John Petrucci

John Petrucci was born on July 12, 1967 in Kings Park New York to an Italian American family. He picked up the guitar at the early age of 8 because his older sister was allowed to go to bed later in order to practice the piano. However he decided to quit the guitar when his attempts to stay up late were unsuccessful. He would later pick up the guitar again at the age of 12 when his childhood friend and future Dream Theater keyboardist Kevin Moore invited John to join his
cover band. He is also an uncle to Jake Bowen, guitarist of Periphery.

John attended Berklee College of Music in Boston with childhood friend John Myung (bass), where they met future bandmate Mike Portnoy (drums). These three in addition to Kevin Moore, formed the band Majesty, which would later become Dream Theater. While Dream Theater is what Petrucci is most commonly associated with, he is also a part of the project band Liquid Tension Experiment and has appeared as a guest on several records by other artists such as the Age of Impact album by the Explorer's Club.

Petrucci has released a guitar instructional video, "Rock Discipline", which covers warm up exercises, exercises to avoid injury while playing, alternate picking, sweep picking, chords and other techniques for developing one's guitar playing. Petrucci also has a book named "Guitar World presents John Petrucci's Wild Stringdom", which was compiled from columns he wrote for Guitar World magazine, bearing that same title.

In 2001, John Petrucci was invited by Joe Satriani and Steve Vai to tour with them on the popular G3 guitar tour, which exposed him to a massive number of new fans and inspired him to record a solo album. The album, Suspended Animation, was released on March 1, 2005, and was made available for order from his web site. Petrucci also appeared on the 2005 and 2006 G3 tours, and in 2007, went on G3 tour again, this time with Paul Gilbert and Joe Satriani. In a recent video with Larry DiMarzio Petrucci revealed that he's been working on a follow up to his 2004 album, "Suspended Animation" along with the new Dream Theater album.

Petrucci also wrote and recorded two instrumental soundtrack songs for a Sega Saturn game titled Digital Pinball: Necronomicon. Each track is roughly two minutes long and they are simply titled "Prologue" and "Epilogue". According to the spoof rock band Nightmare Cinema (the Dream Theater members changing instruments playing a gig) he got the "alternate stage name" Johnny James. Dream Theater bandmate Jordan Rudess revealed in an interview that Petrucci is a practicing Catholic. He currently lives in St. James, New York with his wife Rena Sands, a guitarist in the all-female heavy metal band Meanstreak, and they have 3 children, Samantha and Reny (who are twins), and Kiara. He is also an avid fan of bodybuilding and dedicates much of his off time to weight training.

Petrucci is respected for his variety of guitar styles and skills. One of the most notable of these is his high speed alternate picking which, as he himself claims, requires a "strong sense of synchronization between the two [playing] hands." Petrucci is notable for frequent use of the seven-string electric guitar, which he states is used as a "writing tool", taking advantage of the extended range both for heavier riffing (The Mirror) and to play extended range runs as part of a solo (This Dying Soul). On one of his guitar lesson videos he states that James Hetfield of Metallica had a great influence on him. He has also cited Steve Morse as a major influence. Another is Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson. Petrucci adopted the technique of using fuller chords and heavy chorus/reverb effects from Lifeson. In addition to this, he is greatly influenced by the emotion-driven guitar playing of David Gilmour. Perhaps the best examples of this are his guitar solo in 'Lines in the Sand' off Dream Theater's 1997 album 'Falling into Infinity', the fast solo mixed with alternate picking and sweep picking from Stream of Consciousness from Dream Theater album 'Train of Thought', the extended solo section of 'A Change of Seasons', and the mellow, spacy segment near the end of 'The Count of Tuscany' from their latest release 'Black Clouds & Silver Linings'. Petrucci has also been known to directly incorporate riffs and solos from other bands into live Dream Theater performances. For example, Pink Floyd's 'Have a Cigar' and Metallica's 'Enter Sandman' are referenced during the performance of 'Peruvian Skies' from the 'Once in a Livetime' live album. Another example occurs in Dream Theater's live DVD 'Chaos in Motion', during the extended version of 'Surrounded'. Here, Petrucci incorporates the guitar solo from 'Mother' by Pink Floyd. The varied examples of this further demonstrate Petrucci's wide range of influences.