METAL Q & A ROCKIN' WITH DOKKEN!

METAL Q & A ROCKIN' WITH DOKKEN!

Bill Holdship

Editor's note: This is Metal Rock ’N’ Roll’s first in a series of “Q&A ” interviews, in which you will read verbatim interviews with some of your fave metal bands—with no editorial comment or judgment whatsoever. Heeeee!

This month, from a recent interview in Washington, DC.: Dokken (Don Dokken, lead vocals: George Lynch, lead guitar: Jeff Pilson, bass, and Mick Brown, drums).

Your record company bio said there's a lot of tension within the band.

DON: I think there’s tension in the band which just means that we’re always striving for the best. And sometimes the only way we can get the best is everyone screaming at each other.

JEFF: Yeah, it’s a four-way tension, not a two-way.

DON: If George says, “Don, those are the most hideous vocals I’ve ever heard in my life. I say, "Well, fuck you, kiss my ass,” but it makes me sing better afterwards. There’s tension in our band like in all bands, only difference is we’re honest about it. I can tell you stories about 500 bands that punch out each other, have black eyes. I know a few drummers who have black eyes on the road from their singers, but they just kind of play it down. We just say fuck it, let’s say it like it is. GEORGE: So people read our bio, and expect to see us on the road thrashing each other.

DON: It’s mostly because of George. I don't like George because he’s got more hair than me.

JEFF: Then you shouldn’t like anybody! I expected George to be a wildman from the bio.

GEORGE: You shouldn’t discount the bio, but it’s really like fantasy.

So, Don, do you really just listen to acoustic and classical music at home? DON: Yeah.

JEFF: Yeah, acoustic bands like Accept and Judas Priest. That’s what Don likes. DON: No, I do like extremes. I listen to Accept and stuff like that or I listen to classical. Chamber music, I like chamber music. That’s mainly because every time I’m home, I’m always screwing, and it’s easier to get in the mood. Yeah, but I do listen to that stuff. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. Jeff’s got a classical background and training.

Yeah. You were a music major?

JEFF: Yeah. Major.

It also says in the bio that you sang in Marty Balin’s Rock Justice?

GEORGE: I was the part of the lead singer in it. The same guy that got me in this band, Mike Varney, was commissioned to write songs for the rock opera. He got me to play on demos for it, and then he got me to sing on demos, and then the people involved, the record companies and everything wanted my voice on the record. Biggest mistake they ever made. (Laughter)

Don, you’re on a new solo LP by one of the Scorpions?

DON: Yeah, Herman Rarebell. It’s set to come out the 14th of February. It’s got Steve Marriot who did two songs, and a guy who sang for Ted Nugent (Charlie Huhn). I sang the single that’s coming out on Valentine’s Day. It’s got some abysmal stuff on it, though, which we’re gonna have to change or I’m going to have to get a disclaimer, (laughs) Didn’t turn out the way I wanted it.

Heavy metal is based a lot on image. Drummer Mick says that bands like Motley Crue and Twisted Sister are OK, but not “musician’s musicians. ” So you consider yourself more musicians than an image thing?

DON: Yes, we definitely "feel we’re a player band more than a poseur band. JEFF: Our image is in our live show. DON: But we don’t have any choice. We don’t have any pyro, fog, demons, sphinxes. We have no choice but to try to go on the strength of the music and the performance alone.

JEFF: We’re just a high energy rock band that writes good songs.

DON: Now if we get a couple platinum records, we may become an image band. We have this thing where a 747 lands onstage, (laughs) We’re definitely players in this band. A lot of bands are not players. If you take a band and analyze them player by player, you find the weak members of the lineup who just kind of bang and bash.

JEFF: And we don’t want to have any elements that are going to be out of date in a year or so. Some weird trend or something.

DON: That’s why they’re retiring me next year.

How about major influences?

DON: Well, that’s hard because we have a lot of different influences. Me as a singer, it’s probably Ian Gillan, Dio, Halford, stuff like that. Judas Priest was a big influence at one period. I actually listened to their albums before they made it famous. We used to play their songs before they were famous. George, I think, was influenced by Beck and...Muddy Waters, (laughs)

You guys did a TV special in Germany? DON: A one hour TV special.

JEFF: Remember watching The Empire Strikes Back last night on video? Remember the funny quality on the tape? That’s because it was taped over the Dokken Rocks Germany special! That’s how much we liked it.

