Mike Portnoy

Michael Stephen Portnoy (born April 20, 1967) is an American drummer primarily known for his work with the influential progressive metal band Dream Theater. Portnoy is known for his virtuosity on drums, and for winning 21 awards from the Modern Drummer magazine. He (along with his bandmate John Petrucci) has produced the last four Dream Theater albums, starting from Scenes From a Memory. He is also the youngest person (at 37 years of age) to be inducted into Rock Drummer Hall of Fame. Though he is occasionally criticized for being 'overly technical', Portnoy remains one of the iconic members of the modern progressive rock and progressive metal scene.

Mike Portnoy was born and raised in Long Beach, New York, on Long Island. His father worked as a DJ at a local radio station, helping Portnoy gain an appreciation for music at an early age through bands like Led Zeppelin, The Who and The Beatles. Although Portnoy taught himself how to play the drums he did take music theory classes in high school, and during that period he began playing in local bands Intruder, Rising Power and Inner Sanctum, the latter of which released an album. He left Inner Sanctum after being awarded a scholarship to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he and childhood friends John Petrucci and John Myung formed a band called Majesty, that would become Dream Theater.

Portnoy names his biggest influences as Rush drummer Neil Peart, and composer/guitarist Frank Zappa. Other favorites include drummers Terry Bozzio, Vinnie Colaiuta, Peter Criss, Simon Phillips, John Bonham, Keith Moon, Ringo Starr and Bill Bruford and bands such as The Beatles, Queen, Yes, Rush, Pink Floyd, Muse, Metallica, Jellyfish, Iron Maiden, KISS, Phish, Deep Purple, Radiohead, Umphrey's McGee, U2 and Jane's Addiction.

Portnoy has won 20 awards from Modern Drummer magazine, including "Best Up & Coming Talent" (one time), "Best Clinician" (two times), "Best Educational Video/DVD" (two times), "Best recorded performance" (5 times) and "Best Progressive Rock Drummer" (for 12 consecutive years), and is also the youngest person (at 37 years of age) to be inducted into their Rock Drummer Hall of Fame.

He has also been the catalyst for founding several other progressive rock groups and projects: Transatlantic, Liquid Tension Experiment, and O.S.I. (with former Dream Theater keyboardist Kevin Moore), touring as well with Mexican drummer "Chucho" Dávila giving free clinic sessions to local Music Stores in Texas in 2005.

He has released two instructional videos, Progressive Drum Concepts and Liquid Drum Theater, the latter winning awards from Modern Drummer Magazine. He has also released many "Official Bootlegs" on his website, including footage of the studio sessions for the Dream Theater albums Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, Train of Thought, Octavarium and the Transatlantic release Bridge Across Forever. He also recently released bootlegs of his tribute bands Hammer of the Gods (a Led Zeppelin tribute) and Yellow Matter Custard (Beatles), with more expected from his other tribute projects Cygnus and his Sea Monsters (Rush) and Mike Portnoy's Amazing Journey (The Who).

He also played with New Jersey thrash metal band Overkill for one show in 2004.

On September 18th, 2006 within his website's Forum Portnoy cagily stated that he had finally met Rush drummer Neil Peart (one of the few heroes from his youth Portnoy had never met, owing to Peart's legendary privacy), that "Neil and I have finally met and we spent some time together this week and had a great time..." [1], and that a possible collaboration was underway/had been discussed with the teasing statement of "Patience everybody... all will soon be revealed!" It has now been revealed that this was meeting was for an interview Portnoy did for his stint as guest editor of Rhythm Magazine.[2] Portnoy had previously written the liner notes for the Japanese pressing of Rush's 2002 release Vapor Trails.[3]

Portnoy has used several kits throughout the years, all of which were built by Tama except for the Awake-A Change Of Seasons era kit, which was a Mapex. To date, he has used the following drum sets:

Mike and his wife Marlene live in Pennsylvania with their daughter Melody Ruthandrea, son Max John, dog Bongo and cat Cypress.

An avid collector of many things, Portnoy has a vast array of Dream Theater memorabilia including bootlegs, posters, clippings and everything else under the sun with the band's name on it. He is also responsible for capturing everything the band does on video tape and DAT (see YtseJam Records). His huge video collection includes favorite films such as 2001 - A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Jacob's Ladder and The Wall along with episodes of The Simpsons and memorable boxing matches. His love of A Clockwork Orange is so great that a section of the soundtrack was used as Dream Theater's intro tape on both the first several legs of 1997/98's "Touring Into Infinity" World Tour as well as the Octavarium/20th Anniversary World Tour of 2005/06.

Mike is also a recovering alcoholic. This prompted him to write a musical suite which will eventually comprise the 12 Steps of the Alcoholics Anonymous recovery program. So far, Dream Theater has written three songs, which describe seven of the twelve steps. These are: "The Glass Prison" (Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence), "This Dying Soul" (Train of Thought), and "The Root of All Evil" (Octavarium). The song "The Mirror" (Awake), which was also written by Mike and discusses the same topic, is not officially a part of Mike's "AA Saga". Though some fans wonder about how deep his alcoholism ran within him, fans highly respect his right to privacy and as a respected musican and stray from bringing the subject up around him (whether it be in person or via the internet). To this day Mike has not made a public statement (aside from the general storyline of the A.A. recovery program) about this subject.

Shortly after playing the set for the Metropolis 2000: Scenes From New York DVD and CD, Mike fainted backstage. His statement on this incident from the FAQ on his personal website is as follows: "I collapsed and passed out due to over-exhaustion, dehydration, stress, too little food and nutrition, too many Red Bulls, etc. It took me several hours of throwing up, being wrapped in blankets and laying down before I was carried out of the venue hours after the show." The audio commentary on the DVD has more information on this.

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