DRUMMER STEVE BROWN ON HIS BROTHER MICK’S RETIREMENT, “HE DOESN’T [OWN] DRUMS [NOR] DRUM STICKS”

Tesla drummer Steve Brown, the younger brother of former Dokken drummer Mick Brown, spoke to Chaotic Riffs about his brother’s decision to retire from touring in 2019. When speaking about the physical challenges that forced Mick to retire from performing live, Steve said (as per blabbermouth.net), “It’s not so much the playing, but it’s the travel on top of it. He’s a lot bigger guy than I man, and cramming into airline seats for long flights… They would play in Washington state on a Friday and somewhere on the East Coast on a Saturday. Those two things, you just can’t do it forever. And he’s been doing it — what? Fifty years. So I was kind of surprised. To be honest with you, I thought he would do it till he just keeled over on stage one day.”

“When [Mick] was playing with Ted Nugent at the same time [as Dokken] and trying to do both, he kind of got tired of that,” he continued. “And then when the Ted thing was done, he stuck it out with Don [Dokken] as much as he could. But then just came a point where he just physically couldn’t do it anymore. And both of us have the same type of thing — I have it worse. It’s psoriatic arthritis. So it’s an immune deficiency thing. And he kind of worked his way through it; it kind of passed. But I know the kind of pain that I’m in, so for him to continue on like that, kind of untreated too — ’cause I take shots and I do this and that and try to stay ahead of it a little bit… And one thing is when you’re sitting on a plane and then you’ve gotta get up, and you’re, like, ‘Oh, God.’ [Laughs].”

“So I wasn’t surprised that he had decided to do [retire from touring]; I just didn’t think he was gonna stick with it forever,” Steve said. “And a couple of years later, I told my wife, I go, ‘Let’s go down and see him, see what’s going on down there.’ And he was great — and he was in the best possible mindset I’ve ever seen him in. And I thought, ‘Well, there you go.’ And soon after that he sold every piece of drum gear, everything he owns. And all of his friends that I run into out here, they’re just, like, ‘He really retired?’ I’m, like, ‘He doesn’t even have drums. He doesn’t even have drum sticks.’ [Laughs]”

Watch Steve Brown’s entire interview below.