In 2016 The Neal Morse Band released their second album, The Similitude Of A Dream. Inspired by John Bunyan’s classic Heaven-and-Hell novel The Pilgrim’s Progress, bandleader Morse felt it had to be a double-length work to cover the whole story. But as they completed the first disc, drummer Mike Portnoy didn’t want to take it any further – leading to the biggest argument the pair ever had, as Prog discovered that year.
Neal Morse’s ability to awake at five in the morning with a mind full of musical themes is a rare one. His Transatlantic colleague Pete Trewavas once described him as a “walking blinking songsheet who has a fresh idea every single moment of the day.” It’s something Morse doesn’t take for granted, adding, “I’m not blasé about it and I’m in a constant sense of wonder about it. I’m just really thankful and I consider it all to be a gift from God.”
Neal Morse Band drummer Mike Portnoy is predictably less reticent about praising Morse’s ability to quickly write consistently elegant music. “He’s incredible – I’ve never seen anyone like that,” he says. “I have always said that I hold him in such high regard as a songwriter. I honestly put him in the same category as Pete Townshend or Lennon and McCartney. There are some people who are just natural conduits for songs and Neal is one of those people.
“And it’s not even like it is always three-minute pop ditties, as in Neal’s case, he will come up with a 20-minute prog epic in his sleep. I’ve never worked with anyone like that, and that makes it great when we all sit down together.”
With so much material available for the band to shape, it might be reasonable to think that recording an album would be a relatively effortless experience. Yet halfway through The Similitude Of A Dream, Morse and Portnoy were involved in a heated exchange that threatened their future together.
The disagreement – which led to both storming out of the studio – centred on the drummer’s reticence to begin work on a second disc once the first had been completed. Morse perceived Portnoy’s concerns to be a reluctance to lengthen the album if the material wasn’t of the highest standard.
“I’m telling you this because it’s an important part of the album’s story,” Morse says. “There was a real struggle; Mike really wanted it to be a single disc. I didn’t mind it being a single disc, but we were only 20 or 30 pages into the book. I was thinking that if we were really going to explore the story and bring it to fruition, it was going to have to be a double.
“On the Sunday, we got up to where Breath Of Angels is and Mike was kind of wanting to wrap it up. He and I really came to an impasse – we were both unhappy and we both really kind of quit. Making music together is like anything else: when it’s working, it’s heaven; and when it’s not, it can be hell. He didn’t tell me directly, but I think what he was feeling was, ‘We don’t have enough good material.’”
He adds: “About four in the morning on the Tuesday, the Lord woke me up. I started to write and I felt like, ‘Let me see what we can do to make it better.’ So I kind of sketched out a lot of music. I really wanted to save the situation. By the time Mike arrived at noon, I think I’d written three songs for the second disc.
“We both started apologising, and he had ideas about what to do, and I had all these ideas, so Tuesday just turned into this great day. By the time we finished on the Thursday, I felt we had a great album – but Mike said we had just made the album of our careers. So for us to go from being really tense in the studio to being really joyous was crazy.”
But Portnoy reveals that his motivation had little to do with concerns over quality, and much more to do with his former band Dream Theater.“In the 20 years now that Neal and I have been working together – and we’ve made 18 studio albums at this point – we rarely disagree,” the drummer says.
“If I’m going to be completely honest, the main reason I was resistant to the double album was that Dream Theater had just put out a double concept album. I knew ours would inevitably be compared to Dream Theater and I didn’t want people to think that we were copying them. So I was desperately fighting the idea.
“When we got to this crossroads, I kind of just shut down and I was really forcing my will on to the guys. That just made for a really uncomfortable day in the studio, and it got to a point where Neal and I walked out.”
He continues: “It was completely unheard of for us to butt heads like that. It was a horrible day; without doubt the worst day I’ve ever had in a recording session. Neal left the session, I went back to my hotel room and I slept on it, then decided to go back in with an open mind and stop resisting the double album idea.
“I went in, apologised to the guys – and the next thing we knew we were at the end of disc two and we’d made some magic. I mean, The Battle on disc two is one of the sickest instrumentals I’ve ever been a part of, and it’s just insane.
“I guess the lesson was for me to let the magic happen and stop fighting it.”