by Alexandra Mrozowska
— Senior Columnist —
Vast discography and decades of successful tenure on the music scene are privileges of relatively few in the music industry. But once achieved, can the legendary status become more of a confinement than a blessing? “They just want their Coke to be Coke, they don’t want New Coke,” says George Lynch – one of the guitarists that need no further introduction – speaking about reactions to some of his more experimental projects. Hardrock Haven has recently caught up with George to discuss The End Machine’s new album, his other projects and his perspective on different aspects of songwriting, recording and functioning in the music business.
Hardrock Haven: With the new album by The End Machine, titled Phase2, obviously there will be a lot of reviewers comparing it to its predecessor. Do you think there’s actually any point in such comparisons, as each album is actually an evolution of sorts?
George Lynch: Well, I think it’s more of a devolution, in the sense that it’s more of a prequel to the first record and I would say that I would flip them… I look at this second record as the first record, because it’s more basic, more meat and potatoes and slightly less adventurous. But the trade-off is it’s a little more accessible and we try to make sure we have really strong hooks and just really solid, stick-to-your-riffs kind of quality to it versus being eccentric and adventurous. To me, it should be the first record (laughs). And the first record feels like it’s the sophomore record, like, “Okay, now we’re stretching out a little bit.” Like Led Zeppelin II, you know – we take some chances and string out in different areas and are being a little more self-indulgent.
Hardrock Haven: The End Machine’s line-up are your former bandmates from Dokken and Lynch Mob respectively, and obviously the drummer Steve Brown is “Wild” Mick Brown’s younger brother. Do you think knowing each other so well and having certain chemistry throughout the years translates somehow into the music you make together?
George Lynch: Absolutely! I mean, you don’t have to go through that honeymoon period when you’re trying to develop a chemistry and you discover your personalities are conflicting… You’ve got all of that out of the way and you can jump right in on day one and start focusing on the work. So, there’s this huge advantage to being familiar with the people you’re working with and knowing that you have a good rapport and a working relationship. It’s a mutually productive collaboration, and there’s good chemistry there. You don’t have to think about all that stuff, ‘cause all that stuff can be an energy sucker and can really kill projects, you know (laughs). So we didn’t have that concern. Everybody was very professional on one hand and very positive in what they brought to the table – there wasn’t any negativity. Because in this kind of work, a lot times it can become a little bit of a drag work-wise, you know… and it’s nice to have people that can joke around once in a while and add some levity and lightness to the proceedings, so that you can sometimes take a break (laughs). So it’s nice to have a sense of humor and sometimes get along and just get away from the music for a second, which we did.
Hardrock Haven: Definitely. And yet about the change behind the drum kit, what did Steve bring into The End Machine and was it any different than his brother’s input?
George Lynch: I’m gonna be honest – playing with Mick’s brother, Steve, was like playing with Mick. In some ways, it was a little fresher, because Steve is younger and not so beat up by the industry. He hasn’t been touring for four decades, like Mick has, and you know – all that can have an effect on you. It can make you jaded, it can make you callous, it can make you cynical… And I’m not saying Mick is all those things, but it continued to have that effect on all of us. This can really suppress your enthusiasm for what you’re doing. Steve didn’t bring any of that negativity to the table. He’s tons of positive energy and that’s infectious and it’s good to have around. Especially when you work with old guys like us, we need that young blood to feed off (laughs). Sort of kidding, but nah, he was great to work with. And he has the same style of playing as Mick, the same feel – which is very rare, but you would expect that I guess – and the same personality. He’s the clown of the band, he’s got a great sense of humor, he’s always joking… He plays real hard, [he’s] heavy hitter just like his brother… Sings just like him too, and Mick was really fundamental to our background vocals, so his brother fills that spot very well – he’s checking off all the boxes! You couldn’t have found a better replacement for Mick. We call him “Mild” Steve Brown, like “Wild” Mick Brown (laughs).
Hardrock Haven: Many of the artists who take part in various projects created by Frontiers Music SRL admit that after a while these projects naturally evolve into a regular band situation. Is it the case – or will it be the case – with The End Machine?
