James LaBrie isn’t here to write your pandemic ballads. “Enough artists, I’m pretty damn sure, are going to do that,” he says with the kind of finality that could puncture a concept album. Instead, the Dream Theater frontman spent lockdown plotting interplanetary escape, quoting Elon Musk, and yes, belting out a Mötley Crüe cover with his son’s band. It’s the kind of energy you expect from a guy whose band is still outprog-ing the prog lords on their 15th studio album, A View from the Top of the World.
“We just said, let’s write what we think,” LaBrie explains of their pandemic-era writing sessions, which happened in the band’s self-built, Bond villain-sounding fortress known as Dream Theater Headquarters. “It has to have some significance to us personally.” So rather than wallow in quarantine despair, they Zoomed in from Canada (in LaBrie’s case) and channeled their inner astrophysicists.
Case in point: “The Alien,” the first song they wrote for the record. Its inspiration? A three-hour Joe Rogan interview with Elon Musk. “My son turned me onto it,” LaBrie admits. “Musk was talking about Mars exploration and terraforming. Eventually, we’re going to outgrow Earth or strip it of all its resources. We’re kind of a destructive species, aren’t we?”
That’s not a rhetorical question, by the way. But for all the doomscroll-worthy themes, LaBrie insists that Dream Theater’s music always has an undercurrent of hope. “We want everyone to see the human spirit—that we can rise above anything, transcend any negativity,” he says, slipping into motivational speaker mode. “We’re extremely resilient, and we have to believe in that.”
To avoid going full space cadet, the band anchored themselves with some analog joy. LaBrie recorded a cover of Mötley Crüe’s “Kickstart My Heart” with Falsett, his son Chance’s band. “Back in the ’80s I was in a band called Shock Candy, and we used to cover a lot of Crüe,” he says proudly, without a hint of shame. “I’ve always thought Nikki Sixx is a brilliant freakin’ musician.” The kicker? Mick Mars himself got wind of the track. “He absolutely loves it,” LaBrie says. “My son and his bandmates were flipping out.”
Now, with a new world tour on the horizon, LaBrie is ready to take the album’s sci-fi themes on the road. But don’t expect any dystopian doom-mongering. “There’s always a light at the end of the tunnel,” he says. “Even if it’s coming from another galaxy.”
Listen to the interview above and then check out the videos below.
