Exclusive Interview: Don Dokken From Dokken

It wasn’t always multi-platinum sales and stadium gigs for Don Dokken. There was a first-phase and there were early days, and it is those bold first steps to stardom which are celebrated comprehensively on Dokken’s The Lost Songs: 1978-1981 album.

Released earlier this year, The Lost Songs shows the crackle and craft of a hungry young Don Dokken as he embarked upon a journey which started in Southern California and Northern Germany. It is a trek which is testimony to the sheer endeavor and perseverance Dokken showed in those few years between 1978 and 1981.

Rock Confidential sat down with Don Dokken to discuss not only the tracks on The Lost Songs but to also dig into the experiences and adventures of being a working band with big dreams on the pursuit of a life of rock n’ roll.

Don, it’s great to talk to you. Let’s go back to the day you found the tapes that ended up becoming The Lost Songs. How did you find them?

You know how you’ll leave a bunch of stuff in your garage for a million years? I bought a new toy. A ’68 Stingray convertible. I had no room in the garage for it. So I decided it was time to clean the garage. It was full of junk. I had to laugh because I hired two guys with a big truck to take the junk away. I’ve owned three or four homes. You move. You save stuff you don’t use. When we were all done cleaning the garage, I’d say 90% of that crap I threw out. I was almost to the end and there was a tub on one of my storage shelves. I pulled it down. It was really heavy. I opened it up and there it was. Two-inch reels of analog. That baffled me because I haven’t used analog tape in 25 years. I opened them up and pulled the reels out and they were moldy. They had white fuzzy stuff on them. I thought “these are ruined, I’ll just throw them out.” I opened up the tracking sheets and it said “Michael Wagener, Hamburg 1979.” The other reel said “Media Art Recording Studios, 1978.” What the hell is this stuff? I knew it wasn’t Breaking The Chains because we did that in Cologne instead of Hamburg. Then I remembered. We toured in ’79 with one of my original lineups – Juan Croucier, myself, and Greg Pecka. We were a three-piece. We went to Germany and played all the same clubs The Beatles had played. It was our first time out of the country and we had an offer and it supplied the gear. It was an adventure. When I met Michael Wagener, his studio was right across from all the clubs we were playing. That’s why there’s two live songs on the album. He actually ran the cables into the club and recorded us. I had to bake the tapes, of course. You have to bake them when they sit that long. There was about eight or nine songs on there but only three or four would play. The rest of the song were shot. So we baked them, put them on the reel and transferred them immediately. You only get two passes. I said, “Wow, these are all those early songs I was writing back in the day.” There was another album floating around called Back In The Streets which had some bootleg demos of me as well. That guy made a million bucks off of it over the years. He never paid me. He stole the tape. So I took those back and thought if I could come up with 11 songs it might be interesting for Dokken fans especially to get a peek into my early writing days, what my voice was like, my writing style, my guitar playing, and my influences. Two of the songs are actually Robin Trower’s rhythm section at the time – Rustee Allen on bass and Bill Lordan on drums. I didn’t have a band. I was only 23. We took everything I had and I mixed them and thought it would be fun to put out because we’re right in the middle of working on the new studio album. Plus I was getting ready to go into the hospital for my spine surgery that didn’t go so well and I had some downtime. So that’s how it happened.

Don with producer Michael Wagener

What was it like to hear those songs again? It had been over 30 years since you last heard them, right?

Yeah, it really was. Every time I heard a song I was like, “Oh man. I forgot all about that one.” I sang them and I played guitar but there was a drum machine and a rough bass.

Were these songs you had recorded just for yourself?

We were just doing the club circuit in Hamburg and Michael offered to let us use his studio. It was during what they call “downtime” – 2AM to like 6AM nobody’s in there. We’d get off stage at 12 and the studio was literally across the street. We’d grab our gear and drag it over to the studio and started laying down demos and ideas. Some were written right on the spot.

You had an offer to tour overseas. That didn’t just happen to everyone.

