DON DOKKEN: 'I Have To Play Music. That Is My Drug.'

Mark McDermott of Easy Reader recently conducted an interview with Don Dokken. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

On DOKKEN's first arena concert tour:

"It was scary. It was scary enough playing the Whiskey for 300 people, and then all of a sudden we walked onstage in front of 10,000. It took a while just to figure out what the hell we were doing… you know, how to live on a tour bus, how to get on stage on time, how to hook up equipment quick — we only had 35 minutes, you know. We learned. It was exciting. We were all in our 20s. I had never done that."

On DOKKEN's 1986 European tour with AC/DC:

"It's pretty hard to play when 14,000 people are chanting, 'Angus,'" he said. "I mean, it smarts a little bit. You are just going, 'Oh man, this is brutal.' So you either suck it up and throw down and go for it, or put your tail between your legs and go home. So we survived and became a much stronger band, I'll say that."

On his recently recorded solo acoustic album featuring an all-star cast (including percussionist Tito Puentes) that he has not yet released:

"Some people say it's too mellow… But come on, man, you are in your 50s. Nobody is giving Robert Plant shit for being mellower. This is the guy from LED ZEPPELIN and his shit is like adult contemporary. You do a solo acoustic album and people go, 'Oh, you ran out of steam, you pussed out.' I go, 'No, I can still do that."

On still being in it for one reason — the music itself:

"There's been a million musicians I've met who say I want to be in a band to meet girls, or I want to be in a band because it's cool. But I'm like, 'I am in a band because I am a musician, and that is what I do. I have to play music. That is my drug. When we played Pier 52 or Fleetwoods, I wasn't thinking, 'Oh yeah, man, in a couple years we are going to be famous. It kind of never really entered my head. I thought, 'Yeah, we'll do this, make our 200 bucks a night, and it's fun. I never thought we'd end up selling three million records…. I mean, we are very lucky. It could have been 'Breaking The Chains' and back to the Kettle."

"We don't have to do this anymore. We are financially set. We just go and play because that is that we do. We do it because it's awesome."

On drummer Mick Brown, the only other original DOKKEN member still in the band:

"It's cool, man. Mick and I have been playing with each other over half our lives. We were just talking about this the other day. I go, 'Jesus Christ, Mick, we've been together more than any of your girlfriends, or mine. We are like a married couple.' He goes, 'Yeah, I've been staring at your ass for 30 years.' I go, 'I never thought of that, you being on the drums, you've had to look at my ass all these years. That's had to suck."

Read the entire interview from Easy Reader.