THE INTRO
As Dream Theater prepare to record new music, guitarist John Petrucci revels in his reunion with ex-drummer Mike Portnoy on solo album Terminal Velocity.
John Petrucci reunites with Mike Portnoy on the guitarist’s new solo album, plus the latest news from Gazpacho, Blackfield, Catherine Anne Davies, Ihsahn, Molassess, Lee Abraham, The Ocean and more!
Dream Theater guitarist John Petrucci reveals that the sense of joy emanating from his new solo album, Terminal Velocity, has come partly from his reunion with the band’s former drummer Mike Portnoy. The musician’s latest nine-track recording is out on August 28 via The Orchard Music.
The follow-up to his 2005 solo debut, Suspended Animation, marks the first time the pair have worked together since Portnoy’s unexpected departure from Dream Theater in 2010. Up until that point, he’d been a key figure in every step of the prog metal band’s development since co-founding them as Majesty in the 1980s.
“If you’re friends with somebody for 25 years, it doesn’t go away,”
Petrucci says. “Our families are close and our kids all grew up together. My family, from the beginning, was like, ‘You gotta get Mike to play!’ I was talking to Mike while I was working on this, and he just said, ‘Hey, if you need somebody…’ He’s very kind like that.”
Petrucci took Portnoy up on the offer and recalls there was an excited tension when the pair of them set up to jam together for the first time in a decade. “It was awesome and it was pretty funny: ‘Wow, do you realise we haven’t done this in more than 10 years?’ He said, ‘Alright, what’s gonna be the first thing we play in 10 years? Try to guess what it’s gonna be.’ I guessed it wrong! He played one of the first songs we wrote in Majesty. I thought he was gonna play Metropolis.”
As a lyricist and singer (among other talents), Petrucci is clear on why he decided to record another instrumental album. “The guitar really takes on the focus the entire time,” he says. “It’s a bit different of a mindset – I’m the soloist, the vocalist and the rhythm guitarist all together.
It’s a lot of fun. I love to play guitar and I really wanted the spirit of that to be heard on this record. It’s just such a great instrument; it’s the perfect creative instrument. I’ve also developed as a player and developed my gear.”
He adds: “It sounds like a trio playing together, but the reality is I wrote the album and recorded the final guitar tracks, and Mike and [bassist] Dave LaRue played to those tracks. We did it in such a way that it sounds like we all play together. Part of that is the way Mike plays, infusing all that spirit into it, and Dave is amazing too.” He emphasises: “Fun is what I wanted to get across. I think there’s a lot of spirit, a certain tongue-in-cheek feeling. I didn’t want to do a depressing, boring album. Guitar playing is fun – that’s what I was trying to say.”
While Petrucci admits the 15-year wait for his second record was longer than he’d have liked, he says 2020 was the first time he was able to focus fully on the project. “I don’t like doing things a little bit at a time; I like just going in, being in a mindset,” he says. “But a lot of people were continually asking,‘When are you going to do another solo album?’ After a while it becomes like the boy who cried wolf!”
With the Covid-19 pandemic continuing to keep the music world on pause, he accepts that the chances of touring with Portnoy and LaRue are minimal, although he’d jump at it if he could. Instead, he’s planning to return to work with Dream Theater, who will begin plotting a new album far sooner than they originally expected.
“We’re not just gonna sit around doing nothing,” he says. “We’ll start on another record in the fall. And the last run of shows we did, we filmed two shows in London, and that’s going to be our next live DVD. That should be out before the end of the year.”
See www.johnpetrucci.com. MK