In their heyday, Dokken were a prime example of great music being created despite internal friction. With the legendary personality clashes between Don Dokken and guitarist George Lynch later gaining more publicity than the band’s albums, the last time he spoke to Fireworks in 2002 saw Don in a more relaxed and focussed frame of mind. He had a great guitarist in John Norum, the equally excellent Barry Sparks replacing Jeff Pilson on bass, the band’s first European tour for 14 years, and a new album (‘Long Way Home’) that he was very proud of. Now, two years later, both Norum, and his replacement Alex De Rosso, have come and gone, but Dokken’s resolve remains. With a new album featuring guitarist Jon Levin about to hit the shops, I caught up with the forthright singer to find out exactly who will have ‘Hell To Pay’.

‘Dysfunctional’ was an apt title for the reformed band, ‘Erase The Slate’ was Don’s new start with Reb Beach after his virtual non-involvement in the Lynch-Pilson debacle that was ‘Shadowlife’, and ‘Long Way Home’ was Don’s personal journey back to where he began. ‘Hell To Pay’ is a little less personal and more global.

"Well, I’ve never been a political writer," Don explains. "I never write lyrics about Governments and things, I leave that sort of thing to people like Bono or Sinead O’Connor – but over the last few years I’ve become so frustrated with the Government and Bush – the Iraq thing is making me crazy. So instead of writing a song that’s political I decided to do an album cover with a politician shaking hands with the devil." While he obviously wanted to make a statement, the concept goes no further than the cover. "We’re just writing a record," he continues, "it’s just Rock’n’Roll music – put your headphones on and escape from the stress of your day – but I want people when see the album cover to think about what’s going on and that we’re all going to pay for it. It’s we, the normal people, that suffer from the ills of the Government – the problem is the same in England – Blair trusted in Bush, and look what happened. He believed everything that Bush told him and he backed him as a proper ally and trusted in our intelligence, and it was all bullshit! Now he’s screwed and he’s going to be out, he backed us on our information and now he’s going to have hell to pay for getting in league with the devil – and in my opinion Bush is the devil."

Musically Don has become accustomed to being accused of straying away from the sound that made Dokken famous – however the more guitar oriented sound and Lynch-like solos suggest that Dokken was at least listening to what the fans wanted. It may not be the Dokken sound of the 80’s, but he did at least meet the fans half-way. "It was a conscious effort," he admits. "The bottom line is I can do what I want musically – but also if I want to keep touring and performing I think I owe something to the fans, otherwise I should do what other bands do – stop making records and just go out and do the old hits. I could do the nostalgia thing and go out on tour for four months through the summer playing ‘Tooth & Nail’, ‘Into The Fire’ and ‘In My Dreams’, and all that. Over the years I got tired of listening to everyone say, "Give us the classic sound" – so I kept saying "What is the classic sound? What does that mean?" If you’re asking me to write a record like ‘Tooth & Nail’ or ‘Under Lock & Key’ – that was over fifteen years ago – I can’t put my mind back that far. I’m not there spiritually – I’m not there emotionally – I’m older, hopefully a little bit wiser – I don’t know if I can even still write those kind of songs, so I just stopped thinking about it. So this time I just wrote lyrics and our guitar player Jon (Levin) had a lot to do with it – his favourite band is Dokken – he’s a big fan of George Lynch’s, so he would come in and say "Here’s a riff I would like to hear Dokken do" – so I would say "OKAY, I dig that" and write a lyric to it, and this is how it came out."

There’s no doubt that Levin is a dead-ringer for Lynch, but Don denies that he was looking for the Lynch sound without having to deal with George. "No, it’s not why Jon’s in the band – and that the God’s truth," he counters. "He does sound a lot like George and a lot of people think we’ve got him in the band because he’s a George clone – it’s even been suggested that we MADE him sound like George – but I swear on my children that I actually tried to steer him away from that. I wanted him to develop a style of his own, but the bottom line is – that’s the way that he plays. That’s his style. He said "You’d rather I played like Michael Schenker or John Norum?" So I just tried to balance the record. I even slipped in some Schenker-ish stuff – or some blues – but there are some riffs and solos that have that Lynch sound – Jon just happens to sound like that. Y’know George didn’t invent that sound, it was just that he had that style, and that attitude, and he was in Dokken. I couldn’t ask Jon to completely change his style for us."

