Here's an interview with Dino Jelusick where he talks about his involvement with Mike Mangini's solo album - he recommended one of the guitar players and was going to sing on the album as well, but his litigation with Frontiers stopped him from doing so. It's at the 12 minute mark, and he also talks about having long calls with Jordan Rudess and about congratulating MP on his return to DT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FgyuSvpadQ&t=1042s
OK, it took me a bit, as the link is timestamped to much later in the interview.
Yeah, so Dino says he sees MP and says something like "Hey you're back in Dream Theater", and MP's response was, "Yeah, that's what people want.."
Um..that's what people WANT??
Maybe it's nothing but MP being MP, but jeez..
I have a take on this:
I have followed MP and his career since 2002, when I became familiar with progressive music. I have watched every single video on Dream Theater - whether it be a studio video, a tour diary or even other people talking about DT etc. I have a copy of and read the official biography too.
My theory is that mainly due to family obligations, DT started to transform from a band to a business after the problems they had during the FII era. The music got more formulaic and the changing music industry environment meant that they had to rely more on touring income than the album royalties but they could only be on the road for 4 weeks at a time because they are family men now. (Which is totally understandable.) At the same time, their fame within the musician circles led to additional income such as the ability to attach their names to gear, with the most successful one being the JP line of guitars. So much so that Petrucci now writes songs because there's a new piece of equipment coming out: Awaken the Master is promotional material for the 8-string JP guitar.
My experience in the music industry has taught me that if you achieve fame through your ability with any given instrument, there's an unwritten obligation to push the boundaries of what is possible with that instrument. The 2000's is when MP became the weakest instrumental member of Dream Theater, he stopped doing clinics and solos, and started referring to himself as a groove and feel drummer and given how he started his career, this could be considered a regression. I think/know some of his endorsement deals came very close to a termination within the last decade.
My guess is that MP had always been the "widest musical horizon" member of Dream Theater. The others do not stray far from familiar grounds when it comes to musical preferences. (Other than JP introducing MP to Muse but that could be considered an anomaly in DT's case.) When he left DT, he spun it as "exploring new musical avenues". At the time, he was starstruck with the reception that A7X had on the road, a level of reception that he never had with DT and when that ended, he wanted to replicate that success with Adrenaline Mob which did not work and the band did not have any sort of commercial success whatsoever, he ended up leaving. The other guys wanted to hustle and do the small club tours but he did not see this as being MP-level when push came to shove.
He tried to please the fans with his prog side, pop side, metal side and all the other sides available to mankind but after more than a decade of trying to get things off the ground, the only somewhat successful outing of his has been the Winery Dogs as that sort of dad rock always has an audience. In my opinion, the TWD success is due to Richie Kotzen putting the break on things when he deemed necessary instead of having an industrial level output that other Portnoy projects are known for. When it came time to do the TWD albums and tours, things remained fresh for the band and the fans - it's like squeezing and orange but stopping when the juicer hits the peel. MP usually tries to juice the peel too.
Noticing that the fans wanted the prog metal experience from him after the positive reaction to the PSMS shows, he put together SoA - two ex-DT members trying to out-play Dream Theater. I think this was the project that he was most hopeful about, in terms of experiencing the good old days but it didn't work out that way and that was an eye-opener for him. They thought that putting 5 high profile guys in a room would result in instant success and it did not happen. I think when it comes to his commitments to bands, MP is an emotional person, so when things do not work out, he reacts in a big way. At the end of the day, Dream Theater is what made him and the shadow of Dream Theater will always follow him around. He has not managed to loom larger than the shadow of Dream Theater since he left the band in 2010.
He's knows it and he isn't wrong when he allegedly said "It's what people want." - He can say this, because he has tried everything else. The MP brand isn't enough to entice people, no matter how hardcore his core fanbase is. This is true for other members and ex-members of Dream Theater as well. Sherinian had a 5-year stint with the band and he'll always be known for that despite having done more outside DT than within it. This happens with bands that become the gateway to their genre. The Waters-Gilmour push and pull created Pink Floyd, a similar circumstance is true for Dream Theater as well. It is just the way it is.