Lynch and Dokken trade jibes over debut

Don Dokken has hit out at former bandmate George Lynch over claims that the singer “destroyed” Dokken’s debut album.

On separate episodes of The Classic Metal Show, Lynch and Dokken trade barbs over Dokken’s 1981 debut Breaking The Chains. Lynch says he and the rest of the band were “sent home” after recording their parts, only for the frontman to remix the entire thing.

But in response, Dokken insists Breaking The Chains was a solo project and that he was the only official member of the group at the time.

Lynch says: “I did like it when we originally recorded it, but then Don got ahold of it and destroyed it. He basically sent us home from Europe and said, ‘OK guys, we’re done. I’m just going to stay back and hang out with my girlfriend.’

“What he did was he stayed in the studio when we were gone and had his way with the record, which was pump up all the vocals, take all my guitars out, destroy the mix. It just sounded weak and wimpy. It just killed it.

“It was actually pretty muscular and pretty tough when we were in the studio. It sounded so good. It was the first record I’d ever done, so we were committed to making a statement. Quite honestly, the sound was just unbelievable.

“Then when it was all done, he did what he did to it and he killed it. It’s very hard for me to listen to because of that, because I knew what it was and nobody will ever hear that unfortunately.”

On a later episode of The Classic Metal Show, Dokken slammed his former guitarist, insisting he must be “high.”

Dokken adds: “I guess George forgot that when we did Breaking The Chains, he wasn’t in the band. He must be smoking something. When I did Breaking The Chains, it was a solo record deal. George was not in the band. Mick was not in the band.

“It was a solo album, and the album came out originally in Germany, and it was called Don Dokken Breaking The Chains. Now, George – I asked him to be in the band. He said no. I asked Mick if he wanted to be in the band. He said no. He was paid $2500 to play on the record and that’s it.

“He had nothing to do with Dokken. He wasn’t in the band. He’d just come to Germany. We did a little tour. I paid him. He went back. He thought he was going to join Ozzy. That didn’t work out. So he basically had nowhere to go, no band, and he was broke.

“That’s when he came back and said, ‘I want to be in the band.’ To say that I did anything behind his back, I don’t know what that means because he wasn’t in the band. He had nothing to do with Dokken. The guy is high.”

Dokken recently announced they had split with bassist Sean McNabb and brought in Mark Boals as his replacement.

Lynch is working with former Stryper frontman Michael Sweet on a new project called Sweet & Lynch. Their debut album titled Only To Rise launches on January 27 via Frontiers Music.

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.