George Lynch is an American guitarist born on September 28, 1954, in Spokane, Washington, widely regarded as one of the most influential and technically accomplished heavy metal guitarists of the 1980s. He grew up in California and picked up the guitar at age 10, eventually cutting his teeth on the Sunset Strip in the late 1970s with a band called The Boyz — whose sound drew close enough comparisons to Van Halen that a demo recording circulated as a purported pre-fame Van Halen tape. His trajectory crossed paths with some of the era's defining moments before he ever recorded a major album: Lynch auditioned twice for the lead guitarist role in Ozzy Osbourne's band — first in 1979, when he lost the position to the late Randy Rhoads, and again in 1982 following Rhoads' tragic death in a plane crash. Rhoads himself had been a fan of Lynch's playing, and when Randy landed the Ozzy gig, his first call for a substitute to take over his teaching position at his mother's Musonia music school was George Lynch. "I won the consolation prize," Lynch has said. "Randy got to tour with Ozzy — and I got to teach at his mom's school." Lynch auditioned again in 1982 but lost out a second time, this time to Jake E. Lee.
Those near-misses gave way to something more enduring. Lynch joined Dokken in the early 1980s and across the band's three platinum albums — Tooth and Nail (1984), Under Lock and Key (1985), and Back for the Attack (1987) — became one of the defining voices on the electric guitar in hard rock. His playing was precise without being clinical, aggressive without being chaotic, and melodically sophisticated in ways that separated him from the pure shred school. His compositional instincts were most clearly demonstrated on "Mr. Scary" — an instrumental track from Back for the Attack that earned Dokken a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Instrumental and gave Lynch the nickname that has followed him ever since. The creative and personal tension between Lynch and vocalist Don Dokken, always combustible, reached a breaking point in 1989 when the band dissolved.
Out of those ashes Lynch formed Lynch Mob in 1989, bringing along Dokken drummer Mick Brown and recruiting vocalist Oni Logan. The debut album Wicked Sensation (1990) was a critical and commercial success, showcasing a blues-influenced, heavier and more expansive version of Lynch's guitar voice. Lynch Mob released two albums in their initial run before Lynch stepped back to record his first solo album, Sacred Groove (1993). A full original-lineup Dokken reunion followed in 1994, producing Dysfunctional (1995) and Shadowlife (1997) before creative tensions resurfaced and Lynch departed again. He has since remained in near-constant motion — releasing albums with Lynch Mob in multiple reunion configurations, collaborating with Dokken bassist Jeff Pilson on the Lynch/Pilson project, participating in the supergroup KXM with bassist Doug Pinnick of King's X and Korn drummer Ray Luzier, forming The End Machine with Pilson, Mick Brown, and vocalist Robert Mason as a deliberate return to the classic Dokken sound, and building the Mr. Scary Guitars brand of hand-crafted custom instruments.
Across a career spanning more than four decades, Lynch has recorded over fifty albums and toured the world many times over. He is ranked number 47 on Guitar World's list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. He remains one of the most recognizable endorsees of ESP Guitars, a relationship that dates to the Dokken years and has produced some of the most visually distinctive guitars in rock history. Wayne Dennon photographed George Lynch as part of an archive built around the players who defined what hard rock guitar could sound like — and few players defined that more completely, or more memorably, than Lynch during his peak years with Dokken and beyond.
