MIKE PORTNOY: 'I Feel Music Is Meant To Be Heard Immediately'

Brian Rademacher of Rock Eyez recently conducted an interview with drummer Mike Portnoy (ADRENALINE MOB, DREAM THEATER, AVENGED SEVENFOLD). A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Brian Rademacher: I'm hearing a lot of fans can't find the [ADRENALINE MOB] physical CD?

Rock Eyez: You can get it off my web site and we will have it at the [band's] shows. Basically this is something we are putting out ourselves just to get it out immediately because we are touring with GODSMACK and doing some of our own shows. We didn't want to wait for the full album which will come out next year. This is just a temporary setting to get this music out. It was not to be at the mercy of the way labels work with a three-to-four-month set-up. We didn't want to wait.

Rock Eyez: Do you feel the way to go now is downloads?

Mike Portnoy: I do, I think in a perfect world you would have both, but I like collecting myself. I remember the last album with DREAM THEATER and went in a sat with the heads at Roadrunner and I pitched them desperately, "Let's release the album now, let's put it out and make available for download we can still sell a physical CD with a special edition and a bonus disc. Three months down the road, you can still do your set-up, but let's get it out for the fans now. " And I desperately pitched it, [but] they weren't ready to make the plunge. I guess we are using that mentality now with the ADRENALINE MOB release. . . In today's world people get their information here and now in real time. It has its negative side but it also has its positive sides. I feel music is meant to be heard immediately. As a fan, I download music all the time, because if I am sitting in a hotel in Madison, Wisconsin early in the morning and I'm reading about a band I want to be able to check it out right there and then. I don't want to wait until my next day off or to go to a music store if I can even find one. I still collect CDs because I'm a collector.

Rock Eyez: Comparing the industry today vs. back in the day.

Mike Portnoy: Oh my God, it's a world different. When I signed my first record deal back in 1988, it was completely different. Everything was the success of a band, it was based on MTV play and that is what makes or breaks a band. Our first album, we didn't do a video and we were completely buried and fell right into oblivion immediately. A couple years later, we did our second record with Atco and that was a seven-album deal that lasted fifteen years of our career and that album we did a video and it was plastered all over MTV and the radio and we were on tour all over the world and that made the biggest difference. Back then you sold records; a band like DREAM THEATER back in 1992 sold a half million records. Nowadays the Madonnas and Lady Gagas aren't even selling like DREAM THEATER used to. I recently saw this quote so I am paraphrasing someone else's quote, it was a funny thing and very true, "Back in the old days there were hundreds of bands selling millions of records nowadays there are millions of bands selling hundreds of records." It's the truth, the industry has so much music and so many bands it's hard for any of them to get any sales like they used to. It's a different world right now.

Read the entire interview from Rock Eyez.

Photo credit: Joe LaRusso