George Lynch remembers the pressure of creating memorable solos in the Dokken era

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George Lynch has always been very prolific, typically releasing a few albums a year under the Dokken or Lynch Mob banners and often working on solo or short-term collaborative projects.

Given the breadth of his back catalog, it’s no surprise that Lynch has difficulty picking favorites from the lineup. “I would say it’s all of them at the same time and none of them,” he says guitarist. “They are all your children when you create them – they are a product of your creative essence. This is a pretty deep, spiritual thing,

“Coincidentally, my wife recently asked me what I thought was the best song I’ve written. I said I would rather have written one great song than a bunch of pretty cool songs. Something like “Imagine” or “Hey Jude” – one of those songs that defines a generation or transcends time. These are the songs that set the standard for a great work.

“I guess perhaps one obstacle in developing this groundbreaking song is that I don’t consider myself a great singer. I don’t even listen to guitarists – I think the voice is the purest instrument. I can hear something in my head that I can never really capture vocally, so I guess that’s a gap I can’t seem to bridge.”

However, he doesn’t have to worry. Fans are quite comfortable with his guitar playing, which has been the subject of intense observation for decades. Lynch’s groundbreaking solos have been a staple in guitar magazines for years, and YouTube is full of lecturers trying to unravel every little detail of his work.

“I’ve looked at a few things online and there are a few people who really get it right and just as many who are completely wrong,” he complains. “The bottom line is that I may actually be the worst person to demonstrate some of my guitar parts.” [laughs] It’s been more than 30 years since I recorded many of these songs and I don’t really remember what I did. I just played off the cuff, so most things didn’t work out, and I never really tried to reproduce it note for note after recording it.”

Despite his misgivings, not to mention his amazing performance, Lynch graciously responded guitarists desire to share the stories behind five titles that best represent his career. Here’s what he told us.

“Paris is Burning”, Dokken – Breaking the Chains (1981)

“This song is older than Dokken – it was something we used to play in [the pre-Dokken bands] the Boyz and then Xciter, so it had been hanging around for a while. Don [Dokken] I changed a few words, but it was essentially the same song – the chords, the melody, the arrangement, etc. It’s become a song that I really explore in a live setting and is something of a showcase, though it was never originally designed that way. It’s just the way it evolved. It’s actually been heard on some of my live records, and you can see that it’s morphed into something completely different than the original version.

“It’s interesting how I came up with the titles for many songs back then. I would read that TV guide and browse through the titles of old films. Probably well over half of the Dokken song titles came from movie titles that I found TV guideand from that came “Paris Is Burning.” What does it even mean? [laughs] I’ve never seen the film.

“Most of the writing for Dokken was a collaboration between me and Jeff [Pilson, bassist]but Don helped with some. For example, I would literally say, “This song is called “Paris Is Burning”” and then we would come up with the words to go with the title. I always focused on finding a hook and a melody first, and then we tried to bridge the gaps between us. Unfortunately, TV guide no longer exists, so I no longer have that songwriting resource.”

“Breaking the Chains”, Dokken – Breaking the Chains (1981)

“I came up with the solo spontaneously, that’s how I normally work. Back then, I liked to create a structure – maybe make up a sentence, respond to it, and then let it play maybe an octave or maybe two higher, with a kind of crescendo at the end. I guess if there was any formula, that would have been the template for it back then.

“In a way, there is a certain sense of composition involved in the creation of many of my Dokken-era solos, even though I wouldn’t have prepared anything in particular before it was time to lay down the role. Back then, there was usually a fairly limited set of parameters for a solo that was intended to be a radio-friendly hit. If you didn’t fit the mold, the radio would actually edit your songs without your consent. Since there are only 16 bars available here, I had to get in and out and make a memorable statement. Every song that was on the radio at the time had a killer solo, so there was almost a feeling of competition. A friendly Competition.

“Guitarists are actually a family and everyone generally respects each other. We were all good friends, but back then you knew that when it came time to take your solo on stage, you better come up with something special.”

“Tooth and Nail”, Dokken – Tooth and Nail (1984)

“This is a rare example of a solo that I fully planned before I went into the studio. I remember writing it with Jeff and thinking I wanted a song with a whole section for the solo that goes through a bunch of different changes, with each section having its own sub-style. I think we probably didn’t really succeed in that in a pure sense, as some parts are almost identical, but that’s what we were aiming for.

“I spent quite a bit of time working out the tapping sections and I guess it’s one of my most popular solos. I used the Randall RG80 and RG100 solid state heads. Dokken was on tour with Pantera at the time and I remember Dimebag Darrell was really impressed with my amps. That was his way of picking up Randall, but he really made them his own, so eventually they were probably more closely connected to him than to me. These were very cool amplifiers. Gary Siddall, the engineer at Randall, emulated the sine wave of my 50 watt Marshall “Plexi” heads, and I think they came pretty close, but with a really immediate response and no sag. They were pretty warm for a solid-state amp.”

“Mr. Scary”, Dokken – Back for the Attack (1987)

“Originally it was supposed to be a song with lyrics – that’s how I wrote it. There weren’t any extra guitar parts or anything like that, just a simple arrangement. The problem was that no one could figure out what to do with it to make it work vocally. We wanted to destroy the song, but we had some time in the studio and the engineer really liked it, so we spent the whole night on it and the next morning we had built this thing that we thought was pretty cool.

“Don and Jeff were trying to come up with lyrics – they’re both really good singers, but I’m not, so it can be difficult for me to express vocal ideas. I don’t know if they bet The but there is a lot of effort involved. [laughs] It could have worked, and I still think to this day that we could have come up with something if we had put a little more effort into it.

“There are a lot of complex guitar layers here that make it impossible to reproduce live with a guitar because it just creates gaping holes. It really takes at least two guitars. This would have been recorded with my ESP [George Lynch signature] REH guitar, and I think as far as the amp goes it was an early Marshall metal face that would have been modified by Frank Levi.”

“Wicked Sensation”, Lynch Mob – Lynch Mob (1990)

“The sound and production here is much better than the Dokken stuff, which is firstly because we have a completely different kind of band and also because it was a reaction to being in a very white-sounding band be.” [laughs] I had so many R&B, soul, funk and blues influences that didn’t really come through in Dokken. The ’80s thing was a bit lacking for me, even though we had great success.

“At Lynch Mob we created a happy accident with our chemistry and came up with some good songs. It was frustrating for me that we didn’t really have that element in Dokken when I could put my dream band together.” We spent a lot of time working on the first album to make it impressive.

“One of the basic principles of the new band’s structure was to have that groove element – there was a lot of groove in this band. A big part of it was Oni Logan on vocals. That opened up a lot of scope. “For the bluesy expression, the basses in the ’80s seemed bad, the drums often sounded crappy, and everything was over-processed, so I wanted something that avoided all of those pitfalls.”