Alex Skolnick, guitar master known from Testament, leader of his own Alex Skolnick Trio, and member of the Metal Allegiance project, has recently been interviewed by The Metal Voice podcast, where he spoke about working with Mike Portnoy.
Here is what he had to say about the drummer, who has recently rejoined Dream Theater after some 13 years (21:35 – 23:45):
“Just lovely guy. Larger than life on the drums, and in personality as well. But [he’s] also an encyclopedia. You can call out songs by Frank Zappa, King Crimson, or Stevie Wonder, and he’ll know it and he’ll at least be able to play a recognizable part of the song.
He can also do riffs on guitar and bass – he’s really [an] all-around multi-instrumentalist, and he can do vocals well. He’s great to work on songwriting, because he’s really a take-charge kind of person. [He] has a backboard. I understand it could be overwhelming for some. It’s not really a chart, but he’ll do a roadmap. He’ll think of a name [for a song part] – it’s a very rock ‘n’ roll way of doing it. And in some ways, it is like orchestration because he comes up with a nickname for a part. You know, ‘It reminds me of ‘Let It Be’, we’re going to call it ‘Let It Be’ or whatever. He’d come up with some name, write it down, write the order, and then we’ll try it, and we’ll make the change. ‘Okay, this part is gonna go here. Now this part is gonna go here. Let’s try that. Okay, let’s get rid of that part.’ […] It’s fun to work with somebody like that.“
Official Metal Allegiance website: https://www.metalallegiance.com/
Official Alex Skolnick website: https://alexskolnick.com/
Mike Portnoy‘s official website: https://www.mikeportnoy.com/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/mikeportnoyofficial
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mikeportnoy/
YT: https://www.youtube.com/@MikePortnoyDT1
