MIKE MANGINI speaks about MIKE PORTNOY’s return to DREAM THEATER

DREAM THEATER's MIKE MANGINI shares 'Not Drowning', second single from upcoming debut solo album

03-11-2023

During an appearance on Wednesday, November 1st episode of SiriusXM‘s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk”, Mike Mangini spoke about his departure from DREAM THEATER and the return of the band’s original drummer Mike Portnoy. He said in part: “All I know is the decision was made and when I heard it, all I pictured was, ‘Oh, this is an original guy going back to his band. Uh, okay. All right. Let’s go to the next thing.’ It was nothing more. I was told. It was just nothing more than — it seemed so simple to me. And maybe intuitively it’s, like, ‘Oh yeah, I get it.’ And that was that. That’s really it… So that’s really the crux of it all is it was an easy thing for me to understand. And then once the news hit and it became real, which is when it set in, because once I knew about it, I just got busy. I was, like, ‘Okay, I’ve got all these videos to finish.'”

The 60-year-old Mangini, who joined DREAM THEATER in 2010, continued: “I’m actually doing like a lot of stuff for my upcoming solo album. I’ll do some drum playthroughs. Not to yap and yap and yap about it, but I have a lot on my cork board and my lists and things to do and things to accomplish and things to complete. There’s so much there I haven’t been able to do. But once it hit and it became real, it was real quick for me. I’m, like, ‘Okay, I get it.'”

When host Eddie Trunk noted that everything about his exit from DREAM THEATER, from the way it was handled to the fans’ response to Mike‘s attitude about it, was “about as good as it could be,” Mangini concurred. “It is as good as it could be,” Mike said. “I think people are where they need to be. It’s, like, there’s stuff to do, there’s places to be, there’s people to see, there are things to accomplish and roles to fulfill and tasks to do. And that’s what it is. That’s really what it is.

“How lucky am I, how fortunate am I to be just a part of that history, to have all this amazing stuff happen?” he continued. “It’s positive, positive, positive.

“I know I’ve accomplished some things with my career, and I’ve had a lot of struggles and a lot of things that didn’t work or whatever, but for my parents to be in their 90s, to see this happen, and I’m not talking about career stuff; I’m talking about how I’ve treated people and how they treat me. I mean, I think that’s what I want for my kids — I wanna feel well about how they are with people and how people treat them at the end of the day. I think that’s just awesome.”

Portnoy attended DREAM THEATER‘s concert in March 2022 at Beacon Theatre in New York City. It was the first time he witnessed his then-former bandmates perform live since his exit from the iconic progressive metal outfit 13 years ago. Asked by Trunk if it was “a weird thing” for him to see Portnoy at the gig, Mangini said: “No, and you can ask him. It was like nothing ever changed. In other words, I was post-show getting dressed, and Mike, he walked up the stairs like, and, of course, my door’s open. Of course, I’m basically pantless in a way. And he comes up and I really just like clothed myself. And the first thing I said to him was, I think, something like, ‘Dude, your timing’s off. I just have no pants on for a second.’ I don’t remember what I said. It was like my underwear, whatever it was. But it was like nothing ever changed from the phone calls that we made, from the time he brought me on stage with DREAM THEATER, from the time I’m at a DREAM THEATER show we would though watching ZAPPA DOES ZAPPA and talking about Vinnie Colaiuta and Terry Bozzio. I mean, what other way is there to live? I don’t know anything different. So that’s the truth. That’s the vibe. That’s your answer to your question.”

When Portnoy‘s return to DREAM THEATER was first announced on October 25, Mangini said in a statement: “I understand DREAM THEATER‘s decision to get Mike Portnoy back at this time. As was said from Day 1, my place was not to fill all the roles that Mike held in the band. I was to play the drums in order to help the band carry on. My main role of keeping our live show working tightly on a nightly basis was an intense and rewarding experience. Thankfully, I got to experience playing music with these iconic musicians, as well as some fun times laced with humor. I also really enjoyed spending lots of time with the crew. And then there’s the Grammy win, which was amazingly satisfying. To the fans: thank you so much for being amazing to me. I cherish the pictures I have of you all losing your minds and having fun. Finally, I really love the band, crew and management and wish them and the entire organization all the best.”

