DORO PESCH: 'I Feel The Fans Are Even Closer To Me Than My Closest Friends'

Canal Metal conducted an interview with German metal queen Doro Pesch at the tenth edition of the Alcatraz Hard Rock & Metal Festival, which was held August 11-13 in Kortrijk, Belgium. You can watch the entire chat below. A few excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On her early days as a musician:

Doro: "Sometimes we played some gigs, we went to our rehearsal room, we were always practicing every day. Christmas, New Year's Eve, every day. Then we said, 'Hey, shall we do a little concert today?' I said, 'Okay, let's do it.' We got some generators from Düsseldorf, that's where we started. There's a beautiful river, the Rhine. We said, 'Let's put our equipment on the Rhine River.' There's some nice little places. We put our generators, our Marshall amps, our drums and we had a concert. I don't know why people came, but people were coming. Even the police, they came. They said, 'Do you have a permit?' We said, 'No, we don't even know what that is.' They said, 'Well, you have to finish soon.' We said, 'We have only five more songs.' They said, 'Okay, then play your five songs.' And then the police, everybody was starting to headbang and rocking out. Very basic, but a lot of fun."

On whether it's empowering being a woman in the male-dominated genre of heavy metal:

Doro: "Yeah, I was always a metalhead, so I don't know…I always felt good being a woman. It was nothing special to me. I was just the way I was. I always loved music so much. I always wanted to have a band. I fell in love with music when I was three years-old. I made up my mind that I wanted to start a band, then I was fifteen, sixteen. Then I had my first band, it was called SNAKEBITE, then BEAST, then ATTACK, and then WARLOCK. I guess we were at the right time at the right place, then everything fell into place. I never felt I had any problems. People never looked at me strange. Even I had the great chance to tour with the greatest bands and people. My first tour was actually with JUDAS PRIEST in '86. It was unbelievable. My second tour was with W.A.S.P. and Blackie Lawless treated me so well. And then my third tour was with Ronnie James Dio, so it couldn't get any better than this. Then SAXON, MOTÖRHEAD. I never felt different. I was always one of them."

On why she chose heavy metal as her style of music:

Doro: "I never liked pop music, maybe here and there a song. But I never wanted to do pop, no. I like it extreme. I like it extremely powerful, aggressive or very sensitive. I think metal and rock bands can do the best ballads. I think it has the most soul and heart. I always loved metal. I grew up with hard rock, actually the glam rock scene. I think I was seven, eight years-old, then Alice Cooper, Suzi Quatro, SWEET, SLADE, they were all big. I was a little girl, but I loved it."

On what she gets back for her dedication to her crew and music:

Doro: "You get so much. It's love. Love and trust and a strong bond. I feel the fans are even closer to me than my closest friends because my really close friends, they are normal people but not metalheads or not rock fans, there's so much missing. I can talk only so much about whatever, like normal life, but when you are a metal fan, it's so deep. I love it so much. It's always a big honor and to get a connection with the great people. I think metalheads are the best people. They have their hearts in the right place and they feel something. I appreciate it a lot."

On staying true to her metal sound and whether she would ever experiment with grunge sounds:

Doro: "No, no, I experimented a little bit with other sounds like more industrial sounds. We did two records, one was 'Machine II Machine' and the other one was 'Love Me In Black'. I loved it, it was a great album, but it was never grunge."

Doro has been recently touring in support of the thirtieth anniversary of WARLOCK's "Triumph And Agony" album by performing the LP in its entirety.

Doro's long-awaited follow-up to 2012's "Raise Your Fist" album will arrive in August 2018 and will be the German singer's first release since last year's "Love's Gone To Hell" single.

Doro's last release was a package titled "Strong And Proud - 30 Years Of Rock And Metal", which came out in June 2016 via Nuclear Blast. It contained three decades of Doro — three unforgettable nights — forever captured on three DVDs and two Blu-rays, including a two-hour-plus music movie.