Jeffrey Steven Pilson (born January 19, 1958) is an American musician best known for being the bass player in the glam metal band Dokken and currently classic rock band Foreigner. He has also had an extended stint with Dio in the 1990s.
Pilson was born on 19 January 1958 in Lake Forest, Illinois. He is of Irish descent.
He spent part of his youth in Milwaukee, Wisconsin before moving to Longview, Washington, where he graduated from R.A. Long High School in 1976.
He attended the University of Washington to study music after he had started playing bass at age 13 but left prior to earning a degree in order to pursue a career in music.
One of his early bands was an Emerson, Lake & Palmer-type progressive trio called Christmas. He moved to San Francisco in 1978 where he met and became friends with guitarist Mike Varney.
Pilson and Varney would join forces in the band Cinema. After moving back to Seattle for a brief period, Varney called Pilson to get involved in the recording of Rock Justice, a rock opera co-written by Varney and produced by Marty Balin.
Still based in San Francisco, Pilson next teamed up with guitarist Randy Hansen, best known as a Jimi Hendrix impersonator, and Pilson recorded the Astral Projection – Live album with Hansen for Shrapnel Records.
When the band with Hansen dissolved, Pilson moved to Los Angeles and several weeks later, on a recommendation by Mike Varney, was contacted by vocalist Don Dokken who was looking for a bass player for his band Dokken.
An audition was set up and Pilson joined the band in October 1983.
Pilson was co-writer on many of Dokken's best known and most successful songs, including Just Got Lucky, Alone Again, Into the Fire, The Hunter, In My Dreams, It's Not Love, Kiss of Death, and Dream Warriors. Pilson recorded the studio albums Tooth and Nail (1984), Under Lock and Key (1985), and Back for the Attack (1987), all certified platinum, and the gold certified live album Beast from the East (1988).
After the breakup of Dokken in the wake of the Monsters of Rock Tour 1988, Pilson, along with Randy Hansen, Vinny Appice and Michael Diamond of Legs Diamond, formed his own group called Flesh & Blood in 1989, handling lead vocal and rhythm guitar duties.
After changing the name to War & Peace, Pilson released a total of four albums, starting with 1993's Time Capsule, utilizing different players and lineups along the way.
The recordings of the original Flesh & Blood lineup were released in 1999 and re-issued in 2013 with a bonus track, packaged with recordings from another session, under the name War & Peace as The Flesh and Blood Sessions.
In the early 1990s, Pilson also worked as a session bassist with the band Wild Horses (not to be confused with the British band of the same name), guitarist Michael Lee Firkins, and MSG, before taking part in the Dokken reunion which resulted in 1995's Dysfunctional album. It was followed by the semi-acoustic One Live Night (1995), the controversial Shadowlife (1997), and Erase the Slate (1999), Pilson's last studio album with the group. During the 1990s, Pilson also recorded and toured with Dio, appearing on both Strange Highways (1993) and Angry Machines (1996).
In 1993, Pilson collaborated with former Giuffria and Dio guitarist Craig Goldy, co-writing and contributing lead vocals to 4 songs on Goldy's first solo album, Insufficient Therapy, issued on Shrapnel Records in 1993. During that time, Pilson, Goldy and drummer Tim Pedersen also had a heavy progressive rock project named 13th Floor although no album was ever released.
After exiting both Dio and Dokken, he and former War & Peace mate, Tommy Henriksen, began working on a modern rock project called Underground Moon, for which Pilson decided to assume the pseudonym Dominic Moon. The album, which included a cover of Midnight Oil's "Beds Are Burning", was released in Europe and Japan in 2001 and Pilson put together a short-lived live band and performed a handful of L.A. club shows. The album saw a limited edition re-issue in 2008 through Polish company Metal Mind Productions.
On the heels of Underground Moon, Pilson reunited with his ex-Dokken bandmate, guitarist George Lynch, in a project called Lynch/Pilson, releasing the album Wicked Underground in 2003. After a proposed Dokken reunion did not materialize, Pilson re-teamed with Lynch and drummer Mick Brown in Tooth & Nail, later shortened to T & N in 2011. They would release Slave to the Empire, an album of re-worked Dokken songs and new material involving a plethora of guest vocalists in the fall of 2012. Pilson was also confirmed as the bass player on the Lynch Mob's forthcoming 2015 studio release.
Pilson briefly returned to Dio to help record the band's final studio album, Master of the Moon. He became the bass player for Foreigner in the summer of 2004 when he joined an impromptu lineup consisting of founding member Mick Jones, Jason Bonham, Jeff Jacobs, Thom Gimbel, and Bonham singer Chas West for a benefit show for muscular dystrophy on July 25, 2004, in Santa Barbara, CA at Fess Parker's Doubletree Resort. West would be replaced by Kelly Hansen, formerly with Hurricane, who made his debut with the group on March 11, 2005, at Boulder Station in Las Vegas. Pilson has been part of every Foreigner recording and tour since, including the 2009 studio album, Can't Slow Down.