THE VIDEO Dokken, "Breaking the Chains," Breaking the Chains, 1982, Elektra
Click here to watch this video NOW!
SAMPLE LYRIC "Breaking the chains around yuh / nobody else can bind yuh / take a good look around yuh / nooooooowww you'rrrrrrre breakingthechains"
EXCESSIVELY DETAILED DESCRIPTION The video opens with a shot of two chains forming an "x" in front of a wall made of stone. They go from one corner of the screen to another, implying your television is chained up. Then we see George Lynch's hands -- he's playing his tiger-stripe guitar. The camera keeps pulling back till we see his well-oiled torso, then that he's wearing umm, what looks like belts being used as suspenders, then very fitted red slacks. Did I mention that he's ridiculously built, even though this is many years pre-body-building-fetish for him? Yes. Yesssss. Anyway, he's got his classic half-n-half mullet, which I love. It's not as spiked up as in "Into the Fire," but it's still in full effect.
Next Don Dokken turns toward the camera. Don looks totally weird in this video, and I mean that in a different way than usual. His hair is quite short (barely shoulder-length) and it's sort of curly, with bangs. Also, he's wearing no makeup whatsoever. He has on a red and black vest over a red and white horizontally striped top and black leather pants.
As he turns all the way, he begins walking down a very small hallway with George. It looks like Pee-Wee's Playhouse as a bed and breakfast or a boat or something -- white walls with visible dark post and beam construction, old paintings and candelabra on the walls hung at crooked angles, and lanterns hanging from the ceiling that move back and forth. Plus it's just wide and tall enough to accommodate them, making it seem like a carnival ride or something. When Don sticks his arms out to emphasize "the walls around you / closin' in" his hands touch the walls on both sides.
Suddenly Jeff Pilson appears to Don's right. He's got a cute little shag haircut and is wearing a fitted white leather jacket and playing a red bass with a red chain as a guitar strap. He is so damn cute! Seriously, if Jeff weren't in a band with George, I'd be all up in his junk. He is really super attractive, it's just like, hard to even notice when George is in the shot.
If I had to compare them to anyone today's kids would get, I would use the following SAT analogy -- Jeff Pilson : George Lynch : : Chad Hugo : Pharrell Williams. Get it? Got it? Good.
George and Jeff lead the way down the hall till the first verse ends, causing Don to step to the front and ululate. As the chorus begins, we finally see Mick Brown, who's drumming wearing a tiger-stripe vest over a black sleeveless shirt. It looks like he's wearing no pants, which I think means he's wearing white pants and the lighting is just weird. He's definitely not wearing tiny shorts a la Tommy Lee or Rick Allen. He doesn't look half bad, which is weird because I usually find him not attractive at all.
We pull back from Mick, and George and Jeff are both standing on the platform with his drum kit, and down in front there's Don singing and... holding a guitar? Yes, holding a guitar. I feel like at the point they set up this shot George Lynch had a real "oh no he didn't!" moment. Since at no point does Don appear to know what he was doing with the guitar, it is a good thing that this is the only video where he gives it a try.
Anyway, Dokken are rokken on their little stage for the rest of the chorus. George and Jeff jump off of the platform simultaneously, lights come up, etc. Then we see a shot of George playing a guitar with tiny chains for strings (they really took the title of this song as literally as possible). Even though he's not really playing, George does a great job with his guitar face.
Next we see Don reading some pieces of paper as he sings "got this letter / came today" and as he sings he turns to his right and the camera pulls back till he's eventually standing at the right side of the screen. The giant face of a woman who no joke looks like she could be his sister appears at left. She's wearing a red top with black polka dots, dangly earrings, and little makeup, and she has sort of frizzy curly hair pulled into a side ponytail. Uhhh... As Don shakes the papers around and sings about what the letter says ("says she loves me / she'll come back"), the woman mouths "I love you, I'll come back." Sheesh. As Don surveys the charges against her, the woman makes a sad face, then an "oops" face, then eventually turns and leaves. Don tosses away the papers and George and Jeff appear at his side.
Dokken rokks out some more, and Don's guitar face is terrible. He sort of pouts and strums along. As we head toward the solo, we see Mick, holding his drumsticks over his head, chained to some bars beneath a stone archway. There are torches on the walls and there is a fire burning in a little birdbath-type thing in the center of the room. The camera pans left, and we see that Jeff and his bass are chained up beneath the next arch, then a mercifully guitar-less Don, who's sort of dancing around in spite of the chains, and then finally George, who's just chained to a stone wall.
With a flash of sparks, George pulls loose one wrist, then the other so that he might play his solo. With a small explosion and some guitar face, he frees himself from his chains, then walks around to Don, Jeff, and Mick, breaking their chains by tipping his guitar toward them. Jeff and George rock out while Don sort of does this crappy dance and Mick randomly hits his drumsticks together over his head. I always feel bad for drummers when they get stuck in something like this, where they have to wave their sticks in the air or tap their hands on something lest anyone forget that they're the drummer. It seems kind of humiliating.
Don begins the last verse ("woke up today / I'm alone") and we see him from overhead. He's wearing a bathrobe and lying in bed with his head on a pillow. He looks toward the pillow next to him, which has the indentation of someone having been there but, as Don says, "I look around / but baby you are gone." The camera pans out, and we see that Don is chained to the bed, which is tiny (it stops beneath his calves, so his feet are dangling), but most importantly that he's wearing a robe that barely covers his ass -- it's like a micro-mini. Even though the light on the bed is blue, the floor around him has all these weird red lights on it. It's hard to notice, however, so imminent is the threat of seeing way too much Don Dokken.
Mercifully, we cut to a shot of George rocking out, but then it's revealed that George is rocking out right by the head of the bed. Don tries to sit up, and then, (Noooo!) we get a brief upskirt shot of Don. Thankfully, he is wearing briefs, but seriously, why did they put him in this tiny, tiny robe? Finally, with an explosion, he breaks the chains and leaps off the bed, and Jeff leaps into the shot next to him. Even Mick is drumming right next to the bed.
As we begin the final chorus, the band is back in the weird hallway again, just standing at the back of it as the camera approaches. Then they're down in the dungeon again, standing around. Finally we see them as if they were playing on the stage again, only now their images are superimposed in front of the crossed chains and stone wall from the opening of the video. As the song ends, the band slips down and off through the bottom of the screen, and a final explosion yes, you guessed it, breaks the chains.
THE VERDICT This video is often held up as a paragon of 80s cheesiness, though I would say that compared to something like "Queen of the Reich" this thing is a special effects masterpiece. None of the sets look like they're about to fall over, the walls of stone appear to be made of stone (and not of foil or papier-mâché), and they did enough takes so that anyone who got hit in the head by one of the swinging lanterns in the filming of the video does not get hit in the head by a swinging lantern in the video (although Jeff Pilson does come close).
Most of the cheese in this video comes from the literalness and heavy-handedness of the constant breaking of chains. This song is about breaking out of routines (whether simply in daily life or as an extension of a failed relationship with a girl who looks like a blood relative). No chains are actually meant to be broken. At the same time though, I don't mind it. Or at least I don't mind the dungeon part -- chaining Don to the bed is a bit much.
Still, I prefer the literal interpretation of this video to the crappy, utterly decontextualized "In My Dreams," which seemed to scream out for a literal interpretation. And, at the end of the day, what it really comes down to is the idea of George Lynch being all tied up. Aawwwwww yeahhhhh.