INTERVIEW: Don Dokken cleans out his garage and finds a treasure trove

Photo: Don Dokken headed to Germany in the late 1970s, and he recently found original songs he recorded at the time in Hamburg. Photo courtesy of the artist / Provided by Silver Lining Music with permission.

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There are few positive stories in the world right now with the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to disrupt personal and professional lives, but if one looks close enough, there’s some silver lining to be found.

For example, Don Dokken, the creative force behind the hard rock / metal band Dokken, recently bought a house in New Mexico on 13 acres. It’s a secluded home that’s perfect for when he needs a break from the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles. In transitioning some of his storage from one property to another, he decided to clean out a garage, and he turned up a treasure trove of unreleased music from the late 1970s and early 1980s.

“I decided to clean out my garage and brought the stuff up here six months ago and started throwing everything away I didn’t think I needed and came across a box, this big plastic tub that wasn’t even marked,” Dokken said in a recent phone interview, “And I opened it up, and I saw these old reel-to-reel tapes, which nobody uses anymore. It’s all digital now, you know, so I was like, why do I have reel-to-reel tapes? Some were marked, and two of them said ‘Hamburg 1979.’ One tape said ‘Hamburg Live,’ and I’m like what the hell is this stuff? So I put it all on.”

What the tapes held were early, early songs from Dokken’s career, well before the original lineup of Dokken (Dokken on vocals, Mick Brown on drums, George Lynch on guitar and Jeff Pilson on bass).

“This was when I was on my own, and I was playing with Juan Croucier [Ratt] on bass,” he said. “We went to Germany in ‘79 and did a tour, so these were all the demos we did. And they just kind of got lost, and here we are [four] decades later. I came across them, and because the COVID and the corona and the tour was canceled, I didn’t have much to do but just write a new record. And I thought, well, I’ll do this first just for fun so people can get a peak in the window, going back in time when I was in my early 20s.”

Dokken thought the original recordings were solid, but they needed some 2020 brushing up. He spent the past few months trying to make them sound better. The demos had pops, cracks and snips, all of which he had to take out in the editing room. Three of the four songs weren’t finished because they were lacking guitar solos or harmonies, so he spent time recording new solos and harmonies. He also deleted a drum machine sound on three songs, and to make up for the loss of percussion, Dokken employed the help of drummer BJ Zampa, who performs in his band.

“So it was a project,” the singer said. “It took longer than I thought. It’s retro, but it sounds pretty cool. You can tell some of the songs are not hi-fi quality. One of the songs was on a 45 single. It’s old, so it’s a trip down memory lane.”

The end product has been music to the ears of diehard Dokken fans. Listeners can now enjoy tunes like “Step Into the Light,” “We’re Going Wrong,” “Day After Day,” “Liar” and “Prisoner.” The 11 songs encompass the recently released album The Lost Songs: 1978-1981, released under the Dokken name.

“When tapes sit for a long time, they get sticky, and they get gooey,” Dokken said. “And a lot of times tapes won’t play after 20 years. You can’t play them anymore. They just decompose, so toward the end of the reel there were a couple songs that started to play, and they just stopped. They just started wobbling and making noise, and I said, well, that’s the end of that. They didn’t make it.”

Dokken remembers these early days. He had been trying to get his name out there in Los Angeles, playing a variety of clubs on the Sunset Strip (“To play the Whiskey was kind of like you made it on the Strip”). They were finding success, playing alongside Van Halen and Quiet Riot, but then the music venues started booking New Wave acts like Blondie and Depeche Mode. This meant Dokken needed to find some new digs, and he headed to Germany, trying to repeat the global fame of bands like Saxon, the Scorpions and Judas Priest.

“The New Wave scene came along right about ‘79,” he said. “Everybody thought there was this rock scene going on in Hollywood, and I’m like, not really. I mean, there was, but then it kind of died out. It was punk, like Black Flag and bands like that were playing, and New Wave, and the rock scene came back in like ‘81, ‘82. So that’s when I decided to go to Germany because bands like Saxon, Scorpions, Judas Priest were very, very popular over there, so I decided I’d rather go to Germany because the fans were more into the music I was making. So we went to Germany, and it was an experience.”

It was in these pivotal years that The Lost Songs were recorded. At the time, Dokken was a young man of only 24 or 25, and fans can check out photos from this time period on the new YouTube video for the song “Step Into the Light.”

“I was naive,” Dokken admitted. “I didn’t know anything about recording. I didn’t know anything about overdubs. I didn’t know anything about harmonies. It was all a learning curve. I was just lucky to have met Michael Wagener in Germany. He wasn’t famous yet. As a producer, he was just working in the studio, but he was good. … So I was lucky to have him to get these sounding pretty good.”

The gamble ultimately paid off. He went to Germany, wrote some songs, made the connection to Wagener, and the rest was history — or at least history that has recently been found. “That’s why we went to Germany because we were a harder edge,” Dokken said. “That’s why we took a chance and went to Germany.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Dokken’s new album, The Lost Songs: 1978-1981, is now available. Click here for more information.