Latest news with #Parasomnia
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
"I'm scared for my life and career at this point." Dream Theater's Mike Portnoy jokes he's worried about his job after spate of drummer firings
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Dream Theater's Mike Portnoy says he's worried about his future after seeing a spate of high-profile drummers lose their job recently. Josh Freese was let go by the Foo Fighters this month, The Who fired Zak Starkey a few weeks ago and Guns N' Roses parted with Frank Ferrer in March. Last year, Jason Bonham was replaced in Sammy Hagar's band. Reacting to those firings, Portnoy jokes that he is looking over his shoulder. As well as his role in Dream Theater, which he returned to in 2023, Portnoy works with a number of other groups and artists. He tells Office Hours Live With Tim Heidecker: "I think it's the Spinal Tap conspiracy. I think nobody is safe. Ringo's son was fired from The Who. John Bonham's son was fired from Sammy Hagar's band. "I mean, if the spawn of Ringo and Bonzo are not safe, nobody is safe." On Freese's shock departure from Foo Fighters, Portnoy says: "Frankly, it's shocking. I thought Josh was perfect. So, yeah, it's scary. It's scary times for drummers. "I'm scared for my life and career at this point. And I'm in, like, 15 bands, so I have 15 times the chance of getting fired right now. The odds are very much stacked against me right now." On Starkey's firing from The Who, which came weeks after he was fired then almost immediately rehired, Portnoy adds: "The whole thing with Zak Starkey started ... they did a show last month at the Royal Albert Hall. "They were doing The Song Is Over and Roger came into the second verse early and stopped the band, turned around and blamed it on his mix, that the drums were powering out his mix. "Now, mind you, Zak Starkey is on an electronic kit. They already downgraded it off of an acoustic kit. They have him playing an electronic kit, which is fully controllable in terms of volume through the sound guy. "So, if anything, he should have fired the monitor guy, not Zak." Dream Theater released Parasomnia, their first album with Portnoy for 15 years, in February.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Dream Theater returns to Minneapolis to play new album in its entirety
The Grammy-winning prog-rock icons Dream Theater are heading out on another run of "an evening with"-style shows. The tour will have them playing their latest album, Parasomnia, in its entirety during the tour, which includes a stop at the Orpheum Theatre in Downtown Minneapolis on Sept. 25. The new tour continues the reunion with drummer and founding member Mike Portnoy, who was also part of the group's most recent trek, which wrapped up earlier this year. He rejoined the group for the recording of Parasomnia. It was Dream Theater's first album with Portnoy since 2009's Black Clouds & Silver Linings. Tickets will go on sale at 10 a.m. on May 23.
CBC
16-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Iconic drummer Mike Portnoy says he owes it all to Rush
For 40 years, Mike Portnoy, one of the greatest rock drummers of all time, has been the driving force behind the prog rock band Dream Theater. But for more than a decade, he and the band were split. That all changed last year when Portnoy reunited with the band and they recorded their latest album, Parasomnia. In a Q interview, Portnoy sits down with Tom Power to tell the story of Dream Theater — and that story actually starts with another influential band: Rush. As a kid, Portnoy's biggest heroes were Ringo Starr of The Beatles, Charlie Watts of The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, The Who's Keith Moon and Kiss drummer Peter Criss. Then he discovered Rush. WATCH | Mike Portnoy's full interview with Tom Power: "Once I discovered [Neil Peart] and Rush and Genesis and King Crimson and Yes and all that stuff, that turned me upside down and made me become the drummer I am today," he says. While it's clear Portnoy has an immense amount of respect and admiration for all the legendary rock drummers who've come before him, Rush holds a particularly special place in his heart. "You're talking to a Rush fanatic here," he tells Power. "Dream Theater was built and born out of our love for Rush. In fact, the first name of the band before Dream Theater, we were called Majesty. We're at Berklee College of Music, it was '85, and myself, John Petrucci and John Myung, we met out of a mutual love for Rush. And that was the type of band we wanted to be." Portnoy recalls meeting Petrucci and Myung within the first couple weeks of school. "They saw me jamming in a practice room wearing Rush T-shirts and stuff like that, so we knew that that was a common ground for us," he says. Together, they came up with the band name Majesty after sleeping outside at the Berklee Performance Center, waiting in line for tickets to Rush's Power Windows tour. "We were listening to Caress of Steel and the song Bastille Day came on," Portnoy recalls. "We're like, 'Oh man, listen to that! The ending when they go into the half-time thing and the guitar melody … that's so majestic. Hey, that'd be a great name for the band: Majesty!' And that was where the name of the band was born." WATCH | Official video for Dream Theater's Night Terror: Portnoy says he "came in late in the game," discovering Rush in 1981 or 1982, when he was around 14 or 15. "It was just the perfect band at the perfect time for what I needed," he says. "I was ready to really become a better drummer and I wanted to learn more about the drums and develop more as a musician. So Rush's music immediately blew my mind and I became obsessed with them and became obsessed with Neil. "Everything I learned about progressive music — odd time signatures, the giant drum kit, the way to orchestrate drum parts melodically — I got all that from Neil. So once I discovered Neil, it developed me as a drummer and a musician in general. The fact that he was the band's lyricist as well really inspired me. I ended up becoming one of the lyricists in Dream Theater as well."
