It has been a wild 15 months for Dream Theater. In September 2010, drummer Mike Portnoy shocked the music world by leaving the band he helped found 25 years earlier. The remaining four members of Dream Theater (guitarist John Petrucci, keyboardist Jordan Rudess, bassist John Myung and vocalist James LaBrie) pressed on, auditioning a handful of the best drummers in the world before settling on Mike Mangini—and chronicling the entire process in a documentary titled “The Spirit Carries On”—and recording a new studio album, “A Dramatic Turn of Events,” released in September 2011. During the band’s fall tour of the United States, Greg Maki of Live Metal caught up with Rudess backstage at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C., to talk about this critical time in Dream Theater history.
LIVE METAL: Well, I guess, not a whole lot going on with Dream Theater lately. Not much to talk about.
JORDAN RUDESS: No, nothing. Nothing to talk about. (laughter) Everything’s calm.
How have you been handling the increased media attention over the past year?
Carefully. (laughs)
Are you comfortable doing a lot more interviews?
Well, what’s cool is that now that the situation has changed, it’s a little bit more spread out, like everybody’s kind of talking about it. Before, Mike Portnoy was very much the face of the band. Now it’s evened out a little bit more, so everybody’s kind of handling a lot of responsibilities. So it’s OK.
You do meet-and-greets with the fans and things like that. What has been the fan reaction to everything that’s gone on?
It’s been amazing. Really amazing. A lot of happy faces. I look out at the audience, I see the people. This new album is being really well received. And even beyond the new album, I find that when people see the band, this new incarnation of it, it’s kind of like they really get this hit of where we’re at, which is a very positive, unified, strong place. It’s pretty amazing to live it. Over the last year, there’s been so many changes and so many careful but really good steps along the way that we’re kind of looking around going, “Wow, this is working out OK. It’s a good thing.”
One thing was working hard on the album and doing something that we thought would on one hand show people that we are Dream Theater, we can continue writing music the way we have and this music machine will move into the future with positivity and strength—and doing that was one of the first steps. And then taking it on the road and putting on a good show and having everything come together.
At this point, it feels like, OK, it’s been quite a year. We went from a situation where it was difficult for us because we had this situation with Portnoy where we didn’t know exactly what was gonna happen. But when we decided to definitely move on and we found Mangini and we made the album, go on tour, get the show together, things have been looking really, really good.
The documentary that you did—I’ve never seen anything like that, a band really letting everyone into the whole audition thing. I thought it was really cool. Whose idea was it to do that? And, also, was it strange to have the cameras around at such a crucial point for the band?
It was an idea that kind of came together with us just talking about things. I can’t really point to one guy. The idea was to capture what we were going through. From the seed of the idea, it was like, maybe we should make a movie of it, a documentary, ‘cause it’s going to be such a fun thing to share with everybody. We realized we’re kind of dealing with the situation, and then the reality hit us that we’re in a position we can have some of the greatest drummers in the world come down and jam with us, or audition for this job, and so it was almost a natural thing, like wow, we can’t miss this opportunity to capture it.
So we decided to do the documentary, and one thing kind of led to another. It was very natural. It was a bit more pressure for the drummers to walk in and have to deal with cameras and all that kind of stuff. Even though I felt a little bad about that part of it, putting any more pressure on anybody, I felt like, you know what, this gig, part of it is about walking in front of a lot of people nightly and feeling what it’s like to be hit with this OK, I’m onstage with everybody watching me. So having a few cameras in the room and having the pressure of an audition is almost like real life in this band. It makes sense. Even though it’s not so comfortable, it does make sense to see who can play under this kind of pressure and how they respond.
The only thing that was negative about the whole documentary, and it wasn’t really negative about the documentary itself, was the fact that the fans got a little bit impatient, wanting to know, “Well, what’s going on with you guys? Who’s the drummer? Just tell us. You’re just a rock band. Why are you doing this?” That kind of thing. But we all knew that we had this really cool thing to share and a great way to share what was going on. So we were just waiting patiently. OK, it’s gonna be released and everybody’s gonna find out. And then once people saw the documentary, they were like, “Wow, that was great. Now I understand why you kept us waiting. This is a great way to share what was happening. Thank you for doing this.” So it all turned around. There was that little period of a month or so where people were getting upset.
