George Lynch of Souls of We

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by Deb Rao
Staff Writer

Guitar virtuoso George Lynch has checked in with Hardrock Haven to discuss his new project Souls of We featuring George Lynch (Dokken, Lynch Mob) on guitar, London Legrand (Brides of Destruction) on vocals, Johny Crow on bass, and Yael on drums.

Souls of We has released their debut album, Let The Truth be Known on Shrapnel Records. Fueled by the powerful guitar shredding of George Lynch, vocalist London LeGrand weaves his powerful vocals and daunting lyrics around the compelling yet mystical brutal destructive manner. Let The Truth Be Known was mixed by Mudrock and recorded at various studios in Los Angeles.

At a chance meeting on Melrose Ave a few years ago, Lynch and Legrand would soon be destined to combine their rock and roll roots to unveil a unique project that can be described as Black Label meets Buckcherry meets Tool. Samples of Let The Truth Be Known can be heard at on MySpace.

George Lynch unveils Souls Of We, discusses the music industry today, and his legacy with Dokken.

HRH: George, Thank you so much for taking time out to unveil your new project Souls of We. How did Souls Of We come into fruition? How did you end up meeting London Legrand?

LYNCH: Well. London had submitted an audition tape for Lynch Mob back in the early ’90s, when he was just a young whippersnapper coming out of North Carolina on his way to Hollywood. He hitchhiked out to Hollywood and wanted to become a rock star. That is when we ran into each other the first time. The second time around was when he was cutting hair in Hollywood. I was walking down Melrose and looked into the salon and saw this incredible looking guy and I knew he just had to be a musician. So I went up to him and asked him, “Are you a musician?” London said he was a singer. Usually, when guys look like that in Hollywood, they usually don’t have a lot to back it up and not a lot of substance. But I was probably thinking that at the time. I was doing a project called Microdot and I invited him down. It was just kind of on a trial basis. We got together for a few days and he was incredible. It was kind of had a real garage sound meets R and B. That got interrupted because he went to Brides of Destruction for two records. In the meantime, I got the Souls of We; once Brides broke up I called him and brought him in. It was unbelievable.

HRH: How would you describe the sound of Souls of We? It reminds me a lot of Black Label meets Buckcherry meets Tool kind of vibe. Do you agree?

LYNCH: I love it. I have to say that it did succeed in being unique. It doesn’t sound like an older legacy guy trying to adapt to new music. I think it is a strange mix of different influences and the great chemistry between London and myself. It is really hard to categorize. Also, that is a great analogy; in fact I am going to use that one from now on. (Laugher) I keep telling London, he sounds like the guy in Buckcherry. We had an Al Green DVD running the whole time we were doing vocal tracks, and some old gospel bands and R and B. I think you can hear a little bit of that in the songs. We were trying to go for the gospel preacher kind of thing. We took the rapper part and made it more gospel.

HRH: What does the name Souls of We denote to you? Does it have a religious meaning to you?

LYNCH: I think it is a terrible name but it is a great band. I think the Souls thing has been used too often but I don’t think it matters. Souls of We, I am not saying there is any deep meaning of the name. As musicians, we are not tending to be responsible for this creative spark. We don’t want to shove it down people’s throats with this record. We feel that it is something that came through us for a reason. In that sense, it is kind of spiritual. So when you are talking about religious or spiritual things, I feel that about music. I think it is very spiritual. I do agree with that. Because it is mysterious. You don’t really know fundamentally what it is. Souls of We could be kind of a collective audience collective body and the listener, the appreciator, and the great area between the musicians and the listener. It is kind of a statement. Let The Truth be Known, the album title kind of says it all. London and I both have misgivings about the business aspect of what we do. I think we speak to that and particularly on that song.

HRH: Do you see a trend for guitar solos becoming popular once again in the music industry today? Back in the ’80s, music seemed to evolve around the guitar solo.

LYNCH: As in anything in life, the pendulum works both ways. The guitar players never went away. The commercializing of guitar in music did. But the music itself wasn’t really selling very well. Now you see a whole new generation of kids coming up and they are learning from the ’60’s guys and the British Invasion, guys from my era the ’80s and so forth. Kids are experiencing the golden age of guitar. They are learning this stuff at a very young age and becoming familiar with it and taking it to a another level and this is what they are suppose to do. So it is very gratifying. But for myself, when I am embedded in a band record, which I love to do. I love to be in a band of brothers. I don’t really look at these vehicles for solos. The guitar has a certain function, and I try to do my best to do.

HRH: Do you feel that you and London have the same kind of musical style that blends together so well in Souls of We?

LYNCH: Souls of We is a match made in purgatory. The friction that we experience is not like the friction that I have experienced in some of my former bands. Where the guys just don’t like each other. London and I are spooning musically. We fit together like an end to a glove. It is wonderful. It was so fun. We just had so much fun in the studio. Just creating all of that stuff and watching it come together is really the gratifying moment in this kind of work. When you finally see all of this stuff finally start to come together in the studio is just amazing. To think that a year ago, whenever we came out with some little part and what it has taken to get us to this point. When you have a finished end to a product, and all the pieces fit together is like making a movie. It is very gratifying.

HRH: Any touring plans in the works for Souls of We?

