House of Drumming.com

Odd-Arne Oseberg wrote: Actually, that time it was sort justified.

Joel wanted to set the record straight about that night in Moscow. Here's his take on what transpired (we swear we're not making this up): "Remember, this was the Soviet Union in 1987, and they'd never had a major rock concert before. There was a film crew filming a documentary, and they turned very bright lights on the audience. The audience was having a good time -- until they turned the lights on. They froze; they turned paranoid. There was a lot of anxiety -- why are we being looked at? And whenever they turned the lights on, anyone who was overreacting was being pulled out of the audience by a security guard. I wasn't yelling at the audience -- I was yelling at the film crew. So I threw the piano, and that got their attention. Then they stopped lighting the audience, and everybody started rocking out. That was the reason for that action -- not because they looked like an oil painting. That was something I said to a reporter after the big shots in the Communist Party, despite our best efforts, sat in the front row at one of the shows. They looked like an oil painting. The regular people in the back were rocking out. Hey, I hate the camera being on me. If you looked like me, you wouldn't want the camera on you either."

Kurtis wrote:no intent to insult willy. don't see how you found it offensive. if one of my drum heros pulled a stunt like that i would see both sides of the coin.

chris perra wrote:Ok.. Anybody defending Portnoy needs to go to 20 seconds in the video and watch on full screen..
The snare mic is there, resting on the snare... then bam!!.. it gets chucked off the kit by Dumbass..

The crew can't see that because they are behind his worship....
Total asshole created a shitstorm by himself....

Not to excuse my actions, but at least to explain the situation:
This PSMS tour has been VERY difficult on all of us in terms of gear and production. The only way we have been able to make it to such far away places such as Manila, Russia, Israel, Indonesia, etc (where it is normally VERY expensive to tour unless you are a "name" band that has been around for many years) is we've have had to make concessions by using supplied gear and local techs at each show.

Granted, WE agreed to these terms and are willing to make it work - however, on at least a half dozen occasions on this tour we have been incredibly frustrated to arrive at the venue only to find the band's gear requirements were simply blatantly ignored (wrong keyboards, wrong amps, Zildjian cymbals, etc) AND were not setup and ready for us as was supposed to be the case and what the promoters had promised.

We have been as patient and understanding as we possibly can be...but when you get 4 guys who haven't slept more than a couple of hours every night in order to fly to these shows without sleep...sometimes our patience can wear thin.

In the case of the Manila show, we arrived hours before the show to find out the drums weren't setup, cymbals were missing, Billy's amp was wrong (again) and Tony had a buzz on his gear that would not go away...but we forged ahead because we were VERY excited to play for the fans!

At the start of Stratus (where the video on youtube is from) - my snare drum mic fell off and I motioned for the tech to come put it back on the stand/drum...and instead, he comes up to the drum kit and takes the mic away...leaving me playing with NO snare mic!!! (you'll hear I begin playing the high tom instead of the snare)...realizing he had no idea what was going on or how to fix the situation, I stopped playing and did my little "rap" while they fixed the situation and we wouldn't have to play the whole song with no snare in the mix.


In the video, you can see I was at least making a joke out of it and wasn't maliciously trying to hurt anybody or storming off in anger.

Moral of the story: WE ARE HUMAN! And sometimes frustrating circumstances create frustrated behavior. I'm not saying I was right in stopping the song...but if you see a video from later in the show, you'll see I explain to the audience that I've been waiting my whole career to play in Manila and I wasn't going to let ANYTHING ruin my night or their show!!
And we carried on and everybody had a great night...

And I look forward to returning...
(although this may be the last time I tour without my own kit and my own drum tech...hahahaha!!!)

MP