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Interview with James LaBrie - Dream Theater
We met singer James LaBrie just before the concert at KB Hallen, Denmark, January 20th 2004. The soundcheck was behind schedule and we had to wait 45 minutes. We were worried that this meant that we would have little or no time to do the interview but LaBrie merely shrugged and said that the soundcheck was always behind schedule. So we got nice little interview with the frontman of Dream Theater who seemed to be in a really good mood. This was confirmed later at the concert where he and the whole band were in excellent shape! Read the concert review here
Tajs: Could you say a few words about your new album Train of Thoughts?
Well, I think what should be said is what everyone else picked up on: It's definitely our heaviest album; that we've ever made. Surpassed "Awake" on that level. I think it's once again showing people that we never want to repeat ourselves. We are always willing to experiment and move on and see what else is out there for us to musically, you know, journey on with. Also on this album basically we were presenting people with another stab from us, showing different sides of us and different influences and I think each album kind of shows you where the band's at as far as what we are feeling musically or what we feel can best describe us at this moment in time. I think that "Train of Thought" is definitely showing... This is the kind of album we wanted to do now, real heavy.
Tajs: So you decided to write a real heavy one...?
You know, it's kind of like... We are on tour and at the soundchecks we do, we might search in and a riff will come out and it just so happened that on our last tour we were doing soundchecks and a lot of the stuff we were playing around with was pretty heavy so it was like a foreshadow of what was to come. Once we came to the writing stages, Mike had collected all these ideas we were working on. He brought them to the rehearsal studio when we were starting to write and said here are the ideas we had before. Let's take that and embellish on it. And that's basically what happened and everything else kind of followed.
Tajs: Is there a general message in Train of Thoughts? I'm talking about the lyrics...
Well, I think each lyric is either dealing with things on a social level or it's dealing with things that are personal. You know, once again the relationship that we have with ourselves and the understanding and the... I don't know, transcending where we might be at some point in life that might not be too favourable and trying to rise above that and become a better person. Other lyrics are dealing with politically what's happening in the world and maybe just how affected we all are by how impressionable some of these people can be. And then there are other things like, things that happen to people on a more day-to-day basis at any given time.
Tommy: I was wondering, how has it affected DT getting Jordan into the band on the creative front, I mean, he is very talented...?
Oh, he is incredibly talented. I mean, Jordan is great, it's definitely a fact that the sounds of DT sonically tend to be the sound of today and even when at moments it's really progressive, because there are still a lot of progressive elements within Train of Thought, I mean, this is where Jordan really shines and shows just how fluent he is on his instrument. So he definitely is a big influence and he is a big part of the team and he helps to bring DT to another level.
Tommy: The songs Disappear and Vacant on the two latest albums have a very moving feeling in common where you wrote the lyrics. Do you see them as experiments of DT, perhaps something new for the band?
That particular song, Disappear, if you want to talk about that one, or even Vacant from the last album... To some degree there is a personal situation, something I have experienced indirectly or directly. Something that I had to write because I felt good therapeutically, actually putting it on paper and then tell a story and to guide it to where I wanted to go melodically with the song. I think that with DT, no one song is going to say what path and direction we are going. This may be something that we tend to lean towards more in the future. I mean, most or all of DT's songs are very diverse and I think that's what keeps us interesting; you never know what's going to hit you next. And I think that's going to continue and in fact, this type of songs that come up... I think it shows the dynamic creativity in the band. And that's good because it puts in a lot of different colours because of that.
Tajs: You mentioned the word "politically" just before. Would you say that DT has a political dimension?
Well, I don't think that we are standing up there with a certain flag or a certain political party saying this is what we support and this is what you should think. It's a lot less in the preaching sense, I think politically what we touch on when we do include that within the lyrics, is our viewing of the situation, our interpretation of what's going on around us and it's not necessarily what we feel that everybody else should feel. It's just our interpretation of what we see going on around us in the world and the world is in a very peculiar situation right now and has been for quite some time, terrorists and all.
But when you really think about where does all this stem from? It's stems from religion, you know, it stems from beliefs, it stems from what people think is verbally superior to your belief from my belief and I think that's where the conflict happens, that's where the confrontations happen. And that's where the ignorance comes into play, for example the whole song In the Name of God. That's what this whole thing is dealing with, all these different relations out there, when people are brought into these situations almost in a cult-like fashion and are brainwashed and misinterpreted, the true meaning behind it, that it's supposed to bring us all closer together, open our minds up to the fact that the picture is much grander than what we see and what we can comprehend at this point in our lives or at this point in our existence.
I think it's beyond our comprehension and I've said that for a long time. But I think at the same time that it's up to us to get it together and realize that we should all come together on this, it's something so grand that we can all be a piece of it and really make life that much more... I don't know... for lack of better words.. Joyous, more harmony and all amongst us, it doesn't matter what race you are, the ethnic core of you or anyone else, it just has to come down to the fact that whatever put us here is something beyond our wildest dreams. But anyways, I'm going out on a tangent here.
Tajs: You just put vocals on the new Ayreon project, with Arjen Lucassen in Holland.
Yeah, I just saw him the other day actually. He was at our show in Holland. It's been amazing, the music is incredible. It's called The Human Equation and basically I'm the main character so I sing throughout the album. I don't want to give too much away because Arjen doesn't really want to talk much about it because he wants it to have a big impact when it gets close to the release. All I can tell you is that the music is fabulous, I mean he is an amazing writer, he is a very creative person, very talented. And he was really cool to work with, him and I got along so well. We have been in contact with each other for almost as long back as three years ago. He contacted my by email: "I would love for you to sing on one of my albums" and I said "Well, when the time is right, we'll know it and if we can make our schedules fit, then lets do it". He wrote me about six months ago and said "Hey, I'm pretty much there, I just need some tweaking here and there musically and lyrically. Can you do it?" and I said: "Show me the stuff, let me hear it" and when I got the music it was like "Wow, I want to be a part of this for sure!". So it's great, it's really cool.
