In 2017 Dragonforce guitarist Herman Li told Prog how he discovered Dream Theater, and what becoming a member of their fan club had done for him.
“I was born in Hong Kong and the pop music there was just awful. I just wasn’t into it. Then I heard guitar solos for the first time and I thought, ‘Wow, this is really cool!’
I came to London around 1988, and it was around 91 or 92 that I first heard progressive rock. It was the grunge era – but I never got into that so I had to go and find my own music.
I used to live in Hammersmith; and I remember borrowing tapes and CDs from the local library. I got a bunch of Rush albums and then I discovered Dream Theater and Symphony X. I got into them because they had a more modern approach.
Although Michael Romeo from Symphony X was one of the inspirations behind my guitar playing, Dream Theater are my true prog heroes. I got into them on Images And Words – I thought all the songs on that album were amazing – but Scarred from [1994’s] Awake is my favourite track of theirs.
That was from my ‘learning to play guitar’ time so it meant a lot to me. I practised along to that song. It’s not extremely technical but the solo blows you away and it’s got a great melody.
I’ve seen them play every tour since Awake – that was the first prog gig I ever saw – and I thought The Astonishing tour was the best I’d ever seen them. Wow! I don’t know what people were complaining about online because I thought that album was amazing, and the whole show, the production – they nailed it.
They say you should never meet your heroes – but I’ve met Dream Theater loads of times now. We’ve played festivals together, I got John Petrucci to sign my guitar and I even interviewed him once for a magazine, which was fun!
I grew up being inspired by these guys and they’re genuinely nice. Prog is the thinking person’s music – maybe that’s why the musicians are so friendly.
Through Dream Theater’s fan club and online forums, I found out about a lot of other prog rock bands, like Shadow Gallery and Lemur Voice. More recently I discovered Circus Maximus and I thought their album Nine had some really good songs.”
