Stephan Erickson is an American singer known almost exclusively for his extremely brief stint in Dream Theater. He is also the Lead Vocalist and Guitarist of the Seattle based Music Project "Arimathea", and he replaced singer Geoff Tate in the band Myth. His stage name with Dream Theater was Stephen Michael Stone, and he was inducted into the band after a successful audition and impressed the band with his work in studio. Not wanting Stone to be dull on stage as he felt their previous singer, Charlie Dominici, Mike Portnoy gave him a concert tape of Iron Maiden to inspire him.
The live result was disastrous. After playing three songs instrumentally, Portnoy announced Stone as their new singer, and he attempted to sing the remaining three songs on the setlist. Stone hurt his voice early on, and croaked through the rest of the show. Furthermore he embarrassed the band with his on-stage antics, seemingly doing a bad impression of Bruce Dickinson, cavorting around the stage in an over-the-top manner. Stone also infamously shouted "Scream for me, Long Beach!" at several points, embarrassing the band further as they were not in Long Beach, but rather Bayshore. To add insult to injury, Stone proclaimed that this was "The New Dream Theater". He was fired shortly after the show, though Stone claimed it was mutual and he already had a plane ticket back home, and asked Portnoy to drive him to the airport, which angered Portnoy. Stone seemingly left the public eye completely after this, and never recorded anything, though he did consent to be interviewed by Rich Wilson for his book Lifting Shadows. His real name is Stephan Erickson and as of late, there have been rumors of a music project that he has been working of for a few years called "Arimathea". Sources say that there is a library of new music that Erickson has compiled and that it is fresh! Time will tell. There are also new Dream Theater Audition Recordings '09 that features Erickson singing a basement recorded version of the song titled "Crumbling Metropolis" (at the time), where John Myung and Erickson used a 4 track cassette machine to lay the tracks that can now be heard on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-_93IUJQIU and a studio recording of Erickson singing "To Live Forever" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IydbEa9IZAo ... Both show Erickson's potentials even back in 1990. If there have been any improvements from these recordings, then the new music of Arimathea should prove to be promising. It would seem that this chapter has been left unfinished ...
Discography[]
- 2005 - Images and Words Demos (audition footage)