In the latest episode of the ‘On The Road To Rock With Clint Switzer’ podcast, Dokken founder Don Dokken touched on the initial decision he and his bandmates made to split the royalties among one another and admitted the ‘stupid’ plan cost the band a lot. Starting off by explaining the competitive songwriting in the band, he said:
“Dokken was a very unusual band. When I formed the band, even though I’d been Dokken for years and years before I met George [Lynch] and Jeff [Pilson] and Mick [Brown] — I’d already toured Germany twice — but when we finally came together, I said, ‘Let’s make it simple. You write a hit, you write a hit, you write a hit, we’ll just split it four ways. It doesn’t matter who writes what. May the best songs win.’ And that’s how it was.”
He went on to explain the ‘stupidity’ of the situation that cost them millions of dollars and the distribution of the tasks and the duties in the band:
“Now, looking back, I could say it was a stupid thing to do, because I wrote a lot of the hits and I gave up 75 percent to the three of them. So instead of me getting four bucks, I got a dollar and Mick got a dollar and George got a dollar and Jeff got a dollar and the management took theirs and the accountants took theirs, and I thought, ‘Jesus.’ I go, ‘I lost millions’ writing ‘In My Dreams’ and ‘Just Got Lucky’ or ‘Alone Again.’ I mean, I can name a bazillion songs that I wrote by myself on the guitar and wrote all the music.”
‘We Weren’t Famous’
Formed in 1976, Dokken did not start their career with an enormous success already built up. Though even their current hit songs gained recognition way after, the rockers were once ‘nobodies.’ In the same interview, Dokken continued:
“But that’s the deal we made. We were nobody. We weren’t famous. Hey, if George wrote a hit, I get money. Jeff writes a hit, I get money.”
Though the band had a plan to equally split the money, the rehearsals and recording sessions were different than each other’s. In fact, one of the bandmates ‘scored’ success only in five days:
“Mick’s the one that scored. He didn’t write. We rehearsed the songs for a week, go into a rehearsal studio, flesh it all out, pick the 12 best songs, Mick comes in the studio for four or five days, knocks out his drums and he goes to the drug dealer and then he heads off for the Rainbow [Bar & Grill in West Hollywood]. I said, ‘Mick, you scored. You made millions of dollars and all you had to do was spend a couple of weeks playing drums.'”
Don Dokken Did Not Write Most Hits, Apparently
Don Dokken says that the bandmates wrote all the songs together, and even the drummer took most of the royalties of the songs, but the former Dokken guitarist George Lynch does not think so. In another recent interview, Lynch claimed that Don Dokken has been claiming to have written all of the hits of the band.
According to the former guitarist, it was he, Jeff Pilson, and Mick Brown who wrote most of the hit songs, whereas Dokken himself only contributed ‘a little.’
You can watch the latest interview below.
