Dokkenin klassinen kokoonpano palaa yhteen kuudelle Japanin keikalle

Yhdysvaltalaisen hard rock -yhtye Dokkenin nokkamies Don Dokken on paljastanut yhtyeen klassisen kokoonpanon palaavan yhteen soittaakseen lokakuussa Japanissa kuusi konserttia, joista viimeinen saatetaan kuvata ja julkaista DVD:nä. Dokken kertoi lauantaina 25.6. The Classic Metal Show’lle kuinka kauan huhuttu paluu lopulta toteutui:

”Years and years ago, I made a comment offhandedly, like, ’You wanna do a reunion tour? I’ll do it for this amount of money.

”It was like a one and a lot of zeros. And that was my price, and everybody said, ’You’re crazy.’ And I said, ’Well, that’s my price, and I’m not gonna do it [for anything less].’ And now, fifteen years later, somebody came up with that price. So I approached George [Lynch, former DOKKEN guitarist] and Jeff [Pilson, former DOKKEN bassist], and I said, ’You guys wanna make a shitload of money for about one week of work?’ And I told them the price, and I told them how much I wanted and how much they’d make, and, basically, they could make more money in one week than they’d probably make in several years. And so everybody said, ’Okay.’ So I said, ’Well, I’ll do it on the condition that I don’t wanna do it in America or Europe or anywhere else. Just six shows in Japan.’ ’Cause we were very big in Japan, and it’s just a… It’s a reunion tour. So they agreed, and we’re gonna do six shows in Japan. We’re gonna be playing Loud Park, headlining with the SCORPIONS. The two headliners are us and SCORPIONS. We’re playing the same night — back to back on two different stages. And then we’re gonna buzz off and do five more shows. And it’s very temporary.”

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Hän kommentoi myös sitä, että yhtyeellä ei ole aikeita soittaa lisää paluukeikkoja Japanin keikkojen jälkeen:

”Of course, everybody came out of the woodwork, and they want us to do Sweden Rock, Wacken festivals, M3… People are throwing money at us to do a DOKKEN reunion in the States and Europe, and my answer to everybody is, ’No. It’s not gonna happen.'”

”I feel bad for my agents, ’cause they’re getting bombarded from these offers for us to play these big festivals all over the world as a reunion, but I’m just not interested; I’m sorry, I’m just not.”

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”Jeff’s busy. He plays like crazy in FOREIGNER. He’s on the road. George is out, you know, playing the bars with LYNCH MOB, so everybody’s busy. So I don’t see any reason… I can’t say, ’We can make all this tons of money…’ And we’re doing this tour for a lot of money, but I’m doing it to put an exclamation point on a very temporary reunion.”

Hänen mukaansa suurin syy paluukeikkojen pieneen lukumäärään on se, että Dokkenin nykyinen kokoonpano on edelleen aktiivinen:

”I’m so happy with Jon Levin and Chris.

”I mean, we get along so, so good. We’re happy. We get on a plane, we fly to a venue, we hang out together and we go to dinner and we do the show and we hang out in the dressing room. It’s very easy; you know, there’s no drama. And at my age now, the last thing I need in my life is drama. So I am hopeful everything goes smoothly in Japan [with the reunion shows], but I am ready [laughs] for something to… There was always drama in DOKKEN, so I don’t expect anything to change. I’m just gonna kind of keep myself removed from it all. All I’m gonna do is go up there and sing my butt off and play two or three songs on guitar and just make it a fun thing for [the fans].”

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Lisäksi Dokken otti kantaa siihen, että muut jäsenet olivat kertoneet paluukeikoista jo ennen niiden varmistumista:

”Mick said we were doing it a month ago, George has been saying it, and Jeff was saying it,” he said. ”Which I have to laugh, because I said, ’Please don’t anybody talk about it until the contracts are signed,’ and I hadn’t signed the contracts until a couple of days ago.

”Doing a tour like this is not easy; there’s a lot of logistics, money, accountants, taxes, overhead, equipment, video. It’s a lot of logistics to put together, and it’s taken a long, long time to put this Japanese tour together. But we did it, and we’re gonna do six shows.

”Everybody was talking like it was a done deal, which is a very bad thing to do. You should never announce a tour before it’s announced, because then the promoters think we’re gonna do it no matter what, and it kind of hurts my negotiating skills. If we say we’re gonna do this, and we’re kind of bartering about how much money, and they feel we’re gonna do it no matter what — if it’s a half a million or million dollars — I said, ’Please don’t say we’re doing it, because it hurts my negotiating position. So I’ve said nothing until tonight.”

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Hän kertoo yhtyeen harkitsevan live DVD:n kuvaamista viimeisestä paluukeikasta:

”I’m hoping that, in rehearsals we feel that we’re tight enough on the final day that we actually do a show and we’re gonna film the whole thing.

”And hopefully it comes out good and we’ll edit it and put out a live DVD.”

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