 My phone conversation with Symphony X guitarist Mike Romeo certainly got off to a delayed start, with Michael phoning me approx 40 minutes late. A rather distant sounding phone line didn’t help matters either, however, with a string of interviews running on past their allotted time that night, I was very grateful to Mike for phoning at all and giving me a unique insight into one of the best bands around today….
Hi Mike. Are you phoning from the States ?
Yeah, I’m in the States, I’m in New Jersey…
You’ve been from New Jersey for some time now haven’t you? What’s it like down there.
Ah, it’s the same crap as anywhere else (laughs), ya know, it’s the same old, man, same old thing…
Starting from the beginning, what got you into music in the first place.
Well I guess the first real musical thing for me was playing piano when I was real young, you know like I was 8 or 10 years old and we had a piano at the house and my parents got me some lessons, so I knew a little bit about music theory and stuff. I was like 13 or 14….14 maybe, and you know your starting to get into some of the bands that were, for me were popular at the time like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, and Kiss. Probably Kiss man, you know, I remember being young and having my Kiss records and it was kinda cool, you know what I mean. Yeah, so that was probably my first thing to get a guitar and kind of do that and start off learning a lot of AC/DC and Led Zeppelin. You know, the usual kind of classic Deep Purple and all that stuff.
 Is that what got you onto Metal as well and all that stuff.
Yeah defiantly. I mean, me growing up in school, at first it was like the Zeppelin and the Kiss, and then it started with the Sabbath and the Preist, and I would start to discover more things like old Scorpions and Uli Roth and then your into like Randy Rhoads and then you get into the whole guitar thing. So over time you just keep getting introduced to these bands.
Tell us how Symphony X formed as a band and what your initial musical goals were.
(thoughtful pause)…umm…well it kinda started out with me and the original Bass Player, Tom Miller. Like in high school we were in bands together and we liked a lot of the same stuff and a lot of the players and a lot of that stuff. So we were in bands on and off. And then I think the real catalyst and everything coming together was….um…I just did a little guitar thing on my 8-track and sent it to like Mike Varney in the spotlight column of Guitar World and all that, so like, there was a little bit going on and he wrote a great thing about me and some other things, some publications in Japan as well, like ‘Burrn’, so it seemed to me at that time, in this country, some of that stuff was just ‘out’, you know, no-one cared about guitar any more and you had a lot of the grunge music and rap was starting to happen. But I thought other places, like Japan must still like that kind of stuff so I just decided to put a band together. I think back then, we were a little more influenced with the Classical stuff…you know, some of the Malmsteen thing. But originally, we liked Rush and we liked the heavy stuff, and the riffs, and you know, a lot of jamming and all that sort of thing.
When the first album came out, the Prog Metal scene as we know it today had not yet emerged fully. Did you feel you were treading slightly new ground with the debut…
I didn’t know, I mean its hard to judge, whats going on around you, you know, you just kind of like do your own thing, and just hope that people kind of understand what your doing and they like it. That’s all you can do.
You always had a certain Neo-Classical edge as well as being heavy and progressive. Was this an intentional nod to people like Malmsey etc?
Yeah man, defiantly Randy Rhoads is probably my biggest influence, and like even Uli Roth you know, a lot of that stuff, especially a lot of his later solo stuff, it was very Classically influenced. Hell, even Ritchie Blackmore you know, that’s the kind of stuff I was gravitated to. But I mean I think over time…I mean we now incorporate some of that a little bit, but I gotta say man, that like just going back to some old heavy riffs, kind of like a Sabbathy – Preist sort of thing, it feels great when you kick back and get into that mode where you were when you were young. But the Classical thing now too, as I got older and I started to hear other things I was starting to appreciate different kinds of Classical music. You know I love a lot of the film sound track stuff and so its like ‘yeah’, you know, we’ll try to incorporate some of that thing. It’s like anything goes, you can do whatever you want.
We’ll go back to the older stuff in a bit, but looking at the new album ‘Paradise Lost’, what can fans expect from this and how do you feel it sits alongside other albums of yours.