DON: We did a German TV special our first tour, but it was like the end of the tour, middle of the winter, and we found out that, unlike most bands who record it onto 24 track machine and then mix it afterwards, we had to do it directly onto a cassette. What you heard is what you got. I was playing guitar on that tour, and every time George would come in to do a solo, they’d push up my rhythms. They had it all backwards. It was real successful, though. They’re still playing that same TV show, they take excerpts from it. So you still have a pretty big following over in Germany?

DON: We’re hoping. We’ll find out when we go back. A lot of fan mail says they’re waiting for the next LP. We had a little cult following, diehard fans who would follow us around from gig to gig. The TV show was played in front of four or five million people, so I’m sure that helped somewhat.

There’s a big misconception about you guys being German.

DON: Yeah. Big misconception. We’re hoping to get rid of that this tour. We re not a German band. The name is actually a Norwegian name. But we’re from L.A. Does one person in the band have heavier influences in writing the harder rock part, and then another more melodic leanings? GEORGE: That was another misconception in the bio. Everybody’s got heavy and melodic ideas in the band. It’s just a sort of combination. That’s why they came up with all these twists. They figure we’re so fucking boring, so they say something and lie. But it’s not fair to people to single out me or single out Don when he (Jeff) is probably more responsible than most of the band for a lot of the writing. JEFF: Not a lot of the writing—just certain aspects of it.

GEORGE: Whatever. Even Mick who doesn’t get mentioned hardly at all. It’s not fair.

JEFF: And Mick has a lot of ideas of his own.

How about the story where you were going on tour with Blue Oyster Cult and Rainbow, but Blackmore wanted you off the tour?

DON: Yeah, they did kick us off the tour. Not Blue Oyster Cult. BOC wanted us on the tour. Ritchie said if they come on tour, we’ll quit, so we lost the gig.

Do you think they felt threatened?

DON: Yes.

GEORGE: We don’t know what happened.

DON: There was no explanation given, but there was no other reason.

JEFF: And Ritchie Blackmore is known for being that way. He has a reputation as being paranoid.

DON: We ran into them afterwards, and it was very strange vibes.

Heavy metal has pretty much peaked. Do you think it’ll begin to taper off or continue indefinitely?

DON: I think it’s already tapering off. When you see the airplay formats on AOR, I think AOR has really copped out because AOR is going CHR now. It’s like a safe format. For awhile they went heavy metal, now they’ve gone back to we’ll play Prince up until 8 o’clock, and then we’ll play heavy metal for half an hour, then we’ll play Duran Duran. Friday nights we’ll play lots of heavy metal. GEORGE: Yeah, there’s going to be a metal backlash, but we’re not really a metal band.

JEFF: It’s not going to affect us because we’re not a metal band as far as the definition of metal is right now.

DON: It’s hard to define. It’s just a term that somebody came up with.

JEFF: But mainstream rock is still not dying out. If you’d call Twisted Sister mainstream rock or something like that— Twisted, Dio, us—bands like that are still hanging in there. Night Ranger, whatever, still selling records and doing well. It’s the Motorheads and the Accepts that are probably in danger. But you never know what they re capable of coming up with next record.

Being an L. A. band, do you guys get compared to Van Halen or Quiet Riot and other bands?

DON: Well, we’d like to be associated with a band like Van Halen. We don’t want to be associated with bands like Quiet Riot. I wouldn’t because I don’t feel we’re that kind of band.

How about Ratt?

DON: Quiet Riot was around the same time that we were, on the same club circuit. After Van Halen made it, six or seven years ago. And Ratt—I personally feel that Ratt was influenced somewhat by this group because from what I saw of Ratt before, some of the members that were in the band, they were sounding a lot different. But when their album came out. there was a big change.

GEORGE: They were definitely going for the same niche in rock that we were aiming for. The heavy melodic stuff.

DON: And they weren’t like that before. It was just a singer—no harmonies. GEORGE: And now it’s pretty much the same thing.

DON: So there’s some influence there, I would think. We played together at various points with different members of Ratt.

GEORGE: Yeah, Bobby and Mick are real tight—the drummers. Juan was in our band and in their band off and on, back and forth.

DON: The drummer in Ratt and I used to play together for like eight years way back.

GEORGE: The only thing that sets us apart is that the vocalists are different. Other than that, we’re pretty much the same.

