Doro Pesch - Warlock / Doro

In Conversation

May 25

When Warlock first hitched their wagon to hard rock’s runaway train back in ‘84 with their debut Burning The Witches there was only one person the journos from the world’s music press were interested in hearing from: the band’s iconic siren, the then 19-year-old Doro Pesch.

Burning The Witches was a cacophonous whirlwind of brute force riffery and superior melodies, delivered by an immediately and identifiably unique voice that managed to somehow balance raw power and beguiling lyricism. That Doro was backed by some kick-ass musicians was, at that time, perpetually in danger of becoming a sidebar to the main story: the emergence of a new powerhouse in German hard rock.

Warlock, as a brand at least, is now defunct, the innocent victim of a legal wrangle with the band’s previous management, but its legacy and principles live on with Doro the now long-time solo artist who is still backed by fabulously kick-ass musicians and who still brings that same seductive Jekyll and Hyde blend of the angelic and the defiant to her vocal performance.

In truth, the Doro of 2021, caged like all of us in a virtual world during lockdown, is not so very different to the young woman who found herself quite by accident to be the new darling of the rock music press all those years ago.

Older, yes - though her unfailing authenticity and undimmed enthusiasm for her music makes her ageless, somehow. Wiser? Certainly - life in a rock band has given her survival instincts and resilience a sharpness that is more than a match for the cut-throat politics of the music biz.

It’s also a Doro who has viewed the world through the lens of rock and roll and has found it wanting, igniting in her a compassion and kindness that have long informed the code by which she lives: a committed vegan whose vocal advocacy of ethical practice is as loud and compelling as the music that still drives and warms her soul - just as it ensures her leather stagewear is, in fact, not leather at all, but rather hand-tailored non-animal materials to look like the real deal.

There are many things that personify the Doro the boys meet over Zoom towards the end of lockdown. The first thing is that she smiles and laughs. A lot. Far from eroding her capacity for answering questions about her life, the passing years seem to have bequeathed her an indefatigable appetite for the opportunity to share her life and her passion.

And while the Sadmen may delude themselves - perhaps justifiably, perhaps not - that their questions were hardly from the same journalism buffet table at which Doro may have been forced to dine in the past, what ensued was a converrsation that was wonderfully candid, totally guileless and full of good humour.

In the interview, which you can listen to below, Doro talks about how her lack of English in the early days of Warlock's global success made her self-conscious and anxious; the wild excitement she felt at appearing on the Donington Monsters of Rock tour in 1986; how Lemmy, that been-there-seen-it-drank-the-tee-shirt scion of rock and roll royalty, took her under his wing and became one of her closest allies, confidantes and friends (and how she keeps a part of him close to her to this day … quite literally!); her love of Ronnie James Dio and the paralysing grief she felt upon hearing news of his death; and how W.A.S.P.’s Blackie Lawless temporarily slipped off his artistic cloak of misogyny and objectification to look after her when she fell ill before a show.

We also count down Doro’s top 10 albums of all time …

A remastered edition of Doro’s 1998 album Love Me In Black is now available in multiple formats