In a new interview with Melody House, Mike Mangini reflected on how he joined DREAM THEATER in late 2010 through a widely publicized audition following the departure of longtime drummer Mike Portnoy. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “The first thing is that because of my schooling, [in the earlier years] I competed to be able to be in the — not only competed in the [school] band to get the snare drum part, ’cause you had to audition, but then you had to audition for the area band of all the high schools. Then you could audition for the whole state. My state was Massachusetts, ’cause I’m from Boston, so I had to compete within my band, each band. Then I had to compete in the district, it’s called. Then I had to compete in the state, and then I got to compete for the country. So I was used to doing this. What you should know, ’cause it applies to the DREAM THEATER audition, is that my very first audition for the district area, I failed miserably. Now you have to understand, I could have played that part with my elbows, with my eyes closed, practically in a strait jacket. That’s how easy it was — I could have played it with my knees. So how could I possibly fail? I destroyed it because I was thinking the wrong thing at the wrong time. While I should have been focusing on my stick height, reading the snare drum part, my dynamics, my rhythm, my timing, something switched in my brain and I was focused on the judge. I don’t know why, but I was focused on the judge, the clothing I was looking at, what I was wearing. And I made a mistake, and then I started to think the words, ‘I cannot believe I just did that. I cannot believe I made a mistake like that.’ And I was getting upset talking to myself, and I made more mistakes and more mistakes, and I got flustered and nervous and I might as well have just been made of ice. And then you hit me with a hammer. It was unbelievable. And everybody around me was just so in disbelief — my band director, the teacher, they’re, like, ‘This is impossible. What happened?’ So I thought about it and I realized that the way to be a great musician is simply when you know what to think and when to think it. See, some people say, ‘Don’t think.’ This is impossible. You don’t have a switch. You can’t think of nothing. You have to think. The question is, what should you think? When should you think it? So all of my books are written about this. And all of my auditions, maybe 50-something, I won every one of them after that. So you can imagine now, I probably would not have been successful in all these other auditions if I didn’t make that really bad mistake, because it got me to think about what I was gonna think about.”
He continued: “Which brings us to in 2010 when I got a phone call to audition for DREAM THEATER. It was probably my 55th audition or something, so I took the piece of paper and I took a pencil and I wrote down, what will that environment be like? Who will be in that environment? And I made a list of all the possible things that could go wrong, the things that could go right. I did. Oh, I thought about this before I got in it. And that’s the secret to my success with the auditions, is to think about it a little bit. And so I wasn’t so nervous walking in. And I thought, ‘Well, what if I make a mistake in front of these people?’ Well, when I was learning the songs, all of it was mistakes. I couldn’t play anything. I didn’t know the material. I didn’t know a single DREAM THEATER song — not one. So, I had to learn it quickly for my standards, because I was traveling for two weeks out of the three. So I didn’t have the time that I really would’ve liked. But I did my homework. No excuse. No making excuses. I just said, ‘Okay. What’s my schedule? When am I gonna transcribe it? When am I gonna listen to it?’ All of these things. And I imagined I was in the room. I used my imagination. So when I got in the room, I was already there. And I was prepared.
“Let me give you a quick example, so you understand,” Mangini added. “Because [the members of DREAM THEATER] were so nice. They were really nice to everybody that came in — very cordial to all the drummers, very accommodating, very generous. And I walked in with a bag, a duffel bag, a handbag. And I had something, some things in the handbag. I put the handbag down and I never opened it. You know why? Because that was the emergency bag. I had extra headphones in case my ears broke. I had extra cords in case the cord broke. I had adapters in case they didn’t have the right adapter. I had towels. I had pencils, pens, paper. And also I had transcriptions of 20 other songs in case they asked me. And I didn’t learn them. There’s no way I could play, but I would’ve sight read some notes just in case. So I had an emergency bag, and it just made me feel comfortable. Think about it for a minute. As opposed to my first audition. I was freaking out and nervous — and I’m always nervous — I was prepared. I did the best I could playing the drums. And just so you know, as a drummer, that drum set that I used for the DREAM THEATER audition, I’d never played a configuration like that — never. In fact, I had no room for the ride cymbals, so I put them up high. Now, with me, I looked at it and I was laughing. See, I thought it was funny. I used my sense of humor to help ease my tension. And I thought it was hilarious. I’m, like, ‘This is gonna be funny.’ So when I saw the audition video later, I was laughing. I was, like, ‘I can’t play those.'”
As part of his DREAM THEATER audition, Mangini beat out six other of the world’s top drummers — Marco Minnemann, Virgil Donati, Aquiles Priester, Thomas Lang, Peter Wildoer and Derek Roddy — for the gig, a three-day process that was filmed for a documentary-style reality show called “The Spirit Carries On”.
Portnoy rejoined DREAM THEATER in October 2023 after a 13-year absence.
Mangini later admitted that he had no advance notice that Portnoy would return to DREAM THEATER before he was fired from the band.
In early November 2023, Mangini told SiriusXM‘s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk” about his exit from DREAM THEATER and the return of Portnoy: “All I know is the decision was made and when I heard it, all I pictured was, ‘Oh, this is an original guy going back to his band. Uh, okay. All right. Let’s go to the next thing.’ It was nothing more. I was told. It was just nothing more than — it seemed so simple to me. And maybe intuitively it’s, like, ‘Oh yeah, I get it.’ And that was that. That’s really it… So that’s really the crux of it all is it was an easy thing for me to understand.”
In a recent interview with Loaded Radio, DREAM THEATER singer James LaBrie was asked how Mangini took the news when LaBrie and the rest of DREAM THEATER broke it to the drummer that Portnoy was coming back. James said: “Well, he was very professional about it. [It was] very admirable of him to have been… He took it in style and class. I mean, obviously, I think it would have been upsetting — it must have been upsetting — but he took it for what it’s worth and even saying things like, ‘It kind of makes sense, guys. I see why this should be happening and why this would maybe inevitably be happening. It just makes sense for the band and the amount of history that you all have together. It seems natural.’ So, yeah, no, he was a class guy. Classy. Yeah.”
Mangini made his name in the hard rock world in the mid-1990s when he played with EXTREME, before landing the gig with guitar legend Steve Vai in 1996. Nearly a decade later, Mangini took up a full-time teaching position at the world-renowned Berklee College Of Music.
This past February, Mangini launched a new band, MONOLITH, with Hernán “Motley” Rodríguez on bass and vocals, and Andy Barrow on guitar.
Mangini released his debut solo album, “Invisible Signs”, in November 2023. Accompanying Mangini on the LP were Tony Dickinson on bass, Ivan Keller on guitar, Gus G. (FIREWIND, OZZY OSBOURNE) on lead guitar and former EVANESCENCE guitarist Jen Majura on vocals.
