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Post by Admin on Mar 11, 2020 19:50:32 GMT
George Lynch says he wishes JUDAS PRIEST would call him and ask him to play guitar for the band.
When Glenn Tipton was forced to retire from full-time touring activities due to his diagnosis with Parkinson's disease, he and his PRIEST bandmates opted to hire Andy Sneap to step in, having gotten to know the British-born, 50-year-old producer when he helmed the group's latest album, "Firepower".
Speaking at a guitar clinic at Pitbull Audio in San Diego this past January, George said (see video below): "I still to this day love PRIEST. I wish they would call me up and hire me. Glenn Tipton, hello?"
JUDAS PRIEST bassist Ian Hill recently said that it was up to Sneap to decide if he wants to carry on playing guitar for the band after the completion of the "Firepower" world tour. "Andy is now, these days, first and foremost a producer," he explained. "Whether he wants to go back and do that full time or not, it'll be a mutual decision when the time comes. Andy will be more than welcome to stay. He's done a tremendous job over the last year or so, really. He's done a great job stepping in for Glenn… We were only about three weeks away from starting the tour [laughs], and Andy stepped in and did a great job. He pulled a real rabbit out of the hat in learning a complete setlist of songs in such a short period of time. He pulled it off anyway. And as time's gone on, obviously, his stage presence, he got more comfortable with that, and he's performing great now. So when the time comes… We'll give it to the end of this run and then see what everybody wants to do. As I say, he'll be more than welcome to carry on with us if that's his plan."
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Post by Admin on Jan 4, 2021 6:37:58 GMT
During an appearance on the Do You Know Jack Podcast, classic Dokken guitarist George Lynch talked about the grunge impact, nu-metal, and more.
You can check out the latest Lynch Mob record here via Amazon.
Asked how the grunge explosion affected him, Lynch replied:
"Initially, I didn't see it coming - I was just blind to it. Me and the people around me got personally blindsided by it and hurt by it because we were still working under the assumption that everything was the same as it was in the '80s.
"We were making records that way, and all that kind of stuff. Not that you should change to conform, or anything like that, but it was a period of adjustment. I was trying to get my head wrapped around it.
"I'm very open-minded about things and wanna try new stuff and explore music that I'm not familiar with and all that kind of thing. So I was thinking, 'What is it about this that is appealing or good?', or whatever.
"And I started figuring it out and getting it, you know, don't play guitar solos in the middle of every song, wear a flannel shirt, be depressed, and talk about shit that matters.
"Drop all the trappings of silliness and superficiality. I get it. So it was kind of a learning curve. It affected me in my writing, to a certain extent, a little bit.
"The '90s was really kind of a vacuum for me, and I'm sure most of my contemporaries, as far as guitar music. We all had to kind of take a step back.
"So it was probably my least productive period - not that I didn't work and wasn't productive, but I was kind of fishing around, so to speak."
Focusing on nu-metal, George said:
"I had an album called 'Smoke This' in the late '90s and 2000s that I should have called Lynch Bizkit - in the Limp Bizkit thing, a little bit.
"I loved it; I loved that music. In fact, I think Limp Bizkit is a great fucking band, and I'm actually a huge fan. I just caught 'em a few years ago. They were great."
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Post by Admin on Feb 13, 2021 6:28:49 GMT
In a new interview with Metal Godz Radio, former DOKKEN guitarist George Lynch was asked if ever got a chance to bond and hang out with Eddie Van Halen at all. He responded (hear audio below): "Absolutely. I mean, we kind of came up through the ranks together. We were both [in] SoCal bands and played the same bills and same clubs and hung out a little bit and have common connections and friends and different things and acquaintances. But the time that we spent the most together was on the 'Monsters Of Rock' tour [in 1988, where DOKKEN and VAN HALEN shared the bill with SCORPIONS, METALLICA and KINGDOM COME]. Eddie and I would spend a lot of time in the hotel rooms just jamming and staying up all night drinking beers and smoking and playing guitar. So that was a really cool hang."
Lynch previously talked about Eddie's influence in a 2009 interview with Guitar Player magazine. Asked if he was jealous of VAN HALEN's success in the late 1970s and early 1980s, George said: "We were jealous and we were all trying to play catch up. We thought, 'Oh boy, we better get on board. This guy's going to change the world.' I remember my reaction when I first heard Eddie. I had been hearing about this guy with the weird European name. He's got a torpedo onstage, the bass player wears clogs, they have bombs onstage, and the guy's unbelievable. I saw him and it blew my mind. They were still doing covers at the time — RAINBOW, MONTROSE — and their original stuff was as good or better than their cover stuff, which was pretty exceptional. After their show, I went back to our band room and played my guitar until the sun came up. I thought, 'Man, how can I get that tone?'"
