During a conversation with Tulsa Music Stream, Don Dokken talked about Dokken’s upcoming new album ”Heaven Comes Down”, which will be out this September.
About the upcoming album, Don Dokken said:
“I’m very proud of the record, but then I gave it to the label… I had only written three songs in the past that never made it, and it was me playing guitar. And I wanted those on the record, because now I’m crippled, I can’t play guitar anymore. I said, ‘At least put those on the album,’ my last hurrah. And they took ’em off. And I never heard…
”Most record companies, they want 15 songs or 16 songs, like Metallica albums. And he goes, ‘We can only put 10.’ I go, ‘But that was the old days of vinyl.’ You could only put, I can’t remember; I think it’s 40 minutes a side or something like that. So I said, ‘But these are good songs. I want ’em on the record.’ Why would you wanna take off four good songs? And they said, ‘Well, maybe we’ll put like a bonus album out down the road and add ’em.’ …
”Anyway, he just said, ‘We want 10 songs on the record, 10 songs on the CD. We’re ditching four of ’em.’ And they happened to pick the ones that I was playing the guitar on and Jon (Levin) was playing solos. And I think they didn’t like ’em… What did my record company president say? ‘They’re too grungy.’
”And I went, ‘Grungy? Well, they’re old.’ But it wasn’t like they were grungy; they were just dark. I was probably going through a dark phase, and he didn’t want any dark songs on the record; he just wanted that classic Dokken [sound with] tons of harmonies, uptemp… yada yada yada.”