Great White -

By: Julie Ruggirello

Great White rocked the music scene in the 1980s, and now they're back on tour. Michael Lardie, one of the original members, talked to TheCelebrityCafe.com's Julie Ruggirello about the band's current tour and some stories from the road, including getting a little rowdy on a plane and the tragedy at The Station nightclub fire in Rhode Island.

Julie Ruggirello: So your new CD has recently come out and you're on tour and everything. Do you want to give me a few details about what you've been doing lately? Because I'm sure you've been crazy with the tour and everything.

Michael Lardie: Well you know in many ways we have been really lucky. I don't know if some kind of blessing was bestowed upon us, but we are probably going to actually end up having as many dates this year as we did last year. And in this economy that is quite remarkable. When you consider that, you know, clubs are closing, venues are scaling down and things like that. We're going to be almost on par with what we had last year and, you know, it's been a—it's been a crazy summer, we've been all over the place: we've been to Oklahoma, we've done all kinds of festivals, we've done clubs, and our whole mindset for Great White is just give us stages and we'll play it. And it's always been that way. I think that's why we probably, when we're doing our tour bus days, we were probably averaging 220 shows a year. This year we're probably up around 75 or 80, which is probably double our aim for this year. We've been very lucky and very blessed if that's the case.

JR: That sounds amazing. So the tour has been going well and you've been doing well at all of these different venues and everything?

ML: Yeah, it's great. I mean one of the best things about it for me in the last couple of years is you look for the little things in a performance that are your hook, so to speak, that make you excited about going out and doing it. And fortunately that's still on our radar. Everybody in the band, after all these years, we still love doing it. But one of the things that I find is quite amazing is the fact that it's becoming multi-generational. You'll see a festival, you're seeing what look like grandparents for that matter, and you'll sort of see a seven-year-old kid with his grandpa's Great White shirt from 1988. He's singing every lyric to 'Rock Me' and I'm thinking like, 'My God, you know, music is passing onto another generation.' And to me I don't know how much a bigger compliment you can get.

JR: That is exciting to see that. Do you have any really funny or exciting stories from the road from your past tours?

ML: Oh well, there's all kinds of stuff. (laughing) One that always comes to mind is we were in Minneapolis I think it was, and it's the '87 road trip with Twisted Sister and our local rep from Capitol had come to the show to hang with us and he goes, 'Guys I just got on the computer and its official, you're gold.' And, you know, that was our first gold record and that was just nuts! I mean after the show we stayed up and hung out all night with the Twisted boys and obviously thanked them for taking us out and helping us break the song 'Rock Me' and pushing that record that went gold.

The second Mark took it one step further, stayed up all night got on the plane in a very filled with joy mood and brought on a bottle of Jack Daniels—you can't do that if you come on the plane and actually open up the bottle while you're on the flight. He was getting all of the passengers to order orange juice and he was walking around the plane being like Captain Jack the flight steward, and pouring whiskey into everyone's drink. So the flight attendants, you know, they were on the flight back to LAX, and they were like this is just not right, but we're going to give you a pass on it and because they were scolding him and weren't in party mode, both Jack and Mark started getting a little abusive in terms of language, (laughing) and I'm trying to think what clicked it into 'Oh no, it's on like Donkey Kong, you guys are going down.' I'm not sure what it was they said to the flight attendants or the captain or whatever it was, they were both escorted off the back of the plane—in handcuffs! So that was a first. We stopped short of the jet way. On the tarmac they opened up the back door, put stairs up, and walked them down the back of the plane.

So that's one of the excesses of rock and roll. I mean it was such an amazing moment for all of us being that we're very different personalities. We make it work very well altogether; everybody manifested their own way of celebrating a pinnacle moment in our careers. And that's the way that it went; that one always sticks out in my mind.

JR: Well, that's definitely a good one. So back to the current tour, which city so far has been your favorite?

ML: You know it's hard to say. I mean we did a great thing down in Bristol, Tenn., at the raceway there. A couple of guys in the band are big NASCAR fans, so it was a big treat for them to play on the grounds of the Bristol Motors Speedway. And that was great, again real multi generational night and getting to meet all the race drivers and all that stuff was a lot of fun.

We just got through a couple of, actually three shows in Southern California, where we're based out of and two of them were really big sellouts, so I mean great crowds.

