This is a full in bloom interview with Dokken/Foreigner bassist Jeff Pilson.
YOU CAN LISTEN TO THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW VIA THE EMBEDDED YOUTUBE CLIP BELOW. You can also access the video directly on YouTube.
DESCRIPTION:
Jeff fires back at Don Dokken’s songwriting claims.
An excerpt from the interview has also been transcribed below.
full in bloom: So, Don told me, really, I think in both interviews he mentioned it, he seems to hold a lot of resentments regarding the songwriting in Dokken. I think he had mentioned he wrote pretty much all of Under Lock and Key then he said 80%…
Jeff Pilson:
Bullshit. That’s total bullshit! He did not write all the records. No fricking way. He is a valuable contributor. And he wrote much of, like, ‘In My Dreams’, he came in with the chorus, and that chorus is great. But he had nothing to do with ‘It’s Not Love’, nothing to do with ‘Unchain the Night’, pretty much nothing to do with ‘Lightnin’ Strikes Again’. He did not write the whole record. He had a lot to do with a lot of it, as he should, but to say he wrote the whole thing, that’s absolute bullshit. And he knows it deep down inside.
It sounds like he’s been trying to stir up attention to himself because he’s got a new record because it seems kind of desperate and weak. I just have to laugh. I mean, I don’t understand it. I think it’s kind of weird. I know he’s resentful of the fact that we split everything equally, but if you would have broken it down to what we did, I’m not sure — maybe he would get a little, yeah, he’d get more than a quarter if it was really broken up, but not enough more to make all the noise he’s making now 30 years later, 40 years later.
George Lynch has said that you guys (Lynch & Pilson) even came up with melodies and lyrics.
Yeah, we wrote all the melodies and lyrics for ‘Unchain The Night’ and ‘It’s Not Love’. I will say the song ‘Will The Sun Rise’ is a great example of when we do collaborate as a band because George came up with the music and then Don came up with that amazing chorus. I think the chorus on ‘Will The Sun Rise’ is amazing. I think the music that George came up with was amazing, but I thought Don’s chorus was just amazing. And that’s when DOKKEN was working, when things like that happened. ‘Into The Fire’, George came up with the music to the chorus, and Don came up with the chorus. It’s great.
You participated in the writing of ‘Alone Again’, right?
I did. Once again, Don had that great chorus. When a song starts with a chorus as strong as that, you kind of can’t go wrong. And I contributed. I came up with the beginning thing, helped come up with the music for the — well, for all the music. But like I say, Don really did have that chorus. I give him a lot of credit for that. But let’s be honest, you didn’t write the whole thing. I suppose he could have — he could have finished a song with that chorus, but he didn’t.
At this point, it’s just so ridiculous, for me, that he’s resentful,” Jeff added. “But that’s dark energy that he’s carrying around that he doesn’t need to.
When Don said he wrote 80% of the album, Tooth and Nail, and I just instantly thought…
‘Tooth and Nail’? You’ve got to be kidding me! He had nothing to do with the song ‘Tooth and Nail’ except that we knew that that was going be the title of the record, so we wrote the song around that. But he had nothing to do with that. He had nothing to do with ‘Just Got Lucky’. He did make valuable contributions to ‘Into the Fire’ and he made the most valuable contribution to ‘Alone Again’. But then there’s other songs on ‘Tooth and Nail’ that he — I mean, ‘Don’t Close Your Eyes’ he had nothing to do with, ‘Heartless Heart’ he had nothing to do with. I mean, there’s a lot of songs he had nothing to do with. So, for him to say he wrote 80% of any of the DOKKEN records is crazy.
With Mick Brown, Don seems very resentful, saying Mick didn’t do shit. But I found an old school interview with Mick, where he was talking about how he would contribute to the writing. He said sometimes you guys would be stuck on a part and he’d take it home and work on it.
Yes, that’s exactly right. For instance, on ‘Tooth and Nail’, George and I would be working all day, Mick would go out to the clubs, he’d come back at two in the morning and listen to what we did, and he’d very often have a great suggestion. So, to say that Mick was not involved is not accurate. Was he as involved as the three of us? No. And did he get a quarter of the publishing? Yes. Does Don have a bone of contention there? Sure. I mean, if you want to get down to it, Mick got 25%t and did not probably contribute 25%, but he certainly contributed somewhere between 10 and 15%, solidly. And when you have a band, sometimes it’s better to just eliminate the arguments. It was management’s idea to split everything equally because they saw all this coming, and I thought it was a brilliant idea. And I would say Don, George and I probably all sacrificed a little bit, although I kind of — I feel very happy with my 25%. That’s kind of about where I land in my contributions. Maybe a little bit more in the totality of things, but I’m very comfortable with it. And I understand where Don would be resentful about that. But I mean, after all this time? Really?
To listen to the entire interview clip, play the embedded YouTube video below.