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“One of today’s most successful female rocker’s Doro Pesch has to be without doubt the greatest female in Metal, as she has outlived Lee Aaron, Lita Ford among others. With a successful history with ‘Warlock’, she went onto her own career as ‘Doro’ and is still going strong. In November of 2002 I had the pleasure of finally interview her in person and I have to say she is such a wonderful person, kind, gentle and such a cool person to be around with.

With the release of her new album ‘Fight’ which is certainly causing a lot of interest as the voice of female front Metal there is no doubt that Doro will reign for a few years yet. I was really surprised to find out that her bass player Nick Douglas was also in a band that I use to write to 10 yrs ago under the name of ‘Deadly Blessing’ an awesome Power Metal band from New Jersey with a singer that could almost out run Ripper Owens. Her is what Doro had to say to the following questions. Thanx Doro you’re a star!!!”

"Since you formed the band ‘Doro’, how many line-up changes have you had?”

“Well the band has been around for 10 yrs or more now, and Johnny Dee & Joe Taylor have been with me 10 yrs and Nick Douglas has been with me for 12yrs. We lost of 2nd guitar player 10yrs ago when we went on tour to the U.S. with ‘Dio’ and that was the tour of our lives!! The guitar player got sick and we thought it was just a cold or something as he was a little weak, but later on we found out he had cancer. So later on he had a operation and we said we would join later on the last leg of the tour in the U.S. or at least in Europe. Just before we did the European tour he had past away, so we found Oliver Palotai, who also plays keyboards.”

“Out of all the previous ’Warlock’ and ’Doro’ albums you have recorded which are your favourite and least favourite and why?”

“Well that is a tuff question, I think one of my favourite ‘Warlock’ albums is probably ‘Triumph & Agony’, because it was so exciting to record and it was also the make or break album and it had some great song on it and we did our first U.S. tour for that album with ‘Megadeth’ and in Europe we supported ‘Dio’. I am surprised that Megadeth have broken up, I was a huge fan of the band and also because we toured together it made us bond together, and one of my favourite song is ‘In My Darkest Hour’, I love it!!! The music business is so hard all the musicians are struggling to continue.

The 90’s was very hard for Metal music, and I knew the fans were there, even if the labels and press did not give a shit any more. Over the last 2yrs it has started to pick up again and I love it!! Metal is on it’s way back!!! We have not toured the UK properly in years, maybe one or two shows here and there but not a full tour like is, it’s great!! We did the ‘Rock & Blues’ festival in the UK not so long ago and I love doing biker festival’s.

I think my least favourite album would have to be ‘True As Steel’ as this was a very difficult album to make, because a lot of people had control over the band and we did not have any control over the album to be honest. I sang this song ‘Under Tears’ and I could not sing the original lyrics for that song. It was a little bit more commercial and we had too many musicians in the studio which made things worse and they did not seem to play the right parts along side my band. Nowadays I love to play the songs from the ‘True As Steel’ album, so it was not really my least favourite album it was just a difficult album for it’s time.

As for the ‘Doro’ albums, that is difficult for me to answer that, because I like every album for a different reason and one of them was not really a die hard metal album, but it still captured some really nice songs. I like ‘Calling The Wild’ and ‘Fight’ because they are very back to basics and the one that Gene Simmons from Kiss produced because I am a big fan of the band. I do not have a least favourite ‘Doro’ album as they are all special to me.”

“So how did the deal with ‘Steamhammer/ SPV’ come about and who else approached you for a deal?”

“Well I was with ‘Warner Brothers’ , who released the ‘Love Me In Black’ record and I worked on that album for 3 yrs and I felt that they did not get behind it enough with promotions etc.. So I realised that had to find a new album that would get behind the band 100%. When we played in Hannover were SPV are from they came to the show and liked what they saw and offered us a better deal. So a year on we signed to them. I was very impressed that the whole label came to see us in Hannover and that made me feel special. They are a great album and they do the jobs right with promotions, advertising etc…”

“So why did you decide to call the new album ‘Fight’ and were there any other titles in mind for this release?”

“Well 6 months before the album was released we were going to call it ‘Carved In Stone’, and first we had the song ‘I Will Fight By Your Side’, and the A&R guy at the label did not like the title, he said it was too long. Also after the 11 September 2001 disaster I wanted to put it on as a anti-war song. Later on I got a call from a friend telling me about this German female boxer, who has won 28 times and she always went into the boxing ring playing the ‘All We Are’. So she called me up and asked if we could do something together and I totally agreed, as I was in the studio recording the ‘Fight’ album, and she wanted to use the title track as her anthem. I think the title for this record is great and I love it!!”

“Yeah for sure, I think it is a fantasy cover and I like fantasy artwork. The cover has a lot of love and positive feels behind it like energy.”

“As you are promoting the new album, could you tell me how you hooked up with Pete Steele from ‘Type O Negative’?”

“Well Joe and myself wrote ‘Descent’ it we both thought it would be a great song if we had a male singer on that song. At first Nick our bas player was singing the male parts of the song and when I heard him singing I thought it sounded good. So I thought it would of sounded better if I could find a male with a deeper voice, so I thought about Pete Steele and the band agreed I should get a hold of him. I later on went to a charity festival for the fire fighters of New York where ‘Type O negative’ were playing and I ran into some of my old friends and we talked about Pete been on the album.

At first I was not sure about it as I had Lemmy from ‘Motorhead’ on the last album, but I had a friend who knew Pete and she called him up. A day later Pete called me up and said he was very interested in doing the vocals on that song, I was surprised and very happy. It turned out really well I love it.”

“Are the songs on each ‘Doro’ album wrote as a team effort or do you write them yourself?”

“Well the new album was wrote by the whole band and the ballads are wrote with Gary Shultz and I always go the Nashville to write the ballads with Gary. I always go to him because we write some Really good ballads together. Some of the songs I write alone and some with the band, but I feel at peace with myself if I go the see Gary to write some really nice ballads.”

“I like the songs ‘Undying’ and ‘Fight’ , ‘Fight By Your Side’ and ‘Descent’’ because this song is so cool and different. ‘Undying’ is a very important song, because we lost our old guitar player and I also lost my father.”

“It is selling really well, I’m not sure how well it has sold so far but I know it’s doing very well.”

“I am note sure, WOA this a great festival to play as you will know Jason. I also liked the Donnington festival we did in the 80’s, that was great!!”

“I heard that you are or have done a CD with a orchestra, is this true? If so could you tell me a little bit about it?”

“I did this last year and it sounded great!! I would like to put it out as a DVD in the near future.”

“Well Doro thank you for taking your time out and for doing the interview, you’re a star!! Do you have anything to say before we finish?”

“Yeah, I want to thank all of my fans deeply and keep Metal alive. Thank you for the interview Jason, your sweet!!