Telegraph
20-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Why ‘virtuosic weirdos' Dream Theater are every rock connoisseur's favourite band
Dream Theater have never been what you might call a straight-up rock and roll band. Even at the start of the Long Island quintet's recording career, 36 years ago, their debut album, When Dream and Day Unite, attracted praise and opprobrium, in more or less equal measure, for its metal-adjacent technical flamboyance. As a former student at the esteemed Berklee College of Music, in Boston, Mike Portnoy, the group's drummer, was singled out for particular attention. 'In the band's very first appearance in Kerrang! magazine… there was a photo of me with the review and [music journalist] Derek Oliver wrote, 'Mike Portnoy: heir to the Neil Peart throne,' Portnoy tells me. (For anyone unfamiliar with the name, the now late Neil Peart was the drummer from the Canadian group Rush, known to all as the gold standard of modern progressive rock bands.) 'To me, that was the ultimate compliment,' he says, 'especially on our first album because Neil was one of my biggest heroes when I was a teenager. Seeing that comparison at such an early age was the ultimate compliment back then.' Over the course of 16 studio albums, like Rush, Dream Theater have done their business away from the mainstream. As was the case with their Torontonian forebears, though, an almost perfect absence from the airwaves has had no discernible impact on the box office. Never mind, either, that the critics can be a bit sniffy – The Guardian once described their sound as a combination of 'old-school heavy metal wailing and unrepentant prog' – because the people keep coming. With almost no fanfare at all, in October of last year, the group headlined their largest-ever London concert, at the O2 Arena. Now, Dream Theater are on the road in North America for a tour to mark the 40 years that have elapsed since forming in Massachusetts (where two other founding members also attended the Berklee College of Music). Unlike many metal groups of a certain age and standing, however, nostalgia is not usually their stock-in-trade. Later this year, the group will return to the road in order to play their latest album, Parasomnia, released this month, front to back for ticket-holders who are evidently keen on hearing new songs as well as old. 'Our audiences are very supportive of us making new music,' Mike Portnoy says. 'We have a fanbase that's very, very passionate. They're not casual. We don't have the kind of fans that just pop in to check out a show because they maybe heard a song on the radio. We're just not that kind of band. We've always been an album-oriented band.' He continues. 'Luckily, these days, we're established enough, or have been around long enough, where we can kind of do whatever we want and call the shots. But it wasn't always that way. It took many, many many years to get a fanbase built up to that level of dedication and support. If we were just starting out, I don't know how we would do it. But luckily we've built this fanbase that has been with us all these years and which allows us this freedom.' Late at night in the thick of February, Mike Portnoy appears on my computer screen from a dressing room of the Hard Rock Live theatre in Biloxi, Mississippi. In response to the observation that his quarters look rather posh, not without humour he answers, 'We play nice places, you know?' Reassuringly, though, with a fulsome beard, long hair and a t-shirt bearing the words 'Directed By David Lynch', he retains the air of a man whose very presence in a department store would attract the attention of the head of security. In a voice that sounds like a Harley on the horizon, he answers my questions with considered concision. His backstory is pleasingly irregular. After toiling away on the lavatory circuit under the name Majesty – chosen following a conversation about Rush – it was the drummer's father who suggested the group rechristen themselves Dream Theater. Far from an ordinary working dad, as well being an author, a film director and the owner of an art gallery, the late Howard Portnoy was for a spell a DJ at KRML, in Carmel-by-the-Sea, in California. As if this weren't quite unusual enough, the job was secured after watching the Clint Eastwood thriller Play Misty For Me, a cult standard from 1971 about a lover-turned-stalker. 'He saw that movie and wanted to move to Carmel and get a job working at that radio station, which is exactly what he did,' his son reports. After an apprenticeship banging on pots and pans, Mike Portnoy took possession of his first real drums at the age of six. Lacking any real branding, it had a blue-sparkle design, he remembers, and was a gift from a grandfather who suffered a heart attack on its day of purchase (and who died before the week was out). A decade later, in possession of serious musical chops, he became the owner of a kit made by Tama, the brand he endorses to this day. Asked to guess how much his current set-up would cost were he required to buy it with his own money, he answers, 'I don't know… tens of thousands of dollars' The understandable desire not to pay for his own clobber led to a deal with Sabian Cymbals, which in turn led to a friendship with fellow endorsee Neil Peart. The sight of the two men discussing the intricacies of their trade, in the company of former Frank Zappa drummer Terry Bozzio and session great Tony Braunagel, in promotional clips on YouTube, affords a glimpse of the exalted level at which Portnoy is operating. In the distinction made by Buddy Rich, these are people who play drums rather than hit them. To hear them joined in conversation is like eavesdropping on the winning team in the World Cup for geeks. With his busy paradiddles and mad time signatures, naturally, the relationship with Peart progressed beyond professional obligations. 