Top 75 Mike Portnoy Quotes

I always follow my heart.

I’m a very sentimental guy; I’m a very nostalgic guy.

One of the reasons I needed to leave Dream Theater was because I didn’t want to end my career as just the drummer in one band.

In all of my years in this business, I’ve always been part of either a progressive band or a metal band.

With Dream Theater, every creative aspect of the group went through me. I oversaw it all from top to bottom.

I’m a music fan first and foremost. I can find the beauty in Jellyfish and U2 just as much as Opeth and Lamb of God, just as much as I can with Rush and Yes.

I am looking forward to working with the great staff of Loud & Proud Records, some of whom I worked very closely with during their time at Roadrunner and my time with Dream Theater. I look forward to continuing that relationship with The Winery Dogs!

It’s so refreshing to just play straight-ahead music with lots of twists.

When I sit down to do an interview, I try to be polite and answer the questions that I’m asked.

I can’t possibly overstate how much influence Rush had on me as a young teenager. I would say from about 1981 to 1987, they were my gods.

I’d rather be entertained and go to a show and watch a drummer and have somebody that makes me actually smile. So I don’t judge drummers based on their technical ability; I judge them based on the overall package and what they bring to the music they’re part of.

Dream Theater was my baby. I formed it from the beginning, out of college, and I lived a lifetime with them.

In Adrenaline Mob there are five guys that are all absolutely insanely energetic performers each of their own right. It’s like a five-ring circus on stage!

Billy Sheehan has always been my number one favorite bass player of all time.

To me, a great drummer isn’t always about somebody with chops who can shred. A great drummer is someone who is part of a great band.

I don’t consider myself a great drummer. I consider myself just a music fan that’s a very, very passionate artist, and the drums just happen to be my instrument.

I need to be creative all the time.

After I left Dream Theater, and I was doing Avenged Sevenfold, Twisted Sister… all these other things, I made a lot of new fans in a lot of new areas.

As far as I know, you only live once. So, I want to make the most of it while I can and work with as many different people as I can.

I’d just like to be remembered as a huge music lover.

I guess I did make my name out of my drumming, and I have the big drum sets, and I’m doing all these crazy, odd-time signatures, so, yeah, I guess drumming was very important to what made me popular.

One of the biggest misconceptions was, after I left Dream Theater, I went off and did, like, five different bands and side projects. Everyone was like, ‘We thought you wanted a break.’ And it was like, well, I didn’t want a break from making music; I just needed a break from the Dream Theater camp.

I spent my life’s work doing what I did in Dream Theater for 25 years, so I’m proud of that.

The reality is, when I’m sitting in a hotel room at 3 in the morning, and I see something on the Internet that interests me in the form of a band I want to hear, I like the ability to just go online to iTunes and download it immediately.

When you’re putting together a concept album, it’s all about the flow and the story.

There’s the drums, the music, the melodies, the lyrics, the production, the artwork: there are so many elements to making an album, and the drumming is just a very small fraction of what I focus on.

I love the Dream Theater guys dearly and have a long history, friendship, and bond that runs incredibly deep with them – it’s just that I think we are in serious need of a little break.

People always say to me, ‘Well, how can a marriage last when you’re away as much as you are?’ And I always say, ‘Well, absence makes the heart grow fonder.’ That time apart from each other has actually strengthened our relationship.

I am not a technical drummer at all. I’m more from the Keith Moon/Lars Ulrich school of, ‘Hey, look at me!’ I just get up there and bash.

When you’re making this kind of music, you don’t need a producer. If you’re making pop albums or trying to write hit singles, then yeah, but if you’re writing 20-minute prog epics, as long as you know how to make it sound good, and you have a good mixer, that’s all you need.

It’s been an incredible experience, playing with Twisted Sister, Stone Sour, Avenged Sevenfold, jamming with Ace Frehley and Peter Criss, and the list goes on and on and on.

Trite as it sounds, follow your heart. Persevere. And if you follow your heart and persevere, it will pay off.

