GREAT WHITE ARE!

Paul Suter

“Whatever happened to Great White?” has been a recurring question over the last couple of years, in fact virtually ever since they toured Britain with Whitesnake in early 1984 and then trekked across America with Judas Priest, winning reactions and reports ranging from merely good to great wherever they went. Then silence. Rumors surfaced of line-up changes, of being dropped by their label; now they’re back, and, indeed with a new drummer.

Evidently there’s a story to tell; right now Great White seem to be in a very positive position, with healthy support backing up what is, in fact, a new record deal. The band had been signed originally to Capitol subsidiary EMI America, parting with them at the end of 1984; after a period gathering themselves up for a new assault, they self-financed a new album, Shot In The Dark, which won immediate and heavy local support upon its release. The single culled from the album—“Face The Day”—even hit number one on L.A.’s major KLOS radio station. Capitol was soon in hot pursuit of the band.

Now the new deal has been done, the album is out on Capitol, and the band is seemingly on a roll again; vocalist Jack Russell and bassist Lome Black were duly tracked down to fill in the details.

• • •

“I think the touring we did was a real eye-opener for us—we’d hoped for a wild party on the road, but it was an even better time, and we’d never even been out of California before,” Jack noted. “We came back feeling all ready to go again, but then unfortunately—but now we realize fortunately—things didn’t work out quite that way.”

A diplomatic veil is drawn over the events leading to a mutually decided-split with EMI America, with band and management smiling enigmatically and saying nothing. Most outfits will do anything to get—and then to keep—a major deal, but Great White actually bailed out without hesitation. Surely there must have been some great master plan behind such an apparently reckless move?

Alan Niven, both manager and friend to the band, smiled philosophically and noted “Yes, there was a strategy, but let’s just say we were let down.”

Suddenly, Great White had been thrown headlong into a pretty scary situation—a reversal from major-stadium touring and a bigtime record deal right down to ground zero would knock anybody’s confidence. But they took it all in their stride, it seems...

GREAT WHITE ARE!

“People thought we were washed up, and when you hear that all around you, it’s difficult to deal with. ” —Jack Russell

‘‘There are always times when you get depressed,” Jack admitted, ‘‘but it was never enough to make us give up.”

‘‘We weren’t scared,” Lome insisted. ‘‘We just concentrateo on doing the best we could, being as good as we could, until somebody caught on. It took 18 months—that’s a lot of fucking rehearsal time!

“I guess we kept ourselves pretty quiet, didn’t do a lot of gigs—after all, only one of us has got a car, so it was pretty difficult to get out to the clubs. Plus, it’s real hard trying to get all the gear into the back of a Volkswagen...”

Even without such practical difficulties, nothing would have been easy for the band anyway; the metal/rock boom which had sucked in Great White along with the likes of Ratt, Motley Crue and Quiet Riot was over. Jack Russell tends not to agree that they were ever a metal band of the same type anyway, but the fact remains that if that’s how the record companies and the rest of the media see you, then that’s how you’re going to get treated. It was surely a tough time for a band perceived as metal, whatever the accuracy of that perception.

‘‘I never really considered us a metal band—I wouldn’t say that we’re absolutely not a metal band, but I wouldn’t want to stick us into that small, specific category. We’re a traditional rock band. I was weaned on the likes of Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith, and they’re bands which go beyond categorization. That’s the way I hope we’ll be considered in years to come. But we were stuck in that situation, with that label—it was just something that happened. But now we’re on our way again.

“We just kept going, got our heads down and kept on writing songs. The new album may sound different in approach, but we just write songs that we like. There was no decision to change our style of music and if there’s been any move away from what we were doing, it was a natural thing.

“The EMI America album represented what we were at the time, but we’ve progressed. Plus, with our new drummer (Audie Desbrow), we’re able to do a lot of things we just weren’t capable of before. Gary (Holland) had just one beat he could keep!

“We’re not going Top 40, don’t worry about that—we’re just growing.”

The current stage of development is represented by Shot In The Dark, a project financed by band and management, and initially distributed by indie Greenworld, before Capitol came into the picture and re-released the album under their own logo (and featuring a slight remix of the “Face The Day’’ track, for all you trivia freaks and collectors who need to know such things). The record not only marks the debut of Audie Desbrow, but also a tentative additional member in guitar/keyboards player Michael Lardie. who can be fleetingly glimpsed in the “Face The Day” video

“We’re not about to turn into a keyboards band overnight. ” —Lome Black

“Don’t worry, we’re not about to turn into a keyboards band overnight,” laughed Lome. “He’s on a six-year probation!”

The album is less blatantly metallic than its predecessor, giving the band room to demonstrate something more than sheer animal power—“Hell, I didn’t want 10 more versions of Stick It,”’ laughed Jack. “I wanted to prove that I can actually sing”—and in “Face The Day,” the band have adopted an old Angel City favorite and turned it into a barrier-breaking single release which secured unprecedented success with the hardline, bigtime radio stations in Los Angeles The song enjoyed simultaneous heavy rotation on all the major stations, at a time when most major acts on major labels couldn’t get all three at once But how does the band feel about making their breakthrough with somebody else’s song?

“I don’t look on it as somebody else’s song,” Jack explained. “Although it’s written by somebody else, we started doing it because it felt so right for us, seemed to fit our situation perfectly, both musically and lyrically. Especially lyrically.

“It wasn’t a song that we’d heard before, it was never a big hit or played on the radio a lot,” Gary continued, “so we just re-recorded it and adopted it as our own song. It’s got the right attitude. Plus, it’s in A, so it’s easy to play. No, don’t print that, I was only joking!”

Certainly things seem to have taken on a positive face for the band now, with the radio success and new deal coming through to herald, hopefully, the start of something big. A new wave of support for Great White is rolling through Los Angeles and hopefully ready to steamroll through the rest of the world in doublequick time. But as manager Niven noted, “six months ago you could have got dead flowers for Great White’s funeral from anybody. ”

“People thought we were washed up,” noted Jack, “and when you hear people all around you saying that, it’s difficult to deal with. But we just said ‘fuck it,’ we believed in ourselves and what we were doing and just kept going. We were fighting for our asses, there was always one brick wall after another—but if you’re determined enough, you can get through anything.”

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“The phone calls from the family had started again,” laughed Lome. “When are you going to get a proper job?”

“Our relationship with our manager did a lot to help us through,” Jack emphasized, keen to stress their survivalist determination. “It’s personal as well as business—he’s a real friend who believes in what we’re doing, rather than being an old businessman behind a desk, and he was real encouraging all the way through.”

“He gets involved with us on every level, we-re really all friends together. He helped out with some of the lyrics on the new album—you’ll see his name in the credits there.”

• • •

But the band don’t wish to dwell too much on the trial and tribulations they have endured—now is the time for optimism, and a new sense of excitement as their second chance for success opens up before them, beckoning like a large pearl ready to be plucked from its shell.

‘‘Hard work and determination is what it’s all about,” opined Lome. ‘‘You’ve got to keep hammering on that door, and eventually it’s going to open. But the work itself, especially the touring, is a reward in itself.”

‘‘Sure the road is supposed to be a time for going wild, but for me, the real high is the audience,” enthused Jack. ‘‘Getting wasted is fine, but the absolute ultimate high is the energy you get back from an audience. I don’t put myself on a big pedestal as ‘Jack Russell, Superstar,’ I feel as much a part of the audience as they are—they’re people just like you or me. Great White don’t intend to set themselves apart from the audiencehell, we just want to have a good time with all our friends. And that’s who our friends are.”