'I knew Neil very well,' Portnoy explains. 'He became a good friend of mine for about the last 15 years of his life [the drummer died in 2020]. It was a friendship I had so much gratitude for. He would invite me to sound-check, so I would go and see Rush's sound-check. He would let me sit behind the kit and let me play whatever [set-up] he was using on each particular tour.' But there were differences between the two men. As habitués of the 1970s rock circuit, Peart and his bandmates' preference for reading books over hedonistic chicanery led Gene Simmons, from Kiss, to note that 'in rock and roll even an ugly bastard like me can get laid, but none of the Rush guys ever did it'. I can't speak for Portnoy's predilection for pleasures of the flesh, but, certainly, he enjoyed other trappings familiar to the rock-biz circus. Enjoyed them, that is, until they threatened his livelihood, and even his life. With bombastic élan, over a series of Dream Theater albums, the drummer's journey to sobriety is itemised in a song-series nicknamed the Twelve-Step Suite. 'Back in 2000, I knew I was drinking and partying too much,' he explains. 'My kids were just born and they were young and I didn't want to become a rock and roll casualty like my heroes, like John Bonham and Keith Moon, so… I got sober at that time and [have] spent many, many, many years sober. It was probably what saved my life. It's very easy to fall into the trap of boredom on the road, and things like that. Luckily, Dream Theater isn't a crazy Mötley Crüe [or] Guns N' Roses type band, so our environment is a little more' – he searches for the right word – ' normal than some of the crazier bands out there.' Maybe. But the weird truth of it is that rock and roll is one the very few occupations at which, at one's place of work, one will find crates of beer and bottles of liquor left by promoters apparently unconcerned that touring musicians will end up too trollied to play a show. As if to prove the point, Mike Portnoy raises an unopened bottle of Jack Daniel's 'Gentleman Jack' whiskey into view, against which his phone has been resting. 'I think musicians are creative people and you see those kinds of issues not only with musicians but with actors and even athletes sometimes, [where] you live a life where you're put in the spotlight and you're surrounded by whatever you could want and all you have to do is request it and it's brought on a silver platter,' he says. 'When you live that kind of lifestyle, it's very easy to succumb to it. And there's a lot of boredom, too. There's a lot of time sitting around, you know. I'm on tour with Dream Theater now. We play a three-hour show every night, but the other 21 hours of the day we're kind of sitting around waiting to play.' Today, it seems that Portnoy avoids the temptations of grape and grain by staying as busy as is humanly possible. He is, and has been, involved in what seems like dozens of side-groups with esteemed players such as bassist Billy Sheehan and guitarist Ron Thal. He's sat in with everyone from thrash metal prototypes Overkill to the jam band Umphrey's McGee. During a 13-year period of absence from Dream Theater, concluded in 2023, he kept the beat for both Twisted Sister and the brilliant Orange County metal group Avenged Sevenfold, whose own drummer had died from the misuse of opioids. But it's as a member of Dream Theater that Mike Portnoy has built what is, and what will surely continue to be, his most enduring legacy. Peculiar and esoteric, the group's continued popularity supports the notion that while some avenues of guitar-based rock and roll struggle to prosper, or even survive, metal remains bulletproof. But here's the thing of it: even in this context, the band are irregular. By emerging into the light in the early nineties, perhaps the only period in its history when the movement was in declining health, Dream Theater became a legitimate alternative for listeners who were seriously unpersuaded by the overnight popularity of alternative music. In the years since, they've remained somehow separate from the scene they represent. Lacking the 'cool' of Tool or the crossover wallop of Metallica, instead, with the persistence of Wile E Coyote, they've fashioned an enviable career out of virtuosic weirdness. 'We went through a lot of periods where this band could easily have broken up,' Portnoy reports. 'We went for three years looking for a new singer, trying to change our record deal, getting new management – we could easily have thrown in the towel. The late nineties was a very tough period for us. But I think all the stuff that's happened to us… well, it's like the expression goes: what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. I think we're an example of that.'