Two months after the aforementioned Beacon Theatre concert, Portnoy told “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk” about what it was like to see another drummer play his parts live with DREAM THEATER: “I’ve always been the type of drummer that just flies by the seat of my pants in the moment. Even with my own drum parts, I don’t necessarily stick to them faithfully from show to show, whereas Mangini obviously really studied the drum parts and they had everything programmed out. They’re all about the precision, and that’s surely their thing. And yeah, he killed it. There’s no doubt he’s an amazing drummer and he plays my parts incredibly faithfully.”

Portnoy continued: “I feel bad for him. He and I joked about it. He’s in a horrible situation where he’s damned if he does and he’s damned if he doesn’t. He expressed that frustration to me, and I feel for him; it’s definitely a weird position to be put into. I kind of had it a little bit when I played with AVENGED SEVENFOLD and TWISTED SISTER, coming into the throne of two drummers that have passed away, and I tried to learn those parts as faithfully as I could. When I had a hired-gun gig like that, I spent a lot of attention trying to honor the drummer that came before me — it’s important. I don’t wanna go into a gig like either of those and try to force my style onto it.”

Mangini will release his debut solo album, “Invisible Signs”, on November 11. Accompanying Mangini on the LP are Tony Dickinson on bass, Ivan Keller on guitar, Gus G. (FIREWIND, OZZY OSBOURNE) on lead guitar and former EVANESCENCE guitarist Jen Majura on vocals.

Mangini has released two singles so far from “Invisible Signs”: “Freak Of Nature” and “Not Drowning”.

Mangini joined DREAM THEATER in late 2010 through a widely publicized audition following the departure of Portnoy, who co-founded DREAM THEATER 38 years ago. Mangini beat out six other of the world’s top drummers — Marco Minnemann, Virgil Donati, Aquiles Priester, Thomas Lang, Peter Wildoer and Derek Roddy — for the gig, a three-day process that was filmed for a documentary-style reality show called “The Spirit Carries On”.

Mangini made his name in the hard rock world in the mid-1990s when he played with EXTREME, before landing the gig with guitar legend Steve Vai in 1996. Nearly a decade later, Mangini took up a full-time teaching position at the world-renowned Berklee College Of Music.

Mike Mangini has recently released “Not Drowning”, the second single from his upcoming debut solo album, “Invisible Signs”, which is set to arrive in November. Accompanying Mangini on the LP are Tony Dickinson on bass, Ivan Keller on guitar, Gus G. (FIREWIND, OZZY OSBOURNE) on lead guitar and former EVANESCENCE and current HOW WE END guitarist Jen Majura on vocals.

Regarding the lyrical inspiration for “Not Drowning”, Mike said: “While listening to the chorus part of this song sometime in 2018, I heard word sounds in my mind and the word ‘drowning’ fit it pretty well. I didn’t want to write about it literally though. I used a thesaurus and the internet to find related words and topics because my lyrics are never about personal events or stories. Searching terms related to ‘drowning’ eventually led me to the word ‘confusion.’ That made me think of the confusion surrounding the findings of Quantum Mechanics. I found instances of physicists and mathematicians saying that the test results seemed strange and ‘wrong,’ and that they could not reconcile it with their view of reality. Some said there are things about it we cannot know, or maybe are not supposed to know. It seemed to me that spending too much time immersing oneself in it can make a person crazy. Einstein died confounded by it spending countless hours trying to recocile it with the reality he knew. The myriad of unfounded conjectures outside the physics community conjured up a comedy skit in my mind. The lines ‘Not Drowning’ and ‘I will breathe’ each relate to the hope of clearing away what is blurring the reality of something in all kinds of situations.

“For a song lyric, I suspected that singing about physics wouldn’t be as fun as the idea of jumping in a saltwater pool. I needed a descriptive location for it. ‘Backyard’ didn’t work, so I used the word ‘nation’ because everyone lives in one. That word led me to ‘radiation,’ as that’s what heats up a pool and has a cool sound to it when sung. Mainly, words come to me as sounds, then I search around and form something cohesive, but try not to sacrifice how the words sound.

“I thought this might be interesting to know about. At the end of the day, however, it’s just a song for rocking out!

“And then there’s the simultaneous 7/8 in Common Time and a wild solo section for the Musos!”

