MIKE PORTNOY

Systemized chaos

If you’ve ever seen the enormous size of Mike Portnoy’s drum set, you should be sure that you have to do with a musician of great stature. Virtuosity, flair and unlimited invention in looking for the most ingenious percussion instruments (even a punch ball recently) made him a frequent visitor of every branch rating possible. I fully understand people who rather regard Fenriz as the embodiment of music artistry and a good taste – a perfect anti-thesis to a refined Portnoy’s style - but you must give back to king what is king’s. The class of this American is unquestionable and the position he has worked out for 20 years of playing in DREAM THEATER is unshaken. Taking a chance of DT being in Warsaw I managed to persuade the icon of present progressive metal to a longer talk.

- DREAM THEATER has resembled a noble institution since couple of years. The band became unquestioned leader of so-called progressive metal, your gigs are held in large halls and sports arenas, you never go below a certain standard unapproachable for ordinary mortals. Do you consider yourself a fulfilled artist? What are your further goals and dreams about the band? I guess that being at this stage you just started the process of remaining on top which is often more difficult than climbing to it.
We’ve achieved a lot but we realize the fleeting nature of success. You need to work hard all the time so as not to rest on your laurels. If you ease up a bit, your fans will notice that in a moment. We have so good and intensive communication with them that we’re not likely to lose contact with reality. Very important is also a distance to your work. It’s a very positive feeling when you’re satisfied with your music but you have to remember that you aren’t objective enough to judge it reasonably. And so I’ve never had a feeling of a complete fulfillment. I associate this with an inner conviction that you can’t go further, that all artistically best is behind you. I’m afraid of such feeling and I don’t want to allow such thought to come into my mind. Just think what a state of mind PINK FLOYD could have when they recorded „Dark Side Of The Moon”. It was an explosion of their genius, the highest culminating point. If they found themselves the most ingenious band in rock history, there wouldn’t come into being such masterpieces as „Wish You Were Here” or „The Wall”. I’m not, god forbid, comparing ourselves to Floyds but just like them we take up still new challanges. No matter how large sums would come from playing in DREAM THEATER I’m convinced that if we once started to cash in on „Images and Words” or „Awake”, we wouldn’t be on the market now.

- Would you be able to recall the moments in which you felt anxious about the band’s future? As every greater band having been 2 decades on stage, you can surely outline a sinuous graph of your career?
Certainly, but I’m really not ashamed of anything we’ve recorded as DREAM THEATER. All the stages of our career were absolutely vital and productive, as every album was a unique adventure.

- You’ve never fell into a routine?
I don’t think so. There’s one album which we composed and recorded a bit too fast. We weren’t 100% ready for this step. But I won’t tell you its title ‘cause I don’t want to discourage its fans from it (laugh). It was probably the only situation when I heard the final outcome and I was a bit disappointed. However, luckily, those tracks sold well on concerts.

- And what about „Falling Into Infinity”? Many fans took offence at too melodic, according to them, album which wasn’t compatible with progressive and extremely ambitious face of DREAM THEATER. The next but one album „Octavarium” also had rather mean press, alike „Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence” which was regarded as the critical triumph of form over contents. Have you ever met negative opinions on some of your works, among which there are on the other hand ‘inviolable’ ones such as „Images and Words” or „Scenes From The Memory”?
I agree that the perception of our albums by the critics have always been different. When we started we were scornfully called by the pressmen ‘the successors of progressive style’ which, in their opinion, had been dead since ages. They treated us like a helpless clone of YES, RUSH or even MARILLION which was completely ridiculous. When we introduced more heavy metal elements into our music we were labeled QUEENSRYCHE’s copy. When on „Images and Words” we added thrash dynamics to progressive rock all the scoffers got confused and left us alone (laugh). They understood that we had our own style and a language of music communication. “Awake” was kind of consolidation of our sound specification and the end of certain era at the same time. When preparing to a recording session of „Falling Into Infinity” we were sure that we were taking a risk but if we wanted to remain ourselves, to keep our identity, we couldn’t get back trying to record another „Pull Me Under”. In fact, some people turned their backs on us. But we also gained new listeners who found our previous releases too heavy. Then we recorded the material which we were dreaming about since the first days of DREAM THEATER’s existence – a concept album „Scenes From A Memory”. It was a closed story in which everything was to make a logical sense. Recording this stuff was an exceptional experience, the process which irrevocably changed us as musicians because we together put the common goal – the consistency of music story – first over individual ambitions which were previously taking the upper hand. To the point – I think that each of the four later recorded albums also was challenging. And each of them was completely different. “Six Degrees…” was a great undertaking regarding the dose of music. Recording of this giant was like leaping over an ocean. On „Train of Thought” we wanted to sound as aggressive as possible within our style. We needed to give vent to the tensions of the previous, exceptionally complex in the structure albums. „Octavarium” was a reaction to „Train...” (laugh). It was more soothing, less chaotic but at the same time carrying one of the most difficult compositions we’d ever written. “Systematic Chaos” is in turn kind of refreshing the formula. For some reasons we treat this album as a new beginning, at least from the business point of view. Roadrunner put lot of heart and energy in this project and we also were inspired by the perspective of work with a new partner. There was a great enthusiasm in the band which always results in a positive influence on music itself.

