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 Guitar Man: Gnarly Charlie’s Exclusive Interview with George Lynch By Charlie Steffens, aka Gnarly Charlie, Writer/Photographer Friday, November 27, 2009 @ 8:05 PM
In conversation, Lynch’s mellow disposition and candor are disarming. He’ll tell you about his world in a fearless stream of consciousness. How much time could he spend in his head if he plays guitar like he’s out of his mind?
In the last year George Lynch has been working hard and playing hard in Souls of We and a reformed Lynch Mob. With the release of Smoke and Mirrors, and original singer Oni Logan back in the fold, Lynch Mob’s sound is a continuation of the Wicked Sensation era, spiked with lyrical and political evolution.
Smoke and Mirrors was released in September. While Lynch seems concerned with the lack of exposure the new album is getting presently, he seems optimistic about getting the word out there through the usual channels and lots of touring.
“I’ve been hearing nothing but good things about this record, and that’s great. Of course you want to hear that. When you don’t hear great stuff you try to look at it objectively. I haven’t heard hardly any negatives on this record. The reviews are not the problem and the people who have the record say they love it, but the obstacle, the fight that we have to fight right now, is getting this record out there. And that’s only going to happen with perseverance and lots of touring, really, and a lot of other things, from trying to work the internet from every single angle, all the web stuff. I’m getting really involved in that, even though I’m not much of a computer guy. I have lots of people and friends that help us and work with us to try to get the word out. Publicists, press releases, and working the press, doing every single interview that we can possibly do. Making sure we got photo shoots out there and bios. Just firing on all cylinders is the way to achieve slow, methodical success. I don't think the problem is the record itself. It’s people being aware that it exists.”
“Oni is the wordsmith, definitely,” says Lynch. “We’ve been able to have lots of discussions back and forth and exploration of ideas about subjects that matter to us and he has expressed a lot of interesting thoughts in his lyrics, which he always has. In the past though, I think his lyrics have been a little more, I would say, oblique, meaning that maybe the actual concept he was trying to get across wasn’t so clear. He left it up to the listener’s subjectivity. I think this time around he’s been a little more clear. I like some clearness, because I think it allows the listener to be a part of the creative process in their own digestion of the lyrics and what it means to them. But, personally, myself, I’m very politically involved and politically-minded, but I am not a lyricist and not a singer, obviously. So the chemistry between Oni and I is very important because, yes, I write the vast majority of the music itself and I have ideas that are very important to me that I’d like to get across in my music, but I really rely on Oni to bring his vision in to finish the other half of the song. I think that’s a great challenge for me and for him. To try to meld those two visions together. I feel the point of my music in the context of my life is to try to express myself in more than just a purely musical sense, ideally. That’s the challenge before me and Oni, I think, has done a great job in getting part way there in this new record Smoke and Mirrors. In the bands I’m in, ideally what we like to do is let the people that do what they do, do what they do (laughs). If your strength is drumming and partying, than that’s what you do. If it’s writing the riffs to make the best possible song, that’s what you do. In Oni’s case, his comfort zone is taking the music that I’ve written and going away into a cave somewhere and coming back with all this beautiful stuff, this poetry. Rock poetry. And he’s great at it. So I leave it alone. If it’s not broke don’t fix it. He’s a very introspective person,” Lynch continues. “Very quiet and unassuming, but the waters run deep. And what’s amazing about Oni is when you have a conversation with him you maybe don't get that impression of him right off the bat. That’s what’s cool about Oni, as I said, the waters run deep. He has these profound thoughts and experiences and is able to pull stuff out of his own experiences and have them relate to everybody, and that’s a rare gift, I think. And it is a gift, I think, just as much as my ability to come up with what I do on guitar and many of us do, is something we can’t really figure out (laughs). It just happens, and I think he does that as well.”
