Metal Queen DORO proves once again that she literally gives her all when she cares about something. On this November 13th, DORO’s own label, Rare Diamonds Productions, will release her long-awaited best-of album Magic Diamonds – Best Of Rock, Ballads & Rare Treasures. And it’s comprehensive with 56 songs on three CDs with a total of almost four hours playing time! An all-around impressive showcase that spans four decades of DORO music, and with great mix – 20 rock songs, 18 ballads, and 18 rare treasures, offers everything a fan’s heart desires – and a lot more! We caught up with Doro herself to look back on a wonderful career so far.
Doro: Hi Mark, how are you doing its Doro!
Mark: Very good thank you, I hope you’re well. Thank you so much for talking to us today Doro.
Doro: Thank you for having me.
Mark: The pleasure is all mine. I’ve spend all week listening to the new collection ‘Magic Diamonds – Best Of Rock, Ballads & Rare Treasures’
Doro: You got all the way through, my God!?
Mark: It’s taken me a while with it being over four hours of music but I got there in the end. It’s a huge collection, looking back on your career and deciding what to put on the collection must have been an incredibly hard task? Where did you start?
Doro: Mark it all started with me wanting to put my 50 favourites on. So when we couldn’t tour so much this year I started to put it together, first it was 20 songs, then suddenly 30 then 40 and 50 before I maxed out the CD capacity and the vinyl capacity which is 56 songs. 78 minutes is the maximum for a CD and they’re all up there, but I’ll tell you it’s not even all the songs that I wanted to put on there, there’s some more waiting. So maybe in the next five years there’ll be a Volume 2 coming out! But this first collection has some of my absolute favourites, some songs we recorded live from our last tour, and some songs were newly recorded in the studio from scratch. Then I went into my archives and found some really nice versions of songs we haven’t played in years. Then I had to add some fan favourites for example ‘The Fortune Teller’ – so it’s a mixture of everything – live stuff, old school stuff, newer stuff!
Mark: It’s a wonderful collection, it took me back actually to the first time I saw you live, and it’s great to think that you’ve been an ever-present as long as I’ve loved Rock music. That first time was, and I know that you’ll know the year instantly, was ‘Monsters of Rock’.
Doro: ’86? Did you see us in ’86 in Germany or at Castle Donington?
Mark: It was in the UK my first ever big Festival.
Doro: Same here! We had no idea it was so huge because back then you know there was no cell phones, no internet! So we heard about this Festival and we thought it would be nice and big, maybe 3, 4, or 5 thousand people. And when I hopped up on stage I think there were 80,000 people there all head-banging like crazy it was so awesome! And then Lemmy was there as well and he saw me, and he saw that I was totally overwhelmed and he just said “Do good” and he gave me a little kiss on my head and someone took a photo of that , and that photo is actually in the ‘Magic Diamonds’ booklet. That was the moment our long friendship started actually, I’d seen Lemmy before but that was the start of the friendship and every time we did something together after that the friendship was deeper and deeper. I have so many good memories and of course the duet with Lemmy is on this album too ‘Love Me Forever’ which was the first duet I ever did. That was a hard choice because I loved the live version of that too but I just thought that the studio version had even more magic because it was such a special time. Eric Singer the Kiss drummer played on it, and Bob Kulich too – we recorded it in his studio. Bob too was a great friend of mine and he died a couple of months ago so I thought we had to put that version on.
Mark: I feel like every time you speak I get a great story and just a glimpse of some of the great names you’ve played with over the years. It must be incredibly rewarding to have played with some of those musicians and to be able to call them friends. I think the last song I played before we spoke was the cover of Dio’s ‘Egypt’.
Doro: Can I tell you a little story about that one?
Mark: I’d love to hear it.
Doro: For that song someone asked me if I would like to participate on this album for Ronnie James Dio, it was a long time ago, I think for a German magazine and I said that I’d love to cover my favourite song ‘Egypt’. So I did it and years later I was in the studio in New York, it was 2000 and the product manager for the label told me that Ronnie was having a release party for his new album ‘Magica’ did I want to go? And of course I said yes. One of my best and one of my first touring experiences had been in Europe in ’87 with Dio, and I was a big fan. So I went to this party and it was pretty cool, and Ronnie came up to me and said “Hey Doro, nice to see you, I just wanted to tell you I love your version of Egypt.” And I said “Really do you?” and he told me he played it all the time. It made my day. And then to cut a long story sort a couple of weeks later we were on tour together, I had ‘Calling the Wild’ out and we played on the ‘Magica’ Tour –it was one of the greatest tours we’ve ever done – 3 moths long – we started in San Francisco and ended up in Florida, and in Florida we had three gigs and he’d get me up on stage and we’d sing the encores together with the fans – it was unbelievable. I’ve seen pictures of the shows but no video and I’d love to see one. So ‘Egypt’ has always been one of my favourite songs and when you get the approval of your hero that’s even better!
