Lynch Mob was the band consisting of ex-Dokken guitarist George Lynch, singer Oni Logan, bassist Anthony Esposito and drummer Mick Brown (also of Dokken), that caused sensation in the rock circuits with their amazing debut album ‘Wicked Sensation’ back in 1990. Soon after that success Oni left the band and the musi-cal direction of Lynch Mob shifted dramatically, making fans like me lose interest. Now in 2009 Lynch Mob have got back together with the praised singer and released a new studio album, ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ which could well be the follow-up to the debut. I got to speak to George Lynch on the phone in his studio in L.A whilst he was still in his pyjamas and had not yet had breakfast.  Slightly sleepy but still very conversational, he talked about this colossal comeback, the Souls of We album he released last year and a long-awaited European tour with Lynch Mob yet to be confirmed.

Last year you once again brought back original singer Oni Logan into Lynch Mob after his initial departure following ‘Wicked Sensation’, and toured the US with Cinderella and Warrant and also Australia. What were those tours like?

It was a great homecoming for us because Oni and I tried putting the band back together in the late 90s or early 2000s and it was a little rough. The plans weren’t lining up and we didn’t get a big buzz out there and ended up just doing a tour of the clubs and it was kind of disheartening. This time around it was completely different. We did festivals and we were met with really great responses so it started creating the impression for us that the timing was right and we had the wind in our back. So that gave us positive energy to move forward and do the record and make plans to continue on.

Tell us, after Oni’s departure, why did you decide to change the music direction of the band?

Probably because I don’t have a crystal ball and I work within the confines of my own ridiculous mind and I’m not immune to the winds of change that happen microscopically from day to day of the music. I guess the answer is that I’m really not much of a visionary, at least then I wasn’t. I was playing with my music at that point. I’m not a very good business man and I’ve done some records that I really thought were wonderful records, I enjoyed doing them. They were met with not a whole lot of enthusiasm in the marketplace just because I wasn’t a smart businessman. I think the comparison you can make is like in the marketing world someone would put out a product and it’s accepted, then they turn around and put out another addition of the same product that’s completely different, like Coca Cola, change the recipe, change the label next year and the year after that and you confuse people, they don’t know what to think. I guess I was assuming that I had the luxury of doing anything I wanted to do and people would take a look at it and accept it, but that turned out to not be the case. Also I made a huge mistake in parting ways with Oni initially back in the 90s and in hindsight I realise that. So we had a second chance at life here, going back and finding our original formula and it’s actually been very easy.

Why did you part ways in the first place?

There were a lot of reasons. I was coming off Dokken and had a terrible success so I had the whole rock’n’roll machine behind me. It was very well funded and I really had huge expectations for it and was very driven to create this ideal dream band and record. My expectations were too high and Oni was having issues vocally live that led to me being frustrated with him and I’m sure he was frustrated with himself, so we parted ways. But, as I said, in retrospect that was a very bad decision because rock’n’roll isn’t about perfection, so I realise that now. Oni is a poet, very unique, and we have wonderful chemistry. You can’t buy that. So having found that counterpart to myself, a partner in writing, I really threw out the baby with the bath water.

But finally this September a long-awaited new Lynch Mob album featuring Oni Logan, ‘Smoke and Mirrors’, will see the light. You mentioned, and I agree, that this should be the follow-up to ‘Wicked Sensation’. They are both great albums!

I think we established something 19 years ago and we have the opportunity to go back and revisit that - which not a lot of people get that chance to. So we take it very seriously and are very economic with our time and our money, and try very hard to make sure that we didn’t get in the way of ourselves. We did what we did on the first record: we just got in a room and let the magic happen and didn’t try too hard to be something that we weren’t.

Was it the two of you writing?

First off, Oni was in Switzerland, so he flew in and came to my house, we hung out and re-acquainted ourselves with each other and we took it very slow. But yeah, we initially started writing just the two of us on acoustic guitars. One of the first songs we wrote was ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ and it just evolved from there. Eventually we put a band together with Marco [Mendoza] and Scott [Coogan]. Fred Coury was drumming for us initially but we changed drummers and got Scott. It was an evolutionary process: we did dates and we became tighter. But the hard thing about it was that no matter where we were at, the time or the place, we still had that magic chemistry between him and myself and with Marco’s and Scott’s help as well. It was very enjoyable.

You mentioned that initially Fred Coury was playing drums. Why didn’t he stay?

