Dokken’s heyday was in the mid-80s as the band scored numerous hit songs and tallied three straight platinum albums. Tunes like “Into The Fire,” “Alone Again,” “Just Got Lucky,” “Dream Warriors” and “Burning Like A Flame” all charted high, and for a while singer Don Dokken and guitarist George Lynch were one of the most recognizable singer-guitar duos in all of rock.
On the same bill with Metallica, however, singer Don Dokken said the band might as well have been The Monkees. And in a recent interview on the “Battleline” podcast, he said touring with Metallica on the 1988 “Monsters Of Rock” stadium tour was perhaps the catalyst to the original band’s demise.
“Yeah, that was a tough tour, because they hadn’t done the ‘Black Album’ yet,” Dokken said. “I mean, Metallica’s now the biggest band in the world… And that was kind of maybe the reason we broke up, because of Metallica.”
Dokken explained: “Because when we played the stadium tour, Metallica came on stage every day with this attitude like, you know, do or die. I mean, they just gave it 100 percent, 110 percent. They were kicking ass. They were just coming out with ‘…And Justice For All’, which was not my favorite Metallica album. And they hadn’t done the ‘Black album’ yet that’s now took them into superstardom. And I would talk to the band. I’d say, ‘Look at Metallica.’ And they’re opening for us. And we had the same manager.”
“And I used to say, ‘Well, Cliff [Burnstein], I know they’re opening up and they’re only making half the money as us, but could you put them on after us?’ Because when Metallica went on and they closed the show with whatever it was, ‘Kill ‘Em All’ or something like that, we’re coming on stage doing ‘In My Dreams’, we look like The Monkees practically, ’cause we’re just a straight-ahead rock and roll band.”
Even though Dokken didn’t go over well being billed higher than Metallica, the singer said he admired the metal legends a great deal.
“But I respected Metallica so much because we’d be in Texas and it’d be, like, 105 degrees and they’d go on at, like, 3 o’clock, and it’s just sweltering hot. But they went on every day. Metallica had this mindset that, ‘If this is our last show, we die. So be it.’ They gave it 110 percent.”
Drugs also played a factor in the original band’s split, according to the singer.
“We’d been on the road for a year and a half. And I think we just kind of got full of ourselves. I mean, we had toured with Aerosmith and all these other bands, and we weren’t playing well, in my opinion, because the drugs. When you’re on stage in front of a hundred thousand people, and I’m trying to front the band, and you’ve got all these cameras on you and big screens, and the camera would go to George during a solo, and I’d look over and there’s no George on stage. Where’s George? I hear him playing, but he wasn’t on stage, because he was standing behind his Marshall amplifiers doing coke.”
“And I begged and pleaded and said, ‘Is there any way you guys can’t do drugs for 90 minutes?’ And basically they said no. They were doing coke on stage and it was really, for me, depressing. I started the band, the band’s called Dokken, and everybody was doing coke on stage. And I was, like, ‘Jesus Christ.’ And that’s when the band unraveled.”
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