George Lynch: We always hope that it would be more of a band, and that was the idea initially that Jeff [Pilson] and I and Robert [Mason] talked about. [It] was that it would be something that we at least could go on tour – specifically Japan, we thought. We ended up doing only three dates for the first record here in the Southwest United States – we just didn’t have time to do any more. But we still hold out that hope… and I think there’s a good chance that we’ll do some touring with the band, so it will be actually more than a project. Because when you look at the lineage of this project, it really goes back to Jeff and I in Dokken, then doing the first LP [Lynch/Pilson, 2003’s Wicked Underground] record together, then doing the T & N [2012’s Slave To The Empire] record together and that led to The End Machine. So there’s really this thread of continuity and these are all evolutions of the same project; it’s just Jeff and I, really. So this is the sort of the current expression of that effort, and I think this one is really the one that’s gonna stick. I mean, we’re not gonna change it or become something else after this – we’re gonna keep it The End Machine. The records sell well and we know people would come to see us live, so that’s a viable touring option for us. The challenge is to find the time to do it.
Hardrock Haven: And as you’ve mentioned Dokken – in one of your earlier interviews, you described the new The End Machine material as more “Dokken-centric”. Was it easy or challenging to balance the Dokken vibe and whatever musical vision you had for the album?
George Lynch: It wasn’t easy, but also wasn’t hard. It’s just we had to remain vigilant as far as our focus and what we were trying to do when we were writing the songs. So we had to keep reminding ourselves of what it was that we were trying to do. And what we were trying to do was not to copy Dokken, but to put ourselves in that place mentally where we thought and remembered that we were thirty five years ago, or whenever it was when Jeff and I were writing partners and writing a lot of this material. And one of the things we focused on was the process of how we wrote these songs and in those days it was a guitar riff or a drum beat and we had our real strict formula and when it came to the lyrics, the melodies and the vocal melodies, it was [that] we had to have hooks. We always write the hook first, and then everything else would be built on that. So, that’s what we did. And we had to constantly police ourselves while we were composing and make sure we weren’t going off on tangents and being self-indulgent and exploratory and too adventurous… I know it how it sounds – like counter-productive and counter-intuitive, which it was to us, ‘cause as we’re writing, we’re like, “Oh man, I came up with this really cool part! We’re gonna make this work somehow!” And then, “Wait a minute, does that really serve the song…? Is that really what we’re trying to do here…? No, let’s think about the larger picture, let’s think about that hook and the formula – we have to serve that and confine to that. And that’s what we did a pretty good job of, I think, on this record.
Hardrock Haven: So that was about the songwriting, and what did the recording process for the new album look like?
George Lynch: Well, during the pandemic the compositional process and pre-production couldn’t be really separated from the recording process, ‘cause what we would do is we would write and then the writing was really the part of the recording… Because I would sketch everything out with the scratch drum track that was programmed and then I’d play the parts with no bass – just the guitar – and finally get arranged it all, piece it together, and then it’d be sent out to the drummer. And the drummer would record to that, the send it back – and I would re-record the guitar parts. But not always, as sometimes the guitar parts that I recorded initially were fine and we’d leave that. So maybe I’d add embellishments or second track or I’d do solos and things like that. Then it goes back to Jeff and Jeff does his bass parts, and then it goes to the singer and he sings his vocals and backs. We add any keyboards that we need, or anything else – do any fixes, acoustic guitars, piano… the extra things, and then we send it to the mixer. So it’s really a kind of a grey area – writing and recording is really all part of the same incremental process.
Hardrock Haven: From the standpoint of such an experienced musician as you are, what advantages do you think a self-produced album can have?
