Derek's comments:

I was so excited to make this CD. I had just spent all of the previous year playing Kevin Moore keyboard parts on the "Awake" tour-this was my opportunity to make my mark, so I wanted to kick ass.

The writing started in January 1996, in a rehearsal room in East Rutherford, NJ. I used to take the N line subway from 34th street in Astoria, to Times Square -- Then transfer to the NJ transit to rehearsal. This took an hour and a half 5 days a week. John Myung was kind enough to drop me off on the way home, as he had to travel all the way to eastern Long Island NY.

The writing sessions started of strong, we worked on a couple of Petrucci ideas at first, then we started working on my "Lines in the Sand" riff. I was happy that they were utilizing my ideas. We also wrote "Metropolis pt 2" during those sessions- I actually have the rehearsal tapes that show the genesis and development of the composition.

Unfortunately, Elektra records had different plans for Dream Theater. I remember going with the band to the Elektra offices, and the label obviously wanted Dream Theater to cross over and be more commercial to sell more CD's. They told us to go back to the drawing board.

So we spent about a year in the writing studio. The band ended up choosing Kevin Shirley to produce "Falling into Infinity" at Avatar Studios in Hell's Kitchen, NYC (formerly the Power Station). Kevin just enjoyed recent success producing Aerosmith, and he had a very easy going, but ready-to-work vibe about him. After he heard all of our demos, he put them in pro-tools, and sliced and diced them until he was happy with the arrangements. I liked most of his edits, but Mike Portnoy hated the edits. I could see that Mike was slowly getting more depressed as time was going on, as the creative control that he had enjoyed in the past was slowly slipping away.

To commercialize matters even more, Kevin Shirley brought in Desmond Child to co-write on the song "You or Me." Now Desmond is a great songwriter, but for Dream Theater......come on! Mike Portnoy's hair was turning grayer by the day.

Also, during this recording process, we didn't have any management, and were being sued by ex-managers. We actually showed up to writing rehearsals, and were served papers by our ex manager Jim Pitulski (who ironically is now my label president For InsideOut Music America) It was a bit like the wild west.

Finally, the CD was complete. I immediately moved back to Los Angeles (Thank god!!!) after FII was done.

I think that FII has some good moments, but here was a lot of negative reaction from the hard-core DT fans about this release. It was more commercial designed to cross over-but the crossover songs were not strong enough to breakthrough, so the result was a lot of unhappy fans. I was very unfairly blamed by a lot of fans for the result of this CD. All I can say is that it really sucks replacing an original member in a band, because no matter how hard you try, you will always be under the microscope.

Fast facts:

* Mike Portnoy and I both quit smoking cigarettes at the beginning of the writing sessions, and to this day I haven't smoked. The last time I talked to Mike, he still hadn't smoked either.

* Del Fuvio Monks was the background vocal section comprised of John Petrucci, Mike Portnoy, and Myself. Underneath the surface the Del Fuvios were a secret organization based on Mockery, Bitter Diatribe, and Sardonicism. We were so fucking brutal, it was unbelievable--