George Lynch Interview: Setting the Record Straight

By: HP Newquist (National Guitar Museum); September 1995

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“I’ve read some of the interviews that have come out, and I’m kind of concerned that they sound way too negative.” George Lynch is sitting in a hotel room high above New York City. An old episode of the Honeymooners is flickering quietly on the TV set, while Lynch’s four-year old daughter Mariah plays on the bed. It is after 10:00 at night, but George and Mariah are wide awake, both suffering from a severe case of jet lag. George has opted to bring his daughter with him on this leg of the Dokken reunion tour, something he claims – half jokingly – improves behavior on the band bus.

He picks up an old ESP guitar, which has drawings and graffiti on it from almost everybody he’s ever met. Mariah begins drawing on the guitar while George picks away. “I mean, I never expected to be back with Dokken, and I know I said that a lot of times. But I have to be realistic about my situation. There is a huge market for the band, mostly overseas, and since things collapsed over at Elektra [his old record label, which underwent significant restructuring – ed.], I need to keep my options open if I still want to have my solo career. That was one of the things that brought me back into the band. It was kind of like, ‘You do this deal with Dokken for two records, and you can still go out and do solo records at the same time.’ In fact, I was told that I’d be in a better position t do solo stuff. John Kalodner [Columbia's A&R chief] is passionate about Dokken, but he also told me that he wants us on Columbia. That aspect of the relationship makes me pretty happy.”

The record industry has changed dramatically in the last two years, and Lynch knows it better than most. Reunions are hot, solo guitar slingers are not. Despite the acclaim that George gets whenever he releases an album of his unique guitar pyrotechnics, the record industry at large is just not sure what to do with axe icons like Lynch. The one thing that the industry does like right now is repacking older bands in a modern mold. Page & Plant, Eagles – there are rumors that Journey is coming back. The Beatles, for God’s sake, have even reunited – if only through the questionable, but necessary, evil.

“The way I look at it is this: Right now, for me, Dokken is the mothership. There’s a stability there. Anything else that I do will be a spinoff of that. Dokken provides opportunities for me that I wouldn’t otherwise have. It’s certainly deja vu all over again, because the same problems that existed before are still pretty much there.”

Despite the lateness of the hour, Mariah wants to go out to Times Square to look at all the lights and spectacle. Carrying her on his shoulders, Lynch muses about the direction his career is taking. “I mean, yeah, it would have been great if The Lynch Mob could have sold more records, but there were problems in that band, too. I was leading the group, yet certain people felt they were entitled to more money or more perks than I could give them. They thought I had an endless supply of cash and resources. What it came down to was, I told them if they wanted to get rich and famous from a gig, they should go call Michael Jackson. With Dokken, at least I don’t have to be the one paying everyone’s per diem and cleaning bills.”

As he passes by Radio City Music Hall, Lynch laughs. “You know, I played there once with Dokken – opening for Twisted Sister! Talk about a culture shock.” He stands on the street corner, waiting for a break in the traffic. “We’ve done small, B-level clubs on the first leg of this tour, and the response has been really good. I’m kind of surprised. Japan and Europe were obviously good – the acoustic record [not available in the U.S.] has already sold nearly 100,000 copies overseas.”

He crosses Sixth Avenue against a light, Mariah bouncing up and down on his shoulders. “But most of this record, Dysfunctional, was finished by the time I got there. In fact, everything but the guitar parts were pretty much done. Everybody in management and in the band kept feeding me these horror stories of who they would get to replace me if I didn’t come back – you can guess the names. Well, when I listened to the tracks, I could tell that Jeff [Pilson, bass] and Don [Dokken, vocals] had written a lot of the songs with me in mind. I mean, there were parts in certain songs that I had done on other Dokken records – and even Lynch Mob records- years ago.”

