During the 40th Anniversary Tour, DT USA had the pleasure of catching up with the amazing Mike Portnoy, back behind the kit with Dream Theater for the first time in over a decade. The interview was conducted by DT USA’s own Luis N., who has been part of the fan club since its earliest days.
Dream Theater is about to launch their Parasomnia US Tour, which promises to be epic. Fans will hear the new album played in its entirety, along with the full performance of A Change of Seasons to mark its 30th anniversary, plus other fan favorites. With the tour just weeks away, this conversation is the perfect lead-in. Mike shares insights, humor, and behind-the-scenes stories, from hidden “Easter eggs” on Parasomnia to his love of cinema, thoughts on official bootlegs, and the possibility of revisiting Dream Theater’s archives.
Before we even start, I have to say- I love that Eraserhead poster behind you. I’m a total Lynch fanatic. I was just showing one of the crew some photos of me visiting Laura Palmer’s house last year. That was so cool! I posted about it, so you can probably find it online, but yeah, I mean I’m a Lynch fanatic!
Awesome! I’m based in Atlanta,and I remember attending Morse Fest 2017 and sticking around after the show to see if you were were coming out to hang out, mostly to talk to you about the Twin Peaks “The Return” finale because it was airing that weekend.
Wow. The Return. I literally just watched it last year for the third time. So I’ve been through all 18 episodes three times now.
The “Twin Peaks From Z To A” was just re-released and I ordered a copy. I have the first season on VHS from back in the day. I really love it.
Yeah, me too!
When the “Night Terror” previews dropped, the fan community lit up with speculation, some even calling it Metropolis Pt. 3. Were you following that?
Yeah, I always follow the chats and the forums, the message boards and the fan pages. I pay attention to that stuff. I probably shouldn’t, because it can make you crazy… but yeah, I’m always watching. Big brother is always watching.
It’s been that way since the MP Forum days, but it was fun to see people’s reactions and all the speculation. I was trying to stay away from the rumors, but a lot of fans were saying: “It’s going to be Metropolis 3, because they’re opening their eyes and, you know, “Open your eyes, Nicholas” and such.
Actually, there’s a moment at the beginning, well, not the beginning, but in the first minute or two of “The Shadow Man Incident” where it comes in with this marching snare drum pattern, and originally, I made the snare drum pattern to sound like [imitates the “Overture 1928” drum intro pattern], because all throughout the making of “Parasomnia”, we welcomed a lot of those nuggets and feelings that were bringing up old tracks and songs. And that was maybe just… we decided it was a little too far.
It lasted about a day or two with that pattern before we were like: “You know what, we gotta change that. People are gonna misinterpret that this is somehow a sequel to Metropolis”. So we ended up taking that out just because it went a little too far with the nuggets and we didn’t want it to be misinterpreted.
Also, I’m not sure if you’ve seen this, because people started talking about it when the album came out, that at the end of “The Shadow Man Incident”, it says “Wake up!” at the 19:28 mark?
Oh wow, that I did not notice! That was not intentional. That’s absolutely coincidental. That’s crazy.
Some people were losing their minds over that…
I really wish we had another 20 seconds because I’m so sad that “Shadow Man” is just short of the 20 minute mark. We should have left that last alarm clock going off. That was a missed opportunity that I now regret not making it an even 20 minutes.
The whole record feels incredibly cinematic, almost like a collection of interconnected short films.
I don’t want to pat myself on the back, but honestly, a lot of that stuff came from my love of cinema and film and wanting to make a very cinematic album, not only with the way that the themes go in and out of each other and are spread throughout the album, you know, the spoken samples, movie samples… You probably have already placed a couple of the movie samples I would bet. One of my very favorite filmmakers of all time has the last word on the album. Hopefully he doesn’t get mad about that, but yeah, sorry! The whole album was intentionally very cinematic, in the way that it flows from start to finish. And the songs stand on their own individually, but it’s really meant to be digested from start to finish in a perfect world.
Many fans pick “Bend The Clock” and “Shadow Man” as their standout tracks, but my favorite is “Dead Asleep” because it’s straight up metal.
Yeah, Dead Asleep is, no pun intended, a sleeper. It’s actually one of my favorites. That was the second song we wrote. We wrote “Night Terror” first, “Dead Asleep” was second. But we’re proud of each and every moment on the album. It was a big undertaking for us and something that we really put a lot of love and energy into. And we’re glad to see it’s finally getting heard. You know, we sat on this album for a long time, so it was a long time waiting for people to hear it.
Was all the material written used for the album? Were there any leftover tracks?