What an artist wants and what his fans want are very rarely the same thing, and the fact that people want him to replicate albums he’s already done still rankles with him. "Of course it does," he says wearily. "It reminds me when I was a little kid when The Beatles ‘Help’ came out – then they did ‘Revolver’ and everyone was flipping out – what was this? Then people accepted ‘Revolver’ and they changed again to ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ and ‘The White Album’ – every album was completely different. Led Zeppelin too – you listen to the first album and listen to ‘Houses Of The Holy’ – it’s completely different. In the sixties people accepted it, the fans kind of grew up with the band – but now it’s "This is the sound we want and you can never change." – but of course if you don’t change and make the same record every time, people are pissed at you too. So you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Now they’re saying, "This song sounds like an old Dokken song, but this song sounds totally different – why did you do that?" What can I do? I can’t make everybody happy, I just have to write what comes out of my head from whatever inspiration I have on that particular day." Influences are something that Don obviously sees as a double-edged sword. "The only thing I did with this record was I told Jon that I wasn’t going to watch MTV or VH-1, or listen to the radio – I’m just going to go back and listen to old Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Thin Lizzy, and all the songs I grew up with, and see how that affects my writing. I didn’t want to listen to MTV – there are a few great bands out there still – Puddle Of Mudd, Nickelback, Staind – all these bands that are popular now – they’re all great bands but I didn’t want to be influenced by them. You can’t help it, if you’re a musician and you hear something you like, it’s going to influence you somehow."

It’s strange that a lot of those type of bands are now coming out and saying that Dokken influenced them. "It’s a compliment," he states, "but I don’t really understand it – so many bands I’ve met in the last couple of years have said they grew up with Dokken and we influenced them a lot – we got them through high school – and now they have this band and they’ve got a record contract. That’s great – but I don’t hear any influence – I don’t hear any Dokken sounds in there. There have been some bands that were influenced by us – like Firehouse I think were one – but to play with Staind and Sevendust and for them to say I really influenced them as a singer. I say "Really? Okay!" but I don’t hear it. It’s a compliment and I can’t really knock it, but if someone says "I hated your music when I was growing up" – I’d rather hear "you influenced us" than that," he laughs.

Levin was the band’s legal attorney before becoming the new guitarist, surely that line of work is more stable and financially rewarding than being the guitarist in Dokken. Don isn’t the slightest bit offended by the question. "I asked him that before he joined the band, because he’s pretty well-known in Los Angeles – he makes a lot of money, in fact he worked for our old record company, Sony, for five years. I told him that we weren’t making the millions of dollars a year that we were in the eighties, we’re making maybe a couple of million dollars a year, each – but a lot of that goes back into the band. Those years are gone and they aren’t going to come back – I’m still here playing because I still love playing – it doesn’t matter about money anymore. He said he just couldn’t take it anymore – he said "I became an attorney but I made a mistake – I’m not happy." When you meet him you’ll see that he’s very mellow, and he hates fighting with people – and when you’re a lawyer, what do you do all day? You fight with people! He said "I don’t want to argue with people, it gives me stress. I’m not gonna do it, I’d rather play music." He still does some legal work on the road, he still takes care of Dokken – he doesn’t do it for free, we pay him to do Dokken stuff. He says he wants to just do wills, and contracts – stuff like that – he doesn’t want to be involved with divorces and people fighting over money anymore. He said the last year and a half that he’s been in this band is the happiest he’s ever been."