Mark: That’s a great story. Whenever I talk to anyone I always like to look at anniversaries, and I guess the longer your career the more crop up. This year is both the 20th anniversary of ‘Calling the Wild’ which you just mentioned, and the 30th of ‘Doro’. And just by chance I think they are two of my favourites of yours, I wondered, do you have favourites?
Doro: I think on each and every album there are always at least one or two songs that carry so much magic, but of course I love them all. I love ‘Love Me In Black’ so much, that came out in ’98; ‘Calling the Wild’ I love; ‘The Triumph and Agony’ I love and The first album with Warlock ‘Burning the Witches’ I love because at the time we had no idea where it would lead, we were just recording something and we had no idea everybody would find out! It was released on an independent label and suddenly it did something and we were so surprised, we wondered who could possibly know about this little band from Dusseldorf Germany! But my dream was always to tour all over the world and after the Monsters of Rock Festival you saw us at, suddenly we got the chance to tour with Judas Priest who were my favourite band and then W.A.S.P. who were another of my favourite bands as well! We were so lucky and we just took it from there. But every album has those great moments that I have great memories of. Like working with Pete Steele who was a duet partner on the ‘Fight’ album in 2003! Pete was the tallest man I’d ever seen! He was so tall I felt like a little dwarf! But he was so gentle, just like a gentle giant, he was so cool. And some records didn’t get released worldwide at the time when the market for Metal and Rock wasn’t so good, and even these records I love like ‘Angels Never Die’ or ‘True at Heart’ another album which I loved.
Mark: were there any albums that were hard to make?
Doro: There was just one record really that was difficult to make and I learned a lot from it and that was the ‘True as steel’ album – the third Warlock album. The pressure was so, so hard – everyone wanted us to have a hit and they wanted the album to sound ‘Radio-friendly.’ So man, that was difficult to make and after that I told myself I would never, ever compromise again. The fans would say “You love it, the new album?” and I’d be thinking “No, I don’t love it.” (laughs) So that was like, tough. But looking back I think it has great songs on it as well.
Mark: One of the things you just touched on there is just how rich the catalogue is, and not only are you releasing it on CD, but there’s vinyl as well, and not only that, the deluxe version comes with a perfume too and a ‘Magic Diamonds’ tube scarf which is something I wasn’t sure about!
Doro: A tube scarf is something you can put around your neck and I think you can even put it over your mouth and nose, but it’s one piece it doesn’t have two ends like a usual scarf.
Mark: I see, I can picture it now.
Doro: (laughs) we didn’t know what to call it so we just called it a tube scarf, I’d never heard of it, but I saw it and I wear it myself, when I go by plane or train I always put it on. But the perfume! Mark, I always wanted my own perfume since the early 90s!
Mark: You sound excited, and I was by the fact that you do a ‘his’ and ‘hers’ version?
Doro: I was playing around with it for a while and now it’s finally coming out and yes there’s one for men and one for ladies, I had a good scent for the girls!
Mark: And you have your own label now too?
Doro: Yes I formed my own record label a little while ago as I recently got my rights back to all the Cd’s and the DVD’s so it was very exciting to get all that back especially as you couldn’t get a lot of them anymore. So I formed it to do special releases, or vinyl, maybe picture discs or something fun. So ‘Magic Diamonds; is with Nuclear Blast but all these other goodies I can have fun with just for the die-hards.
Mark: It’s great that you have that control, because as you say a lot of those albums have been out of print for a long time and not many artists manage to get their catalogues back.
Doro: That’s right. Fans have always told me I can’t get this Cd anymore or this DVD and when I was checking into it I found lots out of print. When you’re a musician you’re so involved making great songs, and touring and rehearsing that sometimes the business side you just don’t look at it. But now I kind of know now what that’s like! (laughs) But we were young when it all started – we were 16, 17 when we signed our lives away and we had no thought or idea to look forward, or even to have a lawyer check it out. And that’s the reason why I lost the name ‘Warlock’ – I thought when that happened it would take 1 or 2 years to get it back but it took 20 years before I got the name back! That’s a long time. I never thought I’d last this long, when you start out you hope for 5 or 6 year, but here I am! I’m so happy though to have lasted such a long time.
