Don Dokken had a conversation with Shawn Ratches of Laughingmonkeymusic, where he discussed the difficulties he has with his voice as he gets older.

Regarding this, Don Dokken said:

“I’ve had a lot of complaints. I see fans, when I go, ‘The kiss of…’ (in the song ‘Kiss Of Death’) and I hit this B flat above A, this super soprano note, and I wouldn’t hit it, and you see people go, ‘Well, hey, you didn’t hit the note.’ I’m, like, ‘Dude, I’ve done, like, three thousand concerts. It’s like a motor car. It’s getting worn out.'”

“When you’re in your twenties, I don’t know if we’re gonna have another record or another hit or anything, I don’t know. So here I am just singing up [in the high register]. I was trying to copy (Rob) Halford, or all those bands and Klaus (Meine) by singing so high, but you go on the road for a year and a half and do four hundred shows and five albums, and then you start, like me, I’m husky today just from talking to everybody.

”And that’s just the way it is. And you get older. I’m 70, man. And some of these fans go… I’ve had people say, ‘Don needs to give it up. He can’t hit the high notes.’ I’m, like, ‘Let’s see you hit those high notes 24-year-old. Go ahead. Go for it.'”

Don went on to say there would still be the naysayers even if he sang “perfect like [he] did in ’83”. He added: “My daughter used to go on our web site and we used to have an open forum. So anybody could say anything they wanted. And a guy called Acorn, who didn’t even use his real name, and he made a comment when he goes, ‘I went to five DOKKEN shows this summer and Don sucked.’ And I went, ‘Then why’d you come to five shows?’ And my daughter would fire back. And we finally blocked him. And I said, ‘Sweetie, you’ve gotta remember, this guy works at Subway and he makes tuna sandwiches all day, and he has this new thing called the Internet and he can go on and post whatever he wants,’ ’cause I wasn’t censoring, ‘and that’s their way of getting attention.’ Then you get the people to say, ‘Screw you’ and ‘I agree with you.'”

Don said that he plans to “keep going until it’s not fun anymore”, and he had a special message to those DOKKEN fans who are disappointed that he can’t reproduce his vocal performance from four decades ago.

“If I can’t sing the way they remember me, then just don’t come to the show,” he said. “I’ve got no problem with that.”