As recently reported, George Lynch is once again touring under the Lynch Mob band name. The move comes two years after the musician had made the decision to move on from the longtime band name, calling it “problematic,” and stating at the time that he felt it was “inexcusable” to continue using it. In a new interview, the guitarist reveals why he’s now deciding to revert to his former band name after adopting Electric Freedom as his new band moniker in recent years.
The subject came up while Lynch was doing an interview with Full In Bloom (as heard below). When asked about the decision to switch back, the guitarist explained, “[Lynch Mob is] just a brand I’d established for decades, obviously — over three decades. Nothing’s perfect, and I’ve gotta just live with the fact that it has some negative connotations that I probably have to continue explaining for the rest of my life, and I don’t mind doing that. But it is a brand that I built, and I’m just gonna stick with it. As far as a marketing thing and a brand thing and a business thing and a working thing, and it keeps my band guys working and it keeps the fans happy, it makes sense.”
The guitarist continued, “I really felt, when I adopted Electric Freedom, that I was really going against the grain more than keeping the old name. I really felt a lot more resistance than I’d ever felt having Lynch Mob; that was actually the reality of it. Nobody really liked it. And I didn’t like living with that; it was just kind of uncomfortable. It’s, like, ‘Okay, well, we’ve just gotta put up with George’s decision here to do this, but nobody agrees with it. We’re not comfortable with it.’ It has a sort of disingenuous ring to it. As much as my motives were pure — I felt honest — it just never caught on, on all kinds of levels.”
In 2020, Lynch explained his decision to move on from the name, stating, “The name itself, of course, has always been problematic, and now it’s inexcusable to keep the name. So, things have just sort of all conspired. A lot of different events triangulated to this point where it just makes sense on every single level to just let it go and wrap it up with and nice neat bow with this record and move on.”
When asked if he had received pushback on the name in the past, Lynch stated, “I may have had a few in the 35 years it’s been around, but I’d say probably the most negative criticism I’ve had of it came from me. So I was my own worst critic with the name, especially in later years. I got a lot more criticism with Electric Freedom.”
The guitarist then later spoke of the relationships built with the brand name, commenting, “It’s a brand. I mean, nobody wants Coke to change their recipe. Just stay the same, and that’s what you built over the years. Why would you…? ‘Why would you change it’ is a rhetorical question. Why I’m probably not more successful in some ways in my career is because I followed my aspirations musically rather than sometimes be smart about just sticking to the plan. [Laughs]”
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