Mike Portnoy Shares Feelings on Joey Jordison Playing in Metallica, Says Dream Theater Guys Never Heard Metallica Before Him
“I was devastated and shocked,” Mike said about Joey’s death.
During an appearance on Modern Drummer Instagram Live, hosted by Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante, Mike Portnoy talked about Slipknot, the late Joey Jordison, Metallica, Dream Theater, and more.You can check out Portnoy on the new Liquid Tension Experiment record “LTE3” here via Amazon.Asked about Joey’s recent passing, Mike replied (transcribed by UG):
“I actually heard the news from you. You hit me up on our thread that me, you, and Chris Jericho have, and I couldn’t believe it. I was actually getting in my car to go pick up the pizza, and I had to get out of the car and run back in the house to tell [Mike’s son] Max because Joey is Max’s biggest drum hero.
“I was devastated and shocked but I know especially for Max it’s hard. It’s really the first time he’s lost a drum hero. But for me, it’s shocking as well, and Joey was an incredible drummer, quite an incredible musician, like you, he wrote a lot of the songs for his band and played guitar, and was a multi-instrumentalist.
“But he’s also a great guy. I’m sure we both have stories. I posted a little bit today, just a couple of quick stories, one was how he once heard that Max was such a big fan, he sent this big box of swag overfilled with bass, Slipknot shirts, and hoodies, and all this stuff. And every time Slipknot came through town, he was always so hospitable to Max, and always invited him backstage and hung out with him.
“I also mentioned about when I filled in for Stone Sour, we went to Brazil together because Stone Sour was playing one night, and Slipknot was playing the other night, so the whole Slipknot camp would travel together. And he really made me feel at home during that trip to make me feel part of the wholesome family for that weekend.
“I also remember calling him when I got offered to do the Avenged Sevenfold tour, I had never gone on a tour with another band before, and he had been doing that. In the early-2000s, he was playing with everybody, he did a whole tour of Korn, did a tour with Rob Zombie, did a tour for Ministry. It wasn’t just like he played only with Slipknot.
“So when I got off at that Avenged gig, I called him up and we chatted on the phone for an hour. I was just getting advice from him on what to expect as being kind of like a hired gun. He had some great advice. It’s shocking, it’s so sad. I hate that it’s going to bum out our conversations, really a sad way to start this whole chat today.”
I know, and I know a lot of people are writing about it, and they’re feeling it just as much as we are. And I think it’s the shock, and that’s the thing that always hits me when all of a sudden you just see somebody post a picture of someone, and then you immediately go, ‘Oh no!’ And that’s how it hit me today, I got a call and I’m like, ‘Oh no. How? What happened?’ So can you just discuss a little bit what did he tell you? What advice did he give you about doing that gig?
“He was so encouraging, he was like, ‘Oh dude, you got to do it.’ And he was just giving me advice like on how to go on the road with somebody else’s band. I’ve done kind of one-off gigs, like filling in for Fates Warning, Overkill, or even Stone Sour. But I had never done a full-on six-month tour with another existing band.
“And Joey was just giving me advice on what to expect, it was also some financial questions, like what do I get paid. Am I like paid like a crew guy, do I travel with the crew? I just wanted to pick his brain on what it was like when he toured the Korn and when he toured with Rob Zombie. And he just gave me some great advice, and then, sure enough, we just chit-chatted about everything else for an hour.
“He was always such a cool guy and always so warm and welcoming. And we kind of lost track over the last eight years or so, after he split with Slipknot. It’s kind of sad now, I regret not reaching out more over these last few years to see how he’s doing and check-in. It’s one of those things where you regret not staying in touch with somebody until it’s too late.
“So it’s a lesson, you’re always kind of expecting people gonna be around forever. I always expected there would be a day that Joey would come back and do something with Slipknot, that there would be another chapter down the road. Sadly, that’s never gonna happen now, and that’s sad, it’s really sad. So you have to really appreciate what you have while you have it.”
I always say this to people too, dude, if there’s a little bit of drama in your life, and you know that you can get rid of that drama easily and never bring it back – do it! Because you don’t want this weighing you down anymore and it’s true. And I said before the last time I saw Joey, a little while ago he was backstage at one of our shows, and he looked great. He was just happy, talking, he was telling me about this new project, and we talked about drumming and guitar playing. And you’re right, we tend to lose contact with people and I don’t know why it is, I don’t know if life just gets in the way, and just things happen. But again, he will be sadly missed. You can listen to him on every Slipknot record, and I remember hearing that first Slipknot record, and I was just blown away. I’m like, ‘This is good, this is next level.’