I really got lucky. We’d never been out of California and had been playing the Hollywood scene – Van Halen, Quiet Riot, the Sunset Strip. I left in ’79 because the music scene changed. It went New Wave. The Knack, Blondie, and all those other New Wave bands that were getting played on the radio. Suddenly, rock was out of fashion. The clubs stopped booking rock bands. The only band that kinda slipped through it was Van Halen in ’78. We all thought we’d get a record deal because of them. There were eight record labels on Sunset Boulevard, but it didn’t happen. I wasn’t about to do that kind of music. It wasn’t my style. I met a guy named Michael Boyens that owned the biggest rock club in Hamburg called The Sounds Club. He knew all the other club owners, of course. He saw us play while he was over here visiting and said, “You guys should come to Germany, man. You’d fit right in. We’re listening to Saxon and Judas Priest and Krokus.” I said, “Yeah, that’s all the kind of music I like,” and that’s why we went. It wasn’t a money thing. We didn’t think we’d get a record deal. We just thought it would be an adventure.

Bands today will never understand the adventure. They’ll never have a clue what it used to be like.

Or the experience. We got our chops on the Sunset Strip and that’s how most bands cut their teeth back then. Now you’ve got things like American Idol where people just audition and sing – they’ve all got great voices – but they’re just singing a cover song that was already a number one hit. I don’t call that paying dues. I thought it was about playing, working the clubs, doing demos. You pay your dues. You go to a club and bust your ass and there’s only 20 people there. But you were happy to have those 20 people.

When you were 23, 24 – what was a typical day like for you?

Well, I had a job. We all worked. It wasn’t just music. We had our equipment set up in our living room at my house. I had three roommates. They were all musicians. One of my best friends from high school who has since passed away, Armando Acosta, was in a band called Saint Vitus. They did a couple of records and I actually helped produce one of them. We were all roommates and we’d just jam. That’s what musicians do. I decided to put a band together and start playing the clubs when we could get ’em. We didn’t play ever week. Maybe once a month. And then slowly I had watched Van Halen start out from nowhere. They were getting more and more popular and starting to pack out the Whisky. We were playing shows with them and I’d watched them fight their way up the ladder – from beer busts and backyard parties to playing to 1,000 people. That was my goal. It wasn’t really to get a record deal and be rich and famous. It wasn’t in my mindset. I just wanted to play, man.

You made a comment that you didn’t know why the label picked “Step Into The Light” as the first single off the record. What song would you have picked?

Probably “No Answer.” It’s a heavier song. I like “Step Into The Light” but it’s hard to say what song you would pick. They’re demos. They’re in my past and it’s behind me, you know? We did this as a way for my hardcore fans to get a peek into the window of where my head was at in my early 20s. I can’t remember exactly how old I was. My only timeline is on our first Dio tour I turned 30 and he threw me a surprise birthday party. I had to ask Juan Croucier. He was in Dokken four years. He did a lot of shows with us. He went back to Germany in 1981 when we hired George (Lynch) and Mick (Brown). We did a TV show, a one-hour special. How we pulled it off I don’t know. We were nobody. It was called The Beat Club. It was around before MTV. After I got a deal with my record company, they somehow finagled us a one-hour spot on television. That really helped Breaking The Chains and we sold a lot of records in Germany. So here we are. I had a record deal as Don Dokken. Juan was in the band but not George or Mick. They flew to Germany, did the record and went home. We came back to America and I was all excited and I thought we were gonna get a record deal and it didn’t happen. When we got back, everything had gone sideways. You see all these documentaries about the Sunset Strip and the Whisky and the Roxy. That didn’t happen until ’82. It was all New Wave and Punk. It was The Dickies, The Weasels, Black Flag, Mentors. Or you had bands like Devo. That was the big thing. New York bands were coming to LA. It was almost overnight and for two years the rock scene died on the Strip. I said, “To hell with this” and went to Germany. I was seeing Saxon, Judas Priest, Accept, King Diamond. There were all these bands in Europe that I was buying their records. They weren’t famous in America yet. They were nobody. The Scorpions weren’t even famous in America yet. I remember when Judas Priest put out Sad Wings Of Destiny and I saw them play clubs when they came to America. I went to Germany because our music was more that style.

Don Dokken performing on ‘The Beat Club’

It makes sense for Dokken to be grouped with bands like those you just mentioned.

