Veteran Swedish hard rock and metal drummer Mikkey Dee (MOTÖRHEAD, SCORPIONS) recently sat down with Roxie from Rock Kommander for an interview about his music journey, major life decisions, and why he chose Rock Kommander over every other game offer that came his way.
Asked how his drumming technique and playing style have evolved throughout his career, Mikkey said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “That’s a good question, because it has gone very natural. And let me start by saying that when you’re young, when I started off on the bigger stage, you wanna have a world record in being the best drummer and you wanna do most drum fills and licks and complicated stuff. At that time, I actually played then with KING DIAMOND, so my drumming style and development worked really well with that band. When we wrote songs, they were supposed to be complicated, they were supposed to have a lot of backbeats and weird drum fields. And it worked perfect. But after playing several years with KING, and we were touring a lot, I felt like a shitty drummer because I was lacking other parts of playing drums. I wasn’t very solid. I was not a steady drummer, and I wasn’t very solid, so I kind of panicked about, ‘I can only play all these technique shit.’ I couldn’t sit with a nice calm feeling and not stressing my heart and play just a simple beat and rock out. I had to do all this complicated stuff. And so when I joined [Don] Dokken, that was the perfect way. That was simple rock and roll. And after several years with Don, which was much more melodic hard rock — kind of what I’m playing now with SCORPIONS, which is great — but at that time in my career, in my life, I wanted the harder stuff. And so when I finally joined MOTÖRHEAD after Lemmy asking me three times since 1986 to join the band, and when I finally joined end of ’91, that was perfect for me because this was meat-and-potato, black-and-white, hardcore heavy rock, blues and rock and roll. So that was perfect. But then we moved forward 25 years, unfortunately, Lem passed away, but already before that, I felt like I wanted to play something else. I wanna move on. And when Lemmy passed away, unfortunately, because I think we had many, many more years [left] with MOTÖRHEAD, but then SCORPIONS came about, and that fitted perfectly for me to move from maybe the harder stuff into a little more wide, diverse music. There’s some hard, hard stuff with SCORPIONS, but it’s also a lot of more melodic, and it’s another way of working in the studio. It’s another way of playing live. And so it all [came] at the right time. If you took these bands around a little bit and moved them around, it would not have been so good. So for me, every time I started feeling that I wanted to do something else, something else had happened and it came in the right order, if you will. It really came naturally.”
Mikkey added: “I’m very happy with how it turned out. But then again, it’s all always up to you to make those [correct decisions about which direction to go]. Because the road will end, and you have to make a decision to [take] a right turn or a left turn. And sometimes I made the wrong decision. And then it’s up to you to realize that quick enough so you can turn around and run the other way. In the end, it’s up to you. But with a little bit of luck and timing, which you have to deserve — I mean, you can’t just think that luck is gonna come to you; you have to earn it. Then you’ll get a little bit of good timing and a good bit of luck, and you get what you deserve.”
A Swede of Greek descent, Mikkey has been known for his speed and precision since his mid-1980s stint with KING DIAMOND. After moving to Copenhagen to play with GEISHA in 1985, Dee joined KING DIAMOND, who were looking for additional members to complete their lineup. Dee played on the KING DIAMOND recordings “Fatal Portrait” (1986),“Abigail” (1987) and “Them”, and continued to play as a session drummer for the recording sessions of the “Conspiracy” album (1989),after which he was replaced. He joined Don Dokken for his solo album, “Up From The Ashes” (1990),with the music videos for the songs “Stay” and “Mirror Mirror” receiving airplay on MTV‘s “Headbangers Ball”. The band headlined their own tour, as well as opened for JUDAS PRIEST. During this time, Dee also filled in a short time playing for WORLD WAR THREE (WWIII).
Lemmy had been repeatedly asking Mikkey to join MOTÖRHEAD since 1985, and in 1992, when asked once again, Dee accepted the offer, replacing Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor. Dee‘s first gig with the band was on August 30, 1992 at Saratoga Performing Arts Center.
Dee has been a member of the SCORPIONS since 2016, having joined the band in the wake of MOTÖRHEAD‘s untimely dissolution following Lemmy‘s death. To date, Dee has only played on one of the band’s albums, 2022’s “Rock Believer”.
