BRIAN SLAGEL Everybody who was still playing anything heavy in L.A. was all kind of in the same boat. We were all friends with each other because it was such a small scene then. And we all grew up on the same stuff—AC/DC, Kiss, Judas Priest, Zeppelin, Sabbath, all that stuff. So we had a lot in common.
DON DOKKEN There wasn’t just the Hollywood scene. There was also the South Bay scene—Dante Fox, which became Great White, Bobby Blotzer, Alan Niven, Juan Croucier, Mick Mars … We were all down there. We were just commuting to Hollywood.
JUAN CROUCIER There were a lot of musicians in that area. Rent was cheap, okay? I remember Don Dokken and I shared a rehearsal place with a band called Vendetta, and the guitarist in that band was Mick Mars. They all lived together in an apartment, and Mick had, like, three Marshall stacks about three feet away from the front wall of the living room, and behind that was a sleeping bag and a pillow.
MICK MARS I used my Marshall stacks to kind of wall me in so I could be away from everybody; kind of like my own little room made out of Marshalls.
DON DOKKEN We were all pretty honestly starving. We would work in the daytime, practice at night, try to get gigs anywhere we could.
BOBBY BLOTZER Me and Don were in a band together in ’76 and ’77 called Airborn. We were doing gigs with Van Halen, doing cover material. We were South Bay, which is the Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach, Torrance, Hermosa Beach section of Los Angeles. And Van Halen was from Pasadena, Snow was from inland L.A. You had Quiet Riot, and they were from … I don’t know where the fuck they were from, Hollywood, I guess. But all of us bands were out doing gigs together and such. We went and played up in Hollywood, anywhere we could, honestly.
CARLOS CAVAZO I remember the Boyz, I remember Xciter, I remember doing shows with Don. I remember Great White; they were Dante Fox for a while.
MARK KENDALL (guitarist, Dante Fox, Great White) I grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles—West Covina, Huntington Beach—but always within, like, a hundred-mile radius of L.A. In the ’70s I was in a band and we’d play places like the Starwood and the Troubadour and the Whisky. And during the week we’d play covers gigs, like a five-sets-a-night kind of thing. Then one day a friend told me he saw this guy at a backyard party who was sixteen years old and just a great singer. And it ended up being Jack Russell.
JACK RUSSELL (singer, Dante Fox, Great White) I grew up in Whittier in a real nice family. I joined my school choir when I was in fifth grade. I started my first band right around then, at eleven years old. Started with drugs and alcohol, too. I had an overprotective mom and a really strict father. I guess it was my way of rebelling.
By the time I was sixteen, I was playing with a prog-rock band because they were gigging on the Strip. It was me and these twenty-two-year-old guys and I didn’t really like the music, but it got me into Hollywood. Then I left them and got in another band, but they kicked me out for being all drugged out. After that I was playing backyard parties doing cover songs. That’s when me and Kendall met and decided to start a band together. This was ’78, ’79.
MARK KENDALL Just three or four months after that, Jack got in a bunch of trouble and was sentenced to eight years in prison.
JACK RUSSELL Here’s what happened. And let me just first say the reason I tell this to people is not to make me sound like a badass. I tell it so that people might learn from it and realize that, you know, with drugs, no matter how you think you’ve got control of your life and how impossible you think it is that something bad might happen, it’s possible.
Anyway, here’s how it went: Me and a friend of mine used to find out where the coke dealers lived in our area, right? Then we’d put on ski masks and go in their house with a gun and a knife and say, “Hold your hands up and take us to your coke or we’re gonna blow your head off.” Of course we weren’t gonna do that. But we would load the gun because it was a revolver, and with a revolver you can see when it’s pointed at you whether it’s loaded or not. And we didn’t feel like getting our butts kicked.
So we did this a couple times and it was no problem. And then one time my regular partner couldn’t go so I borrowed a gun from a friend of mine—same type of gun, a .22 revolver—and another friend agreed to go with me. So we put our ski masks on, we go to this house, and we go up to the front door. And before we go in, I say, “Look, let’s smoke some PCP, just to get us in that mood.” And this PCP I had was so strong. I had no clue. But we did it and then we walked into the house. And the rest of what I’m gonna tell you, you have to understand, is from the [police] transcripts. Because I have no recollection of any of this. I really don’t. I was in almost, like, a sleepwalking state, you know?
So we go in the house and my friend notices that I’m not acting quite right. And he splits. Now I’m in this house with this gun, and I guess I went into the backyard. And from what I’ve been told, there was a maid out there and she was watering the plants by the pool. And apparently I said, “Give me your coke!” She goes, “No coke. Just Pepsi. Help yourself it’s in the refrigerator.” She thought I was a friend of the guy who lived there and that I was playing a joke, right? So I guess this made me upset, and I went over to her and I grabbed her. She had her arms over her head and she was squirting me with water and the gun went off. And the father, who was downstairs in the house, looks out and sees this guy in a ski mask wrestling with his maid. So he goes to the side of the house, grabs a briefcase full of money, and runs into a bathroom. And by this time the maid had gotten away from me and ended up in the same bathroom as him. According to the transcript, I put huge cracks in the door from hitting it. It was a solid-oak door, but I guess I had that super-strength type of stuff that happens when you’re high or whatever. And then the report also said, for some unknown reason, I shot at the door. And the bullet went through the door, hit the Saint Christopher necklace over the maid’s heart, and ricocheted into her shoulder. Saving her life. Saving my life, as well.
