It’s understandable to assume that prog rock would have loomed large in Mike Portnoy’s formative listening years (after all, he was a co-founding member of Dream Theater, the band he returned to in September 2013 after an absence of more than a decade). But there were quite a few non-prog surprises in the list he assembled for us.
However, he requested a clarification be included before we start. “It’s important to differentiate the ten albums that changed my life vs. my ten favourite albums," says Portnoy. "Because if you look at my favourite album list, I’ll have Jellyfish’s Spilt Milk or the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique. Those are favourite albums of mine. But I can’t really say they changed my life. So this is a little bit of a different approach. And these are pretty much in chronological order."
