John Petrucci: discusses drummers

Thomas Lang and Virgil Donati were not chosen because they have a tendency to over-interpret and modify the original musical parts. Did you specifically mention at the start of the auditions that you did not want people to do this?

We just told everybody from the beginning that we wanted them to learn the songs so we’d able to have something to play and see how it felt. We didn’t specifically tell anybody what to do. We just told everybody to learn these three songs. Then they all came in and played them. Some people learned them perfectly and some people… I mean, pretty much all the guys learned the songs, for sure. Everybody was very prepared and very professional. It’s just that some guys played it exact. more