Mark: It’s been a fantastic career so far and long may it continue –one thing I have to ask you, and I love asking people this, is when did you know that music was going to be your life? Was there a defining moment or a gradual realisation?
Doro: Yeah I was three years old and I remember I wanted to become a singer because I listened to one song and it was ‘Lucille’ by Little Richard. I was just old enough to get my record player working and from that day on I knew I wanted to become a singer. Then when I was 15, 16 years old I had my first band it was called ‘Snakebite’ and then the band ‘Warlock’ I think started in 1982 –and that was the one! Suddenly we were in the right place at the right time when Metal was just becoming bigger and bigger. Then when we got the support slot for the Judas Priest Tour right after the Monsters of Rock Festival in ’86 ten I though “Yes, that’s it.” I quit my job, I told my boss I was going on Tour with Judas Priest and he said “What is that?” and I said “It’s the biggest Metal band” and he said “What is Metal?” and I said “You’ve got to see it, you’ve got to hear it” and actually they all came to a concert when we played Dusseldorf, and they were all standing in the first row and he said “OK, that’s what it’s all about!” and he wished me good luck. But in ’86 I made my decision that I only wanted to do music but when I was 3 years old I already knew that, I just didn’t know how to!
Mark: I love that story! Like a lot of people I’m having a really hard time without my live music, I think from the age of 16 I’ve seen on average two or three shows a week, so when it all came to a halt it was very hard. But one of the things that most impressed me was when I saw your ‘drive in concerts’ I love the fact that you are trying something different to deliver that ‘live’ experience.
Doro: I remember that somebody called and said “Do you want to do a real show?” and they explained the drive-in thing, and we were on board, I wasn’t sure what it would be like but it went down well. I remembered back to 1987 on the Tour Bus looking at the queues to get into the Festival, it looked exactly like that. But it actually went well, we had a lot of fun and every drive-in show was a little bit different and of course it wasn’t the same as a normal concert of Festival but it still was so much fun for us and the fans rocking out in their cars. And when we played ‘All We Are’ then I could go down and do down (into the crowd) and still have lots of distance, but we were singing all together and I could see them, and hear the loud because when you’re onstage at a drive-in show you can’t hear so much , it’s totally different. But you can still tell, you can still feel the good vibes and the energy. So I went down to sing and someone filmed it on their cell phone and we put it all on our Social Media and in just two days it got over 600,000 views! We’d never had anything like that before, nowhere near! And then we started to get calls from all these people who owned drive-in’s saying “We’ve never done a show before, but let’s do it!” I loved the fact it as all a bit different and it was great to reconnect with the fans. And it was great that the band and the crew had things to do, so everyone was in great spirits because we were all so hungry for a live show. And we even played some little games like honking horns, it was loud as hell! We played ‘head-banging’ where we got people to shake their cars!
Mark: (laughs)
Doro: It was a lot of fun, and it was different, and some people of course were saying that they would never go to a drive-in show, but I tell you, when you try to make the best out of a bad situation it’s great. Ad we’ve also recorded a couple of things – we recorded the ‘Wacken World Wide’ because of course that big Festival over here got cancelled, so we played the digital version. And it was there that we recorded ‘Love Me in Black’ there, I loved that version so much we put it on the ‘Magic Diamonds’ album, so that’s the reason you can’t hear an audience on that one like you can on the other live songs. So it’s very quiet but I think it has a nice atmosphere. So anything is better than doing nothing, it keeps you going, and it keeps me in good shape as well.
Mark: And we were to see you down in Australia too before the pandemic?
Doro: Yeah, our Australian Tour got cancelled or postponed, I so wanted to go and it would have been happening right now as we speak, it was all set for September/October and already cut in stone. So sad, that we can’t be there.
Mark: A lot of heartbroken fans over here, I think a lot of people like me had their calendar all planned out and now it’s looking pretty empty. But it’s good to see them all slowly being announced again.
Mark: Thank you so much for talking to us today, it’s been amazing to listen to all of that great music all in the one place.
Doro: Ah that’s good it would be even better if we were playing down there for you and we could say ‘hi’.
Mark: And that will happen one day, I can see into the future and in it I can see us shaking hands as you start your Australian Tour! And I’ll probably have that tube scarf on too!
Doro: (laughs) I wish you all the best Mark, hang in there and stay healthy. Stay Metal and talk to you soon.
Mark: Stay safe and thank you so much Doro.
Doro: Bye Mark.
