and then it was maybe a few months later that he said, “The guys have asked me if I would tour with them.”

Did that feel a little strange?

At that point it kinda felt a little weird, like, “Hey, wait a minute, our drummer’s gonna be drumming with somebody else?” Not that he hasn’t done that; he’s done that in the past. Other projects and jammed with other various musicians here and there, which is cool. So you have to put it into perspective and realize it for what it was. But there was no indication that he was unhappy with who and what Dream Theater is or represents at this current point in our lives or career. It just came about that we were enlightened to that mindset when we had our meeting in New York, which was originally scheduled for what we were going to be doing with the next album and what it was about and when we were gonna tour again. So it was only at that point that we really… it was a shock. You know, it was kinda like, “What? [laughs]. What did you just say?”

I think it’s unfortunate. You know, I just did an interview the other day and obviously my words were taken outta context. One of the questions was, “Are you sad?” and I said, “I’m not sad.” And, you know, in retrospect, yeah. Should I have answered it so brashly? Maybe not, but basically, what I was trying to say is, “You know, I think it’s unfortunate that he left and that this is where he is. But at the same time, we as Dream Theater and as a band, we have to think of our current situation and what our options are and our only option that we want is that we have to move onward and upward.”

Of course.

You know, I think it’s really unfortunate that he left. I think I could’ve been clearer by saying, “Am I sad? Well, I felt bad about it when it went down,” but I can’t linger in that ‘cause life just doesn’t exist like that. It doesn’t afford those luxuries to wallow in our sorrow and not do anything about it, right? And unfortunately too many people just kinda misconstrued my words and said, “Oh, shit, he’s insensitive, he doesn’t care.” Bullshit, that’s the furthest thing from the truth. I care about the man dearly.

Maybe hurt might’ve been a little more accurate?

Yeah, absolutely. But, hey, obviously when you’re in this industry that’s what it’s all about. It’s controversy and it’s people twisting your words and it’s rumor and it’s circumspect and it’s all that shit. So, whatever, you gotta take it with a grain of salt and move forward.

James, is it too early to talk about a replacement at this point?

Absolutely it is. I can tell you this much: in a couple of weeks we’re gonna start auditioning. We have the drummers coming in and basically, yeah, it all looks incredible; it’s all good. You know, it’s just a matter of doing that process and then coming out on the other side and making the announcement, but that hasn’t happened yet.

Without any disrespect intended, it will be difficult to replace Mike but not impossible. Your fans will still be there with you.

I think the important thing to remember is that still four-fifths of the band are there. And that, and I’ve mentioned this in other interviews, we’re all quite capable of doing things individually that’s musical. For instance, my solo album that’s out now, Static Impulse, and various things that we’ve done within Dream Theater. It really is unfortunate that this man at this point, Mike, has decided to go his separate ways, but we have to accept that, and there’s no doubt in my mind that Dream Theater will still go on forward and be strong and come out with incredible music. Absolutely; no doubt.

Black Clouds and Silver Linings was the last record with that lineup with Mike. It’s still pretty recent history, but can you look back at it as sort of the last testament or statement of that lineup that will close that chapter with Mike?

No, I mean, I’m biased obviously. I absolutely loved the album. I think it was great. When I was doing interviews for that album I always said, “The thing I especially love about this is that I think we really went back to our roots as far as who and what we were as a band as Dream Theater.” We pulled upon a lot of those influences and inspirations that earlier in our career really kinda formed and created who and what we were. So I think a lot of those elements are present on Black Clouds and Silver Linings. You know, I don’t even like to say that [laughs]. Like, you know, “Was it a great last album with Mike Portnoy?” Yeah, sure, it was a great last album with Mike. Who knows what the future holds? At this point our focus is on getting a drummer that we feel connected to both in the chemistry and personality and absolutely he has to be more than capable of playing what Mike played, which is incredible drumming. But yeah, I think it is a great testament for who and what he was. He was extremely passionate about everything that went into Black Clouds and Silver Linings, so it’s a true testament as to what he was within Dream Theater.

