Trivia / Dream Theater

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• Approval of God: Roger Glover of Deep Purple mixed Dream Theater's Cover Album of Made in Japan.
• Attention Deficit Creator Disorder:
  • Mike Portnoy, with side-projects such as Liquid Tension Experiment, OSI, and Transatlantic, and even moreso after he left the band.
  • Jordan Rudess, who, as of 2013, has been working on no less than four musical projects ^note Dream Theater, Explorations for Keyboard and Orchestra, All That Is Now, and Levin Minneman Rudess, as well as guest work for Eyal Amir and Ayreon and continuing to develop and promote various apps ^note Ear Wizard, the Explores app, Jam Bandit and technologies^note Roli Seaboard, Ableton Push, Touch Keys.
• Audience Participation Song: James will often get the crowd into singing along with the band, but that's nothing compared to Portnoy's Audience Participation Drum Solos, complete with call-and-response "Shave and a Haircut".
• Black Sheep Hit: "Pull Me Under". While the band doesn't exactly have problems with the song^note They do not enjoy the culture of Executive Meddling that surrounds it. In fact, Portnoy cited fan complaints about not hearing "Pull Me Under" in concerts as the basis for his song about the band's own overzealous fans, "Never Enough.", several subtle clues line the artwork for Greatest Hit ...and 21 other pretty cool songs, such as "Pull Me Under" highlighted in gold on the back cover; the front cover's subtle red text reading Greatest Hit; and the recurring motif of a seagull's feces staining things (the inner gatefold image shows 22 umbrellas, with only one bearing a shit stain.) It's also pretty obvious right off the bat to people even only vaguely familiar with the band; it's mid tempo, stays in 4/4 the whole time, has no crazy shredariffic riffs or solos or even bass riffs.
• Colbert Bump: The band was able to reach a wider audience thanks to "Pull Me Under" and "Panic Attack" being featured in Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band 2.
• Creative Differences:
  • One of the reasons Kevin Moore left the band after Awake, the others being his increasing alienation from bandmates and Reclusive Artist behavior.
  • The main reason Dominici left after When Dream and Day Unite. The band did not have major issues with Dominici but felt his vocals did not fit their style particularly well. Mike Portnoy even called the result "having Billy Joel singing in Queensrÿche", and he amicably left the band after the album was recorded.
  • One of the factors that lead to Portnoy leaving the band: He wanted to take a hiatus after heavy burnout and was disappointed the band didn't wish to follow his lead. He also wanted to do something similar to Brian Wilson and take time off while writing music for the band, but they too rejected this.
• Creator Backlash: By the time Mike Portnoy finished writing the 12-step Suite, he'd become sick of it, and felt burdened by the last few chapters.
• Creator Breakdown:
  • Many songs came from Mike Portnoy's problems while writing the lyrics.
    • The "Twelve-step Suite" is a series of five songs in twelve parts written by him, which chronicles his experience with alcoholism; also known as the "Alcoholics Anonymous suite". "The Mirror" is also about alcohol, written well before he became sober.
    • "The Best of Times", from Black Clouds & Silver Linings and "A Change of Seasons", from A Change of Seasons were written about his late father and mother, respectively.
    • "Never Enough", from Octavarium, is a Take That! towards DT's overzealous fans.
    • "Honor Thy Father", from Train of Thought, is a Take That! towards Portnoy's stepfather.
    • The unreleased "Raise the Knife" is about Kevin Moore's departure from the band.
  • Kevin Moore also contributed "6:00" (about his burnout and the widening gulf between him and the rest of the band) and "Space-Dye Vest" (about Moore briefly growing obsessed with a model he saw in a catalog during a major depressive episode and realizing that he was not over his last relationship), both from Awake.
  • John Petrucci wrote "Take Away My Pain", from Falling into Infinity, after his late father.
    • Also, "A Nightmare to Remember", from Black Clouds & Silver Linings, is about a car accident where he was involved as a child.
    • "Wither", also from BC&SL, is about writer's block.
  • James LaBrie also has his share:
    • "Disappear", from Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, was written after he observed a young couple in a mall and wondering about what they would do when one of them dies.
    • "Vacant", from Train of Thought was written about the helplessness he and his wife felt after their daughter suffered a severe seizure.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: James LaBrie has sung several songs in the point of view of female protagonists. Notable examples include Scenes From a Memory ^note as Victoria, "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence" ^note "Goodnight Kiss" and "About to Crash (Reprise)" and The Astonishing ^note as Faythe and, to a lesser extent, Faythe's mother Arabelle.
• Distanced from Current Events: "Live Scenes from New York" was released on September 11, 2001. It featured the Twin Towers on fire. The album was quickly recalled, and the cover replaced.
• Executive Meddling:
  • The triggered drum sound on Images and Words, which wasn't the band's idea.
  • In Falling into Infinity, the meddling was so severe it almost caused the band to break up. After that, they renegotiated their contract to ensure they would have complete creative control over their future works.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • Pressings of Live Scenes from New York with its original cover (which was recalled after the 9/11 attack due to its cover depicting a burning New York skyline with the World Trade Center) have become quite rare and can go for as much as $150 on eBay.
  • Black Clouds & Silver Linings has only ever had one pressing on vinyl, which was when the album released back in 2009. In North America, the album was only sold as part of a collector's edition, which makes it pretty rare and fairly expensive. A few other albums have also gone out of print on vinyl.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance: Petrucci apparently regarded Octavarium as the band's best effort to date. While some of the album is universally loved by fans, the band's decision to incorporate influence from more mainstream acts like U2 and Muse was divisive; there's a particularly big Broken Base over songs like "The Answer Lies Within" and "I Walk Beside You".
