George Lynch: Keeping It Real or Rewriting History?
In a new interview with Robert Edwards of Talkin' Bout Rock, legendary guitarist George Lynch (DOKKEN, LYNCH MOB) spoke about the 1989 breakup of the classic DOKKEN lineup. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "The truth of the matter is, and I said this many, many times, and I'm not saying it in any kind of disparaging way, but the fact is that Don [Dokken, DOKKEN frontman] really wanted to control everything and have the lion's share of the money. And that's really what it all came down to. When you boil it down to its foundational element, most basic thing, that's what he was trying to accomplish. And he let us know that. And he got his own separate management and then he had his own separate record deal and he was trying to fire us, but we couldn't do that — he couldn't do that because we all owned the band. So, he disbanded the band, or whatever, or left or whatever. He tried to fire us, but he couldn't do that, so he just started his own thing and then sued us. So we countersued, and the end result was nothing. Everybody just went their own way, I guess. But, really, everybody lost. We all did."
George continued: "We've all done wonderful things [since then] and very satisfying and gratifying musically. But what we all gave up was the sure thing, which was what we had all worked for, which was we did the build. We did it the right way with the help of our incredible management, Q Prime — Cliff Burnstein and Peter Mensch at Q Prime, who managed QUEENSRŸCHE, METALLICA, even THE ROLLING STONES and other huge bands at the time. And we had that power of that whole machine guiding us. And we did the right records all at the right time. The timing was perfect. And on a wonky business level, everything was primed for us to pretty much turn the corner."
Lynch added: "So that's what every professional musician wants, at our level, is to get to that point where you have this negotiating power with the labels and promoters and others, but especially the labels, to have leverage to where you get the deal. And those deals last for many, many years. And then you go to another level — financially, security, music security. You have a home and you're gonna be established and it's gonna carry you through the rest of your life. And that's the point we worked towards, and we were on the cusp of signing that deal with Warner Brothers/Elektra."
Elaborating on the reason he didn't see eye to eye with Don when it came to DOKKEN's business affairs, George said: "I had insisted that all throughout the band's career, when we were intact, I was insisting that we be four for one, one for all, quarter splits on everything, regardless of who wrote what, regardless of anything. I wrote the most music and I suffered the most for that, if you wanna call it suffering, but I gave up the most. And I still believed in that, 'cause I thought you get the best results that way because you're letting the people that are contributing the most important music, you're letting them do that and you're not forcing people that are contributing inferior music to feel compelled to insist on their contribution musically to the album because they wanna make more money. This way you're paying the weaker writers to stay home, and they get just as much money. And I thought that was a good idea. And plus it was just fair. We'd all been out there for 10 years busting our ass. We all came up from the same place. We all played together in the garages and the kegger parties and the sock hops, and we all did our time. So, just because one of us has got the last name or one of us has more talent or identifiable style or something, the other person shouldn't suffer for that. So I was very comfortable with that, and Don was not. And that was our problem. That was his problem with me. I didn't have any problem with him other than the fact that he wasn't comfortable us with being fair and sticking to the plan and the agreement that we all worked under for those 10 years. And then when it came down time for the big payday that we all worked for, he wanted to take it all and pretty much kick us to the side, off to the side. And it's not what good people do. You know what I'm saying? So I lost a lot of respect for him, and I fought him on that. And here we are today."
Lynch concluded: "DOKKEN could have been a much bigger band — could have been on the MÖTLEY CRÜE level [or] BON JOVI level, which is a whole other level. We all would've been pretty set for life. And that got stolen from us, because he took the gamble to take it all."
