John Petrucci – Dream Theater ‘Four Decades of Living the Dream’
Way back in 2010, Dream Theater shocked the progressive music universe by announcing the departure of stalwart co-founding member and skinsman extraordinaire Mike Portnoy. That history has been well documented. The band wasted no time in recruiting a new player, former Annihilator and Steve Vai drummer Mike Mangini, and just as little time in getting back on with things. Within a year, a brand new album, A Dramatic Turn of Events, was written, recorded and released and the band were out on the road again in support.
Over the next decade, the band released no fewer than five albums with Mangini occupying the throne and toured the world many times over.
Fast forward to 2023, the world was just a little less shocked when the band announced the return of their prodigal son, although the announcement still seemed to come a little out of the blue. With Mike P back in the fold, the band are, again, not pissing around. A brand new album, their first with Portnoy since 2009, is ready to roll, many live dates have already been played with many more to come in 2025, and there is also the small matter of their fourty-year anniversary celebrations, which are already underway.
Guitar virtuoso John Petrucci joined us recently to discuss this latest dramatic turn of events, the new record Parasomnia, Dream Theater’s ever-burgeoning history and their plans for this year and beyond.
Petrucci agrees that times of great change, drama and upheaval have led to a new surge of creativity for the band, as such times so often do. “Yeh, it really has!” He says brightly. “Having Mike [Portnoy] rejoin, at the end of 2023 when he rejoined actually, it’s been great. We got straight into the studio early last year and wrote what I think is a really strong album. We had a lot of fun doing it. I can’t wait for it to come out, it seems so long ago that we actually finished it!”
The fact that Mike P’s return, as well as the release of his first album with the band in more than a decade and a half, coincides with their anniversary only doubles the celebration for the band and their massive fanbase. “Not only that, but this fourtieth anniversary tour that we started in October last year has just been phenomenal – the fan reaction, the attendance, the venues, the tears in the audience, the whole thing, it’s so cool.“
“So it’s been very positive for all of us.”
The notion that Petrucci has been in this one musical institution for no less than four decades still seems to boggle his mind. Especially in an industry often known for the relatively ephemeral nature of some of its participants. “It’s wild!” He says. “A couple of things come to mind – I think about some of my favourite bands, there’s not many that make it that long. I even think about the R40, the Rush 40 (year anniversary) and I think, ‘how are we at that point already?!’
“The other thing that I think of is that I’m playing in the same band with guys that I met when I was in middle school. (Bassist) John Myung, we met when we were like twelve. I’m still in the same band with the same guys, it’s just like this family and this brotherhood, and we all feel really lucky to be in this position that we have. We don’t take it for granted, that’s for sure.”
By the time this piece hits the interwebs, the album should be either very close to release, or indeed out in the world, and Petrucci is only too happy to tell Wall of Sound’s readers exactly what they’re in for within the grooves of Parasomnia.
“Technically, it’s a concept album,” he explains. “I had this idea of calling it Parasomnia a few years ago, even before Mike (P) had rejoined, and having the subject matter be all about sleep disturbances and things, because, we’re called Dream Theater, so it’s kind of a perfect title.
“But then, when we started working on the record, Mike Portnoy was actually the one who said, ‘hey, why don’t we take it a step further and make it more conceptual?’ So started having reoccuring themes in the different songs, and adding all this ear-candy and connecting all this music, and having an overture. So you can expect more of an experience, the ‘Parasomnia’ experience in the forum of a Dream Theater record.”
A prime example of what John is talking about here is the second single taken from the album – ‘A Broken Man’ overtly details the experiences of veterans of war, zeroing in on the way post-stress disorders can heavily disrupt their sleeping patterns, which in turn can have an adverse effect on their quality of life after they return home from combat.
“James (singer James LaBrie) wrote the lyrics to that song, to ‘A Broken Man’,” Petrucci says. “Basically, the guidelines for anyone taking on a lyric for this record were that I wanted the band to write about a parasomnia event or experience. In my case, I wrote about night terrors, sleep paralysis, and things like that.
“James, he chose to write about how vets are affected by sleep deprivation, and how that kind of PTSD really messes psychologically with ex-combat vets, and how that can affect their sleep patterns and their life, and how frustrating that can be. So that’s what he chose to write about, tying in with the Parasomnia topic.”
It’s a wonderful, enigmatic title for a Dream Theater record, however Petrucci tells us he cannot take credit for its origination. “My son mentioned it one day when we were having a conversation,” he recalls. “He said ‘parasomnia’, and I said, ‘what did you say?’ I said, ‘that’s a cool word’. My immediate thought was that that would be a cool album title, and I just kept it in the back of my head for a few years, and as we started approaching this new record, I presented it to the band, and this idea.“
“Again, it’s the perfect Dream Theater title.”
Your son is probably stoked that you used his word as the title for the new Dream Theater album? “That’s something I haven’t admitted to him, that I got that from him!” He laughs. “I’ll have to tell him.”
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It’s been no less than five years since Dream Theater last toured Australia, and of course the question on the lips of all fans of progressive metal in this country is, will they be coming out again and when? While John can’t give us a definitive answer, let alone dates, he is extremely confident that his band will play for their myriad Aussie fans again in the not-too-distant future.
“We definitely are, I don’t know the when,” he says, “but if you know the next several months of our trajectory – we’ve got a North American tour in a couple of weeks, we have European festivals, so it won’t be before this (northern) summer. Don’t quote me, but I want to say possibly in the Fall (our spring), but yeah, it’s something that, for sure, we’re going to do.”
“I wish I had a more definitive answer! I would imagine so (that it would be this year), that’s what’s being discussed, but I haven’t seen anything definite.”
Interview by: Rod Whitfield
Parasomnia is out Feb 7, 2025 via Sony Music – Get it here
Read our album review here
