Derek Shulman interview (excerpt)

Roie Avin: In prog today, one of the biggest bands we cover is Dream Theater. Talk a little bit about discovering them or the process of signing them. If there’s an interesting story, maybe people don’t know.

Derek Shulman: Well, there is actually because I was president and chairman of Atco Records at that time. Dream Theater already had two albums out on MCA, I believe, or Mechanic from what I understand, and they were dropped or something. They weren’t selling anything. Somebody – I can’t remember who it was – sent me a demo of a four-track instrumental. A tape of instrumental music from the Dream Theater. And I loved it. I thought “this is something I haven’t heard too much of”, having had other, successes, if you like. And I loved it. I said, “Boy, this is something I could... If they could get a great singer...” and enjoy what they did. It was Mike Portnoy’s band at that point. So I signed the band based on the four-track demo of an instrumental tape. They found this singer and when I heard them put the vocals on top of the music, and do a few more songs, I signed them to a recording deal and they started, they recorded with David Prater Images And Words, which I thought was a spectacular album actually. We heard the song ‘Pull Me Under’, which is about eight or nine minutes long, and I cut it down to a something like a four minute piece with the choruses, and we were able to get it on the radio. And then Dream Theater was, I guess, reborn. The fact is that Mike and the band were workaholics – they loved to play, they loved to work, they loved to write, which is the same thing as Gentle Giant did. We were workaholics too. And they worked their asses off to get to where they wanted to go recording and playing and writing. Thankfully, those four track instrumental demos became Images And Words, and out of that came ‘Pull Me Under’, and we were off to the races with their career back in 1992.

RA: Yep. I know that because that album was the life changer for me. Images And Words for me at 18 years old blew my mind. It changed everything musically. For me and friends around me, it was our Bible, that album.

DS: The way I kind of work on this side of the business, sometimes I knew something was going to be a big hit. I just instinctively do. And it’s something I guess I have my gut, but I wanted to parlay. OK, so I have something which I know is going to be a big hit whether during that period or ACDC on which I brought back from the dead. But I was gonna nurture something that I thought should be heard and should be seen and do as much as I could to at least give them a shot to see the light of day. And that was what I did with Dream Theater. So in that respect, I was happy that it worked.