GEORGE LYNCH For the “Breaking the Chains” video, I remember the director or somebody else on the crew saying, “Yeah, we have these ideas…” And one of the ideas in the storyboard was to put these little chains on my guitar instead of strings, you know, because the song was called “Breaking the Chains.” They were just riffing. So, yeah, it was great. People remember it!
DON DOKKEN The bummer was we had what they call a “passive hit,” apparently. Everybody in the country was playing the song “Breaking the Chains,” it was getting Top 20 requests on the radio. But we didn’t sell any records. Because Elektra didn’t believe in the record. They only printed, like, a hundred thousand copies. That hundred thousand copies sold and when they were out of the record they didn’t make any more of them. So now they’re like, “Wasted money.” You know? “Let’s drop Dokken.” But we convinced them to give us one more shot. That’s why I came up with the title Tooth and Nail.
CLIFF BURNSTEIN When it came time to make Tooth and Nail it would have been me who would have said, “Let’s bring in an A-list producer.” And Tom Werman was an A-list producer at that time. He had made some big records in the late ’70s—Ted Nugent, Molly Hatchet, Cheap Trick—and he had just produced Mötley Crüe’s Shout at the Devil.
TOM WERMAN George and Don hated each other … really hated each other. It was weird. I would let them just fight it out. Basically the guys in the band didn’t like Don’s songs. Don liked “Alone Again” and they wanted to rock! Don wanted to be a crooner.
DON DOKKEN They were totally against “Alone Again.” Period. “Not gonna happen,” they said. I said, “Who made you guys king? The band’s called Dokken, and you guys just can’t arbitrarily vote what we’re going to put on the record.” I had three songs that were going to go on the record. They wanted to kill them all. Because George wanted all his songs on the record. Typical band infighting. And I actually threatened, I said, “I’m quitting. It’s over. You guys are fired, I’m leaving.”
CLIFF BURNSTEIN Today, if I knew how bad the situation was between two band members like it was with Don and George, I would probably have the conversation up front and say, “Unless I can solve this to my satisfaction right now, I’m not interested.” Back then, much younger and with lots less experience, I might have thought, I’ll figure out a way of dealing with it. But now I know that there are some things that are so deep-seated that even if you’re an expert in human psychology or behavior, there’s not much you can do about it.
DON DOKKEN Tom Werman negotiated it for us: “Don has three songs on the record, you gotta at least let him have one more song on the record.” And of course at this time, you gotta remember, on the radio all the bands were doing ballads. Def Leppard, Journey, they all had singles out that were ballads. But George saw us as being a metal band. Which we weren’t. Because I’m not a metal singer.
“WILD” MICK BROWN Tom Werman confused us completely because, as far as I could tell, he didn’t do a goddamn thing! Basically he was on the phone the whole time, talking to someone else about a trip he was going to take to Hawaii with his family or whatever. We’d end the track and we’d look up at the booth. “How was that?” And Werman, he’d get off the phone real quick and he’d go, “Um, yeah, that was good for me. Were you guys in tune?” He wasn’t even listening! It was very strange for us.
CLIFF BURNSTEIN I think I started getting calls pretty quickly from one person or another saying that they didn’t like Werman and that he didn’t seem particularly engaged in the process. My response to that always was “Look, guys, he did all these great records, and they’re all fucking hits and maybe this is his method!” I don’t fucking know. I never made a record with Werman before, so how the fuck would I know? If he has success, and his method of getting success is pretending like he’s not really engaged, then fine! I don’t care, okay? Go with the guy … He’s had more hits than you have, that’s for goddamn sure! That would have been my response for whoever was calling me with this stuff, and it might have been Don, it might have been George, it might have been both of them, it might have been Mick. Who knows? It might have been all of them calling me separately or together, but I would have said, “Who are you to say?” Werman’s the guy who has the fucking multiplatinum records on his wall.
GEORGE LYNCH One of the things that was really strange is he brought in a truckload of video game machines, and he encouraged us to play them a lot, saying it would relax us in between takes. He’d get on the mic and he’d say, “Okay, guys, take a break, go play some video games. You look tired.” And he actually had one of those change things on his belt! So he’d make change for us. He’d tell us, “Make sure you have your dollars. I can change ones, fives, whatever.”
TOM WERMAN That is stunning. Just unbelievable. I don’t even know if they had any games there or where they would have been.
“WILD” MICK BROWN We were in good hands, though, because we had Geoff Workman, and he oversaw it all. But, goddamn, he would come in with a case of beer that he already drank six of, throw those in the fridge and a magnum of Jack Daniel’s. Every day he carried a case of beer with the magnum of Jack on top. And he would snort blow from this little … well, not a little ball, a big ball, and then drink Jack. I guess the beer was to get it going in the morning. Then it was Jack for the rest of the night. And blow.
