[AUS NEWS] DREAM THEATER “Images, Words & Beyond” Australian Shows

 
“They were written one at a time,” clarified Mike Portnoy on the songs that make up the “12 Step Suite” which is the cornerstone of the upcoming Shattered Fortress shows in November. “Basically I had this idea in 2001 when Dream Theatre was making the “Six Degrees” album of writing about the Twelve Steps [The Twelve Steps of AA] because I had just gotten sober and it was something that was a very big part of my life at that time. I figured the twelve steps was such a massive concept I didn’t want to delegate it all to one song so I had this idea of splitting it up into chapters and putting a few on each album. So I wrote about steps one, two and three with “The Glass Prison” from the “Six Degrees” album and a couple of years later I wrote about steps four and five and then a few years later six and seven and so forth and basically the whole process took about ten years over the course of five different albums. The sad thing was once I had finally completed this massive concept I left Dream Theatre shortly afterwards so I never had the chance to perform it in its entirety which was always my intention.”

The five songs, “The Glass Prison”, “The Dying Soul”, “The Root of All Evil”, “Repentance” and “The Shattered Fortress” were written as a means of helping Portnoy through the difficult period of giving up an addiction, but while they ultimately helped many of his fans deal with their own demons, the songs were always meant to be more personal.

Read more of this interview…