Fred is sort of a high-maintenance guy, he’s all Hollywood. He’s a great guy, I love Fred and I hang out with him all the time and he may come back. But Fred does what’s good for Fred, which is fine. But the disheartening thing about being in a band at this point in our careers is that we can’t just put a band together out of love, haha! Everybody has families, mortgages and obligations so we had to treat it that way and if there isn’t enough interest in financial capital to keep everybody involved and keep the whole machine rolling, it becomes very difficult to stay with guys you want to stay with and who want to stay with you just out of love, unless you are Aerosmith or Whitesnake. Then it’s a different story: they put guys on a retainer, you can always tour, and get reasonable money for your record and that sort of thing. But we were starting from scratch essentially. I funded the record and we had to make do with very little. I think it was very healthy for us, but were unable to sustain everybody’s needs, at least at the level we started at. But things are wrapping up pretty nicely and my hope is to get a solid drummer that stays in the band for the long haul, so I’ve been talking to Fred about coming back and it may happen.

What about Tommy Aldridge. Was he in the band at some point touring with you?

No, what happened was that we had a summer-long US tour supporting Cinderella. At the last minute Tom Keifer, the vocalist, had to go and get surgery on his vocal chords and couldn’t do the tour. That was the tour that Tommy was going to do with us. We actually never played with Tommy and we were just getting ready to go and do rehearsals when it all fell apart, but he was initially going to be the drummer.

Were you following Oni’s career throughout these years? Were you surprised he still has that crafted and beautiful voice?

I listened to a little bit of what he’s been doing. I know he put out some sort of an acoustic record that I heard of. I’ve always loved his lyrics. He’s definitely a very eloquent lyricist and it’s amazing how he can translate his and all our stuff into beautiful words and paints these amazing pictures. That’s the reason I fell in love with his voice and his style back in ‘89. But, if I’m reading right, what Oni did was pretty much get disgusted with the music business, which I don’t blame him, and took his family, moved to Switzerland (his wife is Swiss), a very healthy thing, and he dropped out of the business pretty much for five years, if not more. I respect that, it takes a lot of courage. I think he did what he had to do and when he thought he was ready, he came back. And now he’s definitely recharged his batteries and is very consistent, there are no problems live and no problems in the studio. He’s gotten older, but that’s ok. We all get older and things happen, that’s fine, but the essence of what he is is still there. He’s very unique and there is only one Oni and I’m very honoured to be playing with him.

What are your hopes for ‘Smoke and Mirrors’? Will you be touring it? Will you be coming to the UK with the band?

Because we’re on Frontiers they made it very clear that they’re definitely going to put a strong emphasis on the European market so I’d like to believe that we’re definitely going to be working in Europe. I don’t have any definite plans yet and have no knowledge of when we’re going to be going over there, but it’s without a doubt we will be going over there and promote the record live.

I really look forward to that! Before getting Marco and Scott, did you consider calling original members Anthony Esposito and Mick Brown?

Anthony Esposito is in Ace Frehley and I did call Mick Brown but he hasn’t called me back, haha! He’s in Ted Nugent and Dokken. That was really a long shot, I wasn’t expecting he’d say yes, but I just threw it out there. Don and I have been talking about the possibility of doing a Dokken/Lynch Mob tour, so that would be interesting because Mick will be playing with Don. So we’d be opening and then I’d go on stage at the end of the show and play a couple of songs, kiss and make up and share the stage together for the end of the show.

If Don asked you to go back in Dokken, would you do it?

Well, it’s always on the table. We had a few attempts of putting it back together and it’s always fallen apart for some reason or another, but it’s always out there and we’ll just have to see. It’s very difficult when you have four people that are all doing different things. Mick, as I said, is in Ted Nugent, Jeff is in Foreigner and working constantly, Don is out there with Dokken and I’m doing my Souls of We and Lynch Mob and all the other stuff that I am doing, so it’s pretty tough to make it work for everybody. But it’s been brought up and I personally think that if it doesn’t happen relatively soon, it wouldn’t be worth doing because I don’t know if the interest would be there or people would care enough and we might be getting too old!

Jeff Pilson played bass on some tracks of the Souls of We album and you had several drummers. Why did you decide to have so many?

I didn’t decide to do anything. Everything sort of happened by default because the record was such a cluster fuck, it was all a bunch of happy accidents. Initially I had Mike Wengren from Disturbed who flew out there to do some songs, came to my studio the night before along with Fred [Leclercq] from DragonForce and he went through the songs whilst eating pizza, went in the studio at 7am the following morning, spent a few days in the studio and got five songs. After those five songs were recorded, Mike and Fred were gone, they went out on tour, so I couldn’t get them back and I had to resort to using other drummers that were great as well. I had Morgan [Rose] from Sevendust, Yael from My Ruin, Mike Hanson from Steve Vai and Mother Love Bone and Bobby Jarzombek from Fight and Sebastian Bach.

In Souls of We you have London LeGrand, also from Brides of Destruction, same as Scott Coogan. How did the connection between you and BoD form?

