hard to take. Myung noted that the announcement "didn't come out of the blue". LaBrie noticed changes in Moore at the end of the Images and Words tour. "He seemed to be more distant and wrapped up in himself... It wasn't that he was rude or unpleasant with anyone," he said. "But when Mike, John Petrucci and John Myung were in the rehearsal studio putting together the music for Awake, he wasn't there as he had been in the past. And when he was there, the guys told me he'd be sitting reading a magazine when they were trying to work out riffs." "After the record was recorded in Los Angeles, he returned to New York, sold his belongings, packed everything into his station wagon and said 'I'm moving away from Long Island,'" Dream Theater's co-manager Jim Pitulski recalled. "So I asked him where he was moving to, and he said, 'I'll let you know when I get there.' He really had no idea what he was doing and he just started driving across the country. I kind of admired that." Moore stated that he decided to leave because his approach to writing music had changed. He had become more interested in writing and recording his own material. Myung said that Moore left the band out of "peace of mind and what he wanted to do musically that he couldn't do in the band". The band's business manager, Rob Shore, suggested that the idea of prolonged touring was a contributing factor in Moore's decision. Describing Moore as "a very private person", Portnoy thought that he might have left because "the whole machine of the music business just wasn't his cup of tea". When Moore announced his decision to leave, he was single, while LaBrie was married, Portnoy and Petrucci had girlfriends and Myung, according to Portnoy, "was kind of in his own world". Portnoy speculated that any resentment or jealousy Moore felt because of this may have influenced his decision. After leaving Dream Theater, Moore continued to release music, musically far-removed from his work with the band. Mixing Awake was mixed at Unique Studios, New York City. When mixing, Purdell and Baron were initially joined by the remaining members of the band. "We were all in the studio when it first started and it was just unfair to the producers," vocalist James LaBrie said. "Obviously each guy was focusing on