Let's pretend for a second MP actually did end up back in DT. Would he play MM era songs? Would he start playing live to a click? Or would DT allow their stage production to go back to being shit to appease him? Would he seize control of everything again? Would the guys go out of their way to prevent him from being able to have so much control? I think there are too many touchy subjects for them to even consider letting him back in without having to sit him down and have an "intervention" style meeting. And if they did that, I don't know how MP would react to that kind of thing but I can't imagine it would be extremely positively.
*If* that were to ever happen, it goes without saying that there would have to be a lot of discussion over how things would be regarding all those things that you presented - and more. Keep in mind that basically JP runs the show now - I don't really believe that all 4 guys ended up equally dividing the tasks MP used to do all on his own - could be wrong, but when you consider what happened with Ytsejam Records, which JL was going to oversee, you can see why I question how much everyone else is involved). I'm sure that while JP enjoys certain aspects of overseeing all the band's operations, he'd be more than happy to cede power to a good portion of it to MP, since MP does have a good pulse on things. But there would be other things that would probably take more time to work out, such as whether to do rotating setlists. I can imagine MP being willing to play MM-era songs, but I think he'd fight tooth and nail to avoid playing to a click track live or using taped backing vocals.
Agree with pretty much all of this. There would definitely have to be a sit down between them all to see how they would want to proceed if a reunion was a possibility (and there’s nothing yet to suggest it is). I would strongly suspect though that they’d be fairly happy for MP to take back a lot of the responsibilities that he had just by the fact that they were happy to let him do it all before. By this I mean the non-music stuff like fan interaction, bootlegs, t-shirts, album art, arranging live albums/dvds. I think that JP has seemed to enjoy doing some of the promotional stuff though, interviews and stuff so he may like to be more involved in that than he was before Mike left.
I don’t agree that their live show was shit before, I always loved seeing DT live, they’ve always sounded great and their shows really started to look more slick and professional from TOT onwards. That being said, I’m not sure if they’d want to let Mike go crazy with rotating set lists and doing covers of full albums like he used to. It was a lot of work and maybe, at their age, they’re happier just having a settled show rather than constantly having to rehearse stuff on the fly to change up the set. We don’t really know though.
The big test would be when it came to making music. Would JP let Mike back on as a producer, would he have as much control in the writing and recording process. That would be where there may be some issues for me. A LTE album may iron some of those issues out and allow JP, JR and MP to write together again to see if they can co-exist or whether that relationship has shifted to a point where it doesn’t work anymore. For example will they resent it if he tries to take over the recording, will he resent it if he’s not given as much control as before. It would be an interesting and fairly risk free trial run to see whether DT can work. I think LTE would be a much bigger step towards a DT reunion than a JP solo album where Mike is just a JP employee.
All of this is just speculation though, things seem to be very harmonious at the moment with Mangini in the camp so this may all just be a way of them continuing a working relationship with their longtime friend whilst keeping DT as it is.
Topic: John Petrucci - Terminal Velocity (Fall 2020) (Read 52678 times)
