Rock Revolt spoke with guitarist George Lynch about his current project KXM, with with dUg Pinnick (Kings X) and Ray Luzier (Korn) and his former band, Dokken. Excerpts from the interview appear below.
Rock Revolt: Is there any chance KXM, [Lynch’s project ], will be doing any touring to support the album?
George Lynch: Yeah. We are touring, I think it s going to be in July and August (part of those two months.) The idea behind what we want to do is sort of do like an unannounced tour of specific dates all around the world which we then film and record, and put those out at a later date for people who were not able to go see the band live, to experience the band live in that context, because we are limited in the amount of time we can tour, at least for now. I like the idea of the secret, magical mystery tour I heard about Paul McCartney doing in the Wings days, when he would just show up in a van, show up at a college or a school or something and say , “Hey! I m Paul McCartney we just want to set up and play!” I think that’s beautiful. It’s not the way we’ll do it exactly, but something kind of mysterious. We create this mystique around the band where you kind of have to search and reach out and discover things about us, without having us shoved down your throat.
Rock Revolt: Is there any likelihood that there would ever be a Dokken reunion?
George Lynch: Well, it’s always a possibility. What it really comes down to is Don being agreeable to doing equal splits financially. That’s been a stumbling block all along. Despite all the other obstacles that we have for a reunion happening, that is actually the 800-pound gorilla problem. He feels he’s entitled to special financial treatment if we do that, which is ludicrous and was never the way the band was built. The band was always built as a shared band, and I think that’s one of the reasons it survived as long as it did and why it worked. The only person who ended up not liking that arrangement was Don and it is really heavily why the band broke up. We were up for re-negotiating our contract with Elektra in the late 80′s, which is a wonderful position to be in (that’s when you get paid and you’d kind of be set for life). But we all worked many, many years to get to that point, and Don decided, ”Well, you know what? I gotta take a chance here, and I want it all.” He wanted us to be hired guns, and he would get the multi-million dollar re-negotiated deal. That’s what it was all about. And that’s still what it’s about. So, unless he can come around and say, “Hey guys! We’re all important. We all worked equally hard. There’s enough money to go around – don’t need to be greedy here, just split it up equal, put that aside, put it in the file cabinet. Let s go to work and make a good record.” I have aspirations, but I don’t have any sense that it’s really going to ever happen. I wouldn’t be opposed; I would like to see it happen. But honestly, just to have some nice closure, make a nice bookend to our career, and make the fans happy and make a little bit-a-dough, it would be nice to see it work in a healthy way after all we ve been through, but I’m not holding my breath.
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source: rockrevoltmagazine.com
39 Responses
Something tells me that pilson’s gig w/foreigner is a better gig..same can be said for mick brown (ted nugent)…plus it seems that the drama may be less…
A good point I was about to make with Jeff and Mick. Foreigner is constantly touring and playing stadium gigs, so I would imagine Jeff is doing ok with money right now. Mick doesn’t have a bad gig with Nugent either. Don had already alluded to the idea the last reunion attempt a few years ago didn’t work out due to Jeff’s Foreigner commitments. Before the money can even be sorted out, it would take some doing getting all these guys on the same page with scheduling at this point. It’s awesome George would be up to doing a reunion, but he would have to put his dozen or so various projects at any given time on the back burner. It’s a shame all these guys can’t put their collective energy and focus in a reunion since they’ll never get a better opportunity than now with the momentum and interest of classic hard rock and metal. Beyond these things, Don would be crazy not to do an even split with money. He could go from the current lineup playing biker rallies in corn fields to being a major draw in festivals and headlining in some of the smaller, but more prominent venues for the genre out there.
I dont get this “its not about the money its about the music” crap? People, this isnt a garage band…these arent 4 guys smoking pot and playing music while their parents are out of town…this is a professional band! It is about the money..only bcuz don is the money grubber….if the $$$ was split equally there would be no problem…sounds like don ton wants to be the metal version of glen frey?
sounds like KISS all over again
Shut up
I love Dokken, but is there really a market for a Dokken reunion?
You asked the right question. NO there isn’t! They were never even big enough in their prime to headline theaters in most markets. Most casual rock fans couldn’t name a single Dokken song.
True, Not really
Theses guys had something really special with Dysfunctional… Was a great album, although grunge was very in then. They could have really made that band something special. But it will never work with these guys, There egos are to big!