Great White singer misses bandmate

A benefit tour helped Jack Russell get back onstage.

By JOHN BENSON

VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT

Great White lead singer Jack Russell still wakes up with tears in his eyes for the friends he lost on the fateful 2003 winter night when pyrotechnics set off a major blaze at a small Rhode Island club.

In a flash, 100 people died, including Great White’s guitarist and Russell’s good buddy Ty Longley, a Brookfield native.

“He was just a beautifully loving human being,” said Russell, calling from his Palms Springs home. “I miss him dearly every single day. ... I have a picture of him in my wallet and a picture in my house of him and onstage. I miss him a lot, as I do all my friends I lost that night.”

Not that he wants to forget but getting over that night is something Russell now realizes will never happen. In the months and years after, Russell fell into drug addiction as the band tried to figure out what to do. Forever linked to the event, Great White did soldier on with a benefit tour in 2005.

So how close was Russell to pulling the plug on Great White?

“It was a thought in my head but I was so consumed with grief at that point, I don’t really know what was rational thinking and what wasn’t,” Russell said. “If it hadn’t been for the benefit tour, I might not have ever gone on stage again. That was a motivating factor to get back on stage. It wasn’t just for me.

It appears to be a new day for Great White, which experienced hit ’80s rock singles “Save Your Love,” “Rock Me” and “Once Bitten, Twice Shy,” with its original members reuniting for its 25th anniversary.

This includes the recent release of new album “Back to the Rhythm.” Russell describes the effort as an eclectic affair that spans the band’s entire career, with ballads (“How Far is Heaven”), blues (“Was it the Night?”), hard rock (“Back to the Rhythm”) and even ’80s rockers (“Still Hungry.”)

In support of the new album, Great White comes through Northeast Ohio for “The Backyard Bash” with Jani Lane of Warrant for a Saturday show at the Chevrolet Centre in Youngstown. Russell said he’s looking forward to seeing Longley’s dad, Pat.

As for Great White celebrating a quarter of a century of music, it’s something special to the blues-based rock band.

“I think ’80s music, whatever somebody says about it, you can’t really take a whole generation and deny its music and say, ‘It’s all crap.’ I mean, there was a lot of great music in that era,” Russell said. “ And just like any other era, there was a lot of crap. too. It was all about hedonism — having a good time and enjoying yourself. I think that’s what music is all about anyway. It’s escapism.”