Next thing I know, I wake up on my knees on the floor by the bathroom door, and I hear, “Come out of the house. This is the county SWAT team.” I go outside and they say, “Drop the gun!” I drop the gun. I walk forward and they grab me and get me on the ground. And the one cop starts hitting me. He’s going, “What did you shoot her for?” I’m like, “What are you talking about?” “You shot her! The maid!” I shot who? And then I heard my dad’s voice: “When you’re all hopped up, you’re gonna shoot someone.” And there I was.
MARK KENDALL I was walking by the newsstand one day and I see on the cover of the paper: WHITTIER-ITE JACK RUSSELL SHOOTS LIVE-IN MAID. I mean, the letters were like four inches high! And I’m going, “Well, it can’t be the same Jack Russell. This isn’t the guy that’s singing with me. It can’t be!”
JACK RUSSELL They gave me eight years. But then they sent me to this place called California Youth Authority, where they resentence you. After a clerical error and just a bizarre set of circumstances, I ended up getting out in eleven months.
MARK KENDALL By that time I had gone out and started over and basically made a band with a bass player named Don Costa and a drummer named Tony Richards, who both wound up playing with W.A.S.P. later. And I had a female singer named Lisa Baker, who George Lynch stole for his band, Xciter. We went on with another singer for a while and then when Jack got out he asked if he could audition.
JACK RUSSELL I did my first show with them six days after I got out of jail.
MARK KENDALL Jack’s very first show with Dante Fox was at the Troubadour. He was scared to death and I don’t blame him. You know, when you’re confined for any length of time, just walking around and going to the store’s a big deal. So imagine how he felt, you know? But he worked his way into it.
JACK RUSSELL It was a great show! They got me all dressed up and we went up to the Troubadour and just got plowed.
GREG LEON The clarity in Jack’s voice, it reminded me of Robert Plant. And he never hit a bad note. Whereas Kevin DuBrow? Sharp, all the time. It would drive you crazy. I didn’t care for the rest of the band, but to this day I believe Jack was probably the best lead vocalist on the scene.
MARK KENDALL With Dante Fox, at first we would just go up onstage and play. But then we started dressing up and doing this good-versus-evil thing. It was pretty goofy.
JACK RUSSELL It was like this “duality of man” thing, you know? The bass player was all in black. Mark was all in white. I was dressed in black and white. The whole thing was kind of stupid.
BOB NALBANDIAN Kendall looked like an albino. He had that platinum-blond hair and you couldn’t tell if it was natural or if it was a look he was going for. But they were just a fun band, great band. And the music was very Van Halen–ish. Kendall was a great guitar player and Jack was a fantastic singer and front man. And Don Costa, the bass player, he was a maniac.
MARK KENDALL Don Costa would play his bass with a pickaxe. And he put this cheese grater on the back of it, and he would grind his knuckles on that and then bleed all over the stage. He was a real character. I remember later on when he was out of the band, George Lynch called me going, “Where’s that crazy bass player?” And I’d seen the Boyz many times. I knew all those bands. When George got the girl singer out of my band, he was in a band called Xciter. He wanted to make it more than anything.
“WILD” MICK BROWN Don Dokken had his eye on Xciter. And after the Van Halen thing closed the door on other bands, everyone was making a move to try to do something new. So he approached us and said, “Listen, I’m gonna go to Germany. I know Dieter Dierks, who produced the Scorpions. I’m gonna record some songs. Can I take your song ‘Paris Is Burning’ and record it?” And we said, “No!” And he did it anyway.
GEORGE LYNCH That’s not exactly true. I did say yes under the condition that we work our business out and he come over to the house and we kind of talk about it and we do an agreement and I show him the songs and all that kind of stuff. And that he keep me posted as far as what the business opportunities were for these songs and what exactly he was doing with them. Well, none of that other stuff happened. He just felt he got an okay and then he took two songs that were Xciter songs that I wrote.
DON DOKKEN I asked them if I could use the song “Paris”—the riff and the chorus. I didn’t like the lyrics or the melody. I wanted to change it. And finally George said—he just doesn’t remember—he goes, “Yeah, we don’t play that song anymore. It’s over with.” Because they had moved on to kind of a new wave vibe. They had a girl singer in their band, they cut off all their hair, and they were going full-on toward the whole new wave thing. Otherwise I wouldn’t’ve done it. But I just kept the riff and I kept the chorus and then I rewrote all the lyrics and melody and that’s how it came to be.
