A fake news article claiming that Scorpions Drummer Mikkey Dee is dead has been doing the rounds on social media. This news article is from a website that had previously published a fake story claiming that Deep Purple‘s Ritchie Blackmore had died.
Dee took to Instagram to share a screenshot of the Facebook story with the word “FAKE!” written across it.
“NO! I AM NOT DEAD!,” he wrote. “I am very much alive and kicking, although angry as an MF!! How low can you go, you absolute pest of a human being!? This is so inappropriate and potentially harmful.”
“Spreading rumours that I have died is wrong on so many levels. Let’s keep reporting these bastards and let’s put some pressure on Facebook to deal with this problem,” he added. “P.S. I have marked the photos ‘Fake’ in red so as not to spread the rumours further.”
According to Classic Rock magazine, another website that published the fake article also falsely claimed that Pink Floyd‘s David Gilmour and Yes/King Crimson drummer Bill Bruford had both died.
Mikkey Dee is best known as the drummer for the British rock band Motörhead from 1992 until the band disbanded in December 2015, due to the death of founder and frontman Lemmy Kilmister. He is currently the drummer for the German rock band Scorpions with whom he became a permanent band member on September 2016.
Mikkey Dee was born in Gothenburg, Sweden, to a Greek father and a Swedish mother.
He began his musical career with local bands Nadir and Geisha. His favourite drummer is Ian Paice.
Having moved to Copenhagen to play with Geisha in 1985, Dee joined King Diamond. Dee played on the King Diamond recordings Fatal Portrait (1986), Abigail (1987), and “Them” which followed in 1988. After the completion of the supporting tour for “Them”, Mikkey Dee decided to leave the band, as he felt he was becoming more of a back-up musician, rather than an equal contributing songwriter. However, he was rehired to play session drums for the recording of the band’s follow-up album Conspiracy (1989), after which he was replaced by Snowy Shaw.
He joined Don Dokken for his solo album, Up from the Ashes (1990), with the music videos for the songs “Stay” and “Mirror Mirror” receiving airplay on MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball. The band headlined their own tour, as well as opened for Judas Priest. While King Diamond was touring with Motörhead, Lemmy Kilmister repeatedly asked Dee to join his band. In 1992 Dee accepted, replacing Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor.
Mikkey Dee is famous for lengthy drum solos, often lasting between five and fifteen minutes. These appeared halfway through “Sacrifice”, then “In the Name of Tragedy” and latterly “The One to Sing the Blues”.
On 29 December 2015, following Lemmy’s death a day earlier, Dee announced that Motörhead had disbanded.
In 2016, it was announced that Dee would be filling in for James Kottak with the Scorpions on 12 North American headlining dates, including a run of shows at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas dubbed “Scorpions blacked out in Las Vegas”. On 12 September 2016, Dee joined the band permanently. Dee uses Sonor drums, Paiste cymbals and Evans drumheads. His main kit is a Sonor SQ2 Vintage Maple Custom Finish set.