“It’s funny that whatever history we have—distorted history that we have—has been clarified through the prism of time (laughs). We’ve all had time to reflect over the last twenty years, or whatever the hell it’s been, and there’s just a whole lot of silliness there. I mean, at the end of the day were all working for the same thing and the same thing we were working for twenty, twenty-five years ago, and that is to carve out our niche, and make our voices heard to as many people as possible, and validate our existence. We’ve all done that individually and collectively in the largest way in the context of Dokken. We sold the most records, we played in front of the most people, and we had the most success with that band. And it just seems like a no-brainer that at some point we’d want to put any little differences aside and put that back together. There’s a couple of reasons, but one obvious reason is we’d get paid. But a better reason is that it would make a lot of people happy, including ourselves and put a nice cap on the story, a nice sort of bookend to the legacy. Dokken was not a huge, huge band. We’re not Van Halen, you know. But important enough, I think where it matters and it matters to a lot of people and, as I said, to have it end with a happy ending versus this kind of slow dissolution and all this backbiting and backstabbing. Get onstage together and honor the music that we created for the people that supported us. So we are doing some shows. I actually called up Don and I presented the idea to him. This was outside our management or anything else, and he thought it was a good idea. And it is kind of a no-brainer because of the symbiotic relation Lynch Mob has with Dokken, and so forth. Mick was in Lynch Mob and Lynch Mob was born out of Dokken. I thought ‘Well, we’ll open up for you, you know. That’s fair.’ So we did a show in Tokyo at a festival called Loud Park. Lynch Mob did, and Dokken. I said ‘No problem, Don, I’m going to be there. What do you want to do?’ He goes “Well, come on stage!” So I went up there, did “Tooth and Nail” with him, brought the house down, 20,000 folks out there went nuts. So we went ‘Whoa! That was cool. We gotta do that some more.’ So we’re doing a few more shows maybe this year and adding some shows, I believe, in the Midwest early next year and we’ll see where it goes. Baby steps.”
On guitar:
“When I was in my early teens my parents thought it was a bad influence on me and they took it away for about a year (laughs). I’m not a disciplined guitar player where I go in the woodshed and practice constantly, everyday, and go through my scales. I’m not Paul Gilbert (laughs). I’m not that kind of a player. I’m more of a Jeff Beck player. When I need to work or I need to write a song or I need to work on a record or go on tour or practice or do a session, I play once in a while around the house. I’ll bounce around and try some new stuff or check out some of the tablature on one of the guitar magazines or a video. I’ll try to expand my knowledge base, but I’m not extremely disciplined in that way. Not consistently, anyway. And I like that, because to me, music and guitar is just a mystery to me. I don't know where it comes from or where the inspiration comes from or where the creative impulse comes from. I don't try to figure it out, because I think what happens if you look at it like a scientist would look at something and try to break it apart and break it down to its more basic constituents you take the mystery out of it. And that’s what I love about music is the mystical aspect of it. I mean, every time I pick it up something different happens. Each time I play with a different group of people there’s a different chemistry there. It’s in the air, the chemicals between the different players and all these sorts of things. You’re having a good day, you’re having a bad day. All the collective experiences that you bring to the table. I don't want to figure it out, and it’s hard to put that down on paper or in a lesson. It’s just sort of the way I conduct my life and my approach to my music. It makes everyday kind of interesting because it’s an adventure.”
phrydom - 1/7/2010 6:49:43 AM
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"Oni (Logan) and I have worked together off and on--much more off than on--over the two ensuing decades since we did Wicked Sensation, which was the most success I’ve had on any record outside of Dokken, and it’s really, I think, stood the test of time for a lot of people. So, we felt that at some point it would make sense to get back together and revisit that. Oni really dropped out of the game in a big way for many, many years. He dabbled, did some acoustic stuff and played with a local band in Oslo, I believe, in Switzerland. I think he was really disenchanted with the way it worked—the game works and the successes and failures and so forth. But, taking all of that into account I guess he had decided to pick up all his stuff and pack a bag and come back to America and he gave me a call.”
Logan’s writing has always done lyrical and poetic justice to Lynch’s compositions. As in previous collaborations, Lynch gave the singer creative license to let his pen bleed all over the page.
Even at the height of Dokken’s success there were vicious fights between Lynch and Don Dokken, debilitating the integrity of their band. How many more great songs that could have been made during that period is anyone’s guess. Lynch and Dokken seemed to have put their differences aside these days, to the point of being able to perform together onstage again. Let’s cross our fingers.
“If the point of my existence was to sit there and prove to people and myself that I’m the greatest guitar player in the world, I mean, that would be pointless. That would be like trying to say you’re the biggest badass in the world. There’s always somebody bigger and badder and always somebody faster. That’s really not where I want to live. I don't care about that. On a small level I do, but you know I’ve marked out my little corner in the guitar world and I totally appreciate that and don't denigrate it in any way. I try to serve that, but in a larger sense I think songwriting and composition and creating an atmosphere, and a world of music that you live in, with the records you create is much more important, to me, anyways. Look to Zeppelin. Look to Hendrix. A lot of great stuff that lives on historically were not vehicles for Hendrix’s prowess as a guitar player. He used his guitar as a vehicle to make a point, I think. He had something to say and his guitar served the music instead of the music serving the guitar.”
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