GEORGE LYNCH I saw years later in a contract he had signed to a publishing company in Germany, World of Music, that he sold these songs for twenty-five or thirty-five thousand deutsche marks, which is quite a bit of money. And, um, you know, that’s pretty underhanded, to say the least.
DON DOKKEN I went to Germany and Dieter Dierks was gonna be in Hamburg for a night and he came to see me play and he said something to the effect that Klaus Meine from the Scorpions had hurt his voice and things were going slow and he thought my vibrato sounded very similar to Klaus’. So that’s how I ended up singing background vocals on the Scorpions’ Blackout album. Then I did more demos after I sang for the Scorpions and Gaby Hoffmann, the manager of Accept, who were also recording in Dierks’ studio, took my demo to Hamburg and got me a record deal on a French label, Carrere Records. But I had no band at this time, so I went back to L.A. with a deal but no band. Mick and George weren’t doing anything, so that’s when I asked them to join. They said no. I said, “Well, I’ll give you guys, like, fifteen hundred bucks and you get a free trip to Germany. We’ll throw some songs together and make an album.”
“WILD” MICK BROWN Don called and he goes, “Hey, I recorded some of your songs and I have a small record deal. Would you like to be in the band?” I was living with George at the time and I looked over at him and held my hand over the phone. I said, “Listen, this sonofabitch took our songs and he recorded ’em and he’s got a record deal. And he wants me to be in the band.” And George was just steaming! He was like, “Wow, you just raped me of the last thing in my life I have!” But before he could think about it I went back to Don and I said, “I’ll do it … if George can be in the band as well.” And he went, “Well, I don’t know…” He knew there was gonna be problems! Because he’d already lied to him. But I convinced George. I said, “Listen, we’ve got nothin’ else going on. Let’s take a chance.” All I could think was, Man, we’re hittin’ the wall here, it’s getting late in the game. I’m already twenty-two! I said, “Let’s go to Germany. At least our music will get recorded with us playing on it.” And goddamn, it did.
DON DOKKEN Of course after I got the record deal, George said, “You stole my song!”
ALAN NIVEN (executive, Greenworld Distribution, Enigma Records; manager, Guns N’ Roses, GREAT WHITE) I think there was some sort of creative friction there, too. George definitely had an extremely high opinion of himself. He claims to have developed the hammer-on tapping technique before Eddie Van Halen. And I tend to sit there and go, “Both of you fuckers are liars. I think Harvey Mandel did it before both of you.” But that’s musicians. And Don is very much a songsmith. I would say that it was just chalk and cheese in terms of personalities.
JACK RUSSELL There’s a lot of people that talk trash about Don, but they just don’t know Don. He helped Great White so much in the beginning, and he never asked for anything in return. He’s got a rough exterior, but people get the wrong ideas about him. He can be a little high on Don Dokken—“Enough about you, let’s talk about me”—but all of us can, you know? It comes with being a musician.
MICHAEL WAGENER (producer, Mixer, Mötley Crüe, Dokken, Great White, Stryper, Poison, Skid Row, Extreme, White Lion) We recorded Dokken’s first album, Breaking the Chains, in Germany, which was basically my first production. There was tension in the band between Don and George—their egos kind of did their little thing. To me that tension was not necessarily bad, but then again, I only saw it in the studio and I kind of tended to control that between the two.
DON DOKKEN When we did the album in Germany, George never even finished the record. He left before it was done. And I had to finish it by myself. Mick and him hopped on a plane and went home. They basically decided that “if you can get a record deal, we can definitely get Xciter back together and get a record deal.” So I gave them their money, their fifteen hundred bucks, and they took off.
“WILD” MICK BROWN We didn’t want it to be called Dokken. But Don was using that name prior to the recording. We didn’t want to be that. So it was, “Yeah, we’ll get a band name.” And I remember George and I left and Don had to stay in Germany to mix and sing and everything. And George, he was smarter. He goes, “I know that guy’s doing something. When we get back over there it’s gonna be called Dokken.”
GEORGE LYNCH So one day we’re back in Germany and drive to this city to a warehouse to go see our first record. It’s at the printing plant. And we’re sitting there in front of a pallet of records and we open it up and we look at it and there’s a picture of Don on the cover and it says “Don Dokken” and there’s no picture or mention of any of us on the record. And we’re like, “Don, what the fuck is this?” And he goes, “Oh, man, I don’t know how this happened. Some heads are gonna roll. I’m so pissed…” I go, “Oh, I bet you are.”
“WILD” MICK BROWN So we got him to drop the “Don”!
GEORGE LYNCH That’s a compromise that he set up for himself to make it appear that he had compromised.
“WILD” MICK BROWN That pissed George off completely. And I can see why. He was being lied to. And, listen, to an artist, music is the most sacred thing. Sometimes it’s the only thing you have in your life. And George, he never really let go of it.
DON DOKKEN I figured, well, Van Halen, that’s an unusual name. I’ll call it Dokken, you know? Rhymes with “rockin’!”