Um…(thoughtful pause)…..well, I think for someone who never really heard us before….I mean there’s a lot of terms that are thrown around like Prog this…or Shred this…and all this other stuff and I think the reality is that it has all these elements of different things but its metal man…its like a metal record you know? So, to me it’s a metal record, and yet it’s a little more than that. Theres some orchestral elements and your trying to create some kind of atmosphere with the orchestra and some dark kind of things. So there is a lot of guitar stuff that’s happening that’s kinda cool, but still there’s like choruses and good vocal melodies and for me these songs are like, our most strongest, well focused, most to the point songs. We defiantly wanted to do that, we wanted this record to be just songs. Not cheesy…but to still show the goods and do our thing, and we really tried to craft some great tunes and come up with some cool riffs.
Indeed, because whilst your taking the sound forward, there’s still a nod to the past as well, which is nice…
Absolutely man, and its all on purpose…yeah.
How long the album took so long to come out.
Yeah, it’s been a long time. But I mean just a lot of things, you know. A lot of touring for the ‘Odyssey’ and then there came a time in maybe like 2004 or something where we said, yeah, we’re going to start working on the new record, and usually when we work on a record we need our time. Time for us to get in our zone and do our thing. But from the ‘Odyssey’ having some success here in the States, more things came our way, like the tour with Megadeath and Dream Theatre – The GiganTour, which was the summer of 2005, the Queensryche guys asked us to come out with them sometime at the end of 2004. So there were a lot of these things being thrown our way that were good opportunities, so we would start writing for a couple of months and then we would stop to go and rehearse, and we’d be on the road for a month or two, and then come back and try to get back in the zone and get back into the vibe and something else came up. You know a lot of little things that led to it, and over time it just built up. And the longer it took too, there was more pressure on us, it was like, holy shit, we haven’t put out an album in so long and there’s going to be so much expectation that no matter how good it is, everyone’s going to be saying that its not good enough. You’ve got that on your mind, and we really care about what we do man, so its like we really want to try our best and you can tell that these guys are working, they’re working hard.
Are you happy with the album Mike, personally….
Yeah, totally 100% you know. I think it’s the best thing we’ve done, I think it has the best songs, all around, I think the production’s better. I got to noodle with some different guitar textures and different recording things here. We did a lot of the recording at my house, and I had time to experiment. So it was a cool thing you know, we just said what the hell, lets just try it and it’s some of the best stuff we’ve done…. At this particular point my Dictaphone kindly decides its going to just STOP and my frantic attempts to try to record on another channel are not working. Thanks to my girlfriend for fixing the problem (she has the same model thankfully) I apologise (somewhat embarrassed) to Mike who’s totally cool at this point, at having been cut short and made to wait on the other end of the phone for a minute…. (record companies take note – you wonder why I prefer e mail interviews!!!)
OK dude we’re back on track. Am I correct in thinking you’ve got a tour coming up with Dream Theatre.
Yeah man. Like I said, we did the GiganTour here with those guys and Megadeath, and we got along really cool man and those guys are killer, so it’s a pretty cool thing.
That will surely win you a lot of new fans….
Well we hope you know. We’re just gonna go and do our thing and play the tunes and rock out and whatever happens happens….
Skipping back to the early days again, I thought the second album ‘The Damnation Game’ saw the band get its style and sound somewhat. Tell us how you found Russell Allen and why you decided to replace the original singer.
Um….(thoughtful pause), well, back then man, things happened so fast. With the first album, we didn’t even really have a band. We kind of did but we were all just getting together and writing songs and we didn’t know really, what the hell our direction was. And we had Rod as a singer, and, things were just thrown together quick. In the first album we just tried to do it ourselves. Cheap…you know man, and we didn’t know what the hell we were doing. And after that came out we were like….we need to kind of focus our direction, figure out exactly what it is we are doing, and kind of refine it a little bit and get a better recording and a better production with the amount of money that we had. And the thing with Rod, it was just like a mutual kind of thing, he was like, yeah man, you know, this isn’t my gig and he was having some trouble with some material that we were writing. So it wasn’t like any bad shit went down, he was like…you guys are doing this thing, and I kinda don’t understand it, its like yeah, that’s cool man you know. But Russell came about because…..(pause)….there’s a funny story actually. When Rod was thinking of leaving, and he wasn’t sure what he was doing, he’s like Oh…I know this other singer and he’s almost as good as me, and I can hook you up with him just in case something doesn’t work out, and it happened to be Russell, so in a weird kind of way, it just so worked out that this guy wasn’t working out so Russ came in. He kind of saw what we were doing, and he was more of a rock singer at the time, so even for him, even though it was the second album it was almost like starting again, to kind of figure out where everybody was, you know, and trying to get on the same page.
