MIKE PORTNOY On State Of Music Industry, DREAM THEATER's 'Images And Words' Album

August 2, 2012

Drummer Mike Portnoy (ADRENALINE MOB, DREAM THEATER, AVENGED SEVENFLOLD, FLYING COLORS) was interviewed last month by Ollie Winiberg of BBC's "Introducing In Essex" radio show during the U.K. leg of ADRENALINE MOB's European tour. You can now listen to the chat in the YouTube clip below. A couple of excerpts follow.

On the current state of the music industry:

Portnoy: "Well, it's tough. On one hand, I like that artists are gaining control of their music again and their bands and their careers. I think that's a great thing that bands can actually maintain that creative and financial control. On the other hand, there's the other side of the coin, which is that artists are getting all of their music ripped off as well, and record companies are folding and sales are down. So it's a double-edged sword, but it's the nature of the business, and you've gotta roll with the changes."

On whether he's had any particularly bad experiences during his career that he hopes to never repeat:

Portnoy: "Well, strangely enough, one of DREAM THEATER's most successful and popular albums, 'Images And Words', which I am extremely proud of, it was an incredible difficult to make. So, actually, as much as I look back at that album and the tour and the explosion that happened as a result of it — I mean, I look back at all that with great, great memories — the making of the record was very, very difficult, because it was our first record with a major label and they made us work with a producer, who made a great-sounding record, but was very, very hard and difficult to work with; he wasn't really a 'people person.' So the making of that record was very painful and difficult from a personal point of view. So, yeah, even though I love everything in the catalog and I'm proud of it all, some of them were [more] painful or harder to make than others, but the end result is something that I've always been proud of."

On the commercial success of "Images And Words":

Portnoy: "That is pretty amazing that we were able to get away with what we were doing, especially in 1991, and that was the height of the whole NIRVANA explosion. I don't know… On paper, you would think that would have been a recipe for the biggest disaster, but maybe that's why that album did well — because we kind of stuck out like a sore thumb at the time."

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