• Meme Acknowledgment:
  • In a magazine interview, John Petrucci said he thought the Psycho Exercises Gag Dub videos were hilarious. On the extra material of the Chaos in Motion tour DVD, he imitated them.
  • There was also a show in Perth, Australia that had to be moved to a new venue, among other complications, so a fan created an Angry Hitler Gag Sub. Portnoy saw it, thought it was hilarious and had it played before the show.
  • The official Dream Theater keyboard includes an emoji of James LaBrie dressed like a pirate.
• Milestone Celebration:
  • Scenes from a Memory was released on vinyl for the first time to celebrate its twentieth anniversary.
  • French magazine Rock Hard celebrated the 30th anniversary of Images & Words by featuring it on their July 2022 issue.
• One-Hit Wonder: Dream Theater aren't a one-hit wonder in the technical sense, as they had seven entries on Billboard's mainstream rock chart. However, they are in the looser, cultural definition of the term as "Pull Me Under" was the only one of those songs to make it to the Top 10 and it is likely to be the song that casual fans and radio listeners most identify them with. The band lampshaded this with the title of their Greatest Hits Album: Greatest Hit (...And 21 Other Pretty Cool Songs).
• Rarely Performed Song: They very rarely play songs from the "Twelve-Step Suite" after drummer and founding member Mike Portnoy's departure from the band in 2010. The "Suite" is a set of five connected songs^note The Glass Prison, This Dying Soul, The Root of All Evil, Repentance, and The Shattered Fortress written by Portnoy detailing his battle with alcoholism. The first three songs haven't been played at all since his departure. The fourth, Reptentance, was only played live a single time even when Portnoy was with the band. The final song, The Shattered Fortress, continued to be played until 2014, in large part because it was one of the hits of the band's 2009 Black Clouds & Silver Linings album, the final with Portnoy. For the same reason, The Mirror, formerly one of their most-performed songs and officially considered a "prelude" to the Twelve-Step Suite, has also been retired from live play since 2014.
• Referenced by...:
  • The final story mission in Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon is named “A Nightmare to Remember”.
  • The RuneScape quest "Defender of Varrock" has the player visit a place known as the Dream Theatre^note The studio who develops the game is British, so it is spelled that way in-game. There is also a song titled "Dream Theatre" in the game's soundtrack.
• Similarly Named Works: Dream Theater's third album, Awake notably shares its name with albums from Hard Rock bands Godsmack and Skillet.
• Troubled Production: The band almost broke up during the production of Falling into Infinity in no small part due to label pressures and associated Executive Meddling. It was a result of this that the band insisted on full creative control over their future albums. The band retroactively credited Sherinian for keeping them grounded during the recording process of the album, saying that without him, they may well have broken up. They have also had wildly different stances on how much executive meddling affected the final product; Portnoy said it affected the songwriting and arrangements a lot, while Petrucci said they wrote the album they wanted to write. The release of the demos for the album does suggest Portnoy may have had a point, though; some of the songs (particularly "You or Me" and "Burning My Soul") differ significantly from the final products, and some of the material left on the cutting room floor (particularly "Raise the Knife") was a lot proggier than some of the songs that made it onto the album.
• What Could Have Been:
  • When Kevin Moore quit band after recording Awake, Jens Johansson was one auditioners to replace him, and Portnoy and Petrucci were already interested in hiring Rudess at the time, but ultimately Derek Sherinian became the second keyboardist of the band.
  • Falling into Infinity was supposed to be a double album, but the record label wanted it to be less proggy and more radio-friendly. Also, a shorter version of the song "Metropolis Part 2", before it was turned into an album, was going to appear in the second disc.
  • Petrucci felt that Metropolis Pt. 2 needed a "heavier and larger" mix and called in Kevin Shirley was to remix it, but due to time constraints, David Bottrill's original mixes of "Regression", "The Dance of Eternity", "One Last Time" and "Finally Free" were left on the album.
  • John Arch (who had been out of Fates Warning for several years at that point) was apparently offered a job after Dominici was fired, though he ultimately opted to not join due to personal commitments.
  • Aside from the drummers who did audition (Marco Minneman, Peter Wildoer, Thomas Lang, Virgil Donati, Aquiles Priester, and Derek Roddy), Bobby Jarzombek and Jason Rullo were apparently also called to audition. Both declined; Roddy was apparently going to as well (as he didn't really care about joining one way or another and was more than content to stick with his snake-breeding business), but he decided to accept the invitation at his wife's insistence.
  • Mike Portnoy had said he wanted a third disc for the Greatest Hits collection called 'The Epic Side', containing all their grand songs, but this never materialized.
    • Regarding Portnoy, he did have plans to play the entire Twelve-Step Suite live at one point, but unfortunately these plans never came to fruition following his departure. He eventually did play the Twelve-Step Suite with various other bands, but not with others from DT.
• Write What You Know: Dream Theater's band members' lyrics are quite personal. Examples from Portnoy:
  • The Twelve-Step Suite was written about his recovery from alcoholism.
  • "Constant Motion" is a metaphor for his experiences with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
  • Portnoy would later on write songs about his family, with "A Change of Seasons" was written about the death of his mother, "Honor Thy Father" written towards his stepfather, and "The Best of Times" written about his father's passing, with the demo version having him singing it.
• Write Who You Hate: As drummer Mike Portnoy told on an IRC conversation, he wrote the lyrics of "Honor Thy Father" (from 2003's Train of Thought) as a potshot towards his stepfather. He outright claimed in an interview that he couldn't write a love song, so instead he decided to pen a hate song.
  "It is aimed directly at somebody else in my immediate family. If you take the key word from the title as well as the key word from the bridge (Crooked _____), you can figure out who it was written for. [Step father] I've never been good at writing love songs, so I decided to write a HATE song!"

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