Mangini reently spoke to “The Everyman Podcast” about upcoming debut solo album, “Invisible Signs”, which is set to arrive in November. Accompanying Mangini on the LP are Tony Dickinson on bass, Ivan Keller on guitar, Gus G. (FIREWIND, OZZY OSBOURNE) on lead guitar and former EVANESCENCE guitarist Jen Majura on vocals.

Asked if he wrote all the music and lyrics for “Invisible Signs”, including the recently released first single “Freak Of Nature”, Mangini said: “Initially. And the reason why there’s confusion is journalists will grab old information that is true at the time, but then it changes. For example, initially, yeah, I wrote every note — of course I did, because I was working on it by myself. I mean, every note — the solos, all the words, horribly sung (laughs) vocal melodies. And it evolved over time. So, as it grew from totally all me and MIDI instruments to what you hear now, there was a stage where I had nurtured it and then turned it over to everyone else on the album. So that’s the essence of it.”

Regarding how Jen became involved with the project as the singer, Mike said: “I met Jen quite a while ago, and eventually she asked me to do one of her one-minute YouTube spots, and we did a Stevie Wonder tune with her and Alex Skolnick, and it was super, ’cause she nailed — she played saxophone and guitar and all this stuff, but she’s singing Stevie Wonder, like with that thing. Not everybody has that thing, and I noted it in my head. I’m, like, ‘Gosh, she’s got that thing.’ And it’s interesting, because later on, when I wrote a couple of songs no one has heard yet, except whoever’s supposed to hear this before it comes out, ‘Black Box’ and ‘Let Me Shine’ are more of what… I mean, you can tell that’s what the kids were gravitating towards. And so I tried to make those songs me. I tried to make it with the riff and that thing to it that is not common on the radio stations. But anyway, so she had that thing that allowed those particular two songs to now kind of connect to the rest of it. And the songs that are on the much — they’re still heavy, but they don’t have that 54 percent swing thing in them.”

As for the rest of the musicians who appear on “Invisible Signs”, Mangini said: “Gus took care of the solos. He didn’t wanna do the rhythm stuff. He’s not a seven-string player; he’s a six-string player. That’s the reason. So, Ivan was recommended to me by vocalist Dino Jelusick (WHITESNAKE, TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA), who’s just the sweetest guy in the world — great friend, someone I was bouncing ideas off of and stuff and helping me out. And he recommended Ivan. He actually recommended Tony Dickinson as well on bass. But Ivan came in and just took all my virtual parts, put them on the guitar. And actually, Dino captured Ivan‘s parts on Dino‘s laptop. So, they sent those to me. But Ivan had to interpret some things. He was, like, ‘Hey, man, this is done on a keyboard. What are you doing?’ I was, like, ‘Yes, I know. Make it so it works for you. Make it so it works on that instrument. Go ahead.’ And then Tony, of course, did the same thing on bass. And he was in touch with me saying, ‘You know…’ I’m, like, ‘No, just tell me.’ He says, ‘Well, this particular run, this particular note, I wouldn’t do that.’ I’m, like, ‘It’s just a note. Just move the note. Change it. Sure.’ Then I said, ‘I made the basic parts that work for the song. If you want to embellish, go for it. Make it you, but stay within the thing. Otherwise, I’m gonna lose this.’ So these guys were so amazing that they took what I did, they embellished, they fixed it, as it were, because it’s a keyboard; they changed some things. But if you heard, if I release all the demos with just me, it’s gonna sound…. you’ll hear some notes here and there that are different, and that’s what happened, or structures. But everything is basically the way it was in essence. And so Ivan took care of all the guitars and he did some fills here and there. Jen Majura did the lead-in solo, the introductory solo for a song called ‘Deep Inside’.”

In a recently released video message, Mangini spoke about the lyrical inspiration for “Freak Of Nature”. He said: “The lyric to ‘Freak Of Nature’ came about pretty interestingly. As I was researching things I’m interested in, like forces and laws of nature, and I came across a hurricane and ‘force of nature’ hit me, but it didn’t sound very good to me. Then, all of a sudden, ‘freak of nature’ beamed in from somewhere. And the interesting thing is that that’s inherent throughout the record; it just permeates the whole thing where there’s meaning, but the sound was more important to me, because if it didn’t sound right, I didn’t think anyone would want to sing it, if that makes any sense. So, I was thinking about other freaks of nature, like musicians and athletes and things like that, and American football player Rob Gronkowski, who played for the (New England) Patriots, came to mind, as he was like an unstoppable force. And so those are just a couple of the things that weave their way into the song. But mainly, I was concerned about the sound, and luckily that phrase came into my mind, freak of nature, and I liked it. So I based all the lyrics off of that.”