Don had also said great things about his predecessor, Alex De Rosso, and had even said that the Italian would play on their next album - it seems that as well as John Norum leaving on good terms to do the Europe reunion, De Rosso’s departure was also a product of circumstances rather than disagreements. "Well, the whole 9/11 thing just changed everything," Dokken explains. "We couldn’t get him a visa so he couldn’t stay here more than thirty days. It’s just a joke now – UFO were supposed to come over here and tour, they can’t get visas – I talked to Lemmy Kilminster, he was stuck in London for a month – he couldn’t get back into the country, and he lived here for years. Everyone has become very, very paranoid in America – if you’re from England, or Germany, or Italy, or anywhere in Europe, you can come here on vacation for 21 days, but that’s it. So I had to say "What are we gonna do? It’s going to take forever to get him legally sorted out with a visa that’ll let him into the country whenever we need him." So Mick suggested we had to get someone in L.A. The biggest problem is I’m not capable of writing every day," he continues. "I don’t get up in the morning and say "Today I’m going to write a song." I might go a week or two without any inspiration at all, but when I am inspired I can’t say to Alex, "Hop on a plane, come on over, I have an idea." I was going to go over to Italy so we could write, and he was going to spend some time over here, but logistically and financially it was going to be a nightmare. I love Alex to pieces, he’s a really great guy – I really loved playing with him and we had a great time – it broke my heart to tell him, but he understood that it was a ridiculous situation. Now with Jon – it could be 11pm at night and I say "Come on over to the studio, I have an idea," he jumps in his car and he’s here in 20 minutes. I had to make the decision – in fact I asked Alex if he wanted to come and live in America – you can get a visa to live here for one year, but he didn’t want to do that, so what can I do?"

Out of his control or not, the loss of any member of a band will have serious effects on their momentum and the will to continue. "It’s very hard," he admits, "but we’ve been very lucky this time. I’m not going to pump up the band and make it sound like it’s all glorious, like some interviews you do I’m sure – I have to be very honest with you, but if you just look at the reviews – in America, on melodicrock.com, and so on – everybody has really taken to Jon. Maybe it’s the Lynch style and he reminds people of the old Dokken – I don’t know. When Kerrang! gives us three stars, and they’ve hated the band for years – they’re not really well known for liking anybody from our era – so when they give us three out of five, it’s a really big compliment. Every magazine we’ve done in America has said that with this line-up – quote, unquote – "the magic’s back!" I don’t know if that’s true, but after the problems we’ve had with guitarists – we’ve just done thirty-something shows and have another twenty to do – a lot of the fans we’ve spoken to have said they loved Reb Beach, they loved John Norum, they loved Alex on the Scorpions tour, but this is their favourite line-up of the last few years. This sounds like the real Dokken – the way we perform on stage – the guitar sound – so I guess I’m just happy about that. They could have said, "We hate your guitar player," and what you were saying about momentum, I expected the fans to say "Oh fuck! Another guitar player," but that didn’t happen. I was very worried about that because it always makes me out to be the bad guy, the old-members say "Don can’t get along with anybody because he’s an egomaniac, and he can’t keep a guitar player because..blah, blah, blah." That’s just not the case – I try to do the best I can y’know? I do what’s best for the band."

In the past Don has always had Jeff Pilson to bounce ideas off, but now it’s up to the new guy to pull his weight – something he seems to be more than capable of. "The songwriting process shifted to Jon a lot," he begins, "and it was probably an accidental blessing that he’d put his guitar down for ten years. He’d been practising at home, and had done some jamming, just to keep playing – he’d had ten years of being a lawyer, so when it came to writing songs I just couldn’t keep up with him. He’d come round my house and have – like – ten ideas. I’d have to say "Slow down, take it easy…just let me turn the machine on and we’ll get one idea at a time down" he laughs. "I can’t write that fast, he was just full of ideas – but the last couple of albums I’d done with Jeff, he was exactly the opposite. Jeff was really tired of making the kind of music that we make, he wanted to go in another direction and was finding it hard to write in the ‘Dokken style’ – in fact he was hating it. On the last tour he did he said "I really hate playing these songs – I’m burned out on them and I don’t want to do this anymore." I said "So why are you?" and he said "For the money", so I said "I think it’s time for you to leave", so he left."