It seemed like, from watching the documentary, that you and John Petrucci took the lead in the auditions.
Well, in the sense that, musically speaking, John and I are very much in charge of writing the music. So we needed to figure out who was gonna work for us. There was a lot of musical concerns, like if I write something wacky, how long will it take them to learn it, what’s their perspective, what can they offer. The audition was a three-part process. One of the parts was let me see if I throw something at them that’s one of my crazy, rhythmic, weird ideas, what are they gonna do? There was also the improvising section, gotta see how they can hang when we’re just playing. And then there was the part to just play our songs and see how that goes.
The sense I got from seeing everyone’s reaction after Mike Mangini came in and auditioned—I don’t know if anyone came out and said it outright—but it seemed like what I got from you guys was a sense of relief, that at that point you knew you were still going to be Dream Theater.
We’re gonna be OK! (laughs) I think you’re right. I totally think you’re right. He came in first thing in the morning. He played through all three of the songs. He nailed them. It was crazy. We went, “OK, audition’s over!” We knew we were gonna be OK, which was great. We knew we were having great drummers come down, but the reality of having somebody walk in and hit a home run like that was great for us, good for the spirit.
The new album, I’m sure the writing and recording of it was much different from the last several you’ve done.
It was different in the sense that Mike Portnoy’s presence in a room—he’s not a small person, he’s a big person. He’s got a lot of energy and likes to do things in certain ways. So the fact that he wasn’t there was a major difference. The fact that there was no drummer in the room at all was a major difference. That was a difference that, actually, in many ways, I liked. As much as I like drums and drummers, it was nice to have some more sonic space. As a composer, growing up on classical music and thinking along those lines with my little pencil and paper—even with all my devices, I still use pencil and paper—I like to just have some quiet space to think about my ideas, write them out, look at them and think about it. I could do that a bit when Mike Portnoy was around and he was doing his thing. But having a little extra space was something I definitely welcomed and appreciated, and I think John Petrucci also liked it for his compositional space, as well. So that was cool.
The thing that remained constant, and I guess some people don’t realize it ‘cause it was a little bit confusing to try to grasp what was really going on in the past, is that John Petrucci and I, for the 13 years I’ve been in the band, we’re the ones writing the notes. That’s just the reality of it. So when Portnoy left, (people) thought, “They lost a major composer. What are they gonna do?” Well, Mike Portnoy was very involved and he’s an exceptionally talented musician, but again, when it came to writing the notes and the riffs and all that stuff, John was holding the guitar, I’m at the keyboard—that’s where that stuff comes from. So we felt very confident moving forward in writing the music. That’s one of the reasons we were totally secure in just like, OK, Dream Theater can go on. We’ve been writing the music for all this time. We’ll just keep on doing it. We knew when we released this album, people would hear it and go, “These guys can write Dream Theater music! They can do it on their own.” Well, yeah. But people, they don’t know. You read interviews in past years, and you don’t know what’s going on. So this was a good opportunity for us to move forward and say, “OK, this is what it is. Check it out.”
One of the things we were able to do with writing this album and with this whole change—when a big change happens, it’s kind of like an opportunity to re-evaluate, to make changes and to hopefully make your world a better place. And this album was kind of about that. We discussed a lot of things before we got into it. I remember when John Petrucci came to me and said, “Jordan, I want to talk to you about your role on this album.” And his whole message to me, which I really appreciated, was, “Look, you’re one of the greatest keyboard players on the planet. You’re gonna be playing on this new album. Let’s really use you. Let’s use you to the max this time.” With the idea that, maybe in the past, the Jordan Rudess usage might not have been as good as it could have been. And I appreciated that because I’m into a lot of different kinds of music. I do a lot of different things. I’ve had a role in Dream Theater, which I can play very comfortably. Sometimes it’s not my full musicality really out on the table. I do too many things for it to really be that.