I think you guys should re-record the ‘Damnation Game’ next year – that would be kick-arse!
I don’t know man. I mean, looking back I think some of the songs are OK, but I think over time we kind of grew out of some of the stuff and kind of got a little better maybe over certain things. But hell man, you know, I’m up for anything. There was a time when we were talking about re-doing the first album because it just sounds so horrible man, but then we were listening to the songs and its like man…some of this shits OK. You could tell man, we were just kind of looking for what we could do….and we were like naahhh!
We then had ‘Divine Wings of Tragedy’, a masterpiece in my eyes. It was darker and heavier, was this a creative and inspirational album to make.
It was like…that was the record where we already had Russ, and he was becoming comfortable with what we were doing, and we all knew each other pretty well, and we just said, we kind of have our direction now, maybe we could go a little heavier, that might have been the only thing we said at the time. And yeah – that’s what it was and it happened again, you know, kind of quick and everybody kind of on the same page. Yeah, it just became what it was you know.
 Your guitar playing style has been a talking point ever since you emerged, and many people seem to say oh – you play like Yngwie Malmsteen, but I disagree. I would hazard a guess that you sound more like Freidman/Becker early days as opposed to the more rigid Neo Classical form. Your use of more exotic scales seems to be more evident in the long run. Would you agree.
Yeah…absolutely, I mean I like all those guys you know. My biggest guy like I said was Randy Rhoads, he defiantly had that Classical thing happening. And then Malmsteen, it was just kind of like to the next level…his technique was just unbelievable. But then, Marty Freidman and Jason Becker….yeah, absolutely, they came along with the Cacophony record and your hearing some weird stuff going on that I haden’t really heard and some of Marty’s playing was reminiscent of Uli (Jon Roth), so I liked that right away. And even like Allan Holdsworth, I mean theres so many guys I like, but I think what it is…the Malmsteen thing is perhaps the most identifiable because if you play like a Classical riff, its like ahh, that sounds like Malmsteen. But if you do this weird legato thing, people don’t know what the hell it is. I mean a guitar player may go, Oh, that’s a Holdsworth riff, or a Marty Freidman thing. Like if you did a tapping thing it like, Oh yeah – its Van Halen.
I agree. Some people like to put you in a box, but I still think you’ve got your own style, I think you sound like you!
Well, to be honest I kind of try. I mean, we all have influences, and all these guys who kind of rub off on us you know. But then there comes a point where its like you got to kind of try and find your own thing, and over time I guess that just happens. I mean I look at the first albums that we did and I’m like, yeah man, there was obviously a Malmsteen thing and maybe a little bit of the Freidman kind of thing too, and Paul Gilbert kind of stuff, but over time you just try to make stuff your own.
Do you find it more expressive to use weird scales and things.
Well I think it just depends on the mood your in that day that day you know. There’s some stuff on this record that’s like real, almost Sabbath kinda style, like real safe in E, and it feels cool yeah, but sometimes you’ve just got to look for something that’s a little different, and you start getting into this harmonic minor, and you start throwing in some wacky off note somewhere to kind of knock it off tilt a little bit.
Mike Pinnella is also a great Keys player. He’s Classically trained is he not?
Yeah.
 It must be cool to build the Guitar / Keyboard solo’s into each song
Yeah, its cool too because sometimes he’ll throw….I mean like ‘Sea of Lies’ is a perfect example where he kinda says hey man, can you kinda play something like this (imitates difficult riff). I’m like ahh dude, I don’t know. But then you kind of find your own way, and then you have this thing that…its your own thing you know. So it’s kind of cool to have that other guy who makes you try something. There was an album that I played some guitar on with a Keyboard Player called Vitalij Kuprij, and he was like yeah, I wanna do this like Beethoven…I think it was the 3rd Movement or whatever… (to which I delightedly mention that the album ‘Forward and Beyond’ is one of my faves) Yeah, exacely! So has like, well here it is…what can you do. And I’m looking at the sheet music and it’s like the most awkward frikkin patterns for a guitar player. And its like, well how the hell am I going to play it that fast. Than you start noodling with tapping and jumping strings, and it just becomes its own thing and it’s a part of what you do, so its always cool to work with a guy on a different instrument who’s looking for those kind of ideas.
