Whether you call it hard rock, heavy metal, cock rock, hair metal, melodic rock, pop-metal, AOR, glam or sleaze, this is the place to find out what became of your favorite 80's rock bands.
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Whether you call it hard rock, heavy metal, cock rock, hair metal, melodic rock, pop-metal, AOR, glam or sleaze, this is the place to find out what became of your favorite 80's rock bands. |
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LYNCH MOB: VIGILANTE JUSTICE RIP Magazine, August 1992 By Daina Darzin George Lynch can't stop playing his guitar. It's on a stand in the conference room at Elektra, left over from a demonstration for some tech magazine, but soon finds its way into Lynch's lap, where he fiddles with it intermittently for the next hour. It's not like he's being uncooperative about the interview; that guitar is just umbilically attached, a living, breathing part of him. It's this clear love of his instrument, and his undeniable skill on it, that's made Lynch a success, first in Dokken, then in his own band, Lynch Mob. And a good thing it is, too, because his business acumen, he admits, didn't cut it. "When I was young, I signed everything anyone ever put in front of me," he laughs. "I'd say, 'Wait a minute, it says here I'm giving you 50%,' and they'd say, 'Yeah, but what's 100% of nothing? That's what you have right now. You could have 50% of something.' Dokken signed a very, very bad deal in Europe that way. We're still battling them in the courts." In those days Lynch left most of the business stuff to his former bandmate Don Dokken. "I was never good at that," he says, "at being manipulative. Fortunately, and unfortunately, I was involved with someone who was. It's the kind of person Don is. A perfect analogy is a story about a time he and I were stranded in a car. This was before we did our first record together. It was late at night; we were stuck--no money, no way to get out of the situation--on a remote road, out of gas. We found a call box, and Don called AAA, which he didn't have a card for, but he told the guy he did. So the guy came and filled the car up with gas and asked for the card. Don told him he didn't have it. Basically he did what he had to do. It parallels his philosophy of life: Step on the other guy to get where you want to go. "I don't think like that," Lynch continues. "I would have been sitting there the whole f?!king night. I'd have been walking to the gas station, still trying to work it out at dawn. The guy was really angry. I remember thinking, I'd never have the balls to do that. So Don made it happen for me in a lot of ways. Now that I have a foot in the door, I don't really need that cutthroat attitude. I am a lot more aware of the business. I try to educate myself, so I don't make stupid decisions and mistakes like I have in the past." Lynch Mob is on solid ground now--about to release the self-titled follow-up to their rock 'n' roll Tilt-a-Whirl of a debut, Wicked Sensation--and Lynch seems to have made peace with his history, including his acrimonious breakup with his old Triple-A-conning buddy. Industry folk were aghast to see the two hanging out and having a good time together at last year's RIP anniversary party. "I've just had to accept him for what he is," Lynch says evenly. "Don did what he had to do because of the kind of person he is. I always thought the band should be more of a band--equal splits, everybody takes care of everybody else, watches out for everybody. Don was more like, 'Every man for himself,' trying to make himself more prominent to the detriment of people around him. Now that I'm not playing with him anymore, it doesn't affect me. It's not that I forgive him, or that I condone what he did--though it could have been a blessing in disguise. At the time I was going through some things that weren't good for me, some drugs. If it weren't for the breakup of the band, I'd probably still be going through that. I might be lying in a morgue somewhere, the victim of an overdose. "But I was forced to clean up my act, because I had such a bad reputation," he continues. "A lot of that had to do with Don, who was badmouthing everybody. I had to dispel this horrible rumor that I was this madman. I changed my life around." Still, "It was pretty hairy, having your whole life's work pulled out from under you. I dedicated ten years to that band," George says softly. "I was definitely bitter about that. My old manager dropped me and stayed with Don. That crushed me more than anything. Here's the guy that supported us when we had nothing, gave us money so we could survive--I respected him for that, looked up to him. I call him after the breakup of Dokken and say, 'What's going on? I got these songs. I know you're still working with Don, but are we still gonna work together?' And he said, 'Send me a tape.' I was really hurt. That was one of the big things that prompted me to convey another image of myself." George originally formed Lynch Mob with his longtime drum cohort Mick Brown, bassist Anthony Esposito and vocalist Oni Logan--who proved to be the wrong choice. "Oni was very inconsistent," recalls Lynch. "That's the downside of hiring someone who was unknown, new; someone who didn't have experience, but had to go out and sing on the road every night; someone who'd go to record in an extremely expensive recording studio and not be able to sing for weeks at a time. It was a