John was saying, “I want to open this up. I want to really make sure that more of your ability is used in our group and people really notice it.” And I really thought that was cool—“Absolutely. I’m into that.” It was kind of about almost like harking back to the more harmonic, melodic side of Dream Theater. A lot of decisions were made, like in past albums where he would come up with a heavy riff or something like that, and maybe the approach was to just double it with a snarling pig sound or something like that. This time, it was more like, “OK, here’s a cool riff. Let’s have something on the keyboard that would work against it that would be cool that would work together.” So you’ll hear on this album, there’s a lot of places where we take that approach. Not to say we didn’t do that in the past, but there’s just more of that.
On tour, you’ve been doing more of a consistent set list from night to night. Are you enjoying that? What are the pros and cons?
It’s so, so great. We’ve changed the set list a bit. We’ve kind of morphed as we’ve learned what we want to do. But at this point, we’ve got an A and B set list, and they’re dialed in. What’s great about it is I think they’re both good set lists, but also, on top of that, it’s so wonderful to go into a concert and have things dialed in, so when a song ends, you know that you’re gonna be going here. You just feel comfortable. Let’s say we end a song and then I know I’m going into “On the Backs of Angels,” and I have to take my iPad and put it back to MorphWiz, and I’ve got to move my keyboard to this patch, and at the same time, I’ve got to press a couple of pedals. It’s not like, “Oh my god! What song are we gonna play tonight?” It’s really together. The crew knows where we’re gonna be, so the lights are always in the same position.
I feel like we can be effective as a band putting on a show. I guess I feel almost like a Broadway show, where they rehearse and the show is dialed in. And we all knew. That’s why we pushed to say, OK, so in the past, we did this, and there are fans that would like to maybe see a different song every night or a whole bunch of different songs. But we’re like, we can’t put on a good show that way. We want this to be tight and together and feel secure. So we’re happy. Things might change. I don’t know, but for now, it’s working.
This is the first time you’ve really done this since you first joined the band, back on the “Scenes” tour.
Yeah, I’m used to having different sets all the time and always having to redo what’s in my keyboard. There’s good things about that, too. Certainly, some people are like, “I like it when they play different set lists every night.” First of all, what’s the percentage of people that are coming every night to a show? I think it’s really small. And then they say, “Well, on YouTube.” But they’re not the ones at the show. We’re going from city to city, country to country—if we have a tight show, in my mind, as fun as it was in a way to play different songs every night, to me, I just really prefer this. I like it. I’m glad that we have the opportunity, in our kind of rethink about what Dream Theater should do, to do this. It’s helping us a lot.
Back when you first joined the band on “Scenes from a Memory” and doing the tour for that and playing the whole album front to back, did that ever get tiring?
I don’t get tired of that. I love being consistent. I love playing the same songs from night to night. Mike Portnoy used to get impatient with that.
I interviewed him a couple years ago, and he said the changing set lists were a direct result of that tour.
Oh, really? That’s interesting. First of all, Mike Portnoy’s got an amazing memory. He’s got one of these kinds of minds where he can go, “Let’s play an evening of Led Zeppelin.” I’m like, “What?!” He’s like, “Yeah, I know it. Go!” You have a talent like that where you can just walk on—part of it’s being a drummer; you’re hitting things, so it’s not as complicated as remembering all the different notes—but he really has an amazing capacity for being able to play a lot of different music. So for him to change the set list and say let’s play this song, this song, this song, is not a big deal. He can just walk on and do it. It’s about everybody else (laughs) that can’t, that aren’t quite as comfortable. And even if we were, still, we have a video guy, we have a lighting guy, we’ve got techs—they’re all running around wondering what’s going on.
Probably still my favorite album of all time is “Scenes from a Memory.” Going into that, did that feel like it was going to be something special?
Well, I guess in the sense that it was very special for me to join the group. I didn’t understand who Dream Theater was until I was in it and I saw what this all means. I was never in a group like this that’s kind of big and global. So I had a perspective in a way, but (it was) my own personal awakening to what Dream Theater’s all about. So I was just there checking it out. I must have brought in like 100 different ideas to that writing session, which I don’t do now. I had on my recorder—“How about this? How about this? How about this?” And I realized that’s not a way to work because the guys like to be there—although they used some of my stuff, they did want to be around for when things get created. But yeah, it was just a good time. Everybody was energized, and it turns out that that album has become very popular.
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