Lyrically there’s a little bit more depth creeping into Dokken’s work. ‘Prozac Nation’ is an interesting one – but I wonder if it’s vision of everyone on drugs is painting a bleaker picture of the world than it actually is. "I don’t think the world’s a bad place," he agrees, "but I do think everybody is taking something to get them through it. In my world with some of my friends, every time I meet up with someone they’re on something. Some kind of anti-depressant, or tranquillizers, anxiety medication – I mean Jesus, it wasn’t this bad in the sixties. When my parents had problems they weren’t going to the doctor saying "Give me a pill to make me happy". But then again the Rolling Stones talked about it – ‘Mother’s little helper’, and Jefferson Airplane were talking about it. But in my world, especially on tour, I see my road crew, everybody – you take a pill to make you sleep on the bus, then in the morning you’re groggy so you take another pill to get you energized, then you drink a lot of coffee, which is the same thing – then when you get too wired you take a pill to calm you down. That was the inspiration for the song – and me too, I get depressed – so I go to my psychologist and I say "I don’t know why I’m depressed – I’ve had a very good life. I’ve been lucky. I’ve had a 25 year successful career. I have two wonderful children and a nice home, but I get depressed." His solution was "Take this pill". I tried it but I got too down, so he said "Then take THIS pill". So I did, and then I was too up – and everyone’s like that."

Another outstanding song from the album is the ballad ‘Care For You’, which graces the record twice – once with a full band, and once with a sparser acoustic vibe.

"That was an accident," he recalls. "I mixed the song and it was done – then I was at the board and trying to adjust the strings, so as I was doing that I turned off the drums and bass so I could focus on the balance between piano and the vocal, so I could get the levels right. Then some people said they preferred to just hear me singing with the piano, it sounds like a totally different song. I thought it was too mellow at first, but then we sent both versions to a couple of movie companies, and they wanted to put it in some movies next year. They buy the song but don’t have to use it if they don’t want to, they call it ‘option’ and have it for one year to use it in a movie – but they all said they preferred the acoustic version. I didn’t know what to do so I called the record company to ask them what they thought – they had a meeting about it – I know it’s the same song but I did sing a couple of the lyrics differently and I think it has a different feeling to it – the acoustic version is a little bit sadder, more peaceful and kind of melancholy. Any women who’ve heard it prefer this version, it has that sad ‘Stairway To Heaven’ kind of vibe to it, where it’s just guitar and Plant singing before the drums and bass come in. So, in short there’s two versions because I couldn’t make up my mind. I just said "Fuck it, put them both on there," so they did.

For ‘Long Way Home’ Don had used some songs intended for his solo album, and despite a wealth of ideas from Jon, he’s done the same again. "One song came from my solo album, that’s ‘Still I’m Sad’," he admits. It was written about four years ago and was the only song that was already written that’s on this album. It was actually supposed to be on ‘Long Way Home’ but John Norum didn’t like it and refused to play it, so when it became apparent that he wouldn’t be doing another Dokken album, I put it on this record." Don is still intending to record a solo album, but the plundering of his best songs for Dokken releases is pushing it back even further. "You know, I’ve had those plans for five years," he laughs, "and every time I write five or six songs I think "Well, I’ve got two-thirds of the album done", then I end up putting a couple of them on a Dokken record. We were talking about that the other day with the band – I’ve been working very hard, I spent a year on this record and I wrote thirty-five songs with Jon – I wrote six or seven ballads and picked ‘Care For You’, which was the best. I really think I’ve got to stop talking about it and procrastinating, and get that record done – but now, because I’ve been on tour I’m in a rock mode and thinking about making a really heavy album. If I went home tomorrow I’d probably end up doing a super-heavy metal album – that’s the mood I’m in now. In an ideal world I’d like to do a schizophrenic double album, one really heavy CD and one that’s all ballads. That would be a really cool thing to do – one album to listen to in the evening when you’re ready to rock, and one to listen to late at night with a glass of wine when you’re ready to read a book or have sex with your old lady."