George Lynch: We didn’t mix it – we had an outside mixer in Italy – but we self-produced it indeed. And to this day, I really don’t know what that means. As long as I’ve been in this business, I don’t know what the producer is supposed to do… I worked with a lot of big producers and I still don’t know what they do. I’m sure they do something, but I’m old school and I think bands are just bands. And I don’t like bands that outsource everything, ‘cause to me that is not a band when you have other people write your songs, and even other musicians come in and play your parts, then you have somebody produce it and tell you what you’re supposed to be, and how you’re supposed to sound. That’s what the band does (laughs). That’s why you’re a band, you know (laughs). And I pride in doing a lot of that stuff, and I love doing all that stuff – I love writing, I love playing and I have an idea what it should sound like, and so does Jeff. That’s why we work together and we don’t need somebody else to do all that for us. I don’t understand the point – maybe some people do need that, I don’t know… But then, it wouldn’t be us. If I’m playing somebody else’s song they wrote, that really wouldn’t be my vision, so I don’t know why we would do that. Seems strange to me.
Hardrock Haven: Obviously an upcoming release date of a new album means an increased social media presence these days…
George Lynch: Well, now your social media activity is your metric for success as far as labels look at your band and tell what your fanbase is like, what your appeal and your sales potential is and so and forth, so it’s all about that now. I’m not saying I’m the guy who asked about that stuff, ‘cause I’m a sixty-six-year-old oldschool rocker (laughs). When I say ‘rocker’, I’m just barely keeping up, yeah… but I’m aware of that there’s a brave new world that we live in, and that’s okay. I mean, I’m a big fan of Instagram, so that’s pretty easy to negotiate and I enjoy going on and posting things. It’s interesting for me because I like doing a mix of personal things that I do – like I ride my motorcycle or I go backpacking and do all kinds of things like that – and I mix it up with my guitar building which is what I’m doing now in my shop here… or I’m in my studio, or I make an occasional political post or some comment on current events… You know, I try to keep it interesting and mix it up quite a bit and also use it as a way to promote things I’m involved in – if I’m playing somewhere or there’s a new release, like The End Machine coming out April 9th – I’ll post the video or something. Or if I have a guitar that I finished building and I wanna sell it, I’ll take this guitar and post it up online on Instagram and immediately get ten responses that somebody wants to buy it. So it’s a marketplace of ideas and commerce and all kinds of interesting things. But I just link my Facebook and my Twitter to that, so that kind of controls and feeds all that. I don’t really interact directly to Twitter and Facebook. I just interact with Instagram. And then I hire somebody who handles all my social media and they interact with that.
Hardrock Haven: Speaking about the collaborations and different projects you’re a part of, last year you’ve released an album in collaboration with Dino Jelusick as Dirty Shirley. According to what Dino told me in an interview, you described it as being in your top three albums you’ve ever recorded and what’s the reason for that?
George Lynch: Well, it was top three albums of that year that I recorded… Just kidding. I’m really impressed with Dino. I mean, it’s a funny story when the label [Frontiers Music SRL] first introduced me to him and asked me if I am going to work with him. I had no idea who he was and for some reason I had the impression that he was an Italian Pop singer. And I agreed to do the project ‘cause I thought that would be really interesting, and different, and challenging. ‘Cause I love Pop music and I love the structure of Pop music that’s designed to work with how the human brain works… you know, repetitiveness, the heartbeat and all these frequencies and all that. So I just thought that’s the kind of record I was making, so initially I started writing for that and I threw a couple [of] ideas out there to him. And as he lives in Croatia, there wasn’t any real direct contact other than some e-mails, I think. And then he sent me back what he did to the songs (laughs), and I was like, “Holy shit, this guy’s a monster, as if Ronnie [James] Dio and David Coverdale had a baby!” (laughs) So of course, I had to rethink my writing process… Honestly, he can overwhelm the record in a wonderful way. And if I had anything to do over, I’d definitely go and redo all the guitars over again, because I feel that when the vocal stops for the guitar solo, the energy just drops down like this [makes a gesture with his hand]. Oh my God, it’s like this power and this majesty, this guy’s singing like a fucking monster and all of a sudden I come along and it’s almost like a break for him so he can go to the bathroom or get a hot dog and come back (laughs). He’s a phenomenal artist, really incredible.
Hardrock Haven: Absolutely. And do you plan to continue with Dirty Shirley sometime in the future?
