Dream Theater’s Mike Portnoy has consecutively been voted Best Progressive Rock Drummer by Modern Drummer Magazine. Nonetheless, this trend-setting machine shows off his modesty in an exclusive interview with vmusic.com.au.

It took you almost 20 years to come to Australia. What did you think of it? 

It was great. We have great memories of the last visit. It was our first time there as a band. The response was enormous. It was nice to make up for some lost time. We knew once we got there and proved ourselves to the promoters then future visits would surely become easier, and that’s what happened.

Well, we knew it would be strong because we had been doing this along time. Generally whenever we go to a new market we do well. We know through the years we have accumulated a lot of fans all across the globe. We are very confident that, wherever we go, we are going to do well. We know how great our fan base is, so it is just proving it to the promoters, who don’t necessarily realize the force that we are. We are not a mainstream band and we are not in the mainstream charts or press. So, it is very easy for promoters to be skeptical. They have to be proven wrong.

Is it hard to believe that promoters are going to be skeptical with a resume like yours? 

Yeah, but when you are not a mainstream band then it's easy to be forgotten about by people who are just looking at numbers on a piece of paper. 

Well, I spend a lot of time making sure every tour has brand new songs from people that saw us last time. I can’t say there will be any surprises but anyone who saw us last time will get a completely new experience this time. That’s just the way I always treat the set list throughout the history of the band – that’s just a given with us. No matter when you see us, you are going to get something new. 

It’s been awesome. We just finished the U.S. leg. Now we are about to embark on the European version which has Opeth and Big Elf. The American one was great and we expect Europe to be awesome.  

Well inevitably the bands that we tour with influence us, whether we want them to or not. We have toured with Megadeth and Deep Purple. When you are surrounded by these bands night after night... The inspiration kind of rubs off inevitably. 

We enjoy touring by ourselves the most. Our best tours are the evenings with Dream Theater. I mean, I love touring with other bands, but I feel like we are always our best when we are by ourselves. We’ve gotten the chance to tour with pretty much any band I’ve ever wanted to tour with. Whether they be bands that we have co-headlined or opened for. We’ve always had great touring partners throughout the years, but at the end of the day I think ultimately we are very much an individual entity. When we do our solo tours that’s when we are the most comfortable. 

Yeah. It is different for different lyricists, but for me personally I have always written things directly out of my life. I have never been afraid to share some things with the listener. I’ve written songs about my dad and mum's passing. I’ve written songs about my recovery from alcoholism, addiction and bad relationships with other family members. My life has been an open book when it comes to our lyrics and it has always been very therapeutic for me to do that. 

At the end of the day, if it ever reaches out to anybody else and helps them, then that’s great. I get people coming up to me all the time and thanking me for the lyrics that I’ve written about. The thing is, I am not ever telling anyone what they should or shouldn’t do, I’m just writing about my personal experiences. But when people come up to me and say thank you, then that’s totally awesome.

Perseverance, you don’t get this kind of creative control or independence overnight. It takes many, many years of proving yourself. We’ve proven ourselves time and time again. Like I said, the way we proved ourselves to promoters on the road we’ve had to do the same thing with record companies over the years. They were hesitant in giving us creative freedom, only to find out that no-body knows what’s best for Dream Theater than ourselves. So, through the years of selling records all around the world record labels have finally realised that we are our best bosses, and that they can get out of our way and let us do what we do. 

We were changing line-ups a lot throughout the 90s. We have been through three keyboard players and three singers throughout our career. But, it has been very stable since Jordan joined the band ten years ago. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that we finally have a line-up where all five of us understand and respect each other. We have very similar character traits, but at the same time really different character traits - which helps create chemistry and maintain a balance. We all get along. Maybe it's because we are all getting older. We are in our 40s and 50s now. When we were younger, in our 20s and 30s, we’d fight, bicker and battle out for control. But, it is not like that anymore. Now, we have mellowed with age. I think the musical chemistry is great and smooth. It has been a very comfortable, because the 15 years that preceded Jordan were filled with bulls**t and problems. 

