Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 8, 1995 TAG: 9509080022
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KIRA L. BILLIK ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: PHILADELPHIA LENGTH: Medium
One band, though, has survived.
Dokken, hugely popular a decade ago with a string of gold and platinum albums, signed to Columbia and put out its best record to date, ``Dysfunctional.'' They've left the '80s behind and matured tenfold in sound and subject matter.
``A lot of these bands, they went up the ladder, they went down the ladder,'' singer Don Dokken said. ``We went to the top - we didn't get our downside curve. If we could have stayed together, maybe we would have fell by the way with everybody else.
``It was kind of a double-edged sword that we went away at the peak of our career for so long [and] to come back in a bad musical climate, but I still believe - and maybe I'm just a foolish man - that if you make good songs and a good record, it will surface.''
Dokken came out of the same Los Angeles scene that produced Motley Crue, Faster Pussycat and many others. Sporting Don Dokken's distinctive vocals and guitarist George Lynch's unique fretwork, the band rode albums such as ``Tooth and Nail'' and ``Under Lock and Key'' and singles such as ``Alone Again'' and ``In My Dreams'' up the charts.
But after years of infighting, which Dokken says was over his bandmates' drug abuse, the band split at the height of its popularity.
``I didn't do drugs,'' Dokken said in a telephone interview, ``so I was odd man out. Mick [Brown] was hung over, George was snorting lines of coke between songs on stage - I couldn't take it, and I begged and I pleaded and nobody listened to me, so I said, `OK, I quit.'''
``Dysfunctional'' was to have been Dokken's second solo album. He and bassist Jeff Pilson wrote the record and were about to release it when Lynch and drummer Brown got in touch.
Dokken admits that his relationship with Lynch, even though the guitarist and the rest of the band have been sober for years, is still rocky.
``The first couple months were still shaky with George,'' he said. He ``and I were still butting heads pretty hard.''
But when the band started rehearsing, he knew it was right.
``It was like we never broke up,'' he said. ``To do our best work, I guess we do need each other.''
After years of writing about what he called ``love and broken hearts,'' Dokken's new songs are more pointed, more serious. He said the new direction came from re-examining his life. That's where thoughtful, introspective songs such as ``Hole in My Head'' and ``The Maze'' come from.
``I was seeing all these things - the world changing in front of my eyes,'' he said. ``I had a niece who I was very fond of who was 8 years old who died of leukemia. ... [That] just kind of totally jogged my sense of mortality.
``A friend that Mick and I knew for years walked off a cliff and died of exposure. ... We had a friend [who] died of AIDS, a guy that overdosed on heroin. ... You get older, and all of a sudden, people are dying around you.''
The harrowing ``What Price'' deals with child molestation.
``We are models of our parents, and I believe that's where I lucked out, because I wasn't raised by my parents,'' he said. ``I was raised in foster homes. ... I regretted not having a mother and father until I got to know my mother and father down the road.
``They were 15 when I was born; my father was in the Korean War, and my mother went to a mental institution. ... I love them, but they are a mess.''
Dokken said he wanted to maintain the band's identity and grow at the same time. It was tough to do.
``I was so paranoid about this record not sounding like I was trying to be commercial, or grunge or speed metal,'' he said.
``I wanted to move on with my life spiritually, musically. A lot of people said if you do that, you guys will kill yourselves, because you won't attract the new fans and you might disenchant your old fans.
``I said, well, if I'm only out here to make my fans happy, then I shouldn't be out here.''
But he's pleased that the response to the band's reunion has been positive.
The record has sold about 200,000 copies.
``My biggest surprise of all of it has been that there's so many young people at the shows,'' he said. ``I can see them out there singing every word to every song - they can't be more than 17, and there's no possible way they could have seen us play.
``So I'm thinking, `Well, how do they know these songs?' I talk to them and sign autographs, and they're just like, `Well, my older sister, my mother. Mom really dug you guys,''' Dokken said with a laugh.
by CNB