George Lynch: Right now we can’t, because there’s some legal thing going on with him, I think. Nothing to do with me, but that precludes him from working with a particular label, from what I understand. I don’t know too much about it. So unfortunately, as much as we both wanna do another Dirty Shirley record – we can’t, until he gets that business sorted out. But if we do one, we’ll definitely have a different album cover, ‘cause I don’t know where the hell that album came [from]. What does that mean…? I was like, who the hell thought of this? How did anybody look at this and think this is a good idea?
Hardrock Haven: I guess everyone wondered about that…
George Lynch: You know, the name of the band was supposed to be a joke – and they used it seriously. They were asking me what I thought for a name, and in my studio I have this wall of amplifiers – and one of the amplifiers is a Friedman Dirty Shirley. And so I just was looking at my wall when I was on the phone with them and I said, “Um, what about Dirty Shirley?” And I was kidding, and that’s what they used. It’s a name of a freakin’ amplifier, and I just wasn’t serious about it. Gotta be careful what you say.
Hardrock Haven: True! Also in 2020, we’ve heard from another project of yours called The Banishment which explores way different territories musically than you’re usually associated with. What was the inspiration behind this concept – which, as you’ve mentioned in various interviews, was something you’ve been toying with for years?
George Lynch: Yeah, for many years – I remember initially one of the projects I was hoping to put together was with Tommy Lee as he and I have been discussing doing something like this back in the late ‘80s, if I remember correctly. We talked about it a few times, and then he went on to do something like that with Methods Of Mayhem. But I’m a huge fan of Nine Inch Nails and The Prodigy, and Prong and all kinds of other stuff… Lords Of Acid or sometimes a little Techno-flavored stuff like [the] Chemical Brothers, The Crystal Method and things like that. So I don’t know… I’ve just always imagined that kind of music and what I can bring to it, being an interesting hybrid that I wanted to explore. And when I met up with [Joe] Haze, who’s my partner in the project, he was all over [it] – he is a big Industrial and Techno remixer. So we just threw caution to the wind… he flew down from Utah and we held up in my studio for about a month. We created the bits for the songs then. It’s been about six or seven years now that we’ve been working on it on and off and we’ve had a number of different singers… First was Mandy Lion from WWIII, but it didn’t work out. Then we had some other guy but I can’t remember his name, and then Tommy Victor [Prong, Danzig]. Tommy sang two songs but eventually bowed out – which is understandable, ‘cause there was not much happening with the project. But we still may release his two songs as bonus tracks. Our current singer’s the guy named Devix. He’s an actor and he brought the whole “dream punk” concept to the project. It has a little Punk-ier aspect to it – at least in the vocal realm – but it’s still highly polished, intricate music behind it. So it’s really just a strange, unique hybrid of styles and I love this project, but you know… the problem with these kinds of projects for me is being a legacy ‘80s guitar player guy. A lot of people don’t wanna hear that from me. They just want their Coke to be Coke, they don’t want New Coke and they don’t allow to change a recipe or formula. My way to deal with that is resistance through these projects. So that’s the biggest obstacle in getting these things released and getting them heard. We’re going through that right now, but I think we’re coming out this year. We’re talking to a label and I think it’s very receptive and a right fit for us – so I think we’re coming out, ‘cause the record’s already done.
Hardrock Haven: Funnily enough, I was just supposed to ask you about possibly feeling pigeonholed by the reviewers and the interviewers – and as you say, also the listeners – who keep on dwelling on your past rather than your present and future direction…
George Lynch: Yeah, it’s a constant balancing. ‘Cause I do so many projects and I serve the base, I guess – if that’s the way to describe it. You know, the people that have supported me for decades and love Dokken and Lynch Mob… probably more my legacy catalog and style. And I appreciate that too, and I love that kind of music… I just like that and I like other things too, so I’m not just trying to do it all to do it all, but just things that I’ve always really loved. I love R&B music, I love Blues, I love Classic Rock, I love Soul and Progressive music and certain kinds of Jazz music… I love certain kinds of old Country music and Classical music to certain extent, and World music too… I mean, there’s all kinds of things that I would like to explore and I know that’s a little self-indulgent. But if you wanna listen to it, go and buy it and if you don’t wanna listen to it, don’t buy it. I don’t understand the hate (laughs).