Hell yeah, of course. I’m the biggest music fan you will ever find. I am still completely inspired and intimidated by other drummers, bands and musicians. It is nice to have gotten the acclaim through all these years, but at the end of the day I am probably my biggest critic. I am usually very imitated by other drummers, and I sometimes feel scared that I am not going to live-up to my reputation. I almost feel that my reputation is bigger and better than I am. I am always looking at other drummers, learning and being inspired by them. 

Yeah, I have gotten to know him over the last couple of years which has been a total honour. I mean I grew up idolising him. A couple years ago we met for the first time, and since then we have stayed in touch. He is a really sweet, generous gentleman and is beyond just a great drummer. To me the best thing about this job is being able to get to know most of your heros.

I have a basement in my house that basically is like a museum. I have a drum room with about six different drum sets and walls which are covered with awards. I have a movie theatre with 1000s of movies, so basically when I come home off the road I go into my basement and it is just like the ultimate Dream Theater museum. It is an awesome environment - so that’s where I have all my awards and things like that. 

Well I keep them  in the basement. The rest of the house is a normal house. My wife is an avid interior decorator, so the rest of the house you would never even know that I was a musician. You have to come to the basement to realise the monster that I am. 

When we first started the only reviews that we would ever see were ones from the actual critics in magazines. Before the age of the Internet, that was the only feedback we got. But now, the last 10 to 15 years every person with a computer is a critic. Now you see reviews from every 12 year old kid sitting in their bedroom. In the early days, when it was on the critics, you couldn’t get a fair gage because it wasn't necessarily what our fans thought or wanted. Now it's nice to see what all the fans say, but on the other hand it can get incredibly frustrating because our fans analyse, literally, every single word and every note from every song. And with that comes a lot of criticism and speculation, which is very very frustrating for us as artists. But, I guess we can’t complain. It is nice that they are talking about us at all. I guess you have to take the bad with the good. 

I wish I could, but I do not know how. I don’t know how to let s**t go...  At least with Dream Theater I can’t. I have done other projects where I understood that I wasn’t going to be in control of certain things. I’ve done sessions where I have just played drums and didn’t have any control over anything, and that was very healthy for me, but I don’t know if I could ever let things go with Dream Theater. I have invested my whole life to this band and I have fought every step of the way for the freedom and independence that we finally have, so I don’t know if I could ever relinquish that. If I want to just relax and play drums, I go and do a session with somebody else.

We are a hell of a lot further. When we started this band, we were just a bunch of kids out of high school that just wanted to play something that sounded somewhere between Rush and Iron Maiden. We didn’t form this band with goals of selling millions of records and playing at all these places. We were just making music for the fun of it. I guess if we had really thought about it when we started the band, playing this kind of music would've been the stupidest decision because it's one of the hardest genres in which to become commercially successful.  That just goes to show that we weren’t really thinking about anything other than the music when we formed this band. 

The idea from within the band came from me. I definitely copied that from Phish. I have always respected the way they have done one-off covers and how they used to do these classic albums on Halloween. I thought it was a brilliant idea. And I thought that we could adopt it and use it whenever we do two-night stands. It has been a lot of fun. I met Tray [Anastasio] last year, and the very first thing I said to him was: “Hey dude, I stole your idea of doing classic albums”. He laughed, he thought it was cool. He actually visited us in the studio and he was quite inspired by the way we write and record. We traded some inspiration. 

I can’ t tell you because then we would give it away. I think it is no secret what my favourite period for the band is 2112, A Farewell to Kings, Hemispheres, Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures. To me those five are absolute classics. Any time I have chosen one-off songs for Dream Theater to do it has usually come from that period. And I even did a Rush tribute band a few years ago and picked stuff from that period. Even though Dream Theater haven’t done a full Rush album, the band and myself have done so many Rush songs over the years that I feel pretty fulfilled in that department. 

Yeah, but I think it's OK. I rather people embracing it than being scared like ten years ago. When we started Dream Theater the word "progressive" was a dirty word and something that critics threw around as an insult.  Now every band is trying to be progressive. I guess it is a certain progressive mind-set. I think the word "progressive" is a way of thinking...

 

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