- I agree, as it’s clearly audible that the new perspectives which appeared certainly after signing the deal with Roadrunner influenced the freshness of this album.
I feel the same. Sometimes you need to get so-called motivation kick. Maybe it’s not a fortunate comparison but can you maximally engage in your work when being on the same position you get invariable payment since years? For a band such motivating factor apart from money is also - or maybe first of all - the comfort of partnership, the passion of people from the label working on mutual success. In the previous company all things were working with their own momentum. They took care of us, we had good budgets but it was like this: “Hey, DREAM THEATER have 300,000 loyal fans who’d buy the next album anyway, so what to put more money in it for, as they won’t sell 300,001 copies?” (laugh). That’s the way it was going, more or less. In Roadrunner there’s no way to think like this. They treated us like debutants with a simultaneous respect for our achievements and great experience which we can be proud of. I can see that they intend to redefine their profile a bit, releasing more ambitious bands as well. As you can see – they’ve signed us, PORCUPINE TREE and OPETH. We expect much from our cooperation.

- I’ve read an interview in which you admitted that you started to be keen on progressive rock in roundabout way. As a teenager you were rather crazy about KISS and Reo Speedwagon and your first drum heroes became John Bonham and Keith Moon from The Who famous for their wild style of playing. So why such a change of music inspirations?
When you’re 12 you don’t give a shit about all those ‘refined’ bands (laugh). I was a kid who preferred to listen to Van Halen and The Who. Loud hits… these were the foundations, initially I didn’t even understand those longer Zeppelin’s tracks. Only at the beginning of the 80s I heard RUSH. I’d been playing the drums a bit then, pounding them like Animal from the Muppets. And when I heard the play of Neil Peart I just felt ashamed (laugh). He was playing like a professor. A complete drummer. When he wanted he sounded very strong and hard rock but he didn’t avoid jazz rhythms. His style was cold and analytic but also exceptionally emotional. He could express himself with his drums. How many such people there were in rock history? Really few – he, Bonham, Stewart Copeland from POLICE an few others. I was fascinated with RUSH although I didn’t witness a very interesting moment in their career. I’ve seen the Canadians for the first time on their tour “Signals”. They were making use of lots of electronic sounds then. For instance Peat was playing the drum pads. But I was still spellbound by him. More or less in that time I caught the YES bug. They had a smash hit in USA then, it was „Owner Of A Lonely Heart” from „90125”. Crowds of people flooded to their gigs just to hear that track and I was hoping first of all for the Bill Bruford’s solo (laugh). And that’s how it all started. Of course I got to know about PINK FLOYD, GENESIS, KING CRIMSON, GENTLE GIANT, solo albums of Peter Gabriel. Very important for me was and still is QUEEN of the 70s. And this fascination turned into something close to obsession. There was a time when I threw away all the albums with tracks lasting for around 3-4 minutes (laugh). I was building up my drum set like a maniac, as I realized that musicians who I appreciated really made use of all the drums and cymbals of untypical diameters. Initially I was thinking they were surrounding themselves with heaps of equipment just to feel more masculine and make it easier to pick up girls (laugh). All in all, drum players mentally resemble rally drivers. The latter can talk about cylinders in engines for hours, while drum players chatter about the sound depth of a snare drum (laugh).