Born on June 3rd: Doro Pesch, Düsseldorf's Metal Queen

She may have been born in 1964 in Düsseldorf, the birthplace of German electro music and Kraftwerk, but she's never sworn by electric guitars.

The daughter of a truck driver who regularly took her on the road, she developed a taste for travel and adventure at an early age. Her adolescence was marked by a painful ordeal. Before even considering a career in music, she was learning a forgotten trade - typographer - and was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis. After a long convalescence, she finally recovered and began to think about picking up a microphone and shouting herself hoarse to ward off fate.

In 1980, she joined her first band, Snakebite, which played rock in a cellar in the industrial town where she had always lived. All the local metalheads and a range of underground bands gathered there to rehearse without incurring the wrath of neighbors. After a few failed experiments, she founded Warlock, a downright heavy metal band. Signed to Belgian label Mausoleum Records, they recorded "Burning The Witches" in 1984. A title that says a lot about their state of mind! The band went on to win multiple laurels: best new band of the year from the specialist magazine Kerrang! and best female singer from the readers of Metal Forces. It has to be said that the petulant young woman, with her impressive blond mane, does not leave anyone indifferent. Warlock went on to record three more albums, "Hellbound", "True As Steel" and "Triumph All We Are". Nearly four decades later, the tracks continues to generate millions of listens across platforms.

As Warlock's name could no longer be used due to murky rights issues, the singer makes do with her first name alone, shortened to Doro. For a while, she hoped to make her American dream come true, abandoning her Teutonic lumberjacks for a quartet recruited in the land of Uncle Sam.

In 1989, she titled her first album "Force Majeure" and entrusted the next  year to Gene Simmons, the ineffable, sharp-tongued bassist from Kiss. She then returned to Europe and gradually rediscovered the pleasure of singing in her native tongue. Like many other metalheads, she has also embraced great music, reinterpreting great classics with the Classic Night Orchestra in 2004 for the aptly named "Classic Diamonds" (2004). In March 2012, Doro celebrates her 2,500th concert in her hometown of Düsseldorf. 2018 saw the release of "Forever Warriors, Forever United", a double album dedicated to Lemmy Kilmister, bassist and belcher-in-chief of Mötorhead, to whom she was very close.

To date, she has some twenty studio albums to her credit and, as the rare woman to have made a lasting mark in the metal world, she continues to survey the stages with a rare ardor.

Concert dates:

Monday June 29: Live Is Live Festival - Antwerp (Belgium) with headliners Irron Maiden, Erica (symphonic metal), Testament (trash metal) and Freddy Melculy (Belgian hardcore).

Info and bookings: www.liveislive.be

Photo: Portrait of Doro Pesch with Warlock in Brussels (Belgium), October 1986