One of my treasure photos nearly 20 years ago already in 2006. On the tour bus with the Queen of Metal, Doro Pesch. I was a bit chunkier back then from all the road dogging I was doing in the music industry then, covering 10-12 shows a month, sleeping 3-4 hours a day and working full time. A terrible diet, usually eating on the road to shows. Before I got on my fitness crusade.

A story behind the picture and I was telling it to a new friend the other day. The night before I went down to Virginia to cover Doro’s gig on a Sunday, I was in NYC, assigned an on-site interview with industrial rock legends, Skinny Puppy, at the Nokia Theatre in Times Square. Hiccups behind the scheduling forced my interview to be postponed to a phoner two days later, but it was still an amazing trip. I think I covered an easy 40 blocks on foot that day. Saw Cynthia Nixon of Sex and the City dashing with a companion into a car in Greenwich Village. Had a terrific dinner with a label friend from the old Roadrunner Records, Jen Bryan. Caught the SP show and got some decent pics before I hightailed it on the yellow line back to Battery Park, which dumped us out early about 10 blocks. Saw some illicit stuff going on in Wall Street with no fuzz around at 12:30 a.m. The ride home on the Staten Island Ferry and driving back to Baltimore in the middle of the night was an adventure as well.

Per usual, I got very little sleep between events and I was back at it the next day to interview Doro. I was treated like gold by her drummer and tour manager, Johnny Dee, and Doro had Trans-Siberian Orchestra and Savatage guitarist Chris Caffery in her band and as an opener. I have a separate pic in my archives of the three of us. I’d interviewed Chris a couple times, had good rapport, had a blast with him and Doro all night at this gig. Chris remembered me later at a TSO meet-and-greet, just good stuff.

Enough of the bragging. I left Doro’s gig close to 1:00 a.m. with a three-hour haul back home, already exhausted, but exhilarated from my time spent in the court of the Queen. It had been my fourth time interviewing Doro. Everything you hear about her is true. The kindest, most down-to-earth person in the scene. Legend. So I’m driving in my truck and quickly fading on a back road in Virginia. Suddenly I wake up with my chin resting on my chest. I’d passed out behind the wheel, miraculously with my foot on the brake and in my lane.

I always thank the divine for protecting me that night. I might not have lived to tell this tale.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.