Interview : Dream Theater’s James LaBrie

Progressive-metal titans Dream Theater will make their eagerly anticipated return to the UK this week. The last time the band performed on our British shores was just before the Covid 19 lockdown in 2020. Thankfully, as restrictions have begun to ease, the band was recently able to resume touring. For Dream Theater returning to the stage has been like becoming reacquainted with a long-lost friend. “It was great to celebrate once again what we love doing. I was saying several nights out on stage – you don’t realise how much you miss something until you actually get back into it. That’s the truth of it,” explains LaBrie. “We all felt great. We all felt rejuvenated, spirited. I think our fans really appreciated it because a lot of them were at a venue or witnessing a live event for the first time in a couple of years.”

The band were recently bestowed the honour of picking up the award for the Best Metal Performance for their track Alien at this year’s Grammy Awards. “For the most part, the spotlight was on pop artists – the pop icons, and the stuff that you’re going to hear on the radio. But music goes so much deeper than that, and it’s so much more expansive than that, as far as styles and the type of artists that exist and make music what it is,” proclaims LaBrie. “I think it was really a true nod to somebody like ourselves that have been around for thirty years plus, and then finally getting that recognition that I think we deserve.” He adds that: “I think it’s a huge statement in the music world. It says you can do things on your own terms, and maybe you can be the oddball in the pack, but you’re still going to be recognised for something that you truly do very well.” Of course, it wasn’t the group’s first rodeo when it comes to the Grammy Awards. “It was our third nomination. So, I guess, third time’s a charm as they say,” concludes LaBrie.

The band’s award-winning composition plays an important part in the group’s forthcoming live show. “It opens the setlist,” says LaBrie. “There’s poetic justice right there. You know, we kick ass and come into the show with a Grammy-nominated song.” During the recording stages of the album, the band had a feeling that perhaps they were onto something special. “We knew that Alien was a really cool song. We just felt like to a certain degree it really does show us in our true form. It’s a nine-minute plus song, and it’s progressive, it’s technical, it’s soaring, and it has a great vocal melody over it,” explains LaBrie.

‘A View From The Top of the World’ has all of the hallmarks of a classic progressive rock album.“ I think with this album it’s a very exciting album to be listening to from beginning to end. Especially with the A View From The Top of the World track, it really epitomises who and what Dream Theater is,” explains James. “I think that we also were able to present to our fans something that I think they were also hoping that they could get. We were very progressive. We were riding this epic track, so to speak. We were being truly Dream Theater and on so many levels musically.”

Although the group’s latest offering should be savoured from start to finish, in the live environment the band will be performing key compositions from their album. “We are playing the setlist that we played in North America. So, there are four tracks that we play from the new album,” explains James. “What’s mind-boggling is that when we look at the setlist, and we go the last three songs, hang on a second, that’s almost an hour. It’s like, holy sh*t – that’s crazy, man. Most bands go, ok guys, we’ve got another hour left in the set – that’s 15 songs. It’s like we look at the last three or four songs – that’s an hour.”

The internet rumour mill went into overdrive when the band’s former drummer Mike Portnoy watched on from the audience at Dream Theater’s recent New York show. LaBrie addressed the situation by stating: “Mike went to the show, and then he expressed that he wanted to get together with me. So, he and I could patch up our differences and move on, let’s let bygones be bygones and move on. So yeah, he and I met after the show, and we talked for a good half hour to forty minutes, or whatever it might have ended up being. I’m not sure – I wasn’t keeping time. But things were said about everything that was, unfortunately, said about one another over the years. It was just a healing and a cathartic moment for both of us – and that was it. And then, he was in the audience, and he watched the whole show, and he says, that was bizarre for me – there I am watching Dream Theater perform a show. But, you know, it was all good, and that’s it. It’s nothing more for people to read into. Like, what you’re saying, does that mean there’s going to be a reunion? Does that mean that he’s going to be doing this or that? No, at this point in time, it’s just that it served a purpose, and the purpose was necessary, and it’s great. So, Mike and I, we’re in a good place with one another, and we’re keeping in touch, and that’s a good thing.”