It’s nearly midnight as George and Mariah ease their way into Times Square from the shadows of 48th Street and Broadway. New York music-store fixtures Manny’s and Sam Ash are shuttered in darkness near the corner, yet Lynch manages to glimpse the outline of a Vox AC30 through one of the windows. “I’ve got a line on a guy in L.A. claims to have the original AC30′s that Jimmy Page used on the first Led Zeppelin tour of the US. Those amps must just kick ass!” Mariah pulls on his hair to get him to move into the throng that is Times Square, and she oohs and ahhhs appropriately. Even on a Monday night, the fabled Broadway glitter is at full assault level. George and Mariah stop to join a crowd watching street performers bang away on plastic drums. At this hour of the night, he is just another guy with his daughter sightseeing in New York.

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Although the streets are jammed with tourists and theater-goers, Lynch seems oblivious to the crush of humanity. He talks about some new directions in his guitar playing. “I’ve been working on a lot of different material. I’ve restrung one of my guitars with really heavy strings; the gauge on the low E is down to a .070. It doesn’t even sound like a guitar – it just sounds so mean and raw that you can’t tell what it is. And I’ve been using Peavey combos on a stage with Dokken, so that’s changing my sound a bit.” Mariah wants a slice of pizza, which necessitates a short detour. Within minutes, the two of them are back on the street again. “I’m also recording a lot of music on ADAT in my room during the day, and whenever we get a break. There are some people from Lynch Mob that I’d like to work with again, and there are other people that I’ve talked to as well. But I want to be a little more certain about my solo prospects before I commit to anything.”

He mentions another new project: designing his new stereo guitar from ESP, the UltraTone 2000. “It’s got a real retro shape, like a Teisco, but it’s got a piezo in the bridge position and a choice of magnetic pickups. The really cool thing is that you can pan between pickups.” No whammy bar, though: playing the prototype on tour, because with the piezos, I can use it during the acoustic segment of our shows.”

As midnight fades away, Lynch and his daughter head back to the hotel. On the way, they pass through a nearly deserted Rockefeller Center. Lynch watches the fountain spires that dance around the statue of Prometheus in the square where the ice rink is built in the winter. He looks up at 50 Rock, the skyscraper that houses more record-company people than you can count. Lynch points high up towards the top of the building with one hand, the other holding Mariah. “Daddy signed his first record contract way up there,” he tells her. His new record company, Columbia, is not in this complex. It is in the Sony Building, another skyscraper four blocks away. In the morning, George and the other members of Dokken will be performing cuts off the new record in Sony’s studios for future broadcast to Sony affiliates around the world. Ultimately, it all seems so stable, so unchanging. Except for the hair.

And what about the hair? Many fans and video watchers saw the bright yellow crew cut that had become the newest in Lynch’s ever-changing legacy of rock hair styles. “Oh man, that didn’t last long. I just wanted to do something completely off the wall, so I cut it short and bleached it. Well, when we got to Japan, the record company execs over there picked us up in a limousine. We all got in, and after talking amongst themselves, they looked at me, especially my hair. Then the translator asked if I wanted to go to a gay bar.” He shakes his head in disbelief. “I went out and dyed it back that night.”

In George Lynch’s career, scarier things have happened.

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About HP Newquist: HP Newquist is the founder of The National Guitar Museum, the first museum dedicated to the evolution and cultural impact of the guitar. He has authored books that have explored a wide range of subjects and include: Legends of Rock Guitar (with Peter Prown); The Way They Play series (including Blues Masters, Hard Rock Masters, Metal Masters, Acoustic Masters), with Rich Maloof and the award winning The Great Brain Book: An Inside Look At The Inside Of Your Head. Newquist is the past Editor-in-Chief of Guitar Magazine. He wrote Going Home, a Disney Channel documentary featuring Robbie Robertson, as well as directed the film documentary, John Denver – A Portrait.

Note: This interview is reprinted from an article by HP Newquist, originally published in GUITAR Magazine (September 1995). It appears here courtesy of Newquist and The National GUITAR Museum.