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First, listen to quot;Till the Living Endquot; from Under Lock amp; Key

Then, listen to “Under the Gun” from Long Way Home
And finally, listen to “Don’t Bring Me Down” from Hell to Pay

I knew right off the bat when I first heard Don’t Bring Me Down that it was eerily similar to Till the Living End, but I didn’t realize Under the Gun was the same way until I dusted off Long Way Home this weekend. Don must really like that riff to use it three times by three different guitarists (and two albums in a row at that).

Oh man, you hit on one of my biggest Dokken pet peeves, that being the fact that you can sing the lyrics to virtually every song over any riff ... they are all very similar, which is saying more about Don Dokken's writing style than Lynch's. A large bulk of the Dokken material was written by Don Dokken and Jeff Pilson. The only real departure was after Lynch already hated Don's guts and was writing songs wholesale and recording them on his own, with no interaction from Don, on Back For The Attack.

As much as I love Jon Levin's guitar playing, I really wish he would stop cloning Lynch and break out a bit more on his own.

Similarity is one thing, but I swear that riff is being recycled more than a modern pop can. A note or two may have changed, but the pick pattern is the same, and the tempo is even nearly the same. It is a little disapointing.

I agree with your comments on Jon Levin. His playing is without question heavily influenced by Lynch, so much so that at times you could mistake him for Lynch if you didn't know any better. I definatly prefer Levin of Norum, but atleast Norum had a little more uniqueness in his sound.

Norum is an Yngwie style player, very very different from Lynch. Europe had all the chops to do a heavier thing, but chose to do pop music instead.

If Don would just stop all the crooning, and get rocking, Levin could strutt his stuff. Live, the guy is AMAZING!!

I've been wanting to see Levin live. I haven't seen Dokken since '99 on the ETS tour with Reb Beach (who put on a pretty good live show himself).

Meh, I have the DVD (quot;Live From The Sunquot;). I love the 1st solo on that album, but I didn't think Reb Beach's playing was all that. Some nice, Vai inspired tapping, but that really doesn't work in Dokken. His Pantene hair irks me, too! lol