The Classic Rock Show recently uploaded a full version of Don Dokken’s interview sessions with the channel on YouTube. One part of the video showed the singer talking about the first time he watched Eddie Van Halen play live and how the event caused him to give up on guitar.
Referring to a show that took place on a California beach in the ’70s when he was the lead guitarist and vocalist of Airborn, Dokken recalled:
“I remember being upstairs in the dressing room, and I heard them start to play. I said to Juan [Croucier], I think, ‘I thought they only had one guitar player.’ Because to me, it sounded like there were two guitar players. I remember walking out on the balcony and looking down at them and seeing this flamboyant singer, flamboyant clothes, and I see Eddie doing that two-hands-and-the-neck thing. And I was awestruck. That was God-smacked.”
He reflected on the change the memory caused in his musical direction:
“I think that moment, I molded about it and thought, ‘Doesn’t matter how much I practice, I will never be as good as Eddie Van Halen.’ You know, he was a genius, and I miss him. I think at that moment; I realized I should probably start concentrating on being a singer more because I can’t compete with someone like that. He was a genius.”
Mentioning his impressions about another Van Halen member during the same show, the vocalist added:
“I remember that moment, and then, of course, we went on to play with him many times at the Whiskey and the Starwood and all these other places. But that show, the first time I ever saw them – first of all – I was blown away by Eddie. Second of all, I was blown away by David Lee Roth because he was so flamboyant and gregarious, and you know how he is. Everybody knows how David is—David’s David.”
Revealing Followed The Show
In another chat with the Full In Blossom podcast, Don Dokken talked about the rest of that memory by revealing that he helped Eddie Van Halen fix the flat tire of his van following the beach performance. He also remembered coming together with the guitarist and his bandmates once again years later at the Monsters of Rock tour:
“So, Eddie and I used to sit up late at night because by then he had Wolfgang, and I had my son Tyler, and we smoked, and we drank on the stairwells because we couldn’t be in the room with the kids. We’d just sit up and talk guitars and amps, and, ‘How the hell did we get from Whiskey to here?’ – stadiums.”
During the same interview, the vocalist referred to Van Halen’s death as a ‘great loss.’ While saying that ‘losing him was like losing Jimi Hendrix,’ he mentioned crying for days after him.
The guitarist passed away in October 2020 at the age of 65 due to a stroke. Following his death, Dokken’s official Facebook page shared a photo of him and Dokken at the Monsters of Rock tour along with a text that read, ‘The world lost a guitar hero today.’