I almost forgot that you’ve also worked quite closely with Timo Kotipelto over the years as well….
Yeah, because I mean we did some touring with the Stratovarious guys, totally cool dudes, and Jens is another totally killer player you know.
What was it like touring with those guys ? You guys blew them off the stage in London.
Yeah, it was cool because like I said, we got along real well, and I mean Timo Tolkki, he’s another great guitar player. It was just a cool thing you know? We’re kind of similar in a lot of ways, but we’re also kinda a little heavier than those guys, a little more metal maybe, but its all cool, it all kind of works.
Coming back to putting people in boxes, when your talking about Progressive Metal, many people like to compare everything to just Dream Theatre. Does this ever annoy you or flatter you.
Not really, no, because I’ve got a lot of respect for those guys you know, aside from the fact that they are really great guys. But yeah, there is a lot of similarities. They’ve kind of been around a little bit longer than us, so I mean maybe its like the Van Halen scenario, its like if you tap…yeah….Oh…Van Halen, but I mean that is not a bad thing either in itself. But yeah, we have a lot of similar influences as those guys like Rush etc, and they kind of grew up with the same stuff that we did, so theres these similarities no matter how you look at it.
Moving up the years again, you did ‘Twilight In Olympus’, a very lush and symphonic sounding record. Was this intentional.
For me personally, that’s like probably one of my least favourites. But only because it was like, there were some problems with Jay, our drummer, and he wanted to do some things and straighten out his life and there were personal reasons…so he really couldn’t be around. So we kind of had a different guy come in, called Tom Walling, and so it was like kind of…um…its always the same if you have a new guy, its always a little weird at first because its like your not used to what they do or thy are not used to what you do, and the other thing about that record was like, there were a lot of deadline issues, because we were with this Japanese label, and we were late, and we didn’t even get to finish this other song that was going to be on there, it was just a lot of weird circumstances that…..I mean I look at the record now and I’m like, there’s some songs on here that are cool you know, there’s some good stuff on there, but to me it feels like the albums too short. I knew that there was other stuff we wanted to do and it was just like I said man, there was all this shit going on that was a little out of our control you know.
‘V – The New Mythology Suite’ is in my eyes a masterpiece, and I’m sure other fans will agree. Who’s idea was the whole mythical concept.
Um….I can’t really remember, I mean it was probably all of us you know. Sitting around and like I said, the ‘Twilight..’ album, we felt like we didn’t really do what we wanted to do, we didn’t feel like we were happy with the end result you know, but with the ‘V’ album we thought, well lets try to do something really creative and lets try to find something that kinda goes with the theme and integrates the orchestra some more, lets paint some musical landscapes and tell a story. And we just figured we’ll try something, something different. So yeah, probably the band was trying to find something cool and I mean I remember Russell saying that he had watched the Discovery channel and maybe they had something on Adlantis, and maybe that sparked something out of the talk. Its like, well maybe that could be kinda cool you know, and try to have some fun, and musically try to tie some themes together, and make it just one big giant piece. I mean it was fun, but then again the Bass Player Tom who was there from the beginning, he kinda weirded out, he defiantly had some issues going on, and I mean I think that’s when the band had started to tour, there was more touring and I think he just wasn’t cut out for that thing you now, he was like ‘I can’t do this, I can’t tour’. It’s just not him so…whatever you know, its cool. But we had to get a new guy and we found Mike Leopond. So there was a kind of new guy on that record but I think looking back a lot of the music was kind of getting in place a little bit. So he just kind of came on board to see what was going on and now he totally understands what we do, and we’re all part of the team now.
The ‘Odyssey’ was yet another triumph, not least because you were getting in bigger tours back then, and doing your own headline tours. Do you recall that tour with any good or bad shows that stick out.
