Return to Planet X documentary (excerpts)

Tom Fletcher: One night, Derek got a call when we were doing something.

Derek Sherinian: I was in the middle of recording my keyboard tracks when I got a call from the guys. They were on a conference call and they informed me that they were making a change in the keyboard department and I was out.

Mike Portnoy: Letting Derek go from Dream Theater for me personally was really, really hard, because I love Derek; I really do and I love his playing. More than any of the other members in Dream Theater, he and I really clicked and had a great connection musically and personally. There was a point towards the end of Derek’s time in the band around mid-1998 where I actually walked away from the band and I almost left the band and the band almost broke up, because there was so much business bulls***. Derek unfortunately was in the right band at the wrong time. Towards the end of ‘98, we made a decision that we needed to shake things up, and if Dream Theater was going to continue we had to make a lot of changes.

DS: I didn’t see it coming. Three weeks earlier, we played some shows on the East Coast, and over dinner we were talking about the next record and the plans for the following year, so I thought everything was business as usual.

MP: We made the conference call and it was heartbreaking. That’s never easy. It’s never easy when you have to let somebody go on bad terms, but it’s really difficult when you have to let them go and there wasn’t any straw that broke the camel’s back. I don’t think Derek saw it coming. It wasn’t like he f***ed up and missed a gig or showed up drunk or wasn’t a good player. It was just really a personality difference and I think the band needing a different kind of personality in the band.

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DS: There are seven stages of grief that one goes through when tragedy occurs. I just skipped right to the stage of being f***in’ pissed.

TF: But we were like, “Man, let’s go. Let’s get this thing going!” [We] jumped back in the saddle, started cuttin’ and never look back.

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MP: And the opening track ‘Apocalypse’ was like just the sickest, most technical thing I’d ever heard. Even the title, ‘Apocalypse,’ was almost mocking ‘Metropolis.’ It was kind of making a mockery of that whole kind of style of writing.

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MP: I remember the first time I heard the Planet X album. I think it probably achieved exactly what Derek was intending to do, and it struck [laughs] fear into the heart of the musician in me, and I can guarantee that that was Derek’s intention. I could tell he was trying to make a record that would “out-Dream Theater” Dream Theater, and I think he totally succeeded.