Some of your earlier solo records like Winter Rose has been described as having a bit of that Bon Jovi thing.

Kill me now [laughs]. Just shoot me.

But for the day and time, the songs were really put together well. Was that the kind of band you saw yourself being in?

At the time, and obviously we’re talking late ‘80s – that was done in ‘89 – the current mode of the industry musically was that. It was hard rock but very commercial sounding. Straight forward and very concise, but still great players on it. But to be honest with you, and I’ve said this several times in the past, my true love growing up was bands like Rush and Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple and stuff like that; even Genesis. So I always had this connection with progressive but heavy kind of progressive. I remember always saying when I was down in Toronto and I was trying to develop my career and try to get it to the point I would eventually and hopefully be signed, I was always saying, “If I could only find the players that were of the mindset that we could do something more progressive. More involved, more musical.” And it’s not that they didn’t exist; it’s just that we didn’t happen to cross paths. And it just so happened when I was out with Winter Rose and we were out touring with Lee Aaron. I don’t know if you remember her, the Metal Queen from Canada?

Oh, right.

And we were out touring with her and she approached me and said, “You know, I’m watching you every night and you’ve really got something going on.” It never went any further than that and I was thinking, “OK, that’s nice; that’s a great compliment.” But where it did lead to is that she contacted a guy by the name of Pierre Paradis and he came to the show unbeknownst to me and saw my performance and then contacted me and asked me to do a solo album with Aquarius Records at the time. Which, you know, never materialized obviously. And then from our sitting down my initial conversation with Pierre and he was like, “Oh, yeah, so what other kind of music are you into?” and we started talking about all these bands. He’s like, “Holy shit. This is really bizarre, and you’re doing this stuff?” And I said, “Well, you know, I’m passionate about what I’m doing here but this is something that I’m doing and I wanted to develop who and what I am as a musician and a singer.” And then he actually contacted somebody down in New York who knew that Dream Theater at the time had been looking for a singer for quite some time. That’s how that all came together. So it was just a matter of certain things orchestrating themselves behind my back.

The Fates Warning song, “Life in Stillwater” was cool.

Yeah, I love that; I love that whole album.

So Fates Warning was closer to your vision of what you saw yourself doing?

Well, that came about because Mike Portnoy was great friends with Jim Matheos, the guitar player, who writes all the material. And I guess through talking Mike had mentioned to Jim, “Oh yeah, we got this new singer,” who at the time was Kevin LaBrie, my first name, and he’s up in Toronto. Jim was like, “Wait a second, man. Your new singer lives up in Toronto? That’s where we’re recording our album at Metalworks up in Toronto, a studio.” And he said, “You know, would he be willing to come in and sing something?” and Mike said, “Let’s contact him and see if he’s into it. “ And I was totally into it, you know, so that’s how that all came about. Me going in and just singing that tune and singing the background stuff. It was cool.

Then in 1999 you do the Mullmuzzler record with songs like “As a Man Thinks” and “Slow Burn.” For anyone following your career, you could tell that you were branching out musically. You’re kind of refining the vision a little more.

Well, I mean, there are songs like “His Voice” or “Shores of Avalon.” I know what you’re referring to; you’re talking about “Guardian Angel,” the more acoustic kind of tunes and stuff like that. To me it was more like I wanted to really approach a good hard rock, Zeppelin-esque kind of album with those dynamics being the forefront. It was stuff that I’d been hearing and the way that I go about writing is I literally walk around with a recorder. Nowadays I have my iPhone with me, so if I have any riff inspiration or any lyrical inspiration I just throw it down on the iPhone. But basically I used to carry a little recorder around with me and if I got a riff then that’s how I go about it. That’s how those albums started to come together along with Matt Guillory, who’s my main collaborator and has been from the very beginning. So it was more of a telling of who and what I am and where I come from musically just because my involvement with Dream Theater as far as the compositions of the actual songs is very limited. You know, aside from me writing melodies here and there and some lyrics here and there, that’s about the extent of it. So the solo albums made even that much more sense to me so that everyone, all the fans and beyond the Dream Theater fan base, could hear who and what I am and what I find inspiring or how I like to express myself musically.