TOM WERMAN I only worked with Geoff Workman as my engineer for three albums—Shout at the Devil, Tooth and Nail, and Twisted Sister’s Stay Hungry. He was a divisive, evil alcoholic.
JOHN AGNELLO (assistant engineer, Twisted Sister, Stay Hungry; Producer) I was the assistant engineer on Twisted Sister’s Stay Hungry and just loved Geoff Workman. He was this giant hunchbacked British guy with crazy teeth who was a great engineer and just so good with the bands. But he was also really nuts. He would drink like a bottle of Jack Daniel’s a day, which was phenomenal. At one point we hooked up a bottle of Jack to an IV to an Atlas microphone boom stand and he just walked around the studio with it because he thought it was hilarious.
TOM WERMAN What he did with Dokken was that he secretly recorded my conversations … my speech in the control room, and then edited it into a different meaning. You know? He used hours and hours of it—he was very good, a very good engineer—and made it sound like I was gay and wanted to fuck the band.
DON DOKKEN Yes. When Geoff Workman first started the record, we were recording Tom talking and they just kind of edited this whole thing of, like, hours and hours of footage where, like, let’s say they’d say, “Oh, you know that chick, Tom? Would you like to fuck her?” And he’d go, like, “Yeah, I’d love to fuck her,” you know? Geoff would record that and cut it. And then Tom, maybe down the road he said, “So, anyway, about you guys…” Geoff would record it and go back and put in the words “you guys.” So it would say, “Yeah, I’d love to fuck … you guys.” Why’d they do all this? Well, they did all this because they were all doing coke. Geoff Workman was an infamous coke addict. He did a ton of coke, Jack Daniel’s, he was fucked up from the day … He was always fucked up. So they’d sit up after a session at night and spend hours and hours and hours with this footage to make it sound like Tom was talking about how he wanted to have sex with George. But beyond that tape, George was really, really difficult in the studio. Everything Tom asked him to do, maybe try this solo again, maybe do this, George basically shot him down. He’d just argue with him incessantly.
TOM WERMAN Geoff played the tape for George, and George flipped. And I didn’t know any of this. George had already done the lead break on “Tooth and Nail” … and it was a piece of art. An unbelievable solo. And we were doing another song and he was just shredding but not going anywhere. And I said, “You know, George, I love the ‘Tooth and Nail’ solo. It went from point A to point B and it really had something to do with the song and it was musical and it lifted it and pushed it along. Could you come up with something a little more substantive like that?” And he went crazy and threw his guitar down on the floor and he had a little fit.
“WILD” MICK BROWN I guess George bought into it. Which sounds weird to me because he’s a prankster as well. And so they got in an argument and George goes, “Listen, you sonofabitch, you cocksucker” something or other! He called Tom every ugly name. And Werman had no idea. He was like, “What the hell is he talking about?” It was hilarious. I guess it really got out of hand.
TOM WERMAN So I went out in the studio and I said, “George, you seem to be pretty angry, would you feel better if you could hit me? Do you want to hit me? I’ll give you the first shot.” He was tough, but this line works a lot.
GEORGE LYNCH Yeah, it wasn’t a huge blowup. I think it had culminated in that … because what Tom kept coming up to me and doing was telling me that I should play more like David Gilmour. He was like, you know, every day, “Yeah, that fast shit, nobody wants to hear it. Just give me a bawrn na na…” Over and over again. And I’m thinking, We’re paying you a lot of money. I don’t need you to tell me to go bawrn na na … I know how to do that all by myself. That’s not valuable input.
TOM WERMAN It came to a standoff and I said, “You know, I think you’d be better off if you finished this record with somebody else.” And I walked out and called the manager and said, “I’ll give you a point back.” And that was that.
CLIFF BURNSTEIN I never heard this story. Oh, god …
“WILD” MICK BROWN Listen, we just pissed our pants. It was funny to me but I was horrified. I was very young and very naive and trying to be real serious. And between all this pranking shit going on I was like, “Wow, is anyone paying attention to our band?”
CLIFF BURNSTEIN I’m not sure how the record got finished. I let Zutaut take care of it. Zutaut brought in Roy Thomas Baker.
MICHAEL WAGENER I just got called by Elektra, or actually by Don, because they needed to mix the album and they had Roy Thomas Baker, who was at Elektra. He had a position at Elektra, vice president of production or something. It was actually a position that didn’t exist, one of those. He decided that he was going to mix it, and then Don insisted that I would be there along with Roy to mix the record. Maybe I was a little bit of Don’s security blanket.