London and I have been friends from before Brides of Destruction and we did two projects, Micro-Dot and Band of Flakes (BOF). He got the call from Nikki [Sixx] so he dropped everything we were doing and did two records with Brides of Destruction. When they dissolved he came back because I had already been working on the Souls of We record. The funny thing is that the Souls of We record really started with Micro-Dot and the Band of Flakes, so everything that we started doing way back before Brides I continued to work on. By the time Brides had burned out I was still working on it so ‘Do you want to get it out of your system, London? Time to come back and finish it!’, so he did.

Souls of We is very different musically to Lynch Mob. What was your approach with this project?

That record is an amalgamation of sources. I draw from some of the Micro-Dot writing, which was very hard to describe because it was garage Korn meets R&B The Ants music or something, really strange and it was very cool. Then the Band of Flakes was very post-Alice In Chains vibe. Some of those songs ended up on the Souls of We record but we changed them up a little bit. The vibe was tuned down, a little heavier but still melodic and real psychedelic. London really dictates the direction and the flavour of the band because of what he does, style, vocals and these crazy lyrics.

You’re currently on a US tour to promote Souls of We. How is it going?

Yes, we’re on tour now and we’ll be on tour until the end of September and then I think we go to Japan in January. The band also has a rotating membership. Our static bass player is Johny Chow from Cavalera Conspiracy, but he’s out with Cavalera Conspiracy in Europe right now, and he’s going to jump back on in the beginning of September. The replacement we have now is temporary. The drummer we used on the tour last month was Jordan Mancino from As I Lay Dying, but he had to go back to work with As I Lay Down on their new album, so we have Mike Henson, who played on the record replacing him. But Jordan is coming back for the Japanese tour.

I saw you on your last solo tour here in the UK last year. I don’t know if you remember that show, but I am sure you will agree with me that the London show wasn’t the best gig of your outstanding career.

Yeah, I’m trying to forget! That was some kind of goofy agent who set up a clinic, but I found they called it a clinic to get me over there. A clinic is usually in a music store, young crowd, you’re answering questions and it’s not a performance. When I got over there of course it was clubs, so I’m standing on stages on these night clubs with a CD in my hand and no band. So I quickly threw together kind of a make-shift band over there, very nice guys. But that was a mistake. I would like to apologise for that. It won’t happen again.

On the other hand, the Guitar Generation Tour with Richie Kotzen and Paul Gilbert went very well. Were you disappointed that some of the shows had to be cancelled and you only ended up doing three?

Yes, because Souls of We passed on going out on tour with Black Label Society and Sevendust so that we could do the Guitar Generation Tour. So I passed on a very important tour for Souls of We to do that and once I had passed on that it was too late to get it back. It was three shows and that was the end of that.

Did you enjoy it, though?

Oh, yeah, it was a blast! It was very challenging for me because I’m not really technically at Paul Gilbert or Richie’s level. But it was very inspiring for me, a good kick in the ass because it forced me to get my chops up and at least fake it a little bit better. I had a great time and I thought my position was the black horse because these guys are more known to a technical crowd and I’m more the blues based guy so I think I filled a very important void in that bill and it worked very well. Everybody got on great and the crowds loved it. It was a lot of work, though, because not only I did my set but then I had to come out at the end and do the jam. Usually a jam is a song or two, but the jam was an hour, which was great for the crowd.

In the last 19 years you have, quite deservedly, kept consolidating yourself as one of the most influential guitar players out there. What is next in the pipeline for you?

We’re going to wrap up Souls of We at the end of September, we have a video that we’re working on that is coming out hopefully soon. Then Lynch Mob is going to kick off and we’re going to go out and tour on that, I don’t know for how long, probably do a video for Europe and Japan, tour the States as much as we can. Then we’re going to see where this Dokken thing goes. Another thing I’m keeping in my back pocket is an instrumental record, which I’ve never done a purely instrumental record. I’ve already been writing for it and I already have the lead track, which is called ‘Summer Scary’ and it’s on an eight-string guitar, pretty awesome, a great vibe. Marco Mendoza is on bass and it’s pretty mean. I’ve also been doing guitars, customising ESPs. People can check them out at www.georgelynch.com , click on the tab that says Art and there will be a drop-down box on guitars. I’m also doing a variety of art pieces. I’ve done 75 out of 200 canvasses, which have all been sold, and I’m going to be showing them in galleries. I’m also doing individual art pieces in installations which I’m going to have a gallery showing in November in Hollywood and that’s been very exciting for me, I enjoy doing it. I also do my Dojo online Guitar Academy, which is a music school, and you, know, running the business, keeping my chops up and trying to stay healthy and stay alive, ha ha!

When you go out on tour with Lynch Mob will it be with Marco and Scott?

Scott may be out with Ace Frehley. If he does, we can’t use him because Ace pays him more than we do, so we’ll probably go out with Fred.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

I’d like to go eat some breakfast, it’s 1 o’clock. Or brunch! I appreciate the interview, though, thank you very much. Thank you, George and we look forward to seeing you on these shores.

Keep an eye on www.georgelynch.com for UK live dates.