Attack Of The Living DOKKEN

Steve Peters

It’s another warm, picture-perfect summer day in Los Angeles, but Don Dokken is feeling a bit under the weather. The lead singer of the band that bears his name has been putting in some long hours on the final mixing of Back For The Attack, Dokken’s latest entry into the realm of scathing hard rock. Don is normally somewhat of a health nut, but the night before we spoke he had allowed himself a well-deserved break from the confines of the studio to do some serious, no-nonsense partying.

Our meeting was supposed to take place in the L.A. offices of Dokken’s record label, but Don was—well, fatiguec I guess you could say—and at the last minute he asked if it would be cool if I came to his place for the interview.

Is he kidding? Half an hour later, as I casually conversed with one of rock’s hottest vocalists while stretched out across the large bed in his cozy abode, I couldn’t help but think of the countless female Dokken groupies who would have traded their very souls plus some spare change to be where I was. But hey, I am a dude, so I spent a quiet moment in solemn reverence of that heartbroken contingent who would be reading this and promptly got to the matter at hand—namely, discussing the album that might finally make Dokken a familiar name in metallovin’ households everywhere.

Back To The Attack is, in Don’s humble opinion, Dokken’s best effort to date. “The songs are great,” he enthuses, dragging on a cigarette between sentences. “It’s a heavier, back-to-our-roots kind of thing, more rock. It’s still got that signature of big harmonies and stuff, but it’s got a lot of heavier guitars and the vocals are a little bit more aggressive. We re leaning toward a metal sound.”

And how. On cuts like "Kiss Of Death,” guitarist George Lynch tears through his leads like a starved pit bull ravaging a chunk of raw meat, and Don reaches the ozone layer itself with his wailing, razoredged vocals. But Back For The Attack reaffirms Dokken’s status as a hard rock band, as opposed to the screeching cacophony of sound that has come to characterize straightforward metal.

“We’ve always been melodic rock, always,” Don points out. "But we definitely have a metal side. With George in the band, there's obviously a metal side We do have our songs that are metal, but we’re a very diversified band.”

They’re diversified lyrically as well, since Don resists writing words of the standard “Let’s rock and party all night” ilk. Kiss Of Death,” for instance, takes a satiric look at the touchy subject of AIDS.

Attack Of The Living DOKKEN

‘‘I like it when someone makes a statement instead of just saying ‘I love you, I love you, I love you’ or ‘We wanna rock, we wanna rock,’ ” Don says. “Every song I hear has the words ‘Let’s rock tonight,’ 'I wanna rock ’n’ roll,’ ‘I wanna rock you all night baby.’ It’s like, c’mon, man.

“People don’t give fans enough credit. They think they just want to go out there and party and have a good time. That’s part of it. Rock music is to have a good time, to let yourself go for a couple of hours, go to a concert and just get it all out of your system, have a good time and listen to good music. But I still believe that when they go home and they listen to those songs and listen to the words that they get something out of it.”

Though Dokken has been churning out the same style of melodic rock since they formed seven years ago, their chances for the fame and success that has thus far eluded them seem better than ever with the current wave of hard rock and metal bands flooding the charts. It’s a factor that Don is well aware of.

“Every time we put a record out, it’s usually when they’re having this backlash and nobody wants to play rock,” he says, disgruntled. “When a Dokken record is coming out, everybody’s afraid to play it because they figure we’re too heavy. Now, this year, Bon Jovi and Whitesnake and Motley Crue are all at once in the Top 10, showing radio stations that metal is still going strong. Rock is still there, and there’s a market for it. You don’t have to be careful and play it safe and just play ballads, you know? That’s good for us.”

It’s also good for them that they've managed to stay together as long as they have. Reports of internal friction between Don and George have been circulating for years, and neither one has ever gone out of his way to deny them. But for the sake of spirited argument and thought-provoking debate, I decide to open the can of worms just one more time. ..

“George and I just kind of keep our distance,” Don says. “I haven’t seen him in about six or seven months. I only saw him about three times during the production of the album, but we get along fine.

“We have to,” he adds. "You know, we're a band. We do what we have to do onstage, but we don’t go bowling together.”

Fair enough. The guys in Dokken don’t seem like bowling types, anyway. But doesn’t avoiding each other make it tougher to get together as a group when touring time rolls around?

"The four of us go onstage no matter what the problems with George and I are," Don states flatly. "We put all that behind us during the time we’re onstage, because we have to do our job. We’re up there for our fans, not ourselves. A lot of bands have problems. I realize that George is a great guitar player, so we play together because we respect each other as peers, as musicians. Our personal lifestyles and personalities might not be the same, .but the tension we have is kind of what creates the music of Dokken.”

It’s true that this volatile combination has produced some truly ass-kicking rock ’n’ roll, a distinctive sound that Dokken fans have been clamoring for since the band’s first record. And while Dokken hopes that this time out the rest of the world will be clamoring as well, they haven’t compromised their sound just so they can appeal to the faceless, recordbuying masses.

“Dokken was always a hard rock band, and we never faltered from that,” Don says, an edge of pride in his voice. “These trends come and go. You know, ‘Rock's popular, it ain’t popular, it’s popular, it ain’t popular,’ and we’ve always done the same thing. I mean, listen to our first album, Breaking The Chains. It was a hard rock album when it was totally not in fashion. The Knack was popular, and everybody said 'Metal’s over, hard rock is dead. This new wave is the future,’ and we just said ’Bullshit! We’ll just keep doing what we think is right.’

“Everybody is surprised that we’ve done such a heavy album,” Don continues. "They say why don’t we do a song like Whitesnake, like ‘Here I Go Again’ or something like that. Well, because that’s not what we wrote. We wrote what we liked, and that’s it. There will always be rock ’n’ roll music, and there will always be rockers out there,” Don philosophizes. "It just comes in waves, y’know?”

So is he more excited that, given the current Top 40 climate and the band’s upcoming opening stint with metal granddaddies Aerosmith, his band faces its best shot yet at hitting the big time?

“No, I’m more nervous,” he admits. “I’m worried that with all the success of these harder rock bands that it’s going to be another backlash. But I’m hoping the fans will hang tough and keep it this way.”

Regardless of how Back For The Attack fares on the charts, Dokken, the band, is thankful that the days of being homeless and wondering where their next meal would come from are behind them. “The one thing that is nice now is that we’re not starving,” Don says with a smile. “We starved for so long! Everybody’s had their horror stories, and we had ’em too. When George first joined the band, we came back from our first tour of Europe and he was living in the back of a Pinto station wagon. I was living with friends, sleeping on the couch. And this is after we had toured!”

Don agrees when I mention that, after nearly a decade of making music together, success for Dokken will be that much sweeter if the new album takes off.

“It’s probably like the little kid in the candy store that gets to walk by the window every day and look at the candy, out he can’t have any,” he surmises. “When he finally gets a piece of candy, he really enjoys it, as opposed to the spoiled little kid who just gets to walk in and get all he wants. If you have to just look through the window for years, and finally you get to have a piece, then you really treasure it.”

Just before I leave, Don picks up an acoustic guitar I’ve been admiring and starts noodling. As he effortlessly picks out some classical arpeggios, I have what could be a prophetic vision. I see Dokken headlining in a huge arena, inciting the massive crowd while they sample what must surely be one of life’s sweetest confections—a humongous chunk of hard rock candy. If it happens, you can bet they’ll be enjoying every delectable bite.