You bring up a really interesting point inasmuch as you typically only wrote one lyric and melody per album. But was it sometimes strange or unnatural to take some of John’s melodies and lyrics and apply them to these pieces of music he had written? Your approach within Dream Theater wasn’t that much different than, say, the way that Roger Daltrey interpreted the music that Pete Townshend gave to him.

I hear what you’re saying and ultimately it has to come down to my interpretation. It also comes down to the way that it hits me emotionally and it has to be expressed through my emotional spectrum, so to speak. And you’re right about Roger Daltrey. Ultimately it becomes him and his experiences that really are able to convey what Pete Townshend was suggesting or intending. So with me it’s always been, you know, when it’s been a John lyric or a Mike lyric. When it’s my lyric obviously I know exactly where I’m coming from and where I’m gonna go with it. But with their lyrics I would always take the song or the lyric and the melody and I would go away with it on my own for however long that might be. I need to internalize it and ingest it the way that I feel fit so that it becomes me. And at the very last moment I always sat down with the lyricist and said, “OK, so I want the literal explanation as to what you’re saying here or where’s the inspiration come from?” And that’s what I do, I take all that information, I go away with it, and essentially it needs to be my expressions. Because otherwise you’d sound very contrived. You’d sound like a machine, and who gives a shit at that point? It’s not even worth it.

That’s exactly right. When John or Mike would present these lyrics, or really mainly the melodies to you, and you heard the piece of music, as a vocalist who wrote his own songs didn’t you hear your own melodies?

Oh, yeah, without a doubt. Absolutely, without a doubt.

So was the process of songwriting – you being presented completed songs by John Petrucci and/or John Myung – really a collaborative process?

To be honest with you, not so much. There were a couple of instances here and there throughout the years where I’d be saying, “Well, you know, what do you think of this?” Or unless I actually wrote the melody from beginning to end. With their melodies there might’ve been a slight bending or nuance or inflection here that I suggested and that we went along with. But for the most part it was just a matter of me just making it sound natural within the context and the parameters of their melodies that they wrote. But absolutely every one of the songs that I heard I already had a melody in my head. Absolutely, there was no doubt about it. And that’s something that comes extremely fast to me. When Matt and I are writing, I literally have to have the recording, when I play a riff or even when I sing a riff, I need to go back and throw a melody over it immediately and I don’t wanna forget it or I don’t wanna miss out on that being something. But that’s the way it’s always been and I’m very confident in that aspect. With lyrics, when I’m writing lyrics, that’s a bit more of a lengthy process. There are instances where it’s instantaneous and I can write a lyric as fast as my hands will move, but that’s very rare. For the most part it’s something that I will work on for a good three or four days before I feel confident enough to say, “OK, that’s exactly how I want it to be said.”

-----

Could any of the songs you wrote for the solo records have been presented to Dream Theater?

I mean, a song like “Crucify,” sure, that could’ve been a song. I’ve never really even thought about that. It’s crazy, you know. Like here I am five or six years from that album, Elements of Persuasion, or even any of the MullMuzzler albums, and I never even really looked at it under those terms. I always thought that it was a complete separate entity. Just like you said, granted it’s the singer and there’s the similarity. I think there are slight similarities with the progressive elements in some of the songs on MullMuzzler and obviously on Elements of Persuasion. I think that’s where the similarities begin and end to be honest with you. And as far as any of these songs making it on to a Dream Theater album, I don’t know. Even a song like “Slightly Out of Reach,” I couldn’t see that song being something on a Dream Theater album. Not in a million years. Even though we might write a song like “Forsaken” or something which is in a similar pattern as “Slightly Out of Reach” but at the same time it still has that Dream Theater signature. I think “Slightly Out of Reach” had a different feel and a different style, you know, musically. There are similarities just in the elements that we might pull some of our inspiration from but I think there’s still enough separation that they each are entities of their own.