Japanese bonus tracks are a sore point with non-Japanese Dokken fans, ‘Long Way Home’ in particular had a couple that were the best songs on the disc – but Don’s not playing ball this time. "No, there are no bonus tracks this time," says the singer, "and yes, you’re right – those two songs on the Japanese version were better than most of the songs on the American release. I admit it, they were stronger songs – and I kind of held them back because it’s so hard to sell records in Japan now. If you’re Japanese and you buy the domestic record, it’s $30, but if you wait a month for the American import it’s only $20 – the taxes are so screwed up over there, there’s no motivation for the fans not to wait a month – so there have always been bonus tracks to give them an incentive to pay the extra $10. You’ve probably bought some Japanese releases, and usually the bonus tracks aren’t as good as the bulk of the rest of the record – like leftover songs. A lot of bands have extra songs that aren’t considered good enough to put on the album, so they give them to the Japanese labels just so they have something the fans can’t get elsewhere. So I took the opposite mentality and thought "Why don’t I put two killer songs on there, and hopefully by word of mouth people will hear that they’re really awesome and buy the record." That’s what I was trying to do." I suggest that sometimes bonus tracks on new albums, and especially on remastered old albums can ruin the balance of a record that has been carefully planned to flow from start to finish. "Yeah, exactly!" he agrees. "An album is flowing a certain way, then when you get to the last two songs you think "What the hell are these all about?" On ‘Long Way Home’ and the two songs on ‘Erase The Slate’ – because those are strong songs too – the albums still sound balanced. You hit it on the head – I could have given Japan bonus tracks for ‘Hell To Pay’, but I knew that the songs we had left didn’t fit the rest of the record. So I said I wasn’t going to screw up the flow of the whole record by putting songs on there for Japan – the record has a way it starts, it has a direction, it has a mood – you get to the ballad and it brings the mood down, but it still has a direction – so I decided I wasn’t going to do it. It may screw up our record sales, but sorry! I had to take my artistic pride this time over just trying to make money."

In every interview Don’s done in the last few years, including this one, he brings up The Beatles, but it’s only been over the last couple of CD’s that the influence has come through in Dokken’s music. ‘Letter To Home’ is the obvious one on the new album, but how come the influence had never materialised in the past, was it being suppressed by someone? "Oh yeah!" Don says emphatically. "George hates The Beatles, he was never a Beatles fan – Jeff is, Mick is, I am, but even the record company (Elektra) wouldn’t allow any hint of a Beatles influence in our songs. They said we couldn’t do that – it’s taboo – it’s plagiarism – but I said I didn’t see it that way, I saw it as a homage – I was just paying tribute to their style of writing, not trying to rip them off. Of course it’s different now – you just look at one of the biggest bands in England, Oasis – those songs are just stolen from The Beatles. Some of them are exactly like a Beatles song note for note, they just changed the words – but now they’re a huge, famous band. My dilemma was writing a song, ‘Letter To Home’, that sounds like The Beatles but doesn’t sound like so and so song from the so and so record. With Oasis I can say "That’s a song from ‘Revolver’, that’s a song from ‘Magical Mystery Tour’", you can actually hear the melody – so when I hear someone say ‘Letter To Home’ sounds like a Beatles song, I say "Which one?" – and they say "Errr….I don’t know, but it sounds like a Beatles song." They can’t place it, it’s just in the style of The Beatles, not a particular song I’ve turned inside out and twisted it to try to make it my own. It sounds like a song that Lennon & McCartney could have written, it just has the vibe."

