Like most rock stars, Doro Pesch appears much smaller in real life than she does onstage. Slender, elegant and dressed in black, she still looks every inch the Metal Queen: her signature dark eyeshadow under her piercing blue eyes, black tank top adorned with countless items of metal-as-fuck jewellery.
Most importantly, she is instantly, overpoweringly charming; a disarming mixture of honesty, humility and self-deprecation. She could easily be misread as shy, but really it’s just that she’s conscious that her spoken English, delivered with a resilient German accent, isn’t quite perfect yet.
Above all, Doro just seems delighted to be here. She is enjoying greater popularity and success than at any time since the late 80s, when her band Warlock became one of the hottest properties around.
“Metalheads have the best hearts and souls,” she grins. “They have a passion for one thing and that’s great. Many people don’t have anything that they care about. Metalheads really care and that’s why I can still do this, playing the shows and selling tickets and merch and all that. Everything is for them. They know that these old-school things have a real value, for sure.”
As a veteran of the European metal scene, Doro has long since earned iconic status. She was arguably the first woman to establish herself as a potent force in the genre, Warlock’s debut album, Burning The Witches, emerging in 1984 to no little acclaim, and yet the curious truth behind her career is that it nearly didn’t start at all.
When Doro was a teenager, she was struck down with a virulent case of tuberculosis that almost killed her. In the end, her bout of ill health proved to be a defining moment.
“Oh man, I got so sick. It was for a whole year,” she recalls, shaking her head at the memory. “I was in hospital and I was close to dying, like, ‘Oh, man... this is it!’ I was only 15, you know? I needed to stay in a good mind-frame and with a good spirit because people were dying around me, so I thought, ‘If I ever get out of here alive, I will do something in music and make people happy…’”
Music was an obsession for Doro from the start. Aged three, she heard Little Richard’s Lucille on the radio; as she recounts, a switch seemed to flick in her head and, suddenly, the course of her life was laid out before her.
I was in hospital and I was close to dying. I thought, ‘If I ever get out of here alive, I will do something in music.’
Doro
More interested in rock’n’roll than anything else, she hated school and preferred to spend days being driven around in her dad’s truck, the radio permanently blasting. Growing up in the early 70s, she fell in love with the giant choruses and huge riffs of glam rock and bands like T. Rex, Slade and Sweet, and then began to embrace the burgeoning metal scene that took root early and hard in Germany.
After surviving her brush with death and making a profound decision to dedicate her life to music, Doro joined her first band, Snakebite, within two weeks of leaving the hospital. Several short-lived bands later, she was the singer in Warlock and on her way to glory. It’s fair to say that she hasn’t looked back since those formative days, even though early gigs were a stern test of her commitment.
“We played at a punk club in Germany one time and this guy was pointing a gun at me the whole time,” Doro remembers, eyebrows raised. “He was laying on the stage, pointing it at me, and that felt a little bit uncomfortable! Ha ha!
“We carried on with the show and, luckily, that guy in the front row was passing out because he’d drunk himself into a coma. The fans took the gun and gave it to me onstage, in between songs, and said, ‘Doro, it’s loaded...’ OK, wow… I was just happy to still be alive! I thought, ‘OK, so that’s what doing a gig is like...’”
Does an experience like that make you tough or were you tough already?
“Oh, it made me tough. When you start, you’re young and you want to be tough, but I was always fearless. Maybe it was because of that experience in the hospital – when you’re close to dying, nothing else is as scary anymore.”
Doro’s big breakthrough came in August 1986 when Warlock opened the show at the Monsters Of Rock festival at Castle Donington, with Scorpions, Motörhead, Def Leppard and Ozzy Osbourne also appearing. The first woman to perform on the Monsters Of Rock stage, she was a much-needed female presence in a male-dominated world, but Doro is keen to downplay the significance of the achievement.
“It honestly didn’t feel like a big deal to be a woman, but it did feel like a big deal for a German band to play in England,” she smiles. “That was very unusual. To be a metalhead, to fight for your music, to keep it going, to make records and to go on tour, that was the real fight. Metalheads weren’t respected in the 80s, not by normal people. But as a woman it’s always been great for me. I’ve always been supported and respected.”
I was a little lost. Lemmy breathed new life into me.
Doro
Stoically resistant to blowing her own trumpet, Doro has achieved plenty over the subsequent years. Early albums like Warlock’s final record Triumph And Agony, and Doro’s first bona fide solo effort Force Majeure, are widely regarded as classics.
Somehow, she even survived the 90s, when old-school metal was struggling to retain its relevance, kicking off with the Gene Simmons-produced Doro in 1990 and adapting to the alt-rock times with the industrial-tinged Machine II Machine in 1995.
Despite struggling to keep record companies onside as the Seattle Sound exploded (“All they wanted was grunge,” she scowls, “It wasn’t my thing at all!”) and watching helplessly as albums were denied a US release, Doro’s endless positivity saw her through.
Since the turn of the millennium, she has been firmly back on the righteous old-school path, partly inspired by the patronage and affection of one particularly significant friend, Lemmy.
Doro met the Motörhead frontman back in 1982 when she performed her first showcase gig in London. Accidentally bumping into him in a nearby pub, he duly got her so pissed that “the gig was a total disaster”. Despite that, she struck up a friendship that would eventually blossom into something special. In 2000, heartbroken after the death of her father, Doro flew to LA to hang with Lemmy and write some songs for her next album, Calling The Wild.
“I was a little lost,” Doro recalls. “Lemmy breathed new life into me. We did those songs and the plan was to stay for two days, but we hung out for two or three weeks. It was so cool, we were just driving around. Lemmy would say, ‘Just drive!’ ‘Where to?’ ‘It doesn’t matter, just drive!’
“Then every day we’d be driving and talking, laughing and listening to music. Before that I couldn’t really speak English, so by 2000 I could understand what he was saying, ha ha ha! It was the coolest friendship for me and he was my best friend in the music world.”
Such is Doro’s devotion to music, she has spurned the notion of romance in favour of devoting her life to her music and her fans. “There is no husband and no kids,” she smiles. “There is no drama. I’ve had my heart broken a couple of times and that was enough for me.”
Metalheads have the best hearts and souls. They have a passion for one thing and that’s great.
Doro Pesch
That said, Doro’s friendships, both personal and creative, are clearly of incalculable importance her. She speaks fondly of the late Ronnie James Dio, glowing as she recalls how he praised her cover of Dio’s Egypt (The Chains Are On). Her experience making Doro with Gene Simmons in 1990 clearly remains a career highlight (“I love Kiss so much, I just couldn’t believe it was actually him!” she laughs), and W.A.S.P.’s Blackie Lawless receives heartfelt praise for looking after Doro when she was struck down with flu on tour. “He let me have their dressing room!” she beams.
She remains a much loved figure within the metal community. 2018’s Forever Warriors, Forever United featured guest appearances from peers/celebrity fans Mille Petrozza, Chuck Billy, Sabaton and Amon Amarth’s Johan Hegg throws down in an epic duet with Doro, If I Can’t Have You – No One Will, returning the favour after Doro appeared on the Swedes’ Jomsviking album in 2016.
“The fans are my biggest, truest and deepest love,” she concludes. “I love people. I want to make them happy and to make them feel strong; to empower them. That’s what heavy metal is about. That’s always what I wanted to do in my life. I’m always happiest when I’m doing that.”
Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 313 (August 2018)
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