For rock and metal fans across the globe, the name Dream Theater is synonymous with decades of metal resilience and prog rock royalty. But alas, after years and years of making continuously great music, the dudes from Long Island, NY aren't exactly what you would call a household name in the vein of Metallica or Foo Fighters, for example. But that suits guitarist John Petrucci just fine, as he explained in a new interview with Highway 81 Revisited, which you can check out in full just below.
Now, this is not to suggest at all that Dream Theater are way out of the mainstream—far from it. And, let's not forget that early their career they did have crossover success with the video for the track "Pull Me Under." But despite an absence of Top 40 hits, Dream Theater fans really do buy the records and come to shows because they want exactly what they have to give, hits be damned—a flexibility that Petrucci expressed in a rather comedic way.
"When you really don't have hits, [laughs] people aren't waiting for the hits. Like, all of our songs are deep cuts, kinda. So, that's sort of part of [our approach], I guess. You know, if you go to see a band where, they're fortunate enough to, like, every song is a hit, you're disappointed if they don't play [one of them], you know?
"With Dream Theater [fans] it's like, 'Well, what have they not played? I'd love to hear this song live?' And I remember being that way with Rush, like, 'Oh, I'd love to hear them play this song from A Farewell to Kings or something they've never played live. So, it's the same mentality." [As transcribed by Ultimate Guitar]
Hell, you don't need to have a ton of hits to be great, never more so in this day and age with just the sheer amount of technical capability, so good for Petrucci for being so down to earth (as always!) Besides, as Primus once sagely dubbed their best-of compilation, they can't all be zingers. (And who cares, anyway!)