“Do you know what I love listening to from him that people out there may not be aware of? The great Download show, that Metallica did. Metallica has pretty much every one of their shows available for download, no pun intended with “download’, but all of their shows are available, so I actually grabbed one of those from that show, from the site.
“Dave Lombardo played a couple of tracks, I think Lars’s tech played a track, but other than that, Joey plays the rest of the show. And it was just amazing hearing Metallica driven by Joey Jordison. You’re so used to hearing Metallica with Lars, so you hear with whole different energy.
“And Joey had such energy! The thing about his playing is that it was so energetic and filled with adrenaline. So yeah, that’s a great listen if anybody out there hasn’t heard it, you could probably grab it off the Metallica download site whatever, and it’s an amazing listen.”
When did you start to appreciate the music of Frank Zappa?
“I think I discovered Zappa because of his sense of humor, I think that was the first thing that appealed to me. I guess I was this 13-year-old kid, and I found a record that had a song called ‘Broken Hearts Are for Assholes,’ I was like, ‘Whoa, man, this guy’s singing about funny stuff!’
“As a 13-year-old kid, I got to hear about these crazy taboo subjects, but then, around that same age was when I started to really get serious about playing drums, and that’s when my ears started listening to the music of Zappa.
“And hearing Terry Bozzio’s drumming, hearing Vinnie Colaiuta’s drumming, and Chester Thompson, and hearing these odd time signatures, and these crazy polyrhythms – that’s when I realized this guy is a freaking musical genius. And that’s when I started diving in, headfirst. My early influences are The Beatles, The Who, Zeppelin, and Rush.
“Those were my big four heroes – Ringo, Keith Moon, John Bonham, Neil Peart. But once I started getting really serious about drumming, that’s when I discovered the more progressive stuff, and that’s when I went head-on into Zappaland.
“And Rushland as well – Neil’s drumming and Frank’s writing, and the musicians in his band, those were the ones that really challenged me and got me going in the musical direction I ended up going in when we formed Dream Theater.”
When you met Petrucci and Myung, did you know these guys were musicians, or one of them was wearing a shirt or something? How did it happen?
“It was me wearing a shirt, actually. I was wearing a Talas shirt because I was a big Talas fan. Billy Sheehan, of course, who I play in several bands with now, but back then, it was only the second week of college, it was September ’85, and I went up to Berklee, and those two went to high school together and they went up to Berklee together.
“But it was only within the first week or two, I was in one of the practice rooms just playing drums, and I was wearing a Talas shirt, and they know who Billy Sheehan was. At that time, it was a pretty obscure reference, not everybody knew who Talas was. But we were Long Islanders, Talas always played the New York club scene – Talas and Twisted Sister, and that whole scene.
“So they approached me the next day in the cafeteria, they came up to me and they were like, ‘Hey man, we saw you jamming yesterday, and we saw you wearing a Talas shirt, wow, I can’t believe you know them…’ And then we started talking about our mutual love for… The big common denominator for us was Rush and Iron Maiden, the three of us were Rush fanatics and Maiden fanatics.
“They didn’t know I was already listening to you guys, I was already listening to Anthrax and S.O.D. came out around that year and I was a huge huge fan of that album. And then, of course, I knew the other thrash bands that were coming out around that time.
“So I was a big thrash metal fan but those guys didn’t really know that, the only metal they kind of knew was Maiden, Priest, and Sabbath, so I turned them on to Anthrax, Slayer, Metallica…
“I remember we were at Berklee when ‘Master of Puppets’ came out [in 1986], I guess sometime in ’86, and I remember taking the T, which was the train, that’s what they call the train in Boston, but taking the T of Newbury comics to pick up ‘Master of Puppets’ and playing it for those guys. They had never heard Metallica before and they were floored.
“And then from there, I kind of introduced them to everything else, including S.O.D. and stuff like that. That first year at Berklee just damning and getting to know each other, and playing Maiden covers and Rush covers – that’s how the band started.”