-----

This is not meant to be derogatory in any way but it always seemed like, “Man, it would be really cool to hear what James could bring to this Dream Theater song rather than singing one of the other guy’s melodies or lyrics.” In some respects it seems like you were even held back a little bit.

I know exactly what you’re saying. The thing is that in any given circumstance you have, you know, with Dream Theater you have five people in the band. It becomes something and it became something that, “Well, this is the way that we’ve done it from the beginning and this is the way it should continue.” And, sure, does that mean it’s kinda dissing and not allowing my involvement or some of my recipe or ingredients coming into the compositions? Yeah, absolutely. It wasn’t so much a diss, but it was like me thinking, “Well, what can I tell ya? If you guys are all gung-ho on continuing to write like this, then I have to respect that.” To me, ultimately at the end of the day I was happy where it went. It wasn’t like I was saying, “Oh my god, I’m really compromising here. This is bullshit. I could’ve written so much better.” I would’ve written different, but it might not necessarily have been better.

Which is precisely why you do solo albums. To get your own creative ya-yas out.

That is why I do my solo stuff. I need to get this outta me. I think that I would probably go mental if I hadn’t started when I did, in ‘99, start coming out with MullMuzzler albums and then eventually Elements and this one. It’s just a way of me kinda keeping things balanced and keeping things sane, as a musician. I think any musician would say the same thing. You can only be what you are within one band to a certain extent where you feel that there has to be other avenues that can really allow you to be truthfully who you are and at least, if anything, satisfy your own curiosity and your own artistic impressions.

“Coming Home” is a beautiful ballad. Does a song like that have any connections to, say, “Sacrificed Sons” which I think was sort of the last piece of music you brought into Dream Theater. They are both kind of piano-driven ballads and you sing in that very clear resonating voice you sometimes use.

Actually, no, I didn’t feel any connection with that. If you’re meaning musically, it does have that atmospheric, kind of cold, solemn kind of feel to it. Definitely in that sense, I gravitate immediately to songs like that. I always have. So in that sense you are correct; there are similarities. Lyrically actually, that song “Coming Home” was loosely based on a show that I love, Dexter. Yeah, about this vigilante serial killer, but the way that I’m writing it is him actually coming to terms with his emotions and becoming more human. Then putting a little twist: writing my own episode that he is caught and that he is asking for forgiveness for all that he’s done, because at the end of the day he has become a human being and he has learned how to love and he’s just asking for forgiveness. So basically that’s what that lyric is about.

-----

At some point we can expect another Dream Theater record?

Absolutely. At this point we’re planning on going in the beginning of January and hope to be out touring next June. We’ll probably start over in Europe doing all the big festivals throughout the summer. Then as far as an album, we might be out touring before the album comes out. Which isn’t a bad thing. I mean, Maiden just ended up doing that on their last album. They were out touring it and promoting it before it even came out. I think in today’s world it doesn’t really matter anymore. If anything it’s just great promotion and it gets everyone excited because we can start sneaking in some of the new music. And for obvious reasons everyone is gonna be extremely curious as to what that new music is.

Do you think with Mike Portnoy now gone and a new drummer joining that the writing process might change?

There’s definitely that potential, no doubt about it. I think we won’t know until we’re actually in the studio and seeing how this flows and how it works with the new drummer. But I definitely think that there’s gonna be more verbal communication going on. More so than it was in the past as far as with me going, “Well, you know what, if we’re doing something new here with another drummer, we better start doing something new in other areas.” Which means being more accessible as to the ideas and the energies that are coming from other ones in the band. So yeah, definitely, I think there’s a lot that could be happening.