Yeah. Everybody always said Dokken has more of a European sound. That was my influence. I’m not knocking any bands, there were great bands on the radio like Journey and Santana. The club bands were all over the map. Van Halen was hard rock. We were hard rock. Quiet Riot got together shortly thereafter. I actually have a funny picture that’s in the video for “Step Into The Light.” They needed photos of me from before the known lineup of Dokken. When you watch the video it’s just old pictures of me in the early days playing on Sunset Strip and a lot of shots from playing clubs in Germany. There’s a picture of me playing guitar and I’m wearing a kimono or something. And Bobby Blotzer was on drums. I laughed because you can see our banner hanging up and it’s just a sheet that we spray painted Dokken on it. That’s how poor we were. But we were playing with Van Halen that night. We were playing at a place called The Proud Bird by the airport. We played on the side stage and Van Halen played on the main stage. That was the first time I ever saw Van Halen and my mouth dropped, you know? I was a lead guitar player at the time. I always considered myself more of a guitar player instead of a singer. Bobby reminded me that that night we had a singer and he didn’t show up. He was a really good singer, very high range. He sounded and looked like Steve Perry. Tom Campos was his name. He had inherited a bunch of money and didn’t need to work. It was like, “I don’t feel like working tonight. I want to go surfing.” Bobby asked what we were gonna do and I said, “I guess I’m gonna sing the songs.” That’s when I began singing. In those early days I was mostly the guitar player. We always had a frontman. I remember seeing David Lee Roth thinking, “What the hell is this?” He was so gregarious and so animated and forceful on stage. In the 70s, no offense to any of them, but singers usually got the microphone and they sang. That’s it. They sure weren’t doing kicks and backflips. David changed that whole landscape. And Eddie Van Halen, in my opinion, will go down in history as reinvigorating rock n’ roll. When he came up with his tapping method of playing guitar, two hands on the neck, when I saw him do that I was just flabbergasted. I tried to do it and I said, “I’ll never figure this out.” Within a year they got a record deal.

You mentioned earlier that you wanted to give Dokken fans an idea of what you were like back then and to help tell your story. Is there anything that hasn’t been told yet?

Oh yeah. There’s a lot of stories. I have a book deal that’s been on the table for seven years to do something like Motley did with The Dirt. A new book came out this year called Dokken: Into The Fire. It’s an unauthorized biography and this guy James Curl called Mick and Jeff (Pilson) and George and me and asked us all these questions, got a lot of information off the internet. Some of it’s correct, some of it isn’t. That’s the first book that’s about our history. But there’s a lot of stories that are left out on purpose because I was there and I don’t want to talk about them until I do my own book and tell exactly what happened. It won’t be just about the Dokken career. I want to do a book about when I was born, playing guitar at 10. I want to do a more in-depth biography. That will happen at some point. The dilemma about writing a book is you don’t want to piss anybody off.

There’s always going to be somebody that gets pissed off.

I saw a lot that people won’t talk about. I’ve toured with every band in the world. Priest, Dio, AC/DC, Aerosmith, Metallica, Van Halen, you name it. I saw a lot of stuff backstage and traveling with them. I don’t know if I should tell some stories because I don’t want to offend anybody. I don’t want to throw anybody under the bus. That’s why I’ve held out on writing my autobiography.

What was the biggest lesson you learned at that point in life, in your early 20s?

I just remember being very driven. I was madly in love with playing my guitar, rehearsing and writing songs. We had a thing called a TEAC 3340. It was a little reel to reel machine. You could record four tracks at a time. Then you bounce ’em down and put ’em back on two tracks and mix it. Then you do another two tracks and bounce it down and do two more tracks. That’s the way it was. I was so excited about just playing music. It feels good. It’s a spiritual thing. Three or four guys jamming. There’s nothing better than that. That’s what I remember. I remember being excited and I remember being grateful.

What’s your favorite part of this record?