We're very appreciative of what we're doing, but for us, people always ask 'God, do you ever get tired of playing 'Once Bitten, Twice Shy?' And I say, 'Well my approach has always been when we play that song at that moment in front of that group of people it's different than it's ever been before.'

So it's still exciting. When you hear the first couple of notes, you go 'Wow!' Even people are really kind of grooving on the new material, obviously that makes me very happy and you know, I like to think of us as, you know, a band that appreciates the fans, we don't lay on people, like seven or eight songs from the new record. You know, it's like 'Dig this.' Because it wouldn't be fair to our fans who have actually allowed us to have a career, without playing 'Save Your Love,' without playing 'Rock Me,' without playing 'Once Bitten, Twice Shy,' without playing 'House of Broken Love.' It's kind of like those are the people who come to see you that allow you to have a career 25 years later. And that would be very unfair to them, because the reality is people come to see the songs that they're familiar with.

One thing about '80s music I find is that people really have a connection, with being able to connect with their past and that is a very happy, freewheeling time. I think it's if you didn't go through it it's hard to describe it, it's really something else.

JR: That's really great. So I know for the rest of the tour there are few cities left. Are you particularly excited for any of these other cities that you have left? Or do any of the venues have a special significance?

ML: Well you know, for us it's kind of hard to say like, 'I'm really looking forward to here.' I mean we're all in our early 50s now and the fact that we can still go out and do this, you know we're excited about every place…it's amazing. We love playing the Midwest if for nothing more than, no matter what the trends are in New York or LA, the Midwest will always have a place in their hearts for classic rock. That's been proven for decades now.

I mean, we got bands that came out of the Midwest like Styx and REO are examples of that. They can still sell out arenas in Chicago and Wisconsin and Detroit. That's their bread and butter, that where they came up and there is a kinship I think to classic stereo head rock that the Midwest has always had the opportunity to get. We're doing the tour up in Mount Pleasant, Mich., which is always a great show. That's like a 3,500 seat theater and that place just gets nuts. We love going to Florida. Florida has always been good to us—a couple of those dates are coming up. Now you're in upstate New York, right?

JR: Yes, Westchester.

ML: Yeah, we're looking to hopefully get some of those in the early part of next year. It's not something we necessarily want to touch on with the tragedy [the 2003 fire at The Station nightclub in West Warwick, R.I., that killed 100]; it's obviously a part of the history of the band. Out of respect, you know, there's a point which we want to be respectful of how we get up in people's faces, and that's another reason we were requested by the families to keep it low key because it's their time to heal right now. But I mean I always remember really liking playing The Chance up in Poughkeepsie; that was always a cool venue. So I would look for us in the early part of next year. When it's really cold and nobody will go there, we'll go there. (laughing)

JR: You just do what you have to do, I guess.

ML: That's the thing, that's the way this band has always been. I mean we went and did Europe with Alice Cooper on a tour in late November and all of December. And then we did Canada in January. It's okay, like pick the two toughest territories at the two toughest times of the year and we'll do it. We just love to play. And we do records to give us the opportunity to play. We're very fortunate that we can still make records that are new material. Because that's another thing, if you think of yourself as a band that has some validity in terms of writing songs and keeping your career going, we don't want to be a jukebox. That's something. We love our catalog and we love playing in front of people, but by the same token it keeps it fresh for us to write new material and to put new records out. And thankfully people still want to hear that.

JR: And I hope they continue for a very long time.

ML: Well, you know, since we reformed in '06 and we have done two records, there's no feeling like we don't want to do this. This is just something fun to do for a while. We're kind of like, in it. I always said let's go. I feel like it's probably a minimum of a four- to six-year run, we're into our third year and it still feels great. I think that by putting a block on it and saying well we're only going to go this far as long as we don't think of it in those terms, we have a shelf life so to speak and it's going to remain fun. If one day we wake up and we say 'time to call it a day' and we'll do it, that's what we always set out to do. We never wanted anybody else to tell us 'you guys are over.' We always wanted that to be on our terms.

JR: Makes sense. Well I'm glad that everything is going well with the tour and I hope that the rest of the tour goes well and hopefully you will get to New York.

ML: Yes, I'm looking forward to that. I think some people assume that because Upstate New York, being a little bit close to the city and the city can be so fickle, as you know. But I mean Upstaters love their rock!

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