George Lynch
Dokken, Lynch Mob, solo artist
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George Lynch is an American hard rock guitarist and songwriter and is best known for his work with heavy metal band Dokken and his post-Dokken solo band, Lynch Mob.
George Lynch is considered to be one of the most influential and famous 80's metal guitarists. He is known for his unique playing style and sound. He is ranked #68 on '100 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time' by Guitar World magazine and is also ranked #10 on 'Top 10 Metal Guitarists Of All Time' by Gibson.
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George currently lives near Los Angeles where he created an instructional guitar website named the Dojo. Lynch also started to produce his own custom hand-built art guitars, marketed under the Mr. Scary Guitars brand, which he makes himself at the ESP Guitars USA custom shop facility.
George Lynch is one of my all-time musical heroes. Many times I took the cover of "Tooth & Nail" to the barber, asking to cut my hair exactly as George's.
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The first time I heard about George was when he played "Paris is Burning" with Dokken on the famous German TV show Beatclub back in 1982. But the experience of first hearing Without Warning and the Tooth and Nail guitar solo's, was even beyond first hearing Van Halen's Eruption.
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Ever since that day I am a huge fan of George's unique style and sound. I have all his album, know all of his licks and solo's. It is just a style and tone that touches me deeply. Of course I thought about asking George on my album many times, but it always felt unreachable. Until October 4, 2019.
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Things came together. Keith St John and I had worked on some songs and got along very well, and Keith happens to sing in Lynch Mob. So when Keith told me he was going to play Denver with Lynch Mob on October 5, I thought 'yeah what the hell, no guts no glory', and asked Keith if he could ask George if he was interested to play a solo on Sin City. Keith asked me to send him a reminder at 6PM on Friday (which was 3AM in the night for me, so had to set the alarm for that), which is what I did and the rest is history. George was happy to play, did an amazing job, did some extra solo's, and gave me a courtesy call in the middle of the night, asking if I was happy with the result. "And Ron, you can be critical if you don't like it, no problem". Yeah right, how can you not be happy with what George laid down in Sin City ?
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It is still quite surreal when I realize that George f** Lynch is on my album. I'm a very lucky guy.
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For the 'Here to Stay' album I decided to re-use George's solos from the 'Sin City' song that appeared on 'Rise'. I re-did all my guitarparts, had the song re-arranged, re-mixed, re-mastered and re-named it into 'Sin City 23'. The song appears as a bonus track on the CD-version of 'Here to Stay'
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George's solo in 'Tooth and Nail' is one of my all-time favorite guitar solos. Here's a live version of 2018. Incredible stuff!
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