Man it’s so long ago too man! I mean every show…some were good, some were OK, you just kind of do your thing, but yeah that was going back… ( muses thoughtfully) 2000, 2001…but I mean I do remember we kind of had a little more money maybe to do what we wanted to do and the band had a little more exposure and we were able to play some better places, and even work with some sound guys that we continue working with, so you start getting your team together.
Returning to the new album, you’ve got the tour with Dream Theatre, but obviously you will try to tour on your own as much as possible as well, am I right.
Umm….(hesitantly) yeah… (both laugh). I think now we did the album we wanted to do and we start playing on Friday coming up, we’re gonna play in New York, but the album dosen’t come out till like June 26th or something, so it’s a little weird that we’re like playing, before the albums out, but hey man, we’ll get busy and get out there and lets do our thing man, have some fun and start playing again.
I notice there’s a version of the album that supposedly has a DVD about the making of the album. Was this something you had a lot of input in.
Oh no…the DVD thing? Yeah All it is, is that we had a bunch of footage of us just playing, from…shit man, like all the way back to Japan ’98, some of it, the quality’s not so great, and the sound isan’t so great, but this is some kind of cool stuff where its like we figured this is stuff that no one else could have, you know the camera guy is like my guitar tech, and he’s like behind me the whole time and next to me, and there’s someone over behind Jason on the Drums, so you know its kind of a different perspective and I mean its all home movie stuff and we just thought, you know, it would be kind of cool to have a little extra thing, and to share with the fans some of the stuff that we’ve collected over the years, and that’s all it is man, its not like any kind of big production DVD.
 You’ve all done some outside project or another. Is it nice to do that creatively and then come back fresh.
Yeah, yeah, I mean defiantly, and the other thing is you meet a lot of cool guys, to hook up with and maybe play a song, you get away kind of from what your doing a little bit and come back, like you said, a little fresh, yeah, I mean its totally cool.
Might we expect another Michael Romeo solo album soon.
Yeah, I think so, I think I’m due for one man. Yeah, I need the time because….its funny man, with this record, since doing so much starting and stopping of the writing, I have some pieces here as we do a lot of the pre-production in my studio, so, after GiganTour, after we got back, and I opened up my folder where I keep all my ideas on the computer, it was like…dude it was some ridiculous thing like 823 different pieces. And I was going through it the other day and I was like, wow, this is cool and we should have used this, or again, we didn’t finish this thing, and there’s defiantly some cool stuff man, like so much stuff…. So there’s the next 10 Symphony X albums on your PC…(laughing) Yeah but the sad thing is probably by the time we’re ready for a new album, that stuffs just going to be so old, and we’ll want something new you know. But yeah, I’d like to do a solo album and utilise some of this stuff. To just kind of go with the more guitar kind of thing and to get some of the orchestra in there, guitar riffing, some soloing going on, kind of like keeping it loose and having some fun you know.
What do you guys do to relax when your out of the studio.
There is never no time! (both laugh) Serious man, it was like, after this GiganTour thing it was like every day we worked on this record, or like we would spend however long, like 8 months or something writing it. And then it was like, we’d start to record it, and then its like right to rehearsal because we’ve got all these shows coming up man, oh yeah dude…its pretty hectic. All of us have families you know, and its like me…I try to hang out with my kids, and try to do the family thing and spend some time with them before we’re out on the road, so yeah, we just kind of chill and do our thing and just spend some time with the families and stuff.
Hopefully you’re coming to the UK with ‘Paradise Lost’. I don’t know yet. Was London mentioned.
Um…I’m sure it was, because I remember seeing some big giant list of like places I haven’t even heard of. But yeah, absolutely I’m sure.
Well I can’t wait to see you in the UK anyhow, and it would also be cool to se you at the Prog Power UK too.
Oh yeah, that’s right, you’ve got that thing going on. Like I said man, we’re all about playing out, and we’re just getting into that mode, and doing whatever comes our way, but yeah I’ll check it out, I’ll have to poke around a little bit and see what’s happening.
Well Mike, I can’t thank you enough….
Yeah Nick, defiantly a great interview bro…
BUY SYMPHONY X CD HERE:
|
