A hard road
Great White founder Russell puts tragedy behind him, continues to rock
Ten years after 100 fans died in a nightclub fire started by his show’s pyrotechnics, Great White founder Jack Russell is ready to move on.
A lifelong fisherman who lives on a boat docked off the Southern California coast, Jack Russell, founder and lead vocalist for ’80s metal band Great White, knows better than most that a shark that stops moving dies.
“There was a time when I was thinking about hanging it up and going on disability, and my wife talked me out of it,” says Russell of the one time he thought about giving up on music. “She said, ‘Jack, are you really ready just to fish every day of your life? You’re going to be happy doing that?’ Nah, I would be miserable.”
After a decade of tragedy and tribulations that would have broken most men, Russell somehow keeps on moving even if some people wish he wouldn’t. On Monday he brings the latest incarnation of the band he founded in 1982, now formally retitled Jack Russell’s Great White after a protracted legal battle, to Rockhouse Live, the city’s new hard-rock music venue located in Raleigh.
In the weird, twisted soap opera that is heavy metal, Great White’s storyline is one of the saddest. Founded by Russell and his childhood friend, guitarist Mark Kendall — the band’s name is, according to Russell, a nod to his love for shark fishing and his ex-partner’s pallor — the group emerged in the middle of the decade as one of the stars of music video-fueled hair metal explosion. They enjoyed ubiquitous hits such as “Rock Me” and “Once Bitten, Twice Shy.”
In the ’90s, Great White’s fortunes waned with the popularity of the genre in the face of grunge and other music trends, but the band continued to make major-label records and tour through the decade. By 2001, though, the members needed a break. Russell and Kendall made solo records.
In 2002, Russell put the band back together for a club tour, and in February 2003, that tour brought them to the Station, a nightclub in West Warwick, RI. Moments into the band’s opening number, their pyrotechnics started a fire that engulfed the club, killing 100 people and injuring 230 more.
In the aftermath, the band’s manager and the club’s owners were convicted for their involvement in the tragedy. More than $175 million, including a $1 million settlement from the band’s insurance company and larger settlements from Anheuser-Busch as the maker of the club’s sound insulation, was paid out to families of the victims.
Following the fire, Great White somehow stumbled along. It would be Russell’s personal struggles with substance dependency and the health problems arising from it that would ultimately tear the band apart. In 2010, he suffered a perforated bowel that left him in a coma. When he awoke, his band had dropped him and taken the rights to the name.
The next year he formed Jack Russell’s Great White with former Great White members Tony Montana ( bass), Derrick Pontier (drums) and guitarist Robby Lochner. Kendall and the rest of the band, who still perform as Great White, sued. In July the two parties settled, allowing Russell to resume his comeback under the banner Jack Russell’s Great White.
“I shook (Mark’s) hand at our last meeting at the court- house and he said, ‘Nice one, dude,’ which is a Kendallism,” says Russell of his and his bandmate’s relationship now. “The door’s always open. I have nothing against Mark. I’ll always love Mark. We’ve gone through so much together. We started playing together when I was 17 years old.”
It is, by anyone’s estimate, going to be a tough climb for Russell. As the face of Great White, he has, over the past decade, become the face of the Station fire. A February article in The Boston Globe on the anniversary of the tragedy painted an unflattering portrait of an aging, clueless rocker in decline. It also depicted a benefit show he held for the Station Fire Memorial Fund that raised an estimated $180 from about 30 attendees.
“There’s nothing I can say that’s going to make anybody feel better,” says Russell, sounding genuinely contrite if tired of being made the villain. “I can’t bring anybody back. I’m so sorry that people got hurt or killed. There’s nothing I could have done in my day-to- day routine that would have changed that from happening. I can’t just get over it because I can’t even imagine losing a husband or a wife or a son or a daughter. I can’t imagine that kind of pain, but I know the pain I went through losing 100 fans and friends who I’d watched grow up since they were kids.”
The events of 2003 still haunt Russell, but he doesn’t understand people’s fixation on him or their reluctance to let him move on. Recovered from his physical ailments, drug- and alcohol-free for two years, and newly married to one of his hospital nurses, he wants do just that.
“I’m in a great place,” he says, getting ready for a show in Pennsylvania. “We just got the sound check. I’m gonna go out and sign some autographs. Go do our sound check and go back to the hotel, warm my voice up some more and get ready to kick some butt.”