The coolest thing on this record is the two live recordings. Totally live, no overdubs. It is what it is. It’s Juan Croucier on bass, me on guitar and singing, and original drummer Greg Pecka. They were recorded in a club called The Sounds Club. Remember, the owner is the guy that invited us to come to Germany. He was a musician and had equipment, so he loaned it to us. All we had to do is hock everything we owned and go to Germany. I remember that like it was yesterday. We literally had like $50 when we got to Germany. We were broke but it was an adventure. I remember Juan and I missed our plane in New York and ended up sleeping in the airport. It was 12 hours to catch the next flight. The whole trip took like 24 hours and we were exhausted. We slept on the floor for like 10 hours and had a gig the next day. When you listen to something like this you get all the memories. A lot of things I’d forgotten and I had to call Juan. The song “Hit And Run” – it was on the internet but it was taken from a copy of a copy of a copy of a cassette. I wondered how people got these demos. But back then, you made a demo and you took it home and made copies. You’d give it to your friends, your family, your girlfriend. Somehow these songs ended up on YouTube and they sounded terrible. I didn’t expect this album to be this much work. It took me four months to find masters and good copies of songs that I couldn’t change. They were already mixed. Some songs had a drum machine so we put real drums on ’em. There’s a couple of songs that didn’t have a solo but I couldn’t do the solo because it was after my surgery and my right hand was paralyzed. Jon Levin played the solos on a couple of tracks. 90% of it is all organic, real at the time. Two of the songs on there were recorded in 1977 with Drake Levin. He was a famous guitar player in a band called Paul Revere & the Raiders. I used to go hang out at his music store, Drake’s Music. He asked if I wanted to go into the studio and do a couple of demos and I said, “Sure.” I didn’t have a band. It was just me. He hired Bill Lordan and Rustee Allen and they came in and did the basics with me. We pressed 300 45 singles from that, took them to Germany and sold them all. They were gone. I didn’t even have a copy. How we found one copy all those years later boggles my mind. We put that on the album and remastered it. That was probably the very first record I ever did. This record is a trip down memory lane for me.

Don in the early days. “I was madly in love with playing my guitar, rehearsing and writing songs.”

Would you care to share your thoughts on Frankie Banali?

Sure. It’s interesting. Frankie played in Dokken. We did like five shows with him. It was right after the Germany tour in ’79. Greg Pecka left the band for religious issues. He was a Scientologist. I actually went back to Germany in 1980 and had another lineup. I ended up getting Gary Holland to play drums on the next tour. That was my connection to why I ended up producing the first Great White album. But after Greg left we had shows coming up. I called Frankie. I’d known him from the scene. Funny story about Frankie, he had a Corvette like I have. I believe it was a ’65 black convertible. It’s actually in the video for “It’s Not Love.” That’s Frankie driving. He was starving. He was roughing it. I remember his front brakes were trashed. I’d always worked on Corvettes. I was a mechanic and I knew how to fix Corvettes. My first car in high school was a ’63 split window, which is now the holy grail of Stingrays. If I’d kept that car I’d be a very, very rich guy. They’re going for like a half-million dollars now. They only made it one year. The government said the split window was too hard to see out of. Frankie said, “Yeah, I’ll do the shows and do a couple of demos, I’ll rehearse with you – if you’ll fix my brakes.” I said, “OK, that’s a fair deal.” I remember in front of his house, he lived up in Hollywood. I went over to his house and hung out. I jacked up his car in the street – totally illegal – put it on stands, tore off the tires, and I put new brake pads on his car. That was our deal. You fix my brakes and I’ll play your shows. I knew Frankie way back in the day. Obviously, our friendship goes way back to the 70s. I was sad to see him pass. Over the past 30 years we’ve played many, many shows with Quiet Riot. I knew Kevin Dubrow. Van Halen put out their first record in ’78. We played a show at a club called the Starwood. I still have a flyer. The lineup was Van Halen, Quiet Riot, Dokken. We did two nights, sold out at the Starwood. It was as popular as the Whisky, just right down the street on Santa Monica Boulevard. We all knew Randy Rhoads. He was a great guitar player. He had just joined Ozzy’s band. Those were Randy’s last two shows with Quiet Riot before he went to do the Blizzard Of Ozz thing. Van Halen went off to do their first album and I took off to Germany.

Unbelievable memories, man. I would love to have experienced the Strip back then.

I saw a lot of famous bands play the Starwood – Y&T, Judas Priest, Saxon. Tons of groups before they were famous in America played the Starwood. They used to tell us, “We’re not going to pay you, but we’ll give you an open guest list. You can put as many guests as you want on the list.” If each person buys a cocktail for eight bucks they’ve made their money back. We would literally go canvas the beach. We’d turn in like 300 names and if a third of them showed up we’d have a packed house. It was very organized and they’d type it all out. It was a great thing. Now, bands have to pay to play. Which sucks. But I remember doing that and we’d start to get a following. That’s the way it was. Then the Starwood went under. I don’t remember why. There was a lot of things going on that I can’t really get into – drugs, the owner of the club was involved in a murder. It was a wild time. It was cool to me because you could go to Gazzarri’s or drive two blocks and go to The Whisky and drive another four blocks and go to the Starwood. In 45 minutes you could drive to the Valley to The Rock Corporation. There was clubs everywhere. You could actually play a different club every weekend in different parts of LA. Van Halen was playing a lot of clubs in their neck of the woods in Pasadena. There was The Fleetwood in Redondo Beach. That was the biggest show I ever did. The owner let us open up for Journey and Y&T. He gave us a 30-minute set. Even though Steve Perry had joined Journey and they just finished the record, he didn’t sing that night. Gregg Rolie sang like in the old days of the band. That was pretty wild. It was like the last concert they ever did before Steve.

