Alone Again

Hey Zoo Freaks, the Zoo Crew just dropped the needle on a real heartbreaker from the classic hard rock years, and if you've been around the dial long enough you already know the feel of this one. We're spinning "Alone Again" by Dokken off their second album Tooth And Nail, that power ballad that cut through all the heavy riffs and gave the band their first real taste of radio and MTV action. What makes the story behind it so interesting is how close it came to never seeing the light of day, and how a young Don Dokken wrote the bones of it years before anyone outside the local scene had even heard the name Dokken.

Don has talked about this one in a bunch of interviews over the years, including chats with radio stations and folks like Songfacts. He says he wrote it back in the mid-seventies when he was only about twenty-two or twenty-three, just a kid messing around with ideas. He cut a rough demo on a little four-track recorder, transferred it to cassette, and then the tape ended up tossed in a box or a closet and pretty much forgotten for close to a decade. By the time the band was finishing Tooth And Nail in the studio, the record company was leaning on them hard for a ballad. Every other hard rock outfit seemed to have one that was crossing over, from Journey to Night Ranger, and Elektra figured Dokken needed something slower to reach the bigger audience. Don started digging through his old cassettes, pulled out that forgotten tape, and played it for bassist Jeff Pilson. Jeff heard the strong chorus right away and said they could rework the rest of it. They sat down and reshaped the song into the version we know, and it became the final track added to the album before it went out the door.

George Lynch wasn't exactly thrilled about the idea at first. He figured the band should stay true to the harder edge and wasn't big on slowing things down for a ballad. Don has said the record company basically told them to put it on or else, so they did. Once the single started climbing, hitting number sixty-four on the Hot 100 and number twenty on the mainstream rock chart, the whole album took off and went platinum. That video helped a lot too. The band had already done three other clips for the record and gone out on the road for a year, and nobody was pushing hard for one on this song. Don kept saying they were missing the boat, so they ended up paying some camera crews out of their own pocket to shoot live footage at one of the last shows of the tour at the Palladium in Hollywood. They edited that together with some other shots and put the clip out, and it gave the band their first big push on MTV. Don sounds pretty torn up on the vocal, but he has always been honest that he doesn't even remember who the song was about. People ask him all the time for the girl's name and he just draws a blank. He figures he must have been in love with somebody at the time, but the details are gone. He likes to say the idea just came down from somewhere above, whatever that higher power might be.

Jeff Pilson has weighed in on the writing too, giving Don full credit for that killer chorus while noting that he helped build out the music around it. When a song starts with a hook that strong, the rest of the pieces can fall into place pretty quick. The whole thing sits right in the middle of the Tooth And Nail sound, heavy enough for the metal crowd but melodic enough to pull in everybody else, and that balance is what Don always pushed for even when the label tried to make them pick one lane or the other.

Looking at how the band got rolling in the first place, Don Dokken was out there grinding on the Los Angeles club scene in the late seventies with a group called Airborn. They played spots along the Strip and cut a few things, but another band already had a similar name locked down with a deal, so Don had to change it. He ended up with a shot at recording in Germany, which was still wide open for hard rock at the time, and that opportunity is what helped pull the classic lineup together. He had seen George Lynch and Mick Brown playing in a band called Xciter and tried to get them on board. At first they weren't interested, but once the German deal was in hand Don convinced them to jump in, along with bassist Juan Croucier. They cut the first album, Breaking the Chains, over in Europe with producer Michael Wagener, and it came out over there before Elektra picked it up for the States. The record did okay, especially overseas, and it set the stage for everything that followed. Croucier eventually left to join Ratt, Jeff Pilson stepped in, and that is the lineup that went into the studio for Tooth And Nail and really broke things wide open.

Don has talked about growing up in a tougher part of the Venice area and bouncing around a bit in his younger years, which is where a lot of that grit in the early music came from. The band kept pushing through the club years, the European trip, and the early records until the combination of Lynch's guitar work, the strong vocals and harmonies, and those big choruses started connecting with a bigger audience. Tooth And Nail was the one that really put them on the map, and "Alone Again" was a big part of why the album kept selling long after the initial push. The band has kept going in different forms over the decades, with Don still out there fronting the current lineup, and the classic records still hold up for a lot of us who remember when this stuff was all over the radio.

If you want to dig deeper into what the band is up to or grab some merch, swing by the official Dokken website. You can also follow along on their Facebook page, their Instagram, and their account on X where they post tour dates and throwbacks. There are a couple of active Facebook groups out there for fans who still love the old records and the current shows, including one simply called Dokken Fans and another dedicated group for people who think the band is still one of the best hard rock outfits around. Those spots stay pretty lively with stories and memories from the Tooth And Nail years and beyond.

This one always hits a little different when it comes on, that mix of the soaring vocal, the big guitar solo that George laid down after the second chorus, and the lyrics about being left standing there without the right words. It is the kind of track that reminds you why so many of us got hooked on this stuff in the first place, and why it still sounds right spinning here on THE ZOO. The Zoo Crew will keep the deep cuts and the classics coming for all you Zoo Freaks, so stay locked in and enjoy the rest of the set. Rock on.