LYNCH: When we mixed it with Mudrock, we really wanted it to conjure up the image of the band live. With all the perfection live having the band up there with stands and the live show and vibe and being mean as fuck. This band is meant to be played live. We have done some rehearsals. It still needs to be worked out. It is a difficult concept to get out there live. With Lynch Mob not a problem.

HRH: Could Souls of We open for Lynch Mob? That would be a great tour?

LYNCH: Being a new band is very tough to get out there. But Lynch Mob couldn’t pay us enough money to go out there that is the problem. Dokken would be a big headliner for the three bands. It is politically tricky. What I could do is do Dokken with Lynch Mob special guest featuring Souls Of We. I could just stay onstage and change my outfits. (Laugher)

HRH: George, since you mentioned Dokken, do you think there is any chance of a Dokken re-union in the future?

LYNCH: Well, it is all speculative. I have no information concerning whether it would or would not happen. I know we have tried a few times in the past. We had great offers and opportunities to put the band back together. VH1 came up to us, and wanted us to have our own show, they were going to sponsor the tour. Warner Brother released the old masters and the old catalog. It would have created a wonderful closure for the fans and the band and end on a good note. But for various reasons it never happened. Jeff is out with Foreigner; it would be difficult to juggle the two. Don has his obligations. Mick is out with Ted Nugent. So it is going to be tricky. I don’t know? I am holding out hopes for maybe 2010 or 2011 things could happen. But after that I think it would be sort of too late. It would be see them before they croak tour. I think we would want to be out here while we are still viable and have youthful energy. I think the band could be better than it ever was. I think the egos would be changed. I think all the drugs and all the bad shit has gone away. We are much more focused and mature. I think we would service a tour a lot better than we have in the past. We were inconsistent in the past. At this point, I don’t think we would have that problem. Dokken never really got to be the headliners that that deserved to be and the place that they earned in the rock anarchy. We were just about ready to extend the tour when it got swiped out from under us. We worked a better part of the decade working our way up to get where we thought we needed to be and that is what we were working for. We had that snatched away from us. I hope we can grasp that final pay-off.

Guitarist George Lynch took time out of his busy schedule to break down some of his favorite tracks on Let The Truth Be Known by Souls Of We.

Let The Truth Be Known – That is the show opener, if we do a show? It is meant to be right in your face. Mike Wengren is on drums from Disturbed. It is all tuned down in your face heavy. I think the song speaks to the frustration with the business and industry and how it is changing. How we have high hopes for a democracy in music. It is about how overlooked the writers and the performers really are in machine that is the music industry. The co- modification of the industry really destroys the heart and soul of why and how and what reason it is created. It is very unfortunate. It is like a prisoner where you can’t take away their dignity and their innermost thoughts. There is a lot of angst on this record and I think this songs displays it more than any other song. Nobody I work with on this record are millionaires and living in beach houses in Malibu. We are all still very, very hungry and still have a vision. This record and the performance we are still trying to visualize it is in our heads while we are trying to materialize it.

January – That is actually an older song that I did with lack of a better project title West Hollywood Starfish. It is a song that has been worked from one project to another. It is sort of an addiction song. But done in a much more colorful, poetic way. Even a humorous way. It is playful, but definitely speaks to a darker period in our lives.

Skeleton Key – Skeleton Key is a horror movie on vinyl. We really talk a lot about this song and slashing it out in a video. A horror video director like Rob Zombie could do something with this. If you have a lyric or write about vampires, a frightening thing that we can’t tame. The thing that we don’t know and that is why we fear it so desperately. It is the fear that we carry within ourselves.

Everything I Want – I actually had a hand in the writing in the lyrics on this tune. If I remember correctly, I think the lyrics allude to materialism to a certain extent. People tend to be but shouldn’t be defined by not by who there are contrary to character but what they have. This is how society defines you by what you have.

Sorry To Say – I think that was written mostly by Andrew Friedman, who was the singer I was working with before London. He contributed to some of the lyrics on the record.

Gandhi’s Got A Gun – This is a song that I kicked around for a while. What this song is about is that it is painting a psychotic picture of two conflicting interests of human nature. We are conflicted creatures. It is a constant struggle.

Push It – “Push It” is definitely sexy. It is stripper music. Back in Lynch Mob we used to test our songs at strip clubs. We put out ‘Wicked Sensation’ and if they liked it, then we would put it on the record. We’re a sexy band. It is part of rock and roll. It is unfortunate that we did have to change some of the lyrics on this record to conform to Wal-Mart. That was one of the songs that we really had to scale back a bit.

Psycho Circus – That is a big band kind of vibe. Big band drums, kind of that era and sound in a circus environment. I did find out from our copyright that Kiss had a song with that title, which I didn’t know.

Nork 13 – It is one of the songs that London and I in a band that we had before Brides of Destruction called Microdot. We added a little bit more drums to it, and I added a little bit more guitar work.

Adeline – On this song, I can speak to what we did on the recording process, and it is kind of a Ben Harper kind of song. There is a lot of slide guitar in there. It is kind of has a Lynch Mob sound. Near the end, we did a thing with chains and it has this kind of chain gang vibe. So that was pretty cool.

Under The Dead Tree – Actually, this was a vocal song. Now it is an instrumental. London had written some very dark lyrics to that song and personal stuff. That was a very tough song to get right. We had to re-work that song many times to get it right. I am still not completely happy with it. The vocal version of that song, when I would listen to it would leave me feeling kind of strange.