Great White
| Great White | |
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Great White live on 11 July 2008 at the Moondance Jam.
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| Background information | |
| Also known as |
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| Origin | Los Angeles, California, United States |
| Genres | |
| Years active | 1977–present |
| Labels | |
| Website | www |
| Members |
Great White Mark Kendall Audie Desbrow Michael Lardie Scott Snyder Terry Ilous Jack Russell's Great White Jack Russell Tony Montana Matthew Johnson Derrick Pontier Robby Lochner |
| Past members | See: Former members |
Great White is an American hard rock band, formed in Los Angeles in 1977. The band gained popularity during the 1980s and early 1990s. The band released several albums in the late 1980s and gained airplay on MTV with music videos for songs like "Once Bitten, Twice Shy". The band reached their peak popularity with the album ...Twice Shy in 1989.
The band continued to release new material into the 1990s, although none of their material charted in the United States. In 2003, the band made headlines when The Station nightclub fire led to the deaths of 100 people in West Warwick, Rhode Island, including Ty Longley, who had been a member of Jack Russell's solo band. In 2011 the band split, with Jack Russell forming "Great White Featuring Jack Russell" and lead singer Terry Ilous (of XYZ) fronting Great White. As of August 2007, Great White sold over 8 million records worldwide.
Vocalist Jack Russell met guitarist Mark Kendall in 1977, and Kendall asked Russell to join his band. They decided to form a band together and they called it Highway later changing it to Livewire and then played one final show as Wires. Then in 1979 Russell was arrested for shooting a live-in maid in a botched robbery attempt and sentenced to 8 years in prison. The band went its separate ways and Kendall was left to start over. He recruited bassist Don Costa (later a one-time member of Ozzy Osbourne) and drummer Tony Richards (later a member of W.A.S.P.). They auditioned several singers including John Bush from Armored Saint but finally settling on a female singer Lisa Baker. The name they decided to go with was Dante Fox. They played their first gig in 1979 with singer Lisa Baker and played around Orange County and the Los Angeles area for 6 months with Lisa, until she joined George Lynch's band Exciter. They then got a singer named Butch Say whose style was similar to that of Rob Halford. Later they found out that Russell was released from prison after serving only 18 months of his sentence and Russell talked Kendall into an audition and he got in the band by a 2 to 1 band vote. They played their first gig with Russell at The Troubadour in Hollywood, California.
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