"I was eleven when Dokken released “In My Dreams”, although I wasn’t paying enough attention to know what I was hearing! I can’t remember the first time I heard it, but I do remember being about fifteen or sixteen, round at a mate’s house, when he put a tape on and I suddenly thought, “Great song!” Funny how some tracks just lodge themselves in the back of your head. This was definitely one of them.

By the time I really started getting into Hard Rock in my late teens, I began paying more attention to Dokken. The trouble was, I never completely clicked with everything they did. There were songs that grabbed me, but plenty that passed me by without leaving much of an impression. “In My Dreams”, however, did. Released on their 1985 album Under Lock And Key, it sits perfectly between melodic hard rock and the polished sound beginning to dominate the decade. Don Dokken's vocals, George Lynch's unmistakable guitar work and that huge, instantly memorable chorus make it incredibly easy to return to.

And that is exactly why I’ve chosen it for my Blast From The Past. It isn’t necessarily the song that made me a Dokken fan, because I’m not sure I ever became one in the traditional sense, but it survived every musical phase I went through. From hearing it at a friend's house as a teenager to rediscovering it properly as my love of Hard Rock grew, “In My Dreams” has always been there. Some songs demand your attention immediately. Others simply hang around long enough to become part of your musical DNA. For me, this is definitely the latter."