In a recent chat with Ultimate Guitar, George Lynch talked about how weightlifting changed his guitar playing.
“Oh, it definitely did, yeah,” the guitarist replied when asked if weightlifting affected his guitar-playing ability. “I mean, in some small ways, I think it obviously made me stronger. So I think that was beneficial to a certain extent.”
He continued, “But also, I was starting to get these really massive cramps in my forearms. Static cramps that wouldn’t go away. And I would get them when I’d try to play anything extended. And I had to try to do different things to try to alleviate that.”
“But, yeah, it was a byproduct of that. All that lifting, it really made it impossible for me sometimes to play,” the rocker admitted. “Any kind of extended solo, my left arm would just cramp up. And my hand would be like a claw. It was frozen. It was really actually kind of scary. And, yeah, not good. I was definitely overdoing it.”
Dokken split up in March 1989 because Don Dokken and Lynch had personal and creative disagreements. Don also wanted to replace the rest of the band before getting a new record deal. “Here’s the things that happens in a band… especially in our era, in the ’80s, and I don’t know, even now probably… But if you have a record deal, or a master deal, for a certain amount of time, and you have increasing record sales, and then you get to the point where the deal ends, your managers come in and renegotiate and you get paid,” Lynch said about the breakup.
He also noted, “Then you’re set for life — possibly. That’s when everything changes. That’s what you worked for for those however many years. This is where all your… Everything you’ve invested in time and energy, you get paid back for. And the singer [Don Dokken], at that point, decided that he wanted it all, he didn’t wanna share it with [the rest of] us, and he let us know that.”
“So after this [Monsters of Rock] tour [in 1988 with Van Halen, Metallica and Scorpions], where we were gonna go out and play in front of hundreds of thousands of people and get paid lots of money, I’m gonna try to take the whole thing and run with it, and you guys are gonna get left in the dust, and if you’re lucky, I might hire you [to play in my band]. And you have to go on stage like that,” Lynch added.
Earlier this year, the guitarist discussed a potential Dokken reunion and said he would only return if everyone got an equal share. He revealed that the band has received good offers for touring and recording, but they often fall apart because one person wants more than the others. He believes a reunion is unlikely to happen.