Article and Photos by: Jim Balentine
Warrendale, PA — George Lynch has been hailed as a “guitar hero” for decades from his early playing in RATT in the early 80s to his most famous stint as the lead guitar player in Dokken and his longtime project Lynch Mob among other side projects. 2024 will be the “final ride” of Lynch Mob, however, as the 70 year old musician has decided to end touring while still on top of his game. He began the 2nd part of the final tour at Jergels on February 1st.
To say that Lynch is on top of his game is an understatement.. since his first riffs with Dokken in 1983 Lynch like fine wine gets better with age as his guitar playing skills are as good as ever using his talented fingers to play the familiar solos that we all grew up with to love, and had a great Setlist, mixing in Dokken and Lynch mob Classics for over 1.5 hours. The band itself has been a revolving door of musicians, and Lynch is the first to admit that, but this group he has now sounds like they have been playing together for years. Bassist Jaron Gulino from Tantric and Heaven’s Edge drummer Jimmy D’Anda who began with the “bulletboys” in the 80s and new lead singer Gabriel Colon put new life into all the classics played and in this writers opinion they sound better with this group than they do from the current Dokken lineup.
The band opened with one of the very first dokken songs, “Paris is burning” before rolling into 2 lynch mob classics “dancing of the dogs” and “river of love”. A personal all-time favorite Dokken song “the hunter” came next, and George played it to perfection! “Time after Time,” “For a million years,” “When lightning strikes again,” “21st century man,” “When heaven comes down,” and “Rain” would provide the 500+ faithful with a musical trip down memory lane with them singing along to every word.
The Dokken classics “Mr. Scary” including a great George Lynch solo and “It’s not Love” ended the set with fans screaming for more. The band would come out for the “encore” ..“Wicked Sensation” from the first Lynch Mob album and by the end of the song, George had a great big smile and thanked the town of Pittsburgh for all of the wonderful memories they gave him over the past decades.
The band will hit Australia in mid February and will return to Florida in California in March. Be sure to catch them in a town near you before it’s all over.