Needless to say, this year has been unbelievable. I know you’ve had some crazy things happen. You had some difficulties after your surgery. You had a great tour lined up, too.

We had a great tour booked with Lynch Mob opening, Lita Ford, Dokken, and then George Lynch was gonna come on stage and play the last four songs with us. People were excited about that. George and I made peace with each other a long time ago. Things were going great and then COVID hit.

Do you get tired of people bringing up the “feud” with Lynch? They’ll talk about it like it’s still going on.

Oh God. We talk about that. I just talked to him two nights ago for an hour. He calls me, I’ll call him. He called me up and sent me a picture of his new grandson. A lot of that was record company hype. We didn’t get along. We argued because we were two alpha males.

You did manage to squeeze in some shows this year. Were you nervous about performing during a pandemic?

100%. We had to go to Virginia and then Arkansas the next day. We took six flights in three days. That’s a lot of airports and a lot of layovers. A lot of people around us. We could’ve caught it very easily. They did social distancing. We had a 5,000-seater outdoors. They only allowed 2,500 people in. They were checking temperatures and everybody had to wear a mask. We pulled the show off and everything was fine. The same thing the next day except the idiots in the front rows. They were 10 feet away but they weren’t wearing masks.

Don on stage in the early days of Dokken.

Don, judging by our conversation today I can tell you have plenty of stories for your book whenever you decide to unleash that onto the world.

Yeah, I just have to figure out how to be PC. Motley did The Dirt but they only threw themselves under the bus. I’ve seen a lot in my career. I’ve seen a lot that people don’t know about. If I wrote a book and told all my stories I’d piss a lot of people off and I don’t want to do that. Maybe I shouldn’t talk about this singer who says he’s such a sweetheart and married and faithful. Um, noooo. That’s not what I remember.

You mean there are actually singers that say that shit? (laughs)

There are. And I saw girls coming in and out of the tour bus and the only guy on the bus was the singer. Then he does an interview and says, “Yeah, I’ve been married forever and I don’t do drugs or drink. I don’t fool around and I’m faithful to my wife.” I’m like, “Bullshit!” I’m not going down that road in my book if I ever get around to writing it. It’s the past, man. We all made mistakes. I have many, many regrets for things I did in the 80s. When I look back now it just seems like everybody in Dokken was in a competition to see how many girls we could sleep with. I remember we’d sleep with girls before the show – in the dressing room or take them in the bathroom. We’d take another girl back to the hotel afterwards. I’m not proud of it. I’m not. But we did it. That’s the way it was, man. It was temptation. When a beautiful Penthouse Pet or Playboy Bunny wants to be with you, even if you’ve got a girlfriend it’s hard to say no. We misbehaved. And there was a lot of drugs going around. A couple of guys in my band were really into cocaine and overdoing it. It was just a mess. But it’s the past. We’re all in our 60s now. You mellow out and you either smarten up or you don’t. You see the world differently as you get older. Since my arm got paralyzed I see the world very differently. I can’t go out on my 13 acres of property and trim trees with a chainsaw or manicure things or work around the house. I can barely drive a car with my left hand. I can’t sign my name or even hold a pen. It changed my whole outlook on life. I’m very grateful that when we did Broken Bones we had seven songs left over. And we’re finishing them. We’re two-thirds through a new studio album and we’re going to write five more. We’re hoping all the bands will be back on the road by Summer 2021 and we’ll have a new studio album. So, I guess you could say The Lost Songs is a bit of a band-aid.

Don, I appreciate your time man. It’s great to see these songs in such a cool package.

I was young and naive and not all the songs are super high fidelity. Some of them sound like they were recorded in the 70s but I’m proud of the record. Yeah they’re demos, but after spending four months putting this together there are some cool songs on there.

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