To promote Dokken’s upcoming album, ‘Heaven Comes Down,’ Don Dokken sat down for an interview with Chuck Shute. During the chat, he reflected on the band’s past and recalled how he felt about losing his name to the other band members after a lawsuit:
“When the band sued me to take my name away, I was dumbfounded. My name is Dokken. It’s not a made-up name like Nikki Sixx or Mick Mars – You know, Mick’s name is Bob Deal. And I said, ‘But you can’t take my name away. Sue my father, or my grandfather, my great grandfather.’ But the other three of them sued me, and we went to court, very protracted lawsuit. I was very stressed out, and the judge took my name away in ’90.”
Referring to what happened after the court’s decision, the singer went on:
“I just looked at him and went, ‘You’re kidding me, right? You’re going to take my birthright name away from me.’ And, of course, George [Lynch] and Jeff [Pilson] and Mick [Brown] were like, ‘Yay!’ Because they had this plan that they would go on as Dokken without me. Kind of like Iron Maiden went on after Bruce Dickinson when they had the singer; I can’t remember his name now. Nice guy, but he didn’t fit Iron Maiden.”
With the lawsuit, the vocalist couldn’t use the Dokken name until 1994, when the original lineup reunited for a new album. The band members agreed to work together for ‘Dysfunctional’ at the time, but the tension between the frontman and Lynch went on even when they went on a tour to support it in 1995.
According to Louder Sound, the singer once recalled that period by saying:
“We were doing a soundcheck, and I asked George: ‘What is the problem?’ And he pointed up at the backdrop, and there’s my name up there. He goes: ‘That’s the problem.’ He believed that I was getting the kudos.”
After ‘Shadowlife’ came out in 1997, a physical fight between the two musicians led to Lynch’s dismissal from the band. Following this, the original members never reunited for new projects, but Lynch joined the others for occasional events like a few 2016 dates in Japan.