Nothing left over. As far as the start, we came in with nothing, wrote everything from scratch. There was no existing stuff. As far as having leftovers, no. We wrote until we made the album longer than we even wanted. It ended up being 70 minutes. We were hoping to keep it under 60, to be honest, and then once we started writing “Shadow Man”, it just kept growing and growing. After we finished “Shadow Man”, we knew we still wanted to write an overture utilizing some of the stuff, so we ended up going longer than we even wanted to. Once we did “Shadow Man” and the overture [“In The Arms Of Morpheus”], it was like: that’s it, we gotta stop writing or else this is gonna turn into a double album. So we pulled the plug and got into completing the work on what we had.
The Overture, man. Is that an 8 string at the beginning? It’s like “we’re off”. My immediate thought was “they are back”…
Yeah. It’s on. It doesn’t let down. It’s on the heavy side.
There’s a lot of melody. I like the callbacks in between songs.
There are a lot that are really deep. I mean, even for instance, “Are We Dreaming?”, a lot of people kind of write that off as a one-minute interlude, but there are themes that are being played there. The melodic themes are coming from other places on the album. So there are a lot of details like that that can continue to be discovered the more you listen.
Another highlight for me is the vibe that Jordan creates throughout the album. You must be a “Severance” fan, because I’ve seen photos of you wearing a Lumon tee shirt…
Oh, yeah, yeah. It’s very reminiscent of that kind of sound, that eerie kind of vibe. I was just telling Jordan about Severance the other day, actually.
Would you consider at some point, maybe later in your career, if the right project came by, would you entertain directing or being involved in film?
I’ve been asked that for 30 years now. I mean, I get asked that all the time. I don’t know if I could handle such a responsibility. That would be a massive undertaking. So I think I’m happy being a fan and a viewer and leaving it at that. You know, I already have enough on my plate as it is with, with everything I’m doing in my career. So, yeah, I think, as cool as that could be, it would just be too much for me to handle.
You released new Sabian cymbals this year, a refresh of the Max splashes. Are there any plans down the road for new Tama Melody Master snares?
We’ve talked about it. So Sabian did do a reissue of the splashes. We did some new versions of the Max splashes, we introduced the Max Chimes and my Max ride cymbal, which is absolutely gorgeous and beautiful. I have been talking with Tama about a new line of Melody Masters, possibly with a finish similar to my Dream Monster kit, with the purple and white fade. So yeah, it is something that we’ve talked about, fingers crossed that we can make it happen.
One of the reasons people are excited about your return to the band is that you might be more involved with the official bootleg releases
We haven’t gotten to that stage yet, because we’ve obviously been so consumed with making “Parasomnia” and now with the tours, so we haven’t had that discussion yet. I assume it will continue to be “Lost Not Forgotten” because that’s the deal that the band made with Inside Out before I came back. So I assume it would continue with that title, not Ytsejam. I obviously have the archives, and there’s plenty of stuff to work with. I have lots of stuff that I pulled for possible future releases, so we’ll see how that lands down the road.
Awesome! So, we have a petition… There is a big number of fans who want more video releases.
That is something I would like to do. In fact, we already have one official live release planned from Paris, and we also want to do an official live release from the “Parasomnia” tour. I’m hoping that some of the special shows (we’ve done) can possibly be held for an official bootleg capacity as well, but we’ll see. I’m getting ahead of ourselves here, but that’s something that has been thought about.
Is there a possibility that the band would consider remixing, remastering any of the past albums to release as special editions?
I would love to. I collect all that stuff. I have all the Metallica boxes, all the Beatles boxes, all the Rush boxes… I collect them all. I’m a fan of that stuff, and that’s something I would need to discuss with Inside Out. I don’t know how much access they can get with the older material, and I don’t know how interested they would be, but it’s certainly up for discussion. With a lot of those early Ytse Jam releases, I was able to go through my archives and put out all the demos and all the studio outtakes with the liner notes. And now the reissues on the “Lost Not Forgotten” releases don’t necessarily have my liner notes and the photos. So if anything, it would be an opportunity to revisit all of that stuff, the liner notes and the extra stuff on reissues. I don’t want to make any promises that we can’t keep, but it’s certainly a project that I would love to oversee and do, for sure.
That would be pretty fantastic. I’m a collector too. I know there are a number of Dream Theater fans that are also big collectors.
Oh, absolutely. No question.
Thanks for taking the time to talk to us, Mike. Welcome back!
Thank you! We’’ll see you soon.
Interview by Luis Nieves for Dream Theater USA
Special thanks to Jake Solomon, Rikk Feulner & Kim A. Sakariassen.
Photos by Nesher Photography
