Robert Fripp has quipped that he was put off heavy metal when George Lynch tried to “steal his girlfriend”.
The only surviving member of prog rock group King Crimson says the blues stole his heart and he never felt the urge to try out his metal chops because he felt a lot of the acts coming out of Hollywood were phony – and he wasn’t best pleased when the Dokken and Lynch Mob rocker, 67, allegedly tried to flirt with his lover.
Speaking to Guitar Player magazine, the 76-year-old musician – who has been married to fellow music star Toyah Wilcox since 1986 – said: “I more or less decided that I would never develop those kinds of chops.
“For a good while, I sat on my parents’ sofa, playing my guitar and pondering.
“I’d just seen B.B. King – I even got a chance to meet him.
“There was something about the blues that had touched me deeply, because it’s a cry of the soul.
“It felt so authentic, especially when compared to the phoniness that was around at the time.
“I considered all that stuff out of LA to be contaminated by the ethos of Hollywood, and I didn’t want to be a part of it.
“On top of that, George Lynch tried to steal my girlfriend.”