In a new conversation with Cobras & Fire Podcast, former Dokken guitarist George Lynch talked about the early days, Gene Simmons, Dokken, and more.
He was asked about his former band The Boys, where they played a show for Kiss bassist Gene Simmons:
“Yeah, he made us change our name. He was just like, ‘All your names s*ck, you need new names.’ So he gave us all new names.
“I became Adam Wolf – actually, the singer became Adam Wolf, I became John Lynx. I think Mick or the bass player was Nikki Thunders – I think Mick was Nikki Thunders. And the bass player was Trevor Roxx.
“And that lasted for a couple of days, and we changed our names to our real names.”
Asked more:
Did you have any run-ins with Gene after Dokken kind of made it and talked about it?
“Yeah, we did a freaking tour with them. I did read some – I don’t normally read rock biographies, but I did read the Van Halen one.
“And there was a thing in there where Gene just made a really quick mention about us being the band that he actually came to see a second time with Ace [Frehley].
“And he talked about signing us. He didn’t really discuss that in the book, which was the case. Unfortunately, Van Halen came out after us, and they just shifted gears and got Van Halen, but his mention in the book was, ‘Yeah, Exciter was on that too and they s*cked.’ That’s all he said.
“I think the first time he saw us we might have been The Boyz, and he liked us and talked to us, we were playing Starwood, and I think by that time we changed our name to Exciter and got a different singer.” […]