Towards the end of 2013, I started going back to the Eighties/early nineties bands I was into. That meant bringing out albums from Blue Murder, Badlands, Lynch Mob, Whitesnake and Dio. I call the Blue Murder, Badlands and Lynch Mob albums as “The Three Kings”. Each band had a guitar player that either left (or was fired) from a bigger band. Blue Murder had John Sykes post Whitesnake, Badlands had Jake E Lee post Ozzy and Lynch Mob had George Lynch post Dokken.
Dokken didn’t get much traction in Australia so you rarely saw them on the music television shows in Australia. So my first introduction to Dokken was a movie called “A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors” released in 1987. I rarely stayed to watch the end credits of movies, however when that Am power chord to tri tone riff started I remained seated.
“Dream Warriors” is written by George Lynch and Jeff Pilson. That is why Dokken worked and in the end that is why Dokken imploded. They had a trio of great songwriters in George Lynch, Jeff Pilson and Don Dokken. They had two guitar players in George Lynch and Don Dokken. Listen to the live recording “From Conception: Live 1981” to hear Lynch and Dokken trading licks. Jeff Pilson was a multi-instrumentalist, playing bass, guitar and piano, as well as being a very competent singer.
I found the single and purchased it. Side 1 had “Dream Warriors” and as B-sides there was a song called “Back For The Attack” and “Paris Is Burning”. Then I saw George Lynch on the cover of Guitar World. Guitar God was a term used a lot in the Eighties. In 2014, it doesn’t have the same weight as it used to have back in 1987. So I purchased the “Back For The Attack” album and then I went looking for their back catalogue.
So just when Dokken had the world in their hands, unresolved internal conflicts made the members part ways. The internal conflicts stem back from the beginning of Dokken. This is how drummer Mick Brown summed up the conflicts;
“I ran into George Lynch in Northern California. I was real serious about becoming a professional musician, a famous musician a ROCK STAR if you know what I mean and George went along with it. Now George was originally from Southern California and he moved back down there and said “If you really want to do it, this is where you gotta be”. So as soon as I finished High School I raced down to LA and we started chasing our careers there.”
“Then running into Don Dokken, and a few years after that he took some material that George and I had wrote and took it to Germany and pretty much put his name on it, you know what I am saying (laughing) and he got a recording contract. So he called me up to play. I looked over at George and I said George, this guy’s got our music and he’s got a record deal and we were pretty upset about that because he’s got our songs. But then we also thought, it’s kind of an open door so we went along with it. I think probably when people talk about the turmoil in Dokken, that was pretty much the moment where it all started. I remember Don asking us to, if he could take some of our songs over there to try and get something going in Europe and we said “No” (laughing) but he did anyway.”
“So there became the problem right away, but even in spite of that, in spite of the difficulties of the inner workings of the band, we never really had problem making music it was always the personality issues that we seemed to fail at.”
So Dokken ends up imploding and George Lynch formed “Lynch Mob”. This is how bassist, Anthony Esposito words it, in an interview on the Metal-Rules website;
“Everybody picked sides when Dokken broke up; Elektra said “We’re going to stay with George. Don, we’re letting you go, we don’t care.”, so Don went to Geffen. The management company Q Prime said “We’re going to stay with Don. George, you’re free to go.” because they figured Don would get to keep the name Dokken, which he didn’t because the other three guys sued him. When the sides were picked up, Elektra was like “We think George has got something more to offer than Don does, so we’re going to go with him.” and we made “Wicked” and it went gold and Don’s record didn’t do nearly as well, so I guess Bob Krasnow did the right choice. That label was brilliant back then, they had Metallica, Mötley Crue, us, Faster Pussycat, there was like five gold, platinum bands. It was a good label.”
In relation to Elektra being a good label, I am sure Dee Snider and Joe Lynn Turner would have different viewpoints.
