Ten Minutes with Dream Theater’s Mike Portnoy

MusicPlayers.com had a chance to catch up with Mike Portnoy shortly after the band’s sound check for a March 11 performance in San Francisco, California.

MPc: Did the band get the name Dream Theater from a theater in Monterey, CA by the same name?

Mike: Yes. I used to visit my Dad in the summer and go there to see movies like "Rocky Horror Picture", "Clockwork Orange" and "Rock and Roll High School". That was back around 1980-81.

MPc: Has Dream Theater thought about trying to get their music into a movie soundtrack because the 2nd CD from Six Degrees seems like it was made for a movie?

Mike: Yeah, we've always been interested in that, but we've never had an offer. I think there is a big part of us that loves that ambient, improvisational stuff. We tapped into that a little bit with the Liquid Tension Experiment. LTE was full throttle technical music but the other half of that project was improve and space jams and stuff like that. Bits of Octavarium have that as well.

MPc: Do you consider yourself the leader of Dream Theater?

Mike: When it comes to the music we all work together in writing the songs; when it comes to the videos, DVDs and that stuff they trust my direction.

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