Dream Theater's John Petrucci - Wikipedia: Fact or Fiction?

hey everybody this is John Petrucci from Dream Theater and you're watching Loudwire hey everyone Graham from Loudwire here and I'm with mr. John Petrucci from Dream Theater thank you so much for your time today nice severe Oh so appreciative distance over time is the new Dream Theater record make sure you pick that up so I went on to Wikipedia today okay looked at your page Dream Theater album songs all that stuff right pulled out some stuff you can tell me if it's fact or fiction and elaborate if you don't mind first of all because we always have to check John Peter yeah it's routine that's correct born in Long Island New York that's correct that's correct yes they do get that wrong sometimes it says that you picked up the guitar at age eight because your older sister was allowed to go to bed later in order to practice the piano yeah let me let me clarify that a little bit the actual age I'm not totally sure it was okay in that zone I was definitely young before ten so young enough to have a bedtime still yes exactly and my younger sister I'm sorry my older sister played the organ organ oh oh yeah so we had this she would take Oregon lessons at night and I would be like in bed by 7:00 or whatever and I would hear her get having these glorious lessons and I'd be like man this sucks like why don't I get to stay up late she gets to stay up late you know kids are so yes and so yeah my elaborate plan was like I'll play guitar this way my lesson will be at night I'll show her yeah but then my lesson was like on Saturday like dad that's what it said that you've decided to quit when your attempts to stay up late were on success they were and I honestly I hated it and I had this like guitar that was really hard to play okay it might have been like that that Hello Kitty one was the action super high action was high the guy bless his heart you know this older man came in with a pitch pipe and a Mel Bay book and I'm playing like mary had a little yeah I was like this sucks - it's said that you picked up the guitar again at 12 yeah that's correct all right and you committed yourself to practicing six hours a day when you discovered how much you really love the guitar the I did start when I was 12 I met John my young shortly thereafter we met in middle school and he was just like me just obsessed with yeah at bass you know and we made this pact where we had to practice six hours a day like that was a hack together so you know back then middle school going into high school and everything there was there were like a lot of parties you know guys were like you know we're going to the beach we're gonna hang out a little but and so John and I had the secret sort of thing that like if we saw each other at that party it would mean that we had put in our six hours like we just see and be like it was just like okay practice always first the practice first so and if the guy wasn't there you'd be like practice he's practicing well I'm glad you brought up the the thing about you and John yes practicing six hours a day because I'm Wikipedia it says that you started that six-hour practice rule once you started at Berklee No so it was before that was like middle school oh yeah okay so there's a little bit of fiction yeah yeah interesting metropolis one was originally known as crumbling metropolis that sounds about right that sounds about right yeah I think so it said sometime around 89 crumbling was dropped part one in the title was originally added by yourself as a joke as no sequel was ever intended at that time well you know what we were huge Rush fans of course you know and like when he whenever you can see a rush song part one and it was it's like you got to do it you know so yeah so the part one was like it was your inside rush joke every day was it wasn't like there wasn't really intended to be another section gotcha it wasn't like seven years later right we'll do part two exactly gotcha yeah it says that when Kevin Moore announced that he was leaving the band that you especially found the news very hard to guess well that was a tough time absolutely you know Kevin and I he was my best friend growing up so you know we like you know every guy probably has like a frame that they just do everything you know it's like we literally did everything together our families were friends you know we lived right around the corner from each other so it's like every day we were just hanging out playing music doing everything and you know then obviously our band became successful which was the dream we both had we were touring we had everything going for us and we were you know doing the awake you know recording and he was like yeah I'm gonna leave and that I just was like devastated yeah and I was like what you know I don't understand so yeah so for me personally it was very heartbreaking you know because that was basically you know at that point and he kind of like sort of disappeared and went on did his own thing and you know we've been in touch very little and I haven't actually talked to him in in a long long time so it was basically the end of that longtime childhood relationship yeah yeah get on a call yeah come on man moving on to the song misunderstood yeah it says you wrote and played the guitar solo then reversed it then you learned how to play the reverse version after recording it you reversed it again so that means like it was back to the I I know that live I had it's definitely reverse and live I have to like mimic a reverse playing when I'm trying to play it okay but I'm gonna I'm gonna say I'm not I don't really recall how we did that