If there was any doubt to Lynch’s guitar god status, “Wicked Sensation” cemented it. As good as Lynch is, I always saw Lynch Mob as a band. Oni Logan on vocals steals the show on the recording. He was the perfect voice for Lynch’s first project post Dokken however rumours persisted that his lifestyle got in the way of the live show.
I didn’t even know that Lynch Mob had a new album out or that George Lynch had a new band. It was a school friend of mine that was a mad Dokken fan that told me, because he had older brothers, who had more money, who could afford to buy magazines and so forth. That is how we found out our musical information in 1990. If we had the funds, we would purchase the expensive music magazines or we will stand in the newsagent all day reading them. If we didn’t have funds, then the information was passed down from people who had funds.
In an interview on the Liberty and Justice website this is what Oni Logan said on how he got the gig;
“So here’s the truth, believe it or not: “I wished it.” That’s right, I’m not kidding. You see when you want something so badly, the power and energy that you release has its way of working for you. Thoughts about the recording: I love it! It was probably one of the most exciting times to be in a rock n’ roll band. Think about it. America was rocking.”
By jumping ship to Lynch Mob, Logan walked out on his “Cold Sweat” bandmates who had just secured a major label contract and were so close to recording the debut. “Cold Sweat” was the band that former Keel guitarist Marc Ferrari started up once Keel broke up. The industry at the time was controlled by gatekeepers and Logan’s decision to jump to the Lynch Mob camp made a lot of people angry.
This is what Marc Ferrari had to say on Oni Logan’s departure in an interview on the SleazeRoxx website;
“George Lynch was obviously a higher profile guitarist than me. Oni was promised the moon by George and it was a decision that he made. Yeah it was rather unfortunate for us because he left our band the day we went into the studio to record the debut album. I can’t say that it was the proper thing or the right thing to do because he put a lot of people’s careers on hold while he made that decision. Things have worked out though, I have spoken with Oni since then and I’ve had the opportunity to hang out with George, so everything’s good between us now.
I discovered Oni, not like Columbus discovered America or anything, but he was putting up dry walls in Florida when he came to my attention. He moved out to California with me and he did his first professional demos with me. We did a handful of shows around here showcasing the band. He felt he needed to make that move for his career, obviously Lynch Mob made a great record.”
Another key factor was the addition of a new bassist. During a recent concert performance in 2012, Lynch told the audience that the first bass player in Lynch was Robbie Crane. This is what the actual bass player Anthony Esposito had to say on how he got the gig in an interview on Metal-Rules.com;
“They (Beggars and Thieves) auditioned like 70 bass players and it was down to me and Phil Soussan. He had played with Billy Idol, Jimmy Page and Ozzy and I was 19 at the time and hadn’t played with anybody, so they went with him. And then I got Lynch Mob right after that. That was how I met the girl at Atlantic, because Beggars and Thieves was on Atlantic, so she got me like seven auditions in seven days, it was Lynch Mob, it was Don Dokken, it was Ronnie James Dio, it was like Alice Cooper, There was something like seven top options to choose from.”
“I got everyone and the only one that wasn’t a salary, that was a band member, that was partnership percentage was Lynch Mob, so I went with Lynch Mob. So I did that and we made “Wicked Sensation”. That was a really great time in my life, we released WICKED, my son Tyler was born and we did the first world tour, all in the same year. I knew that we were making a special record and I just kept saying in the back of my head “If this record came out three years earlier, this band would be huge.”, but because we released it the same year that Nirvana, it was done. If that would have come out like Whitesnake’s “1987”, if it had come out three years earlier, Lynch Mob would have been huge.”
Actually Nirvana released “Nevermind” in September 1991 and Lynch Mob released “Wicked Sensation” in October 1990, so that comparison from Esposito is incorrect.
