GEORGE LYNCH: DON DOKKEN Has No Conscience

Former DOKKEN guitarist George Lynch has hit out at Don Dokken for using Lynch's name to promote the band's tours and attempting to conceal the fact that Lynch is no longer in the group in an effort to pass off DOKKEN's current lineup as the "original band." When asked by Chris Akin from Pitriff.com if he felt that what Don Dokken was doing by touring without him or bassist Jeff Pilson in the band was truly DOKKEN, or if it should be called the DON DOKKEN PROJECT, George responded, "[Don's] not an ethical human being, and I guess he's doing whatever he can do to get away with whatever he's gotta get away with. He pretty much counts on the fact that people aren't gonna go after him legally. But, you know, at this point, I am done expending… or have not spent any energy on negative stuff — it's water under the bridge. He can count on that, and that's fine. But I think that I have enough talent and enough to offer that I can do just fine without taking something away from somebody else. He's taking stuff away from me, on a lot of levels, by using my songs, using my name… He's been out there consistently for… God, seven years now… or five or six years now, promoting tours with using my name. I mean, this last WHITESNAKE tour… national ads… ads that were being put up regionally on VH1, the whole backsplash of the ad was an image of me. And he's consistently tried to promote it as being the original band, with me in the band – keeping it quiet that I'm not in the group. And it's just… that's not fair. Not only is it unfair to the fans, it's unfair to me — it's unfair to both of us. And it's just… People go there expecting to see me. Even my own relatives call up and go, 'Oh, I see you're playing in town.' [And I go], 'I am not. I haven't been in the band in, let's see… five, six years.' But you know… He would like people not to know that. It's a chicken-shit [thing to do]. But it's the way he operates, so… I'd much rather be me than him, so that's the bottom line. He's gotta live with himself and sleep with himself at night. You know, I never really understood those kinds of people — people that don't seem to have a conscience. Maybe they can live with themselves — obviously, they can — so maybe it takes all kinds of people to make the world go around, so I can't labor over that. I'm just gonna keep doing what I do, and keep my eye focused on what I need to accomplish, which is building LYNCH MOB up and L/P up to where we need to be, and doing as much work as possible, and being as productive as possible, and keeping it as fun as possible, and just keep putting out those records is gonna get us closer and closer to the ideal that has been in the back of my mind since I've been a kid, which is, to me, the ultimate guitar solo, the ultimate song, the ultimate groove."

A Windows Media audio file containing George's statement above can be downloaded at this location.

(Thanks: Chris Akin / Pitriff.com)