Welcome to another edition of From My Collection. Today, we explore the roots of one of America’s finest hard rock bands, Great White. They’d reach their commercial peak in the late 80s with such hits as “Rock Me”, “House of Broken Love”, “Save Your Love”, and a radio ready rendition of Ian Hunter’s “Once Bitten, Twice Shy”. But these big haired bad boys weren’t always singing the blues. In fact, Great White initially formed as a full fledged heavy metal band, or as singer Jack Russell so affectionately described in our interview with him last year, “a Judas Priest clone”. While the Priest-isms are most definitely present on their debut EP, Out of the Night, I’d argue Great White was a cut above a mere “Priest clone”. Today’s essay explains why.
For how commercialized glam metal became by the late 80s, it’s easy for even the most ardent of metalheads to forget the genre’s DIY roots. Before getting swooped up by Elektra Records in 1982, Mötley Crüe released their sleaze metal masterpiece, Too Fast for Love, a year prior via their own Leathür Records. Ratt slogged away on the club circuit for years under various incarnations before releasing their self titled EP in 1983 on the startup Time Coast label. Great White wasn’t too far behind either. They formed in 1977 under the name Highway. Highway gave way to Livewire, who then gave way to Wires, who then gave way to Russell being sentenced to 8 years in prison for attempted murder. What?
Okay, time to back up a bit. Back in those days, Russell, by his own admission, ran with a bad crowd. In a robbery gone wrong, Russell shot a live-in maid and was sentenced to the aforementioned 8 years. While Russell was in prison, they changed their name to Dante Fox and went through singers like socks. At the end of the day, nobody had the pipes Russell had. Which is why when Russell got let out after 18 months on good behavior, it was a no brainer to bring him back into the fold. Despite settling on the moniker Great White (named after guitarist Mark Kendall), the band continued to flounder until they gained enough money and momentum to release their debut EP, Out of the Night.
Now if your knowledge of Great White doesn’t go beyond the few hits I mentioned in the intro paragraph, Out of the Night may come as a rude awakening. The blues elements that’d become synonymous with the band are nowhere to be found, and even the hard rock aspects draw more from the melodic side of the NWOBHM than Led Zeppelin. Great White kicked off their recording career in high gear with the high speed anthem, “Out of the Night”. Written in the same spirit as such Priest hymns like “Steeler”, “Rapid Fire”, and “Screaming for Vengeance”, it’s no wonder Russell tosses around the “Priest clone” tag so lightly. His vocals reach Halfordian heights, unlike his Plant-esque delivery of later years. Those vocals were for swooning the ladies. These vocals were for shattering glass.
“On Your Knees” is a boisterous blast of sleaze characteristic of what was coming out of the Sunset Strip in those days. Although in comparison to Mötley Crüe’s “Live Wire” (“I’ll either break her face or take down her legs, get my ways at will.”) and Dokken’s “Felony” (“Those tight blue jeans that drove me wild, I did not know she was just a child.”), hearing Russell sing about loving to “drive the young girls wild” sounds tame in comparison. Of course, by today’s moral standards, all of these songs would be deemed socially unacceptable. So let’s take a moment to be grateful that political correctness didn’t exist in early 80s Los Angeles, otherwise music would be a lot more boring today.
“Last Time” zeroes in on the melodic metal that was being specialized at the time by bands like Scorpions and Def Leppard. It was Great White’s way of proving that they too could incorporate AOR melodies while still being heavy. The more I listen to this song, the more I think it might be my favorite on here, although it’s hard to choose because they all rule equally. “No Way” is a heavy, midtempo headbanger. Like the title track, there’s no shortage of Priest flair, but the lead riff is distinctly American, lying somewhere between Ted Nugent and Dave Meniketti. I’m sure both were huge influences on Kendall. “Dead End” closes the EP out with a final burst of adrenaline. Drummer Gary Holland goes to town on the double bass drums, making him the MVP of this rager and for a little over 3 minutes, the most fitting successor to Alex Van Halen’s throne.
Clocking in at 16 minutes and 34 seconds, Out of the Night said more than most traditional metal and hard rock bands could in a full length release. It quickly blew up among the LA metal underground and soon earned Great White a deal with Capitol Records. They’d release their self titled full length in 1984, which featured spruced up version of “Out of the Night”, “On Your Knees”, and “Dead End”. The EP itself would be remixed and reissued by Enigma Records in 1987, to capitalize on the FM rock radio success of “Rock Me”. Truth be told, none of these re-recordings or remixes do justice to the raw power on display on Out of the Night. It’s a snapshot in time not just of Great White, but of the American metal scene circa 1983. Thrash had yet to fully take over and glam had yet to be homogenized by record executives. The unbridled energy of the NWOBHM was still being felt and it shows all over this EP. So the next time your hipster friend dismisses Great White as hair metal has-beens, crank up Out of the Night and watch their reaction. Also, get better friends because Great White rules.