Biography Dream Theater

Founding members John Myung, Mike Portnoy and John Petrucci in 1986Dream Theater was formed in 1986 by guitarist John Petrucci, bassist John Myung and drummer Mike Portnoy while studying at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Kevin Moore, a high school band-mate of Petrucci's, was recruited to play keyboards and Chris Collins was enlisted as vocalist.

The quintet settled on the name Majesty for their newly-formed group (a name inspired by Portnoy's description of the closing section of "Bastille Day" by Rush), and the three Berklee attendees dropped out to concentrate on the band.

In November 1986, after a few months of writing and performing together, Chris Collins left the band because of creative differences with the other members. After a year of trying to find a replacement, Charlie Dominici, who was far older and more experienced than anyone else in the band, successfully auditioned for the group. With the stability that Dominici's appointment brought to Majesty, they began playing more shows in and around the New York City area, and gained a considerable amount of exposure for a band that had not yet released an album.

Their first major recording project was The Majesty Demos, a collection of ideas and demos that were released in 1987. The initial run of 1,000 sold out within six months, and dubbed copies of the cassette spread like wildfire through the progressive metal scene all over the world.

Shortly after the release of the demos, they were forced to change their name when another band named Majesty threatened legal action. Various names were trialled until Portnoy's father suggested the name Dream Theater, which was subsequently settled upon.

They signed their first record contract, with Mechanic (a division of MCA), in 1988 and set out to record their debut album.

When Dream and Day Unite was released in 1989 to far less fanfare than was anticipated. Mechanic ended up breaking the majority of the financial promises they had made to the band prior to signing their contract, so they were restricted to playing around NYC. The promotional tour for the album consisted of just five concerts, all of which were in New York or Rhode Island.

After the fourth of these gigs, Dominici was fired because of personal and creative differences between him and the rest of the band. Shortly after, however, Marillion asked Dream Theater to open for them at a gig at the Ritz in New York, so Dominici was given the opportunity to perform one last time. It would be a further two years before Dream Theater had another full-time singer.

[edit]
1991 - 1994
Following Dominici's firing, Dream Theater fought successfully to be released from their contract with Mechanic, and set about auditioning singers and writing material for their next album. In the time until they had secured a replacement vocalist, they wrote the majority of the music for what would become their second album, Images and Words.

In their search for a new singer they auditioned over 200 people, among them former Fates Warning frontman John Arch, but all were turned down for various reasons. In 1991 a tape arrived from Canadian singer James LaBrie, who was immediately flown to New York for a proper audition. After a short jam session he was hired as full-time singer.

For the next few months, the band resumed gigging, and worked on vocal parts for all the music that they had written to that point. ATCO Records (now EastWest) signed Dream Theater to a seven album contract on the strength of their reputation and a three song demo (later made available as "The ATCO Demos" through the Dream Theater fan club).


The cover of Dream Theater's Images and Words albumThe first album to be released under their new record contract was Images and Words in 1992. The song "Pull Me Under" gained a lot of radio airplay, and as a result the label commissioned a video clip for its promotion, which had high MTV rotation.

The success of "Pull Me Under", combined with relentless touring throughout the U.S. and Japan, caused Images and Words to achieve gold record certification in the States and platinum in Japan. A tour of Europe followed in 1993, which included a show at London's famed Marquee jazz club. That show was recorded and released as Live at the Marquee, Dream Theater's first official live album. Additionally, a video compilation of their Japanese concerts (mixed in with some documentary-style footage of the off-stage portion of the tour) was released as Images and Words: Live in Tokyo.

Keen to work on fresh material, Dream Theater retreated to the studio in May 1994. The 1994 sessions were the first in which Dream Theater as a whole wrote music together that was specifically for an album.

Awake, Dream Theater's third studio album, was released in October 1994 in a hail of controversy among established fans. Shortly before the album was mixed, Moore announced to the rest of the band that he wished to concentrate on his own musical interests and would be quitting Dream Theater. This rocked a band that had enjoyed just two years of stability after a tumultuous first half-decade, but Moore was no longer interested in the life of a touring musician nor the brand of progressive metal Dream Theater performed, so the two parties went their separate ways.

As a result of that news, the band had to scramble to find a replacement keyboardist instead of jumping head-first into touring mode.

Jordan Rudess, an up-and-coming keyboardist who was relatively unknown to that point, was invited to play a trial performance with Dream Theater in the hopes that he would join the band. The gig went well, but Rudess decided to join The Dixie Dregs as a touring member instead of Dream Theater, and Derek Sherinian was brought on as a hired-gun instead. By the conclusion of the Awake promotional tour, Sherinian was Dream Theater's full-time keyboardist.