Doro

German heavy metal/hard rock goddess Doro Pesch is best-known for her years with the band Warlock, but she has had a long solo career and continued to command a small but loyal following (especially in Europe) long after Warlock's demise. Pesch, who only uses her first name professionally, was born in Dusseldorf, Germany, on June 3, 1964. Although she grew up in a country where German is the primary language, Pesch fluently speaks English and has done most of her singing in English, something she has in common with the Scorpions, Accept, and other German headbangers. Pesch was only in her late teens when, in the early '80s, she started singing lead for an obscure Dusseldorf-based metal band called Snakebite. But in 1983, she left Snakebite and became the lead singer for Warlock, a forceful yet melodic fantasy metal outfit along the lines of Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and Ronnie James Dio. At the time, heavy metal and hard rock were very male-dominated, but thanks to various ladies of loudness -- including Joan Jett, Pat Benatar, Heart, Girlschool, Lita Ford, and the Runaways -- headbangers had grown more comfortable with the idea of women singing aggressive, balls-to-the-wall rock. But there weren't that many women singing gothic fantasy metal and getting into lyrics about witches, demons, ghosts, or sorcerers; Jett, Benatar, Ford, and Heart's Ann Wilson were mainly singing about love, romance, and sex. So when Pesch belted out Warlock's fantasy-oriented lyrics and did so with as much aggression as Ozzy Osbourne or Ronnie James Dio, she stood out. After playing the Dusseldorf club scene for several months and acquiring a small local following, Warlock recorded a demo and was signed by the independent Mausoleum label; after that, the band ended up...