Tajs: Do you use your voice differently with him?
There are a lot of different things that I was able to do with him in this whole piece, because there was a lot of character, like on "Scenes From a Memory" I had to become the feminine person at one point, I then had to become the aggressor. So here a lot of these elements showed themselves so once again I was able to be very diverse and show different colours to my voice. So yeah, it was great, we had a really good time. He had food poisoning while I was there, so he had a hard time using the studio. He was at his pult like this: (LaBrie bending over with hands to his stomach and a look of pain in his face) "Yeah, argh, that was great". He was not feeling good, not at all. But we got through and basically I sang everything in two days and I hung out because I was there for four days but it went by really quick, I had a really good time. He is a beautiful person, a really good guy.
Tommy: On the Ayreon site I read that you got lost out there?
Yeah, I went jogging. Well, the day that I flew in I went to Arjen's place and I went to bed for four hours because of the jetlag and I knew that that night I wanted to do some singing so I did my sleep ting, I got up and I went for a jog and yeah, I got lost... He was out there looking for me in his car. I was gone for like two hours. I was only going to be gone for like forty minutes but it ended up being more like two hours. Pretty wild. And I wasn't necessarily dressed for that kind of weather because I was going to jog but after forty minutes jogging I said "OK, I have had enough of this" and then I started walking around trying to find my way back and I did find my way back.
Tommy: Ha ha we are glad that you did.
So was he! He was freaking out. "Oh my God, I just got him over here and I lost him!".
Tommy: On the "Scenes From A Memory" album, you were engaging in a pretty complex story and concept. How do you think that worked and is there a possibility that you will do that again?
I think it worked fabulously, I mean we were all very happy the way that whole album turned out. That was our stab at doing a conceptual album being the band we were it was bound to happen sooner or later. So we were very, very satisfied with that album, the way it turned out. And obviously a huge gratification that our fans just completely embraced it.
As far as going back and doing something like that, I mean, at this point in the game I don't really see it in the foreseeable future but maybe down the road again, maybe it will be something that we will want a stab at again. But not at this point, I think that at this point we are concentrating at albums and at the next album we want to do something different again and present the people with something different again. But maybe somewhere down the road, maybe it will be something we will want to experiment with again.
Tajs: If you or DT for some reason could not play metal anymore, what other genre would you choose? Like pop, classical, jazz?
What would I personally choose, or what the band would choose?
Tajs: Both you and the band.
If we couldn't play metal anymore then it would be like constricting us from our creativity so... I could never see that happen for one thing, ok, because if it did, if things like that started to present themselves. That for whatever reason we couldn't do this or that, then it would be the end of it. I think we would just say: "Fuck it". And that was that whole big thing after Falling Into Infinity that we got into with the label. "You've got to give us complete creative freedom so that we can do anything we want when we want and this is the kind of band that we are and if you don't get it, we are gone". So I could never see that happening. I think that as while we are a band we will always do whatever we feel is necessary. And if that means tabbing into any given style of music, so be it.
But personally for me there are so many things on the side that I do that gives me that freedom to show myself as a vocalist aside from the DT material. I mean, I just did a project, I don't know if you heard of it, it's called Frameshift and it's really cool. It's with this guy, Henning Pauly. It's fabulous because I was really able to present myself completely differently as a vocalist. And you will hear it if you ever hear this, it's incredible. I did these two spots a capella and there are these other parts where there are all these triads going on vocally like Queen did and it's really cool. And anybody who has heard it has gone "Wow, holy shit this is amazing". So that kind of gives me my way to get out and show people other sides of me and the other guys do the same thing. They have various side projects.
Tommy: (Sensing that time was about to expire) We thank you for your time and we're looking forward to tonight.
Yeah, and check out that Frameshift, I think you guys will really appreciate that.
And so James was on his way and we quickly agreed that he had been extremely cool to interview.
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Written by Tajs & Tommy - 1/27/2004 |
This article has been shown 12065 times. Go to the complete list.
RevelationZ Comments
| Comment by lars Aanum (Anonymous) - Friday, January 30, 2004 | COOOOOOLLLLLLLL Interveiw...!!!!!!
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| Comment by Yoni (Anonymous) - Sunday, February 1, 2004 | mega - jealous... good job guys! *thumbs up*
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| Comment by Morten (Anonymous) - Friday, February 6, 2004 | Nice interveiw!!
He's just a nice guy that Mr LaBrie is'nt he, really calm and laid back. And then he's the tallest of them all which really dos'nt say much...
Last thing (I'm not mocking you Mr LaBrie), he looks like Fabio don't ya think? ;-)
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| Comment by Jesper Rønde Hansen (Anonymous) - Thursday, March 25, 2004 | Tajs man!! This is some COOL! shit dude.. Looking forward to an interview with John Petrucci also, if you'll ever Conquer that victory ;-.. but this interview was VERY COOL!!.. Besos Jesper
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| Comment by Rune Hansen (Anonymous) - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 | Hi
Please write to me mail@runehansen.dk regarding use of this interview :)
thx.
/Rune
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| Comment by Vincent (Anonymous) - Wednesday, March 23, 2005 | It's kind of funny how he looked very much the way I expected him to.
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