Mike Portnoy interview

'A Change of Seasons' was written originally in 1989 [and] was one of the first things we wrote after When Dream and Day Unite [the band's 1989 debut album]. That was one of the first things we wrote, intending to be on [1992's] Images and Words. So yeah, it's got a long history. It's really about 36 years old at this point.

At the 11th hour, the label made us leave it off the album, just because they didn't want a 75-minute album. [They just] thought it was too much for a sophomore release from a new band. At that point, we hadn't even had any success ... and it was just a little too much for a major label like Atco/Atlantic to swallow. It [went] on the shelf after Images and Words, and it broke our hearts.

That was my first lyrical piece, and for it to not be on Images and Words, I felt kind of left out. I didn't write any lyrics to the rest of the songs on Images because I thought 'A Change of Seasons' was going to be there. So it felt like a big part of my voice had been cut off the album. Because the lyrics and the story and the concept for 'A Change of Seasons' is very, very personal for me. It's a very, very heavy subject matter.

But at that point, it had been through so many changes. You know, there was the original version with Kevin Moore, and then we kind of revisited it for the EP version, with a seven-string guitar and with Derek Sherinian on keyboards. So we kind of reinterpreted it for the version that the world knows now.

It brings back so many memories to be revisiting it after all of this time. I listened to it and I'm like, 'Wow, that's me when I'm in my early 20s.' Now, I'm in my late 50s and it just seems like a couple of lifetimes ago. But it still also feels like Dream Theater. It feels natural to be sitting in the same set with Parasomnia. They were written 35 years apart, but yet they still feel like they're the same band.