An Interview With George Lynch
A guitar Icon. There are few modern day guitarists who are more instantly recognizable. His tone and passion for his artistry marks him as truly one of the greatest players who ever picked up the instrument. George Lynch is constantly upgrading his legendary status with assorted projects. Now you can add Movie documentary to his long list of credits. I had a chance to speak with George Lynch about guitars, KXM, Lynch Mob, Native Americans, and Michael Sweet of stryper singing for T&N.
You have a lot going on.
As we speak I am in the studio with Oni Logan. Finishing up the Lynch Mob album.
. It has been bugging me for years to finish it. The songs are just really good and it gets frustrating having to wait but I couldn’t find any other way to commit to the time. They are important songs. Finally found a way to do it and we are just killing it in the studio. We would like to do a quick turnaround and get it out before the end of the summer.
How do you find the time to do it all? You have KXM, T&N the list goes on.
Well not every one of these projects requires me to dedicate 100% of my time to them. I work in a fragmented fashion. This week is vocals and guitar for the lynch mob record. At the end of the month Michael sweet( Stryper, Boston) and I are doing a couple of videos for the michael sweet project which is coming out next year. And then last weekend we were finishing up a video for kxm. For the next single “Faith is a room”. I just divide myself amongst the projects and try to keep it all together in my head.
It is interesting. I actually just finished the “Shadow Nation” film. It deals with Native American issues. It has a heavy music content. There is a band associated with the movie called shadow train. So that is about a month away from being finished and we have a double cd soundtrack associated with the movie. So that is another project finally being finished after three and a half years. It is challenging. More than doing records.
You have a real passion about the native American plight. Are you native?
No. Just Humanitarian issues in general. Not always just Native American. The film explores both sides of the issues. We even interviewed ted nugent for the film. that was tough because he is such a vocal person. You can’t help but like ted even though you might disagree with him. Large personality. He invited us into his home and we had a really great time.
Do you change your setup for each project or do you just leave everything the same as far as your tone and gear?
I don’t think i change the sound. I approach my writing differently. The project I am doing at the time depends on the approach. With KXM there is a different approach because of where we all come from. So the approach is different but the sound or tone stays the same. It’s a mindset. Lynch Mob is more bluesy hard rock so when I write I keep that in the back of my mind. Otherwise everything would all sound the same.
The Breakdown On the T&N version of “Into The Fire” is killer. Who came up with that and did you want something like that on the original recording?
It was just a product of me and Jeff being in the studio. Messing around with parts. In all these projects we tend to just create at the moment. It is when those ideas are the best. That part was one of those incidences. We just kept going. No we just came up with it for this recording.
We actually are discussing a name change. We had an injunction not to use tooth and nail so we went very quickly with T&N. But I was never happy with that. So we will change it. Essentially we have MIchael Sweet coming onboard. So we will have Dokken minus Don with Michael Sweet singing and playing some guitar. We got the first half of the record which is dokken covers recorded. Nice to half a second guitar player live. It will be interesting. Michael is such a great singer and he has a lot of melodic ideas. Dokken heavy. Really A fun listen. I really enjoyed it. I just wish it was out now.(laughs)
Are you up to date with your social media?
I just do emails. That is about it. I’m aware of it but I don’t do that. I know how to but we have people that help us. I really don’t see it’s usage reflected in album sales. We try to keep everyone in touch but I don't have any way of seeing if it helps album sales. Spotify and other streaming services don’t really help out the artist in any way. The amount of money paid out is minimal. For those of us working hard in the trenches it makes it real hard to pay your bills if the music is given away for free. For a lot of us it is not easy. I just don’t think it is right. If we all lived in a shared communism system then sure music can be free. But we don’t live in that world. I don’t know why it is allowed. There is a lot that goes into those “free” downloads. Everybody needs to make a living.
Truly amazing, talking to a living legend.
Bryan Martin/cryofthewolf68