The new Dokken has been no stranger to touring over the last few years, including a package with Whitesnake and old friends The Scorpions, and the notorious Rockfest tour with Firehouse, Warrant, Ratt, and L.A. Guns. It seems that the two tours represented different ends of the enjoyment spectrum for Don. "I was so depressed after Rockfest," he recalls, "and that tour did well! I thought that a package tour with five bands from the 80’s was such a great idea, in theory – but I was baffled at the behaviour of some of the bands – and I’m not naming names. In my opinion we should all have been super-grateful to be playing arenas in front of 10,000 people again, then to see professional musicians immediately fall back into ego, drugs, arrogance - we’re better than you - just because they were getting some recognition, was really depressing. Then to go on tour with Whitesnake and The Scorpions – and there was no ego – everybody was friends, we all got along. Nobody tried to play louder than anybody else, nobody said "You have better food than we do in your dressing room", none of those things happened on that tour and it was just so nice. It was just great to hang with all these people who’d been friends for years, it was great to see Rudolf (Schenker), and Reb (Beach) who’d been in Dokken, and Marco (Mendoza) and all my friends from L.A. It was a tremendous experience and kind of brought back my faith in musicians, that they could be famous but not be assholes and have their heads up their butts – that’s what destroys careers. I realised that not everyone’s like that, they’re just professional musicians, they don’t play games – and if you play too well they don’t turn your P.A. down – we really had just a wonderful time with them. After Rockfest I was exhausted when I got home – emotionally and spiritually I was tired, and frustrated – after the Scorpions/Whitesnake tour I was ready to do 40 more shows. That’s where I would like to be all the time, but sadly that’s not the real world."

Talking of The Scorpions, I remind Don of a previous time he’d played with them on the Monsters Of Rock tour in 1988 with Van Halen, Metallica, and Kingdom Come. I was lucky enough to catch the show at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, to this day the biggest crowd I’ve ever experienced. "God, all those great bands on one stage. It’s unfortunate that you don’t see concerts like that anymore – people don’t go to concerts in those kind of numbers - 100,000 people at one show." One of the reasons is the state of the US economy – another, Don feels, is companies like Clear Channel. "The world’s changed you know, unless you’re the Rolling Stones – and the ticket prices are just too damned expensive – c’mon man we’re in a recession, who can afford to pay $130 for a concert ticket? It’s been good for us, a lot of the big shows in America have been having problems – even Ozzfest has been having problems because of the ticket prices – but it’s worked out okay for us because we can afford to play smaller places and are having sold-out shows because we’re only charging $23. Who can afford to pay $130, and take a date, buy a couple of beers? Some of these places are charging $20 just to park your car – it’s ridiculous! Clear Channel own all the venues, they own all the radio stations, they own all the tours, and they can charge whatever they can because they’re losing money on the stock market – so they stick it to the fans. The fans are finally saying no, forget it – the Lollopalooza tour was cancelled this year, the Warp tour was cancelled this year – the Kiss/Poison tour have cancelled four shows already. Gene’s lost his voice? C’mon that’s bullshit – it’s because the tickets aren’t selling."

He’s incredulous when I tell him that the best seats for Madonna’s UK tour are going for £500. "WHAT? That’s insane! She had to do a press conference in the States to say that she was going to play all the old songs – the word got out that she was doing a bunch of new stuff and the fans wouldn’t pay to hear new stuff. They wanted ‘Like A Virgin’ and all that, so she had to come out and tell people that’s what she was going to do before tickets started to sell. She was all over TV and radio saying "Okay, I’m changing my show, I’m going to play all the older stuff." Sting, on the other hand is doing really well because he’s got a $25 ticket, and Prince - who has the biggest tour of the summer here - is a genius. He’s said if you buy a ticket you get a free record – and of course all those free records are counted in Soundscan’s figures. So he goes to number one – radio and TV see that he’s number one and play him every 15 minutes."

The price of CD’s is another thing Don has a bugbear about. "A CD costs 50 cents to make," he begins, "that’s the disc, artwork, jewel case, everything – if you press 100-200,000 copies it works out at 50 cents, so how do you justify charging $20? Why don’t they sell them for $10? – because everybody’s so goddamn greedy. I told the band that in a few years time I won’t be making records for a record company – I have my own studio, so why not just make them myself and sell them for ten bucks, and not rip people off? We get back $10 instead of the store getting $8, the record company get $10, and we get the other two – it’s just not worth it."

