During a recent appearance on Drinks With Johnny , the internet TV show hosted by Avenged Sevenfold Johnny Christ , former Motörhead and current Scorpions drummer Mikkey Dee discussed the evolution of his drumming style.
He said: “If you take King Diamond , Dokken , Motörhead, and now Scorpions, they came at the right time in my life. For example, towards the end of King Diamond, I felt like a very limited drummer […] I felt a lot of stress, with backing beats and technical drum fills tearing up certain songs.”
“When we moved to California, I started playing with, you could call them regular musicians, more rock, playing Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple again. And I felt stressed. I felt like my meter wasn’t where it should be. And I wanted to become broader. And Dokken was the perfect thing to get me out of King Diamond. I learned a lot, like just sitting back and enjoying it. And then, after a few years with Don [Dokken], I felt like this is great, but I belong to the heavier division; I’m a heavier drummer. And then, suddenly, again, Motörhead came along at the right time,” he explained.
After 25 years with Motörhead, he believed it was no longer a secret that the members might want to do something else. Something like a solo album, or explore something else.
Mikkey Dee states that with Motörhead, there was still a kind of standard to work within, and that restricted him a lot. “And sometimes Phil [ Campbell , guitar] and I would write a song and Lemmy Rush -oriented . We’re not Rush; we’re Motörhead.’ And he was absolutely right about that. Maybe we took a little too far from the structure of being Motörhead,” he said.
Dee, who has been a member of Scorpions since 2016, played drums in King Diamond from 1985 to 1989. The Swedish drummer also played with Motörhead from 1991 until the band's dissolution in December 2015.
Dee played on King Diamond's classic albums Fatal Portrait , Abigail , and Them , until he left in 1988 to join Don Dokken. He returned a year later to collaborate on the album Conspiracy .