Asked if he tried to copy Eddie, George said: "What I really did was sort of bounce off his stuff rather than emulate it. I've done that with a lot of players. Instead of copying them, I react to them. I'll think, 'Well, Di Meola does this thing. I can do some alternate picking, so I won't copy it but I'll embed that a little bit into my toolbox and do it my own way.' I've tried to do that with any player who has influenced me: Clapton, Hendrix, Schenker, Eddie, Holdsworth. I couldn't play any of their stuff note for note to save my life, but I can capture the gist of what they're doing by being exposed to it. I can get the essence."
Eddie died in October at the age of 65 after a long battle with cancer.
Rolling Stone magazine ranked Van Halen No. 8 in its list of the 100 greatest guitarists.
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Post by Admin on Feb 21, 2021 20:29:29 GMT
Legendary guitarist George Lynch has confirmed to Chris Annunziata of "The Metal Teddy Bear Experience" show on 90.3 WMSC that he has a new solo instrumental album coming out later this year. "It's done," he said (hear audio below). "It's been done for a while. It's called 'Seamless'. It's [gonna be released] on Rat Pak Records. I just spoke to the head of the label yesterday, actually, and they're gonna try to work it into a release maybe in midyear, maybe the latter part of the summer, back end of the summer — maybe September."
Lynch previously discussed the prospect of releasing a new instrumental album during a 2019 appearance on "Talking Shred". Asked if he would ever record a "shred" instrumental LP, he stated at the time: "Absolutely. I have some trepidation about it because of the insane players who are making it hard for old guys like me to keep up. I look at all those Instagram guys and my mind is just blown every day. It's so beautiful, because a lot of it is — they're not doing what they did in the late '80s, early '90s, just going hyper-speed shred. They do that too, but they're going back to bebop and jazz and Wes Montgomery stuff, Joe Pass stuff... On top of that, the Tosin Abasi [thing], multi-string, multi-tapping, two-handed, all that stuff too, and putting it all together and coming up with hybrid new stuff, which is fascinating. I've been trying to do the finger thing — I can't really do it. I do a fake finger thing. That's just me trying to be Jeff Beck because I think we all just want to be Jeff Beck."
In recent years, Lynch has recorded albums with a number of different projects, including LYNCH MOB, KXM, SWEET & LYNCH, THE END MACHINE and DIRTY SHIRLEY. His most recent release was "Heavy Hitters", a collaboration with his former DOKKEN bandmate Jeff Pilson on a collection of studio recordings that turn pop music classics into metal anthems.
Last year, Lynch told Guitar World magazine that staying "diversified" was key to making a living in rock music today. "Do everything," he said. "Be an engineer, be a composer, play every instrument you can, get endorsements, learn how to make a web site, be social-media savvy and keep your eye on everything."
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Post by Admin on Mar 6, 2021 5:52:06 GMT
The last time Premier Guitar spoke with Lynch, he was cruising around North Hollywood, picking up and dropping off gear with some of the most respected names in the business. When he answered our call this time, he was in a similar situation to most of us: working through the monotony of these strange times at home with the help of his guitar. The disarmingly friendly shred hero chatted for hours about the manic, arduous, and inspirational process of crafting the Banishment’s exciting new LP, and the killer vintage amps and improvised recording techniques he used in the studio. He also reflected on lessons learned in the court of the tragically departed King of ’80s Rock Guitar: Edward Van Halen. Have you noticed any specific changes in your playing through the pandemic and its isolation? Have you grown as a player? Believe it or not, I tend to be naturally a bit undisciplined and I find excuses to put off what should be my number one priority—being a guitar player. I feel I have a responsibility to my craft and my gift to maintain my chops, but when it feels like work, I shy away from it, which I think is pretty normal and relatable. The way I look at it is, if the inspiration is there, it’s irresponsible to not take advantage of it and I haven’t really encountered any writer’s block through the pandemic, so I’ll keep putting things out. What the pandemic has forced me to do is sit in my studio and play as much as possible, even absent-mindedly, because there isn’t much else to do. I think that’s a really healthy thing, and something I avoided doing for a big part of my career. I sort of regret that when I look back at some of my playing from back in the day and wonder how I even got semi-famous as a guitar player. The alone time has been paying off and I feel more confident in my own skin as a player than ever before. I recognize my limitations as a guitarist, but I also realized through this that I have a style, and it’s my own style that’s genuine and something that I’ve earned. Also, I feel like I can just play much more honestly now and play things that excite me on an acoustic or an electric straight into an amp, whereas in the ’80s, I needed all my crutches, like tons of