Mike Mangini Q&A: The Dream Theater Experience

DRUM!: Did you already know the songs or have to start from scratch?
Mangini: Oh, no, I didn’t know them. I’ve enjoyed their music many, many times, but I’ve never learned a Dream Theater song in my life. I was just all business about it when I got the songs. I grabbed the nearest pencil and paper and got to work. I then bought these big pencils for kids with big erasers on them. [laughs] I wrote everything out. Then I listened to them at half speed; at 75 percent speed; at full speed; at 40 percent speed before even practicing them with the slow-downer software [Amazing X] and it doesn’t change the pitch. I can’t imagine what all the people these days have for tools: lessons online, slow-down tools, zoom-in tools, multi angle – are you kidding me? No wonder there are so many people getting better so much more quickly.

DRUM!: Did you take any liberties?
Mangini: If anyone was to just see me play or look at audition videos or something they might say, ’Hey, man, I thought you said he played every note exactly as written,’ because maybe I hit a different cymbal or something – I don’t know. I hit everything I thought was the right thing. If I hit a hi-hat versus a splash, hey, I’m sorry. That’s because my hearing at 3K and up is limited and I am on a waiting list for hearing aids at this time. I practiced a million hours a day when I was a child and I had a stereo blasting. My stereo system speakers, those were my headphones, no earplugs. Maybe I learned to put toilet paper in them because my ears started to hurt, but you put 30 years of that into the mix and your ears are not going to take it.

DRUM!: Did you second-guess what you played after it was all over?
Mangini: I was running through the jams and tests in my mind afterwards, and although I did have a quick thought of ’Man, I should have done this; I could have done that.’ That quickly went out of my head because then I calmed myself down thinking, ’Wait a minute. I just nailed it, shut up and have some food.’

The waiting part was awful in this Twilight Zone kind of way. I almost threw up between classes at Berklee – probably that was during Marco’s audition, as I know what time he auditioned and that is the time I got ill. And I was really wrecked because I wanted it so badly. I had a lot of heartfelt reasons for wanting to do this, not that the other guys didn’t, it’s just that I didn’t know where they’re coming from.

What was hard for me was thinking about my life without [Dream Theater]. Those four guys made me feel comfortable and [after it was all over] I missed them because it was a classy move for them to treat everyone so well, actually. So it was painful for me, because I didn’t tell anybody – not even my parents or my siblings knew that I won the spot, but they knew I auditioned, which made it worse for them. When they asked me, I just went mum, I went completely silent on everybody. And so it was extremely difficult. But before I got the call from them saying that I indeed won the audition I got white hair on my head.

DRUM!: Were you involved in writing new Dream Theater songs?
Mangini: I was zero involved in it. It’s the four of them. This new material is stuff that they’ve never had the opportunity to do without a drummer. My involvement is going to be worrying about the drums and backing this band. I have too much work to do, you know? I’ve been off the stage as a full-time job for much too long. I just want to sit on a drum stool. I want to see those orange and magenta lights reflecting off my drums. I want to hear the crowd. I want to play drums – that’s what I want to do right now. That’s all I want to do. I didn’t want to get involved in anything at that time. If I have strengths to offer the band, those will show themselves in time.

DRUM!: Any new songs that were especially difficult?
Mangini: The one where I put the most amount of psychotic, two-things-at-the-same-time type of drumming would be track six [still unnamed as of press time]. While multi time signature shifts were going on, I was playing in a time signature that was completely different from those with one limb on one side of my body. And I was really hitting the drums. I’m very proud of it, but they liked it musically. I wouldn’t do it just to throw it in. I didn’t do it for that reason. I did it because I had a mathematical joy out of it. Oh, my gosh, it would be amazing to play in 7/16 here, but yet it’s changing time signatures 18 times or something.

When I got [in the tracking room, guitarist] John Petrucci just bled his soul through mine and into the drums – it wasn’t me. I mean, it was me, but he brought out of me this intro to one of the songs and it was actually so hard to come up with the best possible thing with all the choices I had in my mind, that I didn’t do it all by myself. I did it with John Petrucci, so it was really something. So that kind of established the protocol for our relationship, which was wonderful. I was just like, “Man, I don’t want this to be about me. I’m not happy with my [input] alone. Sometimes I can’t get away from me. I want this to be about us.”

DRUM!: Will you miss teaching at Berklee?
Mangini: I’m grateful for it, had a lot of great times and I’ll always miss a ton of people I worked with there. Put it this way: I got along well with a lot of people there for a reason, and I felt honored to be a part of that awesome Percussion Department. I’d take a ride in there to hang out in a heartbeat when the chaos slows down. I really want to add that I am so proud of the students that I had, especially in my last semester there. They would never think this of me, but [some people] might think I thought, “Gee, I got a new gig. See you later.”

Students for the last few years knew I was missing the stage. Still, they need to know that I did not tell my parents that I won the audition until a week before the documentary appeared online, so they, or anybody should not feel left out of the news if interested in it. My students didn’t impose on me. I need to stress “my.” They didn’t poke at me, or cross boundaries. That doesn’t mean everybody, in and out of Berklee, spared me.

I say the following to contrast how classy the students were: In one case, a visitor that I never even met walked up to me while I was minding my own business, and busy, where my boss was about nine feet from me and another faculty was next to him. The guy interrupted what I was doing – the kind of person that gets too physically close – and says, “Hey, man, congratulations on getting some gig, what, Dream Theater, I think? Cool! Yeah, man, so what are you going to do about working here?” What an intrusive, rude, and boundary-crossing thing to say when I am at the place of my employment around people I care about. I didn’t even get “the call” at that point. Additionally, I suffered a few instances of my getting intruded upon in different forms, very few, but I wasn’t surprised; they’re probably the ones always hitting “Reply All” all the time.

On the flip side of some suffering, the students knew that the Dream Theater drummer audition was going down because the news of their search was public, but they respected my privacy suspecting that I would get a call to audition. Who auditioned was private for months afterwards. I was so impressed with their strength. I love them a lot for that. I was torn about having to not tell them once I knew I was the guy. I didn’t want to say anything to them in part because I didn’t want it to interfere with our studies, because no matter what you say, it changes things. But on the other side, I wanted to tell them screaming at the top of my lungs with joy saying, “You see? The methods, they work!” Well, I used to say that a lot anyway, but winning this audition helps validate some things.