It is a common theme within the hard rock circles that grunge killed off the hard rock movement. That is just an easy way to look at it. The bottom line is this; hard rock was killing itself off. By 1990, the hard rock market was saturated with so many bands, it was overkill. The supply was there, however the demand was shifting. Society was changing. Originally there was Heavy Metal. That then diverged into different genre’s like glam metal, thrash metal, pop metal, hard rock, pop rock, soft rock. Then those genre’s got diluted even more and some merged with other genres. Fans started to gravitate to certain styles of music. In my area there was a split, between the thrash/death metal heads and the rock heads. Once upon a time we where all together, united as the metal militia. Now we had taken up arms against each other.
“Wicked Sensation”, “All I Want”, “Hell Child”, “No Bed of Roses”, “For A Million Years” and “Through These Eyes” steal the show in my opinion.
“Wicked Sensation” and “Hell Child” had Lynch writing the music with Logan the lyrics. “All I Want” had Lynch writing the music with Logan, Esposito and Brown writing the lyrics. “No Bed Of Roses” had Lynch and producer Norman writing the music with Logan the lyrics. “Through These Eyes” had Lynch writing the music, and Logan, Lynch and Esposito writing the lyrics. “For A Million Years” had Lynch writing the music, and Logan and Lynch writing the lyrics.
The credits mentioned above are written against each individual song, however in another area of the CD sleeve after all the production credits finish and just before the thank you’s start it states; “All compositions written and arranged by Lynch Mob.” So who gets credited for what on this album.
This is what Anthony Esposito had to say on the writing of the album;
It was all new material, none of that was ever going to be a Dokken record. George plays the way George plays and there are always little turnarounds that he’ll always throw in. Oni [Logan] is a genius at taking little things, like “Do that little lick, George. Give me that.” and making that the verse or… you’ll hear it in VIOLET’S DEMISE when he did it with Rowan [Robertson]. Oni’s very talented with that; you can hear what Oni did to George. My argument is that George goes around telling everybody that he wrote all the music, listen to every record George did after that and it doesn’t come close. WICKED SENSATION was completely a band effort and the reason why it came out so great is you had [Wild] Mick [Brown], Mick is like the king of the chorus, he writes these big choruses, these hooks, he’s like a Beatle guy. It was all of our colours and I’m the dark guy, I was always like the punk rock guy. I think I brought in the dark textures like “For a Million Years” and “Hell Child” that are like dark, you know, because Dokken wasn’t dark, Dokken was “foofoo”, with a great guitar player. Lynch Mob had none of that, it’s all the elements of the four of us and that made that record so awesome because it wasn’t just one guy writing it all.
Producer, Max Norman was Dimebag’s original choice to produce Pantera’s major label debut and Norman was actually offered the Pantera production gig, however he turned it down to work with Lynch Mob instead. As history would show, Terry Date produced “Cowboys From Hell” and Max Norman produced “Wicked Sensation”.
”Wicked Sensation” is a blues metal boogie with Mick Brown delivering a rattlesnake drum beat over a sleazy tri-tone boogie in C#minor. Oni Logan delivers a sleazy vocal line, dripping in innuendo and continues it was “River Of Love”.
“All I Want” is a real stand out on the first side. It’s got that bluesy 12/8 boogie laid down by Brown and Esposito and a ballsy arena rock chorus that puts Bon Jovi to shame. When the lead break kicks in, its shredalicious. It’s got trills, taps, legato, open string licks, string skipping and a lot of feel.
Side 2 has a few gems. “No Bed Of Roses” is up there as one hell of good melodic rock song. Everything about it is perfect.
The stand out is “For A Million Years”.
In 1990, I was in a rut in relation to my guitar playing. “Wicked Sensation” re-awakened my desire and showed me new ways to play chords, create rhythms and structures. Much in the same way that the “Randy Rhoads Tribute” album became my bible, “Wicked Sensation” was next in my evolution.
http://www.libertynjustice.net/gettoknow_oni.php
http://www.sleazeroxx.com/interviews/marcferrari.shtml
http://dbgeekshow.blogspot.ca/2012/11/wild-mick-brown-talks-t.html?m=1
destroyerofharmony 