In a recent conversation with Shawn Ratches from Laughingmonkeymusic, Don Dokken, the lead vocalist of DOKKEN, discussed the challenges he’s faced in maintaining his voice while aging and the problems he’s run into while attempting to perform DOKKEN‘s iconic songs live.
“I’ve had a lot of complaints,” he said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). “I see fans, when I go, ‘The kiss of…’ [in the song ‘Kiss Of Death’] and I hit this B flat above A, this super soprano note, and I wouldn’t hit it, and you see people go, ‘Well, hey, you didn’t hit the note.’ I’m, like, ‘Dude, I’ve done, like, three thousand concerts. It’s like a motor car. It’s getting worn out.'”
“When you’re in your twenties, I don’t know if we’re gonna have another record or another hit or anything — I don’t know,” he continued. “So here I am just singing up [in the high register]. I was trying to copy [Rob] Halford [JUDAS PRIEST], or all those bands and Klaus [Meine, SCORPIONS by singing] so high, but you go on the road for a year and a half and do four hundred shows and five albums and then you start — like me, I’m husky today just from talking to everybody. And that’s just the way it is. And you get older. I’m 70, man. And some of these fans go… I’ve had people say, ‘Don needs to give it up. He can’t hit the high notes.’ I’m, like, ‘Let’s see you hit those high notes 24-year-old. Go ahead. Go for it.'”
Don asserted that even if he could replicate his singing from ’83, there would still be critics and skeptics.
He said: “My daughter used to go on our web site and we used to have an open forum. So anybody could say anything they wanted. And a guy called Acorn, who didn’t even use his real name, and he made a comment when he goes, ‘I went to five DOKKEN shows this summer and Don sucked.’ And I went, ‘Then why’d you come to five shows?’ And my daughter would fire back. And we finally blocked him. And I said, ‘Sweetie, you’ve gotta remember, this guy works at Subway and he makes tuna sandwiches all day, and he has this new thing called the Internet and he can go on and post whatever he wants,’ ’cause I wasn’t censoring, ‘and that’s their way of getting attention.’ Then you get the people to say, ‘Screw you’ and ‘I agree with you.'”
DOKKEN‘s 13th studio album, Heaven Comes Down, will be released on October 27, 2023 via Silver Lining Music.