Hardrock Haven: Exactly…
George Lynch: Yeah, I still do the other stuff these people like – I still did Lynch Mob records and The End Machine records, and Sweet & Lynch, which is very ‘80s style… I’m doing all that too, so I don’t understand why people get mad that I do other things as well. That seems very strange to me.
Hardrock Haven: Especially that you’ve always been the one to take the bands you were a part of in new directions – like with Dokken’s Shadowlife or Lynch Mob’s Smoke This…
George Lynch: Yeah, I try not to base what I do on the market or any particular person’s opinion… I mean, if I were to sit there and do that, I would never get anything done. You know, you can’t make everybody happy – it’s just never gonna happen. All I can do is what I feel is right. And with my chips forward, I’m not saying that I shouldn’t be smart – and I try to be – but is usually that I think about those things after the fact. But if I’m inspired to do something, that’s what is the most important thing to me… just to follow my heart and do something that I’m inspired to do. It’s not that complicated. And I put out too many projects, I get that, I compete with myself… I’ve got a glut of records always coming out, every year – that’s a problem… but I think it all sorts itself out in time and maybe people will go to appreciate me making efforts to go in slightly different directions. It’s all primarily still Rock music. It’s not like I’m going off trying to be a Jazz king and change my hat and pretend to be this kind of guy or that kind of guy… I’m still myself, just – you know – playing different flavors.
Hardrock Haven: Absolutely! So is it the same kind of idea behind Lynch Mob’s Wicked Sensation Reimagined which was released last year – again, to mixed reactions?
George Lynch: Yeah, I saw that. Again, it goes back to you can’t make everybody happy. I’m sorry, I just can’t worry about that. I just do what I do. I can’t bend in the wind whichever direction where the wind blows (laughs). You know, I stand by all my records – Smoke This was the most reviled record I’ve ever done and I love that record, so I’m sorry… Maybe I’ll be the only one that likes it, but hey, at the end of the day I’m writing stuff for myself, really. I’m writing stuff that’s inside my head and I’m chasing that dragon, and it’s just a process for me… a lifelong process. And that’s just the way of working it out, and that’s all I can do. But I don’t have to deal with anything else, so I’ll leave it for everybody else to sort it out.
Hardrock Haven: And what’s the current status of your other relatively recent bands and projects – like Ultraphonix or KXM? Also, is there anything else you’re up to at this very moment?
George Lynch: With KXM, we’ve started pre-production on our fourth record which we don’t have a title for yet, but we’ve written a few songs – I went out to Nashville to work with Ray [Luzier] and we’ve been working with each other online as well. Once we’re all vaccinated, maybe we all can get together, ‘cause the KXM philosophy is we all get in a room for twelve days and write and record one song a day. No pre-production allowed, no pre-writing, nothing. We just have to write it on the spot. So that will happen eventually this year, but we’re just not sure exactly when.
Then, Ultraphonix recorded a jam record at the Nest Studios in Los Angeles a couple of years ago. And what we did was we just got in a room – an old analog room – and we ran the tape for two or three days and just jammed, kind of like KXM. But unlike KXM, there’s not as many songs on the record – it’s more just like free form, self-indulgent, just us going off… kind of writing songs, but just doing extended jams as well. It’s a combination of that and it’s really an interesting record, but definitely, you know… there’s some mistakes on it and it’s not perfect, but I don’t mind that. It’s real and that is interesting about it – that it is human (laughs). It’s more of a process record. You kind of see the inside of the process by listening to the record. ‘Cause that’s how the songs are made for us… we just jam and after the jam session we go, “Oh, I like that! That was cool, what if we make that a basis of the song…?” And that’s kind of what we did. So that will be coming out this year.
And then I also have the instrumental guitar record coming out called Seamless coming out this summer on Rat Pak Records.
Hardrock Haven: So that’s a lot of things to look forward to.
George Lynch: Yes. Or a lot of things to look forward to hating (laughs).
Hardrock Haven: For some people, probably… (laughs)
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