“WILD” MICK BROWN So Roy Thomas Baker comes in, and it’s Roy Thomas Baker, man! We’re all like, “Wow!” He’s very polite. He does this mix and he turns and he goes, “So, this is what I think you sound like. I want you to listen to it and give it some thought. Tell me what you think.” So we listen and then everyone’s going to each other, like, “I hate this fucking mix. We sound like the goddamn Cars, man.” So Jeff and George told me, “You’re gonna have to tell Roy Thomas Baker that we have to fire him.” And I’m like, “What? You can’t tell Roy Thomas Baker that you have to fire him!” And they go, “Well then tell him his mix sucks.” So the next day I said to Roy, “Listen, we discussed it and we’re not happy with the direction of the sound.” And he goes, “Ah, that’s what I thought you’d say. You’re a guitar band and you’ll probably sell eight hundred thousand as opposed to three million. But, okay.” And he just backed right off of it.
MICHAEL WAGENER Roy and I mixed the first song together and then the band came in and didn’t like it. It was very poppy in a way and then Roy just pulled all the faders down and goes, “Just do what you always do with those rock bands.” And then he left. And then that was it and I was basically mixing the record.
“WILD” MICK BROWN So he was gone. Out of the project. So, really, we paid him a fortune just to mix one song. And we marched on.
DON DOKKEN Roy was very eccentric. He had two Rolls-Royces, a black one and a white one. So he’d show up in the daytime in his white Rolls-Royce and he’d wear a white suit. Then he’d have to leave at six to go have dinner. He’d go home, get his black Rolls-Royce, and put on a black suit.
“WILD” MICK BROWN He had a plexiglass piano that recorded itself when you played. Back then it was the highest-tech thing. And his house was really neat. He had a pool in his backyard that looked like it came out of Disneyland, with one of these slides that went around.
DON DOKKEN I met Freddie Mercury because I went over to his house one day, looked at the pool, and, lo and behold, there’s Freddie Mercury laying by the pool, you know? Laying out in the sun. And I’m like, “Holy shit…”
“WILD” MICK BROWN And there was always these young girls hanging around. George was like, “Jesus Christ…” And there was a little jam room. So we’d play drums, play guitar, and there’s Roy Thomas Baker, going down the slide. You had a pretty big day at the Roy Thomas Baker house!
DON DOKKEN When it came out, Tooth and Nail just barely, barely crept to gold. And we toured for sixteen months. We could never get that Top 5, Top 10 hit. We were definitely the band that just stayed on the road and toured and toured and toured until we just fell down.
“WILD” MICK BROWN We had a video camera on the bus that was filming girls in the back lounge. You could tape it in the front with a VHS. Then you could call back: “No, no, move her butt to the left a little bit…” The first time we had a black-and-white camera.
JAY JAY FRENCH Dokken opened for us after Tooth and Nail came out. There was blow jobs in the back lounge with cameras stuffed in speakers so you could watch the girls giving head in the front. It was total rock ’n’ roll debauchery.
“WILD” MICK BROWN It got around and other bands would go, “I wanna go make a video in your back lounge!” Well, come on in! We did, like, six months with that camera on the bus. And it’s always just horrifying as well. Because your girlfriend would be sitting in the front of the bus! And the girl would go, “Well, I would never do that with these guys…” And then she’s in the back doing … a lot of weird things! And the girlfriend’s watching it on the video monitor in the front of the bus going, “Oh my god!” It was kind of rude but these girls just wanted to have fun. It was hilarious … and then it got to be disgusting. So then we got a color camera and a little more high-definition. Well, that was a hit, too!
DON DOKKEN The first single that came out from Tooth and Nail was “Into the Fire.” Then we did “Just Got Lucky.” But then the same thing—the album wasn’t taking off. It hadn’t gone like everybody else had, with their multiplatinum record. By then, you know, Ratt’s playing the Forum, they’ve got a huge hit. Mötley Crüe’s taking off. Everybody’s taking off, and we’re just kind of eking our way out on tour and we’re up to a couple hundred thousand records sold. Again. And I’m like, “Fuck.” So I begged and pleaded to put out “Alone Again.” I really had to fight the fight. Nobody wanted to do it because there was no money. The label didn’t want to spend any more money on us. So we ended up playing the Palladium and we hired Wayne Isham. He said, “I’ll bring in a couple guys cheap, with some sixteen-millimeter cameras.” That’s why, if you look at the video, it’s live. We played “Alone Again” and they filmed the show and it became, like, a standard. And then, finally, we hit it with our next albums, Under Lock and Key and Back for the Attack. And the rest is history. We just took off. But it was a long, hard fight.