MIKE MANGINI Reflects On His ‘Classy’ Response To DREAM THEATER Exit: ‘It Was A Pretty Simple Reaction By Me’

In a candid new interview with Ollie Winiberg of Drummer’s Review, Mike Mangini opened up about his October 2023 departure from DREAM THEATER. After 13 years behind the kit for the legendary progressive metal band, Mangini was let go to make way for the return of original drummer Mike Portnoy. When asked about his reaction, Winiberg noted that Mangini had “one of the classiest” responses to such a career-defining moment — and Mangini explained exactly why his reaction was, in his words, “pretty simple.”

‬”Oh, I’m glad you said that. Yes, it was a pretty simple reaction by me. It’s just the way I’m brought up and stuff like that. Mangini said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). “And also, the interesting thing is being able to step outside of yourself. And when I say that, you gotta understand, when you study the brain, the emotional area of the brain surrounds the reasoning area which surrounds the moral area. So when you study brain, it’s called the moral center, then your reasoning ability and then your emotional. So when you are tied up with emotion, you can’t be reasonable. Just look at the world. And if you don’t have a good set of morals, you don’t know how to reason. So if people manage to get you in that emotional area and you haven’t really looked into the act of reasoning, critical thinking, and you haven’t looked into what’s really right and wrong here with a set of, maybe, philosophers behind you and belief systems and all of that stuff, if you haven’t even done that, you haven’t even asked the question — not who am I, but what am I — I don’t think you can wrap your head around this.”

“The other thing is if I’m looking at, let’s say, an old-school heavy metal magazine or something — with today, you go online — I just don’t buy in to anybody in any band revealing things that are family. These things happen; it’s a closed-doors thing. You don’t reveal stuff about your coworkers. I just can’t wrap my head around that. So there’s that aspect of it, which really didn’t apply to me. But it could have. I could have spoken about. It was just, like, ‘Okay, next.’

Earlier this year, in an interview with Loaded Radio, DREAM THEATER frontman James LaBrie talked about how Mangini responded to the news of Portnoy’s return.

“Well, he was very professional about it,” LaBrie said. “[It was] very admirable of him to have been… He took it in style and class. I mean, obviously, I think it would have been upsetting — it must have been upsetting — but he took it for what it’s worth and even saying things like, ‘It kind of makes sense, guys. I see why this should be happening and why this would maybe inevitably be happening. It just makes sense for the band and the amount of history that you all have together. It seems natural.’ So, yeah, no, he was a class guy. Classy. Yeah.”