Dokken - From Conception - Live 1981

Dokken were – for a few years – one of the biggest LA Hard Rock bands around, and in George Lynch’s amazing six string virtuosity had a genuine guitar superstar up there with Eddie, Randy, Yngwie, Jake E Lee, Warren Di Martini and the rest.

Combined with Don Dokken and Jeff Pilsons melodic sensibilities, Dokken released two must have albums of the era – 1986’s ‘Under Lock And Key’ ’1987’s ‘Back For The Attack’. For any rock guitarist these are must-haves in your collection! This album is a previously unreleased ‘from the vaults’ live recording from 1981 when they were just finding their musical identity.

Style of music

Melodic Hard Rock

Website:

http://www.dokken.net/ target=”_blank”>www.dokken.net

Release:

Out Now

Overview!

This was recorded in Paris and features many songs that never made it onto the later studio albums – mostly because they aren’t really up to scratch, being a very average collection of riffs and melodies very redolent of many also-ran bands of the early 80’s. ‘Breaking The Chains’ and – to a lesser extent – ‘Paris Is Burning’ being the exceptions, for most reading this the only real interest is to hear George’s at a comparatively early stage of his career.

George puts in a fine performance – for the era – but is quite clearly still finding his own later instantly identifiable style, with it’s combination of sinewy pick harmonics and slippery phrasing. Very reminiscent of both Eddie and Randy – but not yet any where near as developed as those two were in 1981 – here we have lots of pentatonic phrasing with liberal smatterings of his ubiquitous b5, whammy bar abuse and triadic tapping and some fast picked scale work. The most interesting facet of this album is to hear this and then see just how much George had developed by the time they scored their major label release with 1985 ‘Tooth And Nail’

Conclusion

An album for hard core Dokken or George Lynch fans, it is hard to recommend this to any who fall out of these categories.

For fans of:

George Lynch
Early 80’s LA Guitar Scene Fans