Mike Mangini interview (excerpt)

During an appearance on yesterday’s (Wednesday, November 1) episode of SiriusXM’s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk”, Mike Mangini spoke about his departure from Dream Theater and the return of the band’s original drummer Mike Portnoy. He said in part (as transcribed by blabbermouth.net): “All I know is the decision was made and when I heard it, all I pictured was, ‘Oh, this is an original guy going back to his band. Uh, okay. All right. Let’s go to the next thing.’ It was nothing more. I was told. It was just nothing more than — it seemed so simple to me. And maybe intuitively it’s, like, ‘Oh yeah, I get it.’ And that was that. That’s really it… So that’s really the crux of it all is it was an easy thing for me to understand. And then once the news hit and it became real, which is when it set in, because once I knew about it, I just got busy. I was, like, ‘Okay, I’ve got all these videos to finish.’”

The 60-year-old Mangini, who joined Dream Theater in 2010, continued: “I’m actually doing like a lot of stuff for my [upcoming solo] album. I’ll do some drum playthroughs. Not to yap and yap and yap about it, but I have a lot on my cork board and my lists and things to do and things to accomplish and things to complete. There’s so much there I haven’t been able to do. But once it hit and it became real, it was real quick for me. I’m, like, ‘Okay, I get it.’”

When host Eddie Trunk noted that everything about his exit from Dream Theater, from the way it was handled to the fans’ response to Mike’s attitude about it, was “about as good as it could be,” Mangini concurred. “It is as good as it could be,” Mike said. “I think people are where they need to be. It’s, like, there’s stuff to do, there’s places to be, there’s people to see, there are things to accomplish and roles to fulfill and tasks to do. And that’s what it is. That’s really what it is.

“How lucky am I, how fortunate am I to be just a part of that history, to have all this amazing stuff happen?” he continued. “It’s positive, positive, positive.

“I know I’ve accomplished some things with my career, and I’ve had a lot of struggles and a lot of things that didn’t work or whatever, but for my parents to be in their 90s, to see this happen, and I’m not talking about career stuff; I’m talking about how I’ve treated people and how they treat me. I mean, I think that’s what I want for my kids — I wanna feel well about how they are with people and how people treat them at the end of the day. I think that’s just awesome.”

Portnoy attended Dream Theater’s concert in March 2022 at Beacon Theatre in New York City. It was the first time he witnessed his then-former bandmates perform live since his exit from the iconic progressive metal outfit 13 years ago. Asked by Trunk if it was “a weird thing” for him to see Portnoy at the gig, Mangini said: “No, and you can ask him. It was like nothing ever changed. In other words, I was post-show getting dressed, and Mike, he walked up the stairs like, and, of course, my door’s open. Of course, I’m basically pantless in a way. And he comes up and I really just like clothed myself. And the first thing I said to him was, I think, something like, ‘Dude, your timing’s off. I just have no pants on for a second.’ I don’t remember what I said. It was like my underwear, whatever it was. But it was like nothing ever changed from the phone calls that we made, from the time he brought me on stage with Dream Theater, from the time I’m at a Dream Theater show we would though watching Zappa Does Zappa and talking about Vinnie Colaiuta and Terry Bozzio. I mean, what other way is there to live? I don’t know anything different. So that’s the truth. That’s the vibe. That’s your answer to your question.”