Legendary guitarist George Lynch recently spoke to Anne Erickson of Audio Ink Radio about what it has been like to play select shows around the country with his newly christened touring entity GEORGE LYNCH & THE ELECTRIC FREEDOM. He said: “It’s liberating, actually, to be quite honest with you. To have a new band and a new name and a name that — I mean, just the power of the name, ’cause with the new name, which is GEORGE LYNCH’S ELECTRIC FREEDOM, it really is electric freedom. I didn’t even think of it that way, but [ELECTRIC FREEDOM bassist] Michael Devin and I were were talking the other day on the way home, and we were, like, ‘This really defines the band.’ And it really does. Because we’re plugged in, we do a lot of kind of just off-the-cuff improvisation during our show, which you don’t see very much in rock and roll anymore — not since the ’70s. And we’re big fans of that; that’s what we were raised on. So it’s, I think, more alive and vital than your kind of average thing where you go see a band and they’re playing songs they wrote 35 years ago. And sure, it’s great — you wanna hear the songs, and that’s all good. But these guys have been flogging these songs for decades. I’ve been doing that too. And that’s not what I’m about. I mean, I can do it. But I like to bring the audience another perspective and another dimension to what can happen onstage, and that is the creative moment in real time — experiencing that and witnessing that, and for me to play that and the band to play that… And I think the crowd appreciates that. And not just at the moment, but more in retrospect, when they think about it. They think, ‘Wow, actually, that was pretty cool.’ Every time you come see my band, it’s gonna be different. It’s gonna be different members [and] we’re gonna play different material.”
Asked if there are plans to work on new music with GEORGE LYNCH & THE ELECTRIC FREEDOM, George said: “It’s not on the way in the sense that’s we’re working on it, but we have discussed the idea of doing an EP. We wanna go a little more old school and do something that’s pretty easy for us to make instead of taking on a whole album project with a new band. Let’s just do four songs, and let’s hand one out to the fans for free and just get people into it and put a lot of work into those four songs and make it easy, so it’s not this big giant burden for us. And if the EP blows up, which I think it will, then we’ll do — when we’ve been together a little longer, we’ll do a real record. But I definitely believe we need to document what this band is, ’cause it’s very, very cool. It’s a power trio. Michael Devin singing and playing bass, and Jason Sutter is on drums. He’s been in a lot of bands — he’s currently in Cher and he’s been in FOREIGNER and a bunch of other bands. He’s a monster and a sweet guy. And it’s such a cool dynamic with the three of us. It’s just easy. There’s no big-headed egos going on, and it’s not complicated. It’s just the three of us. Everybody’s smart, everybody’s kind, everybody works hard, we’re all very capable, and we’re all shooting for the same thing. So it’s pretty bulletproof. And we also know, on the other hand, it’s not gonna last forever. When Cher calls Jason up to go back on the road, I can’t really compete with that. It’s always gonna be a bit of a revolving door, and it’s unfortunate in some ways, but I’ve learned to accept that and kind of actually just work with that. It’s inevitable, so why not accept it and make it a feature.”
Seven months ago, Lynch offered a lengthy explanation for why he was ending LYNCH MOB during an interview with George Dionne of Metal Express Radio. Addressing questions about why it took him three decades to call it quits with LYNCH MOB, George said: “When we first formed the band in ’89, the name had sort of already been around. While I was in DOKKEN, it’s what I called our little group of guitar fans — I had picks made; it was kind of a little subculture within DOKKEN. When we started working on developing and building the band after DOKKEN broke up, that was just the name that we always thought we’d use, ’cause it was a perfect fit — it’s my name, and it describes it pretty well. And, of course, the negative connotations were always there, and I was aware of ’em, but not as aware as I probably should have been. [Laughs]
“I had made numerous attempts over the decades to kind of let that name go and had walked that back for multiple reasons — usually because of business considerations,” he continued. “For instance, if you try to go out on a tour and not use the name, promoters aren’t gonna be happy with you changing it. People aren’t gonna know who you are. They’re not gonna show up, because what’s THE GEORGE LYNCH EXPERIENCE, or whatever you call it. Or record labels are not interested, because it’s a brand that they can count on and sell a certain many albums or whatever.
“For instance, the LYNCH MOB record ‘Smoke This’ that came out, I think, in ’99 or 2000, that was not supposed to be a LYNCH MOB record; that really wasn’t anything to do with LYNCH MOB. At the end of the day, after the record was done and we were delivering it to the label, they insisted on using that name as insurance. And if I hadn’t agreed to that, we wouldn’t have had a record. That’s the kind of pressure I’m talking about.
“But then, with the onset of everything that’s happened in the last year, I didn’t have that kind of pressure anymore,” George added. “I could take it or leave it at this point. And I didn’t really feel comfortable with it; I didn’t feel comfortable with the name. ‘Cause I’m a very progressive person politically, and it just so flies in the face of everything I believe in, and it makes it hard. It makes it hard to have relationships with people and explain yourself, and I got tired of rationalizing it. I think the music is bigger than that, and it’s had a great run.
“Another reason, too, is the band fell apart again. The band has fallen apart so many times, I can’t even count. And it was just, like, ‘No more Oni [Logan, vocals], no more Brian Tichy [drums], no more this guy, no more that guy. Oh, great. Now what do I do?’ It’s, like, ‘Okay, build another band from scratch, call it LYNCH MOB?’ No. How about just build something new? It gives me a lot more freedom to basically play anything I want live… I can go out and play everything from my catalog — new, old, covers, jams, you name it, and go deep and have fun and change it up every night.”
Oni first hooked up with LYNCH MOB in 1990, but exited the group after the release of its first album, only to rejoin the outfit in the late 2000s.
Logan is featured on five of LYNCH MOB‘s eight albums, including 1990’s “Wicked Sensation”, as well as 2009’s “Smoke And Mirrors”, 2014’s “Sun Red Sun”, 2015’s “Rebel” and 2017’s “The Brotherhood”.
In August 2020, LYNCH MOB celebrated the 30th anniversary of “Wicked Sensation” with a special limited print/deluxe edition of the album. “Wicked Sensation Reimagined” features re-worked and re-recorded versions of the LP’s classic songs, and was made available via Rat Pak Records.
