GEORGE LYNCH
Confessions
of a Metal Head
I have a confession to make. In my
hearts of hearts, I am a metal head.
There. I’ve said it. It’s not as if I have
tried to hide that fact, it’s just something that is usually not discussed in
polite company. Few things will cause
a conversation to come to a grinding
halt than if you are at a dinner party
and the word “Motörhead” escapes
your lips. It’s akin to confessing that
you play “Dungeons and Dragons”; it
may still done, just never talked about.
Back in the halcyon days of big hair
acts, Dokken had one thing that
separated them from any number
of Hollywood Boulevard wannabes:
George Lynch. He elevated an otherwise forgettable band. George could
play with dizzying speed, but he also
could call upon equal parts finesse
and drama. He had a monster tone
and licks to spare. Plus, he just made
everything look so damn cool. George
hunkered over his custom-made ESP
guitars like a praying mantis ready to
bite its helpless prey’s head off.
George didn’t play his guitar so much
as he seemed to be ripping the notes
out of a living being, an illusion that
was made even more (sur)real during
the middle of the “Dream Warriors”
video when his guitar came to life. But
“Mr. Scary” quickly became Lynch’s
signature piece – arguably his answer
to Eddie’s “Eruption.”
I saw Dokken as an opening act for
Aerosmith at the Cow Palace and,
while Don Dokken was just painful to
watch, George Lynch was simply mesmerizing. By the time when Aerosmith
hit the stage, Brad Whitford and Joe
Perry seemed hopelessly out of touch.
- Adam Hunt
A portion of George’s many guitars
on display at Lynch Box Studios
There’s also sort of a much quieter song on
there called “Maya,” which is kind of a beautiful song. It’s not a heavy song, but it’s just
neat. I plugged it into my Brahma with an old
‘ 59 Esquire that a friend of mine loaned me.
It’s sort of reminiscent of Jeff Beck’s style.
The EP is going to be offered exclusively
through the Mob Shop at GeorgeLynch.com.
And the Dojo online courses are still rock-
ing and rolling?
Yeah, it’s a model that I think people really
like because for a very small amount of
money you get as close as you really can to
having a sit-down lesson. All these lessons
are archived where you can go back and
look through hundreds of lessons that we’ve
done in the past. Not only are the lessons
done a lot of the time in my studio, but we
do a lot of gear exploration. We’ll try this
pedal, this amp, this guitar and show the
pros and cons – a thing that I like to use
and experiment with.
We show how we record and the importance
of the little things; we also show how I think
of a composition and how I create it. So I’ll
sit there with my engineer and we’ll start
out with a basic drum track that we create
ourselves with software examples – which is
how I write – and then I come up with a riff
and say, “Ok, here’s your basic riff and here’s
what that would evolve into. Here’s the pre-chorus, here’s the chorus. Ok, those are your
three main parts, now you have a song, they
all fit together nicely, and now we want to
overdub that. We want to put a clean on top
of it, or we may want to throw a solo on top
of it, mix it down.” We get into all areas of
the guitar-centric world. It’s not just lessons
– it’s beyond that, with plenty of other things
guitarists need to know.
So it’s about gear and the application of
that gear. One thing I notice is you see the
big picture with everything.
Yeah, I’m a complete gear nut. I don’t have
the time or the resources to have everything
and try everything, but I’m always looking
on Craigslist and I’ve got my ear to the road,
checking out new stuff. I’m a big fan of that
kind of stuff, kind of in the Billy Gibbons way,
where I’m always changing shit up, exploring
and finding new things.O
12 PG EXPERIENCE: GEORGE LYNCH OCT 2008
