the slave reel. Judging by that and a verse harmony track labeled as “Jeff” on the track sheet,
I suspect that he may have sung most of these
background vocals. Incidentally, his scratch bass
take (that was most likely recorded live when
the drums were done) was very well thought out
and note-for-note pretty much what ended up
on the master bass take.
that overblown sound entirely from the natural drum kit, and much easier than recording
Brown’s drums in an airplane hangar and then
compressing/gating them in the studio off the
master, which the band has been known to do.
Photo by Neil Zlozower
The Bitter End
While Captain and Tennille may have professed
that “Love Will Keep Us Together,” sadly, such
was not the case with Dokken. “Dream Warriors”
represents a career peak that was really just the
beginning of the end for the band. Incarnations
with different members and reunion attempts
failed to recapture the magic of Dokken in their
prime. Is it true that all good things must come
to an end? Eventually, the significantly more
popular Guns n’ Roses crumbled apart due to
similar internal band problems and, as mentioned earlier, the very walls holding up what was
once the infamous Rumbo Recorders recording
studios are now absorbing endless refrains of
“The Chicken Dance” and “Hava Nagila.”
Mr. Scary’s Sweet Revenge
George Lynch’s guitar tracks on “Dream
Warriors” were a pleasure to hear in their
raw state. His signature, chunky eighth-note
chugs and unconventional chord inversions
are the elements responsible for propelling
this song into a fist-raising rock anthem.
The primary axe for these sessions was
Lynch’s original tiger. The pre-ESP original
was a heavy maple-bodied strat-style guitar equipped with a single Duncan SH- 6
Distortion pickup at the time. The amp was a
purple 100-watt Marshall plexi owned by and
rented from Groove Tubes’ Aspen Pittman.
Refusing to sell the amp, Pittman frequently
rented this amp to Lynch for sessions.
The main rhythm guitar parts were tracked in
stereo from a single performance—either using
two separate amps or just different cabinets.
The stereo imaging of this pair is superb, with
nice width in the higher frequencies tapering to
the center for the lower midrange. This was due
to separate mic placements in the room where
a single Marshall 4x12 cabinet was situated. The
phase relationship of these waveforms is impeccable and this explains why the guitars sound so
full and aggressive in this song. These rhythm
tracks are supported with a single mono guitar
double. The clean arpeggiated guitars, which
are another Lynch trademark, are layered with
a thin, metallic-sounding DI acoustic guitar track.
a wall wielding his skeleton guitar—all to the
initial bewilderment and eventual delight of an
adolescent Patricia Arquette. Defiance by way
of a ridiculous guitar solo entrance may come
off as comical now, but this solo is no joke.
Being able to isolate the actual track dry and
audition these nuances in their rawest form
was a privilege worthy of more than Arquette’s
painted-on admiration. I can almost taste the
disdain for Don emanating from those precarious bends and the disorienting mélange of
well-articulated notes cascading down like
Plinko discs on The Price is Right. Lynch’s tone
is bold and never loses focus, plowing indiscriminately through the minor string rattles and
pick-noise imperfections that get masked in
the final mix. The boost used in the front end
of the amp was an original square-buttoned
Ibanez TS-808 overdrive pedal aided by the
use of a BOSS GE- 7 equalizer pedal with an
accent on the mids being pushed above the
zero point. This solo track is supplemented
with a harmony lead that highlights and
heightens this original performance. There was
additional outro soloing other than what made
it to the final mix, but Kernon extracted all the
good stuff from this track and flew it into just
the right spot to close out the song.
Despite the traditional music industry’s decline
and the seemingly irresolvable feuds of so
many bands, the recorded music of groups like
Dokken will outlive all the egos and attitudes
that broke them apart in the first place. Evidence
of their significance isn’t just immortalized in
the mixes that we’ve come to know, the (
now-digitized) individual tracks of these master tapes
tell a backstory of their creation that will outlive
the bands themselves, and the fading memories
of those who were involved in their creation.
To see/hear how you can play along to (with
tab) and make new mixes of “Dream Warriors”
and other songs from the original multi-track
masters, check out www.jammit.com
Unsung Hero
Don’s lead vocal was well recorded. Like the
drums and guitars, the track was full of presence
and tonal character that didn’t make it into the
final, sloshy, ’80s-centric mixdown that we’ve
all grown accustomed to hearing. While Don
may be the front man after which the band is
named, Jeff Pilson may be the unsung hero of
this song. Jeff sang the guide chorus vocals on a
scratch track that was used to build the 18-voice
harmony layers constructed later on the tape.
These were combined, consolidated to four
tracks and were then placed into each chorus of
Frank Gryner is a multi-plati-num engineer whose credits
include bands like A Perfect
Circle, Matrix Soundtracks,
Rob Zombie, and Tommy Lee.
Frank’s technical expertise
in audio system design has
been applied to location studios for the likes of
Filter, Perry Farrell and John Paul Jones.
I distinctly remember the “Dream Warriors”
music video that showed Lynch’s wrecking
ball impersonation as he literally tore through
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