JEFF: I think we write a little bit more outside. They pretty much stick to a little formula thing. We've pushed the boundaries a little more.

HM is often connected with the devil/demon stuff. Is that dying out? DON: I think it’s history. Motley Crue is definitely trying to play it down now. They used it as a vehicle to get notoriety and now they’re playing it down.

Well, I was curious about the claw on your album.

DON: No. We had nothing to do with that. It was a record company idea. They wanted something that was very visual and very aggressive to catch your eye. GEORGE: It was like a little visual hook. JEFF: The album’s called Tooth & Nail, and we’re struggling, and that represents the struggle. ’Cause notice that it’s grabbing at the Dokken sign, even on T-shirts and stuff.

So the struggling tooth & nail, that’s where you guys are in your career?

DON: Yeah, exactly.

JEFF: It’s definitely a real statement. DON: We’re at a sensitive point now. We could either go up or down. It’s up to

us—how well we perform. It’s up to us to keep banging our heads as hard as we can to break the barrier.

You guys seem to take this really seriously.

JEFF: Well, we have a lot of fun too, but of course we take it seriously.

DON: After fighting for a long time, you have to start taking it seriously.

JEFF: Yeah, we want to make it big. We’re not in this for the party. I mean, we like to party, but we’re not in it for that. We got something to do. Well, Mick... DON: Yeah, Mick’s in it for the party. He definitely is.

JEFF: But we are a serious band. Most bands are. And I don’t think audiences are as dumb as people think they are these days. But then again, that’s heavy metal. This isn’t really heavy metal. I think there’s very few heavy metal bands out

there anymore like that. I mean, your average junior high girl now who isn’t stupid or all fucked-up on drugs or something, she likes our kind of music. DON: They’ve been getting laid since they were 12. They’re more hip.

JEFF: Yeah, they’re smarter, and streetwise, the whole bit. The days of the headbanger are over.

Well, like Motley Crue, they really come off as morons most of the time. (Lots of laughter) And the music suffers as a result. DON: That’s right, the music suffers. And the lyrics “Too Young To Fall In Love” or “Looks That Kill” they come off as “let’s sit down and write a song.” There’s not a lot of thought.

Musically, they aren't very good.

DON: Well, I don’t think their musical peers are in awe of them.

JEFF: But what they’re doing, they’re doing really well. They’re pulling it off. Although I think there’s more brains behind that than you might expect. GEORGE: I don’t think it would be very satisfying as a band.

DON: Twenty years from now, if you’re in a successful band, I don’t think the Motley Crue thing will come up as a heavy influence as far as musical direction is concerned.

JEFF: Although personally I think that Nikki is a very good writer. And I think there is some thought behind what they’re doing—and I think that is going to give them some longevity.

So what do you guys hope for?

DON: We hope that this album is going to go. We want to have a multi-platinum album, so we can make another album. And I think our big goal is next year not to be a supporting act—to be a headliner. JEFF: We want to be a classic band that writes classic songs that you’ll know 20 years from now when you hear it in an elevator.

GEORGE: Yeah, stuff you can turn into muzak.

JEFF: We want to be a supergroup that’s part of the ’80s culture.

Seem promising?

DON: Yeah. Sure. We’ve got the talent and the ambition and energy, management, record label, magazine help— we’ve got all those elements. No reason why we can’t do it.

Ever feel like you’re banging your head against the wall, frustrated?

DON: Of course it gets frustrating. You saw how frustrated we were last night. JEFF: That’s one of the great things about this band. It’s got a funny survival element. When the going gets tough, we get tough and get going.

DON: A lot of bands would come out like we did last night, have a bad show, and say fuck it, the audience is a piece of shit. We don’t do that. We come offstage, and analyze it and say it was us. We always blame ourselves first. We’re our own worst critics. That way we can try to have a better show. If you just listen to your fans and your peers, then you’re in trouble. So you have to criticize yourself. You know what you’re capable of doing. We were critical on this album, that’s why we ended up remixing it, and scrapping songs and re-cutting songs after we were finished. “Heartless Heart” the song was totally finished—in the can—and we decided we didn’t like it. It’s OK but we don’t get goosebumps from it, so we did it over.

