DON DOKKEN Says He Wrote DOKKEN’s Hit Songs, Even Though They Were Credited To Entire Band

In a brand new interview with Justin Young of Monsters, Madness And Magic, Don Dokken was asked if he and his DOKKEN bandmates will continue performing live even though he has publicly stated that the group’s recently released 13th studio album, “Heaven Comes Down”, will be DOKKEN‘s last. He said in part (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “We’ll keep touring. I’ve done a lot of interviews. I’ve been doing interviews when I’m off the road, and I tell them this is our last record, and that’s true, but we’re not gonna stop touring. I mean, there’s nothing I can do.

“I’m hoping the surgeon that screwed my life up will get ran over by a bus… He really screwed me up,” Don continued, referencing the complications from his November 2019 neck and spinal surgery. “It took a year for me to be able to raise my hand above my head… So I was depressed, obviously. I came home. I was in a walker. I’m in a cane, and yeah, it sucked, man. But the bottom line is I would love to keep going as DOKKEN, but I can’t write any more songs. I’m screwed. I took my Steinway piano and shipped it to Los Angeles ’cause my daughter is a concert trained pianist. She was happy to get that. But I don’t know how I can write another record.”

Dokken added: “I was talking to [DOKKEN guitarist] Jon Levin the other day. I said, ‘If this album is successful, you wanna do another one?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know if I have it in me.’ I’m the writer, I’m the singer, just like I was in [the classic lineup of] DOKKEN. I’m not throwing my old guys under the bus, but I was the main writer. I wrote the hits — ‘In My Dreams’ and ‘It’s Not Love’ and ‘Alone Again’ and ‘The Hunter’. Even though when you look at the record credits and it says ‘Don Dokken, George Lynch, Jeff Pilson, Mick Brown,’ they didn’t write those songs. And everybody knows in my camp that I wrote the songs — the guitar and the lyrics. Those other three guys were in Orange County with an ounce of cocaine trying to come up some good songs. And that’s why I couldn’t write with them, because I don’t do drugs. Never did.”

After DOKKEN‘s previous studio album, 2012’s “Broken Bones”, failed to meet his expectations commercially, Don publicly questioned whether the band should or would make another record. He was also ruthlessly criticized by fans after radiation treatments from a bout with stomach cancer and eventual vocal-cord surgery hurt his performances.

He told the Bradenton Herald that he took a year or so off after “Broken Bones” to regroup and reassess the band’s place in the rock marketplace.

“Heaven Comes Down” came out on October 27 via Silver Lining Music. The follow-up to “Broken Bones” was produced by Bill Palmer and Don Dokken and was mixed by Kevin Shirley (AEROSMITH, IRON MAIDEN).