MIKE PORTNOY Discusses JOHN BONHAM In New Drum Talk TV Interview

June 11, 2013, 11 years ago

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Drummer Mike Portnoy (THE WINERY DOGS, FLYING COLORS, ex-DREAM THEATER) spoke with Drum Talk TV about legendary LED ZEPPELIN drummer John Bonham at Brian Tichy's Bonzo's Birthday Bash on June 1st. Portnoy answers the one question that stumped him for the first time in his career when asked by host Kenny Howard: "If you could ask John Bonham one question, what would it be?"

Mike also gives his take on what defined John Bonham's sound and playing style. There are clips of John Bonham, as well as excerpts of Portnoy performance of 'Dazed And Confused' Live.

Check out the clip below:

Portnoy recently spoke with Music Radar about his best and worst gigs ever. An excerpt from the article is available below:

For Portnoy, a touring pro with thousands of shows under his belt and with a variety of different bands, his performance life has been filled with what he calls "the Spinal Tap moments."

Only things weren't so funny on the night of 10 March 1998, during Dream Theater's sold-out concert at the Colosseum in Munich, Germany. Everything had been going right – "the conditions were fine, we were playing great" – but two minutes before the end of the group's closing song, Learning To Live, Portnoy went to execute a drum fill, and as he puts it, "I must've bit off more than I could chew."

All at once, he felt a blinding jolt of pain shoot through his right arm. At first, he thought he pulled a muscle, but looking down, he quickly realized that the situation was much worse: "My wrist was completely snapped backwards," he says, "with my palm facing up in the air. I turned pale white."

While Portnoy continued to play, his drum tech immediately snapped the injured wrist back into place and shoved the drummer's arm into a bucket of ice. "I finished the song Rick Allen-style, just playing one handed," he says.

Any other drummer might have called it quits right there, but Portnoy says that the overflow crowd demanded an encore. "I went back out and did Metropolis – one-handed with my right arm in the ice bucket," he says. "That song and Learning to Live are both incredibly progressive and technically demanding. Luckily, I had played them a thousand times, so it wasn't too hard for me to adapt to playing them one handed."

After the show, Portnoy was raced to the hospital, where it was determined that he had dislocated his wrist. His hand and arm were put into a brace, which he wore for the remainder of the tour. Looking back on the Colosseum date, Portnoy rates the band's performance that night as being particularly strong. "Everything was great," he says. "There were no real problems at all. But for purely personal reasons, it was probably the worst night of my life on stage." He then adds with a chuckle, "Let's just say that if I ever decided to join a DEF LEPPARD tribute band, I'll be fine."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

Portnoy recently quit ADRENALINE MOB and released the following statement:

"It saddens me to announce that the four upcoming shows in Latin America this month supporting HALESTORM will be my last with Adrenaline Mob. Unfortunately, I have scheduling conflicts that prevent me from being able to fully commit to the band's future activities at the moment. As I cannot be in two places at the same time, I don't want to hold them back and have to wait for my schedule to re-open up to resume activity. I'm very proud of what we started together and the music we made over the past two years and I wish the guys all the best in the future."

Adrenaline Mob also features SYMPHONY X frontman Russell Allen, guitar virtuoso Mike Orlando (SONIC STOMP) and DISTURBED bassist John Moyer

Adrenaline Mob released their eight-track EP called Covertá featuring cover versions of some of the band's favorites in March.


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