A week earlier, Mangini released a separate video message in which he spoke about the “source of the music” for “Freak Of Nature”. He said: “One thing it isn’t is a recreation of any band I’ve ever been in. I mean, why would I do that? I’m already working with, and have worked with, the best that do that. So it’s not something I wanna do. Plus in DREAM THEATER, everyone’s solo album sounds different than the final DREAM THEATER album.”

He continued: “Anyway, one of the sources for me came from when I spent a dime ordering records from a company called Columbia House and, like, 912 LPs showed up. One of them was LED ZEPPELIN ‘IV’. And when I put ‘Black Dog’ on, it did something to me. There was something about that riff. So over the years, I wrote some songs. And when it came time for this album, ‘Freak Of Nature’ was the first song written. And it’s a riff. The thing is I had to learn how to write lyrics and melodies over the riff. But that’s one of the sources, if you’re interested.”

Other tracks set to appear on Mangini‘s solo LP include “Invisible Signs”, “Habit To Change”, “Not Drowning”, “Saying Sorry”, “So Alive”, “Glamorous Shades”, “It’s Noise” and “Seek And Find”.

Regarding how she landed the gig as the singer in Mangini‘s solo band, Majura wrote on her social media: “When I was a young teenager, my awesome dad took me to a concert of a guitar player called (Steve Vai), who became one of the most meaningful musicians in my life and literally influenced who I became in life. He was on tour with this thing called ‘G3’. I was little, but I was in the front row. Not only was I fascinated by Steve‘s performance, but also I realized for the first time what a drummer does: I understood when he hits the ‘golden plates’ it’s a very treble-ish shhh-sound, when he does some thing with his feet, the big drum is producing a low-end sound of dummdumm and the ‘white thing’ (=snare) in the middle is being a very punchy loud sound. Little did I know that the drummer’s name was (Mike Mangini) and when he gave me his drumstick at the end of the show… for a few days, I thought I’d become a drummer instead of a guitar player. All of this happened decades ago. So I can easily say that Mike Mangini was the first drummer that made me understand what a drummer does.

“2 decades later, I’ve already become an active professional touring musician, I met up with Mike again during a summer when DREAM THEATER played a lot of festival shows and I happened to play the same festivals with the band I was with back then. Mike and I started talking, met up at festival caterings, spent a bit of time in festival backstages together, I handed him my first solo album and told him the story of my childhood with the ‘G3’ concert…

“In 2020 I approached Mike to participate in my ‘1min jammms’ YouTube Series and we had major fun performing Stevie Wonder‘s ‘Sir Duke’ together with my dear friend (Alex Skolnick). Little did I expect that Mike would choose me to be the vocalist for his first solo album ever.

“If there are any meaningful things in life for me personally – this is it!!! I am beyond proud of this collaboration and I’m even more grateful to have gotten to known this amazing human being and finding a new friend for life through countless hours of Zoom and Facetime recording sessions.”

Mangini joined DREAM THEATER in late 2010 through a widely publicized audition following the departure of Mike Portnoy, who co-founded DREAM THEATER more than 30 years ago. Mangini beat out six other of the world’s top drummers — Marco Minnemann, Virgil Donati, Aquiles Priester, Thomas Lang, Peter Wildoer and Derek Roddy — for the gig, a three-day process that was filmed for a documentary-style reality show called “The Spirit Carries On”.

DREAM THEATER won its first-ever Grammy in the “Best Metal Performance” category in the pre-telecast ceremony at the 64th annual Grammy Awards, which was held in April 2022 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. DREAM THEATER was nominated for “The Alien”, a track from its 2021 album “A View From The Top Of The World”. DREAM THEATER‘s previous Grammy nominations were for the song “On The Backs Of Angels”, from 2011’s “A Dramatic Turn Of Events” album, and the single “The Enemy Inside” from 2013’s “Dream Theater”.

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