Normally, when I write the setlist for a Dream Theater show, I’ll change it up every night, and we can basically play whatever we want.

I kind of always made it a tradition, whenever Dream Theater played Toronto, to play a Rush cover.

I’ve been asked to write a book several times; I’ve had several publishers come to me and offer me book deals. Especially right after I left Dream Theater and Avenged Sevenfold, there was a lot of drama going on in my life, so the book companies came at me thirsty for blood and gossip. And I turned down all the deals.

I have no interest in playing ‘perfect.’ To me, it’s more about being an entertainer. Having a connection with the audience.

In Adrenaline Mob, I’m not the leader, but I’m on the board of directors, and that’s OK. I’m not stressing out over every detail. I’m sharing the load.

The most bizarre occurrence has to be when I dislocated my wrist during a show in Germany in 1997.

I don’t like when I see bands that are just a memory of what they used to be, and there’s a few out there that I’ve seen recently that are still touring… I’m not gonna name them, but some of the members can barely play their parts, and then they have a lot of other members that weren’t even originally in the band.

I have so much gratitude that I get to do this for a living and that I actually have fans who come to the shows and buy the records and support me online.

I absolutely am not the ‘de facto front man’ in The Mob – that title surely goes to Russell Allen, who is one of the best front men in the business. I am just happy to be part of the band and not necessarily leading it.

With the Neal Morse Band, we’re doing progressive music with a harder edge; it’s a little more in Dream Theater territory for me. Flying Colors is a little more poppy, it’s more Radiohead, Muse, and Coldplay territory, so I approach that drumming in a different way.

I was always very extroverted and loud.

My lesson would be to not sell yourself to anybody else and stay true to yourself.

Any time I say anything about Dream Theater… Honestly, I’d rather not talk about it. Because no matter what I say, it will be twisted and… So I kind of have made myself promise that I won’t talk about Dream Theater anymore.

If you do anything long enough, people can’t ignore you anymore.

I spent a good solid two years giving my all to Adrenaline Mob.

There’s been a lot of crossing paths with the Yes camp over the years for me. The first one was when Dream Theater and Yes toured together in 2004, which was a lot of fun.

I tend to like the heavier things, especially live on stage. I need that energy and interaction and feeling the audience.

I love my family more than life itself, but I can only sit at home by my pool eating barbecue food so many days before I go cuckoo.

If you’re not gonna be happy, then it’s not worth doing anything.

I remember waking up Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, to my wife telling me to put on the TV because I wasn’t going to be going into N.Y.C. as planned. Dream Theater was working in N.Y.C. at the time mixing our album ‘Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence,’ and I would’ve been driving in that afternoon for our session.

Richie Kotzen is such an unbelievable talent as a vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter.

I understand that Adrenaline Mob is not going to be every Dream Theater fan’s cup of tea. I totally get that; I understand that. It’s different world.

I live a very open life. I value my relationship with the fans, and I utilize Twitter and Facebook and my web site, so my day-to-day activities are an open book for me to share with the fans, for better or for worse.

You can put me in front of any kit, and it is a fun thing to have to adapt. It inspires me to try different things. I like that.

I’m very proud of the album I made with Adrenaline Mob, and I think that there was really a great chemistry there; it was a great band.

I’m not a politician; I’m a very open, honest guy, and that’s the way it is – that’s the way I am; take it or leave it.

Flying Colors is more alternative pop with a prog edge. Think the Beatles meets U2 meets Muse and Foo Fighters. It is the opposite of Adrenaline Mob, which has more classic metal influences like Black Sabbath, Van Halen, Pantera, or Disturbed. They are completely different ends of spectrum.

To me, there’s way more to being a good drummer than precision and technique.

I think it’s important for a young musician to stick with a band for a while and really work with a band and stay focused.

With Dream Theater live, I may have been a bit of a focal point because I absolutely live for the energy on stage, and having interaction with the audience is absolutely crucial to me – regardless of how some others have described it!