The role of the internet is the subject of much debate, not only in music circles but in society in general – for all the enjoyment people get out of it there’s also a dark side which enables sad people with no lives to attack others from behind a pseudonym. Dokken is one of many artists that have had to close down the message board on his site because of the few spoiling it for the many. "The message board is back on now," he states, "but the point of the thing was that I wanted it to be an open forum, but it isn’t quite as open as it was. I’m sorry but it’s my website, and with an open forum people have the right to come on and say they hate your guts – but that’s not how I see it. People are basically saying "If I come to a party at your house and everybody’s having a good time, if I want to come and piss on your carpet then I should be allowed to. You invited me into your house, so I have a right to walk on your carpets with muddy feet." I don’t agree, if you want to respect me in my home – wipe your feet and don’t get mud on my carpet – if you refuse to do that, then I have the right to throw you out of my home. Same with my website – if you don’t have good things to say then don’t say anything – go somewhere else. You won’t see people talking shit about Bon Jovi on his site, or Metallica, or Van Halen, or Aerosmith – because they have people that control it. All the posts go through a person first, and they decide if it’s going to be posted – but I tried to leave it more democratic, but you get those two or three people who have no life, and no honour and they say the same things over and over. I don’t like you, I don’t like your record, I don’t like how you live your life – and I say to them "Why do you come to my website every day?" One guy said "I saw Dokken four times on this tour, and I hated you every time", so I say "Why did you come to our show four times, why didn’t you come once, say "You guys suck" and never come to see us again?" This tells me these guys have a problem, they’re mentally unstable and are crying out to be noticed, so if they come to my site again I’m going to block them. Look at Metal Sludge, what a bunch of cowards – they don’t use their real names – that’s bullshit! If I don’t like you, or anybody else, I’m at least man enough to say it to their face. Be a man, if you have something to say and you don’t like me, then say it to my face. I take that anonymous shit personally, it’s like someone attacking my children – my band is my baby, so I take it personally."

Dokken have suffered more than most from the things that split bands apart – from egos and drugs, to wives who hit on the rest of the band, and more! Surely there’s a book in there somewhere? "If I did it would be a best seller, that’s for sure!" he laughs. "I read the Motley Crue book, and a couple of others – ‘Rock’n’Roll War Stories’, I’ve seen a few books come out in the last few years. I’ve read some and I have to laugh – they’re just touching the tip of the iceberg – not just Dokken but with other bands, and I’ve toured with just about every major band in the world. The things I’ve seen, if I wrote a book it would be pretty juicy – but I wouldn’t do it. I have no right to wash other peoples dirty laundry in public to make money. I could talk about a lot of bands to whom I’ve seen really bad things happen – things they don’t talk about – there are people who have a lot of fans who think they’re wonderful people, but from my experience they’re not so wonderful. A lot of them are actors and it’s all fake, but I couldn’t talk about it in a book – they’d kill me for one thing. Even if I retired and didn’t give a shit anymore, I still believe the Buddhist philosophy of "If you can’t say anything good, then don’t say anything". There’s enough negativity in this world, why should I be like Metal Sludge? Who does it benefit? If you had a show in England that was all good news, all of the time – no-one would go to that news station. I understand why books sell – I understand why people want President Clinton’s book – they don’t want to read the whole book, they just want to know about Monica Lewinsky giving a blow-job. I don’t want to lead my life that way, living off the negative things – I’ll leave that to George Lynch."

Finally, with Don so eager to tour, the question of a European jaunt inevitably comes up. "Yes," he says without hesitation, "when I’ve finished these interviews we have a conference call with a booking agent in England to try to put something together for September or October. The way things are going, we only have a month of dates left in the States and I want to keep playing. I know it’ll only be small clubs – we’re not as big as we used to be – but as long as we’re playing, I’m happy."