We’ve had all the typical stuff go wrong. Tours getting kicked off, and records not doing what we expected. Or not getting a record deal ’cause of weird things going on in the company and politics. No money—no management. So we’ve got everything now. Everything we wanted four or five years ago, we now have. So now it’s up to the fans. GEORGE: Before we could always say, well, it’s because we don’t have a harmonizer.

DON: So now it’s up to us to do our show. If we can succeed on this tour and sell records, as limited as we are by Dio as far as production is concerned, then we know that next year we’re going to be happening. We have nowhere to go but up. If we had a full production this yearlike Ronnie James Dio has—and we weren’t selling records, then we’d say “Well...” The problem for us is we’re up against a lot of well-known bands and we’re not well-known. So we’re up against a lot of heavyweights.

You keep saying though that it makes you work harder.

DON: It pisses you off so it makes you work harder.

GEORGE: It would be a shame not to do it on the strength of this album because we put so much work into it. It’s so deep. It’s got so many good songs on it. JEFF: We don’t believe in filler.

DON: There will be a lot of second guessing if this one doesn’t go platinum. We’ll have to sit down and say “What went wrong?” We, in fact, gave it everything we had. So what does the public want? You want image? You want plastic? This band can’t give anything to the public that’s plastic. We can’t do it because we’re not capable of doing it. We could have somebody come in and design us a bunch of tutti frutti clothes, and have two guys come out on horses and have a duel or something.

“We definitely feel we’re a player band more than a poseur band. ” -Don Dokken

What will you do if the record company comes and says this one didn’t do it—we want image?

DON: We’ll kill them.

GEORGE: They knew we weren’t an image band when they signed us. It’s a matter of presenting it to the public the right way—which is their job. We try to get our ideas across to them the best we can. But we’re in L.A., they’re in New York. JEFF: We still say the bottom line, though, is the music, what you play, and that’s where you’re longevity comes from. Is this tour just taking you through America or are there plans for Europe?

DON: We hope to go to Europe. We have a certain goal we have to reach before we can constitute going to Europe, and making it financially feasible. If we hit in America, we can go to Europe. GEORGE: We’d like to go out with Def Leppard. Leppard isn’t as big over there as they are here, so they need a strong support act. They wanted Ratt to go out with them, but Ratt’s done touring. So if we sell a certain amount of records and we’re„strong enough, we’ll go. We want to keep playing all the way through summer.

DON: Gotta stay on the road, man. JEFF: Yeah, ask Motley Crue and Ratt. DON: Yeah, they know. And Quiet Riot. GEORGE: I just want to get to the point where we’ve played so much that we can become the band we want to be.

So do you think that heavy metal can keep evolving indefinitely?

DON: It’s always been there and it’ll always be here. I mean, Deep Purple came out in the ’70s, Hendrix in the ’60s. I mean, it ain’t going to go away. The people who say rock’s over when the trends come by, those are the ones that are getting old.

JEFF: And they’ve been saying that since 1972 after Led Zeppelin IV. Well, that’s it. No more heavy metal. No more hard rock. DON: They say that every five years because they get burned out.

GEORGE: These arty critics. I mean, fuck them.

JEFF: They’re all frustrated musicians, you know.

DON: They’re tired about writing for rock after five years, so they say let’s write about something different. Let’s change the trends because I’m tired of writing about rock ’n’ roll.

JEFF: But they’re not the kid on the street. And the kid on the street will always want it.

GEORGE: It’s like Talking Heads and that shit. Bruce Springsteen.

DON: They don’t seem to realize that the generation changes every five years. The 10-year-old becomes 15 who becomes 20. But when he turns 20, the one who is five is 10 and he's just learning about rock. So you’ve got a whole fresh, brand new audience.

JEFF: Plus with video and everything— ROCK is a perfect music for that. Because it’s got energy and that energy can come across.

GEORGE: Some of the new music doesn’t translate to that.

JEFF: Yeah, that doesn’t come across, but ROCK will. Just look at how much it’s evolved in the last couple of years now. Hard rock songwriting has really improved. Bands like Ratt, us—or even the Motleys to a certain extent—have really improved the songwriting quality. And it’s probably only going to get better. All these kids who are 15 year old are learning about rock from us, where it evolved since the days of the Deep Purples or the Led Zeppelins or whatever. Everybody’s going to make that improvement from generation to generation.

DON: People who get burned out on rock are just the ones that grow up, and hopefully we’ll never grow up.