LEADER of the PROG
AMONG THE MANY thoughts that pop into John Petrucci’s head during a lengthy chat with Guitar Player is the fact that 2019 marks a full 30 years since Dream Theater released their debut album, When Dream and Day Unite. Back then, Petrucci recalls, “there wasn’t much of a scene for the kind of music we were doing. The prog-rock scene of the ’70s had kind of passed, and even though some of those bands still were going strong, it wasn’t popular music anymore.”
What’s more, he enthusiastically continues, “prog-metal didn’t really exist. It was just a very small group of guys — us, Fates Warning from Connecticut, Watchtower from Texas, and maybe you could even say Queensrÿche, with their early albums — that’s who was doing it. But today it’s so different. There’s this huge prog family tree, and the branches are reaching further and further out and have expanded into all these different styles of music. It’s really an incredible thing to see. It just keeps growing and growing.”
It’s not hyperbolic to say a big reason for that growth is due to John Petrucci. The now 52-year-old guitarist has been at the forefront of progressive guitar playing ever since Dream Theater released that first album — or, to be accurate, their breakthrough 1992 follow-up, Images and Words, which spawned a surprise hit single in “Pull Me Under.” Since then, Petrucci has continually pushed the outer limits of the six-string world in terms of speed, dexterity, technical facility and creativity. He’s also helped create new tools with which to achieve his goals. To that last point, his collaborations with Ernie Ball Music Man, Mesa/Boogie, DiMarzio and Dunlop, to name just a few companies, have produced pieces of gear that have managed to be both cutting edge and insanely popular with the public at large.
All the while, Dream Theater have remained firmly ensconced as the leading act in modern prog. Their most recent album, 2019’s delivered some of the heaviest, most energized and tightly was a 34-song, two-hourplus opus. And the group’s current tour in support of the record has been another landmark outing, combining a hefty dose of new music with a celebratory 20th anniversary performance of 1999’s landmark album in full.