mental block he had; a lack of confidence that manifested itself in voice problems. And he wasn't very receptive to anyone's help or ideas." Logan and Lynch Mob parted amicably enough ("Oni's real creative," says George, "and he'll be a great singer someday, but we just couldn't wait"). To replace him, the group picked--another unknown? "There's a major difference," Lynch explains. "Oni was inexperienced, and will probably remain inexperienced forever because he doesn't listen. Robert [Mason], on the other hand, is like a sponge. He wants to learn and grow." The young singer, recruited from a local band at the recommendation of Megadeth manager Ron Laffitte, proved himself in a full-on trial by fire. "We did 12 dates in 12 days," chuckles Anthony Esposito, "and we were headlining, so it was a two-hour set every single night. We wanted to see if we could fry his voice. And he was great!" "Robert is a real singer," adds George. "He's got the tech thing down." It shows. Lynch isn't one to talk in great detail about his new disc ("I hate to give a verbal explanation of music," he says. "It's a different language of its own"), but Lynch Mob displays a new maturity and a greater, if more subtle, variety behind Lynch's trademark sound--that wild, intricate blizzard of guitarwork that carried Dokken all those years. "I don't come from a musical family," Lynch says, "but my dad's probably a frustrated musician. He has a lot of musical ability, a good sense of rhythm. He's always said that what he appreciated most about my music was its emotional context. If you can really connect with someone's shared experiences and emotions through your instrument, then you've succeeded. That's all I try to do: paint a musical picture of a feeling, whether it be anger or angst or whatever. It might even be things we can't put into words. I know, when I listen back, whether I accomplished that or not. A lot of times I don't. But I think that's overlooked a lot among guitar players. Music isn't looked at enough as a form of communication. Guitarists get caught up in this technical maelstrom, and it's neat--for about ten seconds." Lynch goes back to throwing off little twirls and riffs on his unplugged guitar, while Anthony Esposito reports on the video directors' reels he's been watching in another conference room. "All the metal videos look like metal videos, and all the indie crap looks like...." Anthony lets the sentence trail off. George wants Tim Burton for the first clip off Lynch Mob, but he's probably in Batman II hell, and therefore unavailable. The guitarist also likes the work of Phil Joanou, who directed the U2 Rattle and Hum movie and the Richard Gere/Kim Basinger thriller Final Analysis. Their choice of high-priced video talent coupled with the producer of Lynch Mob, the equally pricey Keith Olsen (Whitesnake, Fleetwood Mac), hints that they're going for broke, aiming for that big platinum pie in the sky But Lynch has his doubts. "The money thing is a double-edged sword," he insists. "I've been in and out of the money for the last ten years." "I'd like to be in for once!" Esposito interjects. "It's something you gotta deal with. It's dangerous," Lynch continues. "It can definitely draw your attention away from what's important. You have to put yourself in the right environment. A little bit of struggle is good for your character. Sitting in a mansion, having every luxury known to mankind, is not conducive to creativity." "I wouldn't know," Anthony deadpans, then adds more seriously, "You gotta keep that feeling of when you were trying to put your first band together, playing clubs, that magic." If Lynch has been through too much to get back to that spot, you can't tell it by looking at him, all tanned and well-muscled from the healthy life he leads now in Arizona, a short plane ride and a whole world away from the hustle and hype of L.A. and all the stuff about the music biz that doesn't fit him. His celebrity manifests itself in little ways, like his 13-year-old son Sean getting a private guitar lesson with Eddie Van Halen. Seems they went backstage at a Van Halen show, and "Eddie pulled Sean to the side and showed him this little tapping technique. He'll remember his audience with Eddie for years to come." Sean is interested in guitar, and "he would have a foot in the door, because of the name," George admits. "He definitely has some ability, but it has to come from here." The guitarist taps his chest. "No one can push you. I had the least encouraging parents. They would take my instrument away from me. That, of course, is where I got my conviction," he laughs. "Because they told me no. If they'd told me yes, I probably would have done something else. I'm going to do neither with my son. Whatever makes him happy, makes me happy--be a garbageman, ride rodeo, just as long as he's happy. At his age there's too many other things going on. I didn't get serious till my late teens--I played 'Pipeline' for years. I started to learn how to play guitar right about the time I discovered my genitals. Maybe it was just a coincidence, since they were in the same general area." George Lynch laughs, then goes back to the same little lick he's been playing during the whole interview, something he'll forget in a minute or the genesis of a humongous hit. If it's the latter, it couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Buy Lynch Mob CDs: |
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