gain and effects, to feel good about what I was playing. I used to rationalize that by saying “it’s all part of my tool kit,” but I’d put too much weight on amps, pedals, and processing for making me who I was as a guitarist and there was always a big gap between the version of me that sat down with an acoustic guitar and the version of me that got into a studio with all the bells and whistles. I always felt like that gap made my playing a little disingenuous and wanted to be able to express myself fully by relying on just my hands and my head. That sounds like a serious breakthrough. On the other side of that, the Banishment places your guitar work in the deliberately sterile and processed context of industrial music to really interesting effect. It’s anything but raw. This project is very processed and I wanted to do something influenced directly by industrial music and embed what I do as a guitarist in that world. I love industrial and I’ve always listened to bands like Ministry, Prong, Prodigy, Lords of Acid, and Nine Inch Nails. I love machine music where the humanity in it comes from the singer’s inflection and attitude. That contrast of a singer that sounds wild and unleashed against music that’s extremely locked-in rhythmically and in tune has always been really interesting to me. It’s tricky when you see the beauty in and love the energy of a style of music and want to do thatthing because you also have to be true to yourself. While I’ve definitely been accused of trying to do this before, you can’t just wear every single hat in the store. It reminds me of when Garth Brooks tried to be a rock singer out of nowhere with that Chris Gaines record. Loving a style isn’t enough to pull it off if it isn’t authenticto you. So this project was done with love for that style, but while trying to stay true to myself as a guitarist. The guitar on the Banishment songs still sounds very much like your work, but not glaringly out of place. You have to be careful about hating who you are as a player. Everything I have ever done is rooted in rock and blues, and while I’ve never tried to do a lo-fi Delta blues record or something drastically different, I always try to stretch the boundaries and reach out of my comfort zones through different types of rock music. The truth is, I just can’t see myself being happy doing Dokken and Lynch Mob records for the rest of my life. Even when I try to do those records and capture that sound intentionally, it’s hard to pull off because that’s just not who I am anymore. Those were made with different molecules decades ago. It can seem just as disingenuous to try and make the same record over and over again as the universe changes around you. Unless you’re AC/DC, it’s really hard to pull off. What was your point of entry to industrial music? Has that been a sound you’ve wanted to explore for a long time? I started listening to stuff that was a little heavier in the ’90s and branched out into the industrial stuff then. I was really into the tribal rhythmic element a lot of that music had. It was groove-oriented and had a sexy thing driving it that I just loved. That late-’90s period of industrial really spoke to me, and if you ask me who I’d want to play with if I could play with anybody, my answer would often be Nine Inch Nails. I love the sound of those records, but always imagined what the kind of guitar playing that I do would sound like as a part of it. The guitar on industrial records is often an afterthought and can be really hard to differentiate from the keyboards. I always imagined what Nine Inch Nails might have sounded like if Eddie Van Halen joined the band and that’s what I tried to do with the Banishment, though it developed into its own thing. There’s always that Zelig effect when you collaborate where it all changes around those characters. What was the songwriting process like for the Banishment tracks? The initial process was Haze and I writing and mapping out the music. Haze and I have worked on this project for six years, and the tracks were first written just by riffing and shooting from the hip, then building on it with layering. We spent about a month working every day and it was very productive and really wonderful, but also very intense, and we had this massive amount of material at the end. Eventually, Haze connected with Devix [Szell, vocals] and he fit the project perfectly. Devix is a world-class artist and is deeply, genuinely sincere about everything he does. That guy is consumed by his art and it shows. Ninety percent of the time, things started with a riff, which was layered by Haze to get the desired effect. One thing that might not immediately jump out at people is there’s a lot of guitar on these songs and the guitars are tracked in a very dense way with many different colors and sonic textures, so if you stripped away the synths and programming, there’d still be tons of guitar holding these songs together. I really like the density and the intricacy in the layering of these tracks. There’s a lot of colors in there and that depth begs for repeated listens and its production really makes it a piece of art much more so than a typical rock record. I feel so fortunate that we found Devix, because he’s such an intense artist and really fits and completes what Haze and I have been trying to do in a wonderful way.
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