Oh yeah, I love Portnoy. And yes, a prog since the first Yes album. Guilty as charged, m'Lud!
By the way, in that Universal Mind cut, that was Portnoy crawling over to Jordan Rudess with the sign reading "Keep Playing!" Petrucci's amp had gone out. That whole thing was an ad lib. Just damn.
What do you consider the first Yes album? Yes? Time and a Word? The Yes Album?
Just curious. Peter Banks never got the credit he deserved. That said, Steve Howe is my guitar hero.
There’s something refreshing about Portnoy’s attitude, he genuinely enjoys playing, and feeding off of the other band members’ energy.
It is a sign of the consumate professional musician that they improvise through mishaps. I once heard that Larry Carlton had a string break in the middle of the set. To the audiences apprehensive gasps, he pulled out a — WIRE CUTTER — snipped off two MORE strings, and delivered a blistering ad lib solo until the roadies could get another guitar ready.
Rumor, but I believe it.
I saw Portnoy in a guitar camp I attend a few years ago in the Catskills in NY. Richie Kotzen was playing with his own band and with the Winery Dogs which had Billy Sheehan on bass and Portnoy on drums. Just to let you know Portnoy is a total attention hog — it’s something to see. I use to play in a band with a drummer like that and it can be terrible if they don’t sing and just showboat all the time. Portnoy is a good drummer and I like his playing in Liquid Tension, especially the song “Another Dimension.” But I didn’t really like Rock Camp because you don’t really learn anything. Yes, you can sit around with the rock stars at the bar after the gig but they’re in the mood to shoot the shitte and not much else. The crazy thing is that I got along better with Billy Sheehan than Richie. Billy is a conservative but he is also the the kind of guy who could talk himself out of a concentration camp just on the strength of his personality. I tried to get along with Richie and I told him to knock it off with the Satanic puppets and that pissed him off. I’ve seen other musicians go down the Rosicrucian or occult route and the worse things happen to them... they try to harness the dark forces to help their career and it just goes down the toilet quicker that you ever thought. Richie’s wife was nice, from Brazil and I told her the same thing about the puppets and she agreed with me — I think the Latins kind of understand those things better. Anyway, the one thing I learnt in camp was from Billy who said stay away from sugar. I also like Billy because he’s from Rochester and knows a lot of the bars I use to frequent in Toronto during the 70s. It was like deja vu or something. Anyway, I didn’t know Buckethead had problems with his heart. I use to be into him because he could out-Hendrix Hendrix for playing with feedback — it was absolutely sublime on the song “Machine Gun.” He is quirky but really tasty when he wants to be.