The name Doro has also been associated with the touring band accompanying the singer, whose members have continuously changed in more than 20 years of uninterrupted activity, the most stable presences being those of bassist Nick Douglas and drummer Johnny Dee.

Doro started her career in garage bands in native Düsseldorf underground scene and achieved media visibility and some commercial success with Warlock in the 1980s.

[3][4] She learned to play piano and started singing at the age of ten years,[5] when she was exposed to the glam rock of bands like T. Rex, The Sweet and Slade.

When Snakebite disbanded in 1981, Doro went on to sing for the garage bands Beast and Attack, before forming Warlock with Peter Szigeti, Rudy Graf, Thomas Studier, and Michael Eurich in 1982.

[9] After the completion of the tour in support of True as Steel, Doro took charge of business and went to live in New York City,[16] where Warlock recorded their fourth and last studio album Triumph and Agony.

"[32] A band formed by the American musicians Thomas Jude on guitars, Paul Morris on keyboards, Nick Douglas on bass and Tom Coombs on drums was assembled for the supporting tour.

[33] Despite living in the US and losing visibility in the English-spoken media, Doro remained very popular in Germany,[10] where her albums always charted[26] and where in 1991 she sang on a charity song by the "German Rock Project" called "Let Love Conquer the World".

[21] The tour in support of Angels Never Die introduced in the line-up of Doro's band the American musicians Joe Taylor (ex-Lita Ford Band[41]) on lead guitar, Jimmy DiLella (ex-Waysted, Mariah and Tyketto[42]) on guitar and keyboards, and Chris Branco on drums;[33] Branco was soon replaced by Johnny Dee (ex-Waysted and Britny Fox[43]) and this line-up recorded in 1993 the live album Doro Live,[33] released also in VHS.

[33] In a pause of her touring schedule in October 1995, Doro made her acting debut as a guest star on the German television soap opera Verbotene Liebe (Forbidden Love).

[21][47] In various interviews Doro remembered how "it was pretty difficult to carry on"[29] as a heavy metal musician in those years and how she was sometimes reduced to odd jobs like singing at weddings and private parties.

[15] American guitarist Mario Parrillo (ex-Detente and Fear of God[50]) joined Taylor, Douglas and the returning Johnny Dee in Doro's band for the following tour,[51] which included another participation at the Wacken Open Air festival.

[54] The tracks of Calling the Wild are played by a large number of session musicians and feature contributions from Bob Kulick, Slash, Al Pitrelli and Eric Singer.

[22] The album includes the songs "Love Me Forever" and "Alone Again", recorded in California with the leader of the English band Motörhead Ian 'Lemmy' Kilminster,[22] starting a tradition of singing duets that Doro maintained for all the 2000s and beyond.

[46][62] Guest musicians on the album were Jean Beauvoir, Chris Caffery, Russ Ballard and Type O Negative singer Peter Steele, who sang in a duet with Doro on "Descent".

The production of Classic Diamonds took eight months, requiring a thirty-elements symphonic orchestra and the arranging abilities of Oliver Palotai and producer Torsten Sickert to be completed.

[80][81] In the same year, Doro Pesch contributed to the benefit CD for the museum association of Borussia Dortmund the song entitled "Tief in meinem Herzen" (Deep in My Heart), a modified version of her classic "Für Immer" re-written for this purpose.

[84] They were also at the Summer Breeze Open Air festival in Dinkelsbühl, Bavaria in August 2007,[85] at the fifth edition of the Metal Female Voices Fest in Wieze, Belgium on 19 October 2007,[86] where she dueted with Sabina Classen on "All We Are",[87] and at the Heavy Christmas Meeting on 15 December 2007 in Düsseldorf.

Both Taylor and Palotai were in the band on 13 December 2008 at the more than three-hour special concert that Doro held at ISS Dome in Düsseldorf to celebrate her 25th anniversary of activity in front of 9,000 spectators.

[94] The main part began with songs from Doro's career, including duets with Bobby Ellsworth (Overkill), Jean Beauvoir, Chris Boltendahl (Grave Digger), Axel Rudi Pell, Klaus Meine and Rudolf Schenker (Scorpions), Tarja Turunen (ex-Nightwish), Warrel Dane (Nevermore), Liv Kristine, Floor Jansen, Ji-In Cho, Girlschool and other female singers who had sung in the single "Celebrate", issued a few months before the show.

[95] The show included another reunion of the 1986 formation of Warlock and culminated with all the guests, other musicians (like Alexander Krull, Tom Angelripper, members of Saltatio Mortis) and friends of the German singer on stage to sing "All We Are".

The line-up of Pesch, Maas, Princiotta, Douglas and Dee went on a world tour for most of 2009 and 2010, reaching North and South America, Russia, China and, for the first time, Japan.

[80] Doro's band appeared at festivals all over the world, including Wacken Open Air[106] and Metal Female Voices Fest 7[107] (where she dueted again with Tarja Turunen[108]) in 2009, Hellfest in France,[109] Bang Your Head!!!

[111] On 13 March 2010, Doro celebrated her 2500th live show with a special concert in Düsseldorf with guests Krypteria, Luke Gasser, Marc Storace, Schmier (from the band Destruction), Sabina and Andy Classen.

[112] Always in 2010, Doro, Schmier, Mille Petrozza (Kreator) and Alf Ator (Knorkator) lent their voices to the German version of Metalocalypse, the US animated show about Dethklok, the world's most popular death metal band.

Guest singers included Biff Byford, Chris Caffery, Udo Dirkshneider, Blaze Bayley, Marc Storace, Tom Angelripper, Mr Lordi and Hansi Kürsch.

[135] More recently, Doro has contributed to the song "A Dream That Cannot Be" by Swedish melodic death metal band Amon Amarth, on their album Jomsviking, released in 2016.

[136] In the 1980s the presence of women in rock, and in particular in heavy metal bands, was usually considered by press and fans more for glamour and sexual exploitation than for the musicianship showed.

[147] Warlock were starting to make a solid reputation in the US, when the taste of the audience for classic metal acts shifted in favor of grunge, leaving the singer's mission to conquer the American market incomplete.

[9] On the contrary, in her home country fans and press remained always loyal and favorable to Doro, who received in her career five nominations for the German Echo music award, which she won in 1994 as Best National Female Artist.

[154] Doro herself was apparently aware early in her career to have the role "to give other women self-confidence" in the metal world,[9] acting as a pioneer for female fans and musicians.