exactly okay yeah I'd have to listen to it again I mean we might have just reversed it and that was it yeah if you reverse something twice that's backward be gonna be kind of silly it would be kind of a pointless exercise right exactly so the black clouds album a nightmare to remember was based on a childhood car incident yes and the account of Tuscany was about an actual encounter in Tuscany yes that's true they're both true what happened in Tuscany did you get kidnapped or something it's a long story with the the concept lyrically personally behind the black clouds album was to write about real events that happened II a nightmare to remember it was about a car accident that my entire family was in that we all survived my father was actually very badly injured but it was a family car accident that was horrible Wow but anyway count of Tuscany was an experience that I had with my good friend Mark Snyder who was my guitar tech and John my young and another guy who is our current drum tech who was like brand-new at that time and my buddy mark is now a huge success in the wine business and Owens Red Hook winery in Brooklyn the only winery in Brooklyn cool but he was interested in possibly working with this winery in Tuscany said you want to come to this castle with the count and so this guy yeah this guy's Sebastiano picked us up in his little car his tiny little car and we drove through the city in Florence and you know the first thing he said was that we're going to this castle and oh yeah just as an aside you know if you know the Silence of the Lambs story Silence of the Lambs ii this the sequel hannibal where he's in tuscany you know anthony hopkins character he's playing at the curator of this big library right in florence and that base that was based on the counts brother like on his life oh yeah so it was like okay that's weird and scary yeah that was weird that's really weird so we eventually we knew that so that was freaky we went to this castle met the brother who was like Italian but had an English accent and was smoking a pipe and he was like this historian everything any and we proceeded to have the most bizarre experience of our lives of four of us with all these like weird count encounters at the castle with the brother and wow I was really freaky like there's one room that we went into and they had these like floor-to-ceiling wine barrels asleep okay and the guy was in an historian as I mentioned and so he proceeded to tell us that during the war these soldiers would come in there to hide from the Germans and they'd go into the wine barrels and they're still in there to this day you know just like freaky things like that there's just some weird dude in a castle yeah and so when when I decided to write about real-life situations I'm like um but why man odd yeah so it's a little weird a little unconventional Wow you know that's how oppa might think it's hokey no that's all funny I like that this is that a wither is a ballad written about the process that you go through during the writing of the song yes so here's the funny thing you know sometimes we talked about what people interpret things like the meaning yeah yeah so you know people I've had a lot of people say a lot of things about they like the poetry of that song and the deep meaning and everything well when I was trying to come up with a subject matter for that particular song was talking to my wife and we were joking we were talking about the Seinfeld episode where they're right it's a show about nothing yeah so she was like write a song about nothing and so that was my my concept was I was writing a song about nothing and it turned into like the process of like that when you're going to write music or lyrics or a story there's this point that you get to where you you know you will you basically have nothing and you're starting your staring at a blank page or your lean guitar whatever in the process that happens so it's not as deep as it sounds it starts on a very like funny place but it find out to be a really cool song that's like the the least it's almost like the least dream theater thing I've ever heard yeah to write a song about nothing yes last one yeah it says you are an avid fan of bodybuilding and dedicate much of your off time to weight training I did I've been doing that for many years something I discovered a while back I actually I was in a skiing accident Oh which was scary because I as a kid I never skied and so we decided you know once we had kids we wanted to like take them skiing yeah them experience that and of course as an adult like trying to learn how to ski yeah yeah it was pretty bad in skiing out here on the east coast where there's a lot of ice and everything like that I went tumbling down a mountain and dislocated my shoulder and it was really awful but I started kind of rehabilitating that and you know I couldn't move my arm at all never mind lift anything the nightmare for a guitarist yeah yeah but fortunately I recovered from that and decided to like to Train and so then I got really really into it and never looked back awesome it's you know it's the type of thing where like makes you feel strong and healthy and you know you can go to do some sort of normal activity and not throw your back out yeah all right John thank you so much I appreciate it so much thank you thank you all right [Music]

Channel: Loudwire

Views: 326,631

Keywords: dream theater, john petrucci, loudwire, interview, wikipedia, fact or fiction, loudwire wiki, distance over time, metropolis, guitar, mike portnoy

Id: FU3027fuZBE

Length: 11min 38sec (698 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 14 2019