A few weeks after the 13th anniversary of the Station Nightclub fire, the guitarist from the band that played on the night when 100 people died and many more were seriously injured is now saying that his band never really played the show after all.
Great White’s Mark Kendall informed TMZ this week that it was not, in fact, Great White that performed in West Warwick, Rhode Island, on February 20, 2003. He now claims it was just frontman Jack Russell’s solo band, backed by a bunch of fill-ins and ringers. Of course, Kendall did actually perform live with Great White on that fateful night — where the rock band’s pyrotechnics set off a deadly blaze that engulfed the club within minutes during the band’s opening song — but now says he only agreed to play the show and let the name “Great White” appear on the marquee to help ticket sales.
“I sat in with his band because his solo tour wasn’t doing very well,” Kendall tells a TMZ videographer. “Then that tragedy happened and CNN just ran out and said it was Great White like it was the original band.”
It’s common practice for ’80s hair metal bands to fill out their lineups with replacements, or branch off into separate groups that cling to the recognizable name, especially in the years after their popularity has faded. When the Quiet Riot, Bulletboys, and Faster Pussycat tour rolled into the Wilbur Theatre in 2014, Vanyaland counted a total of five “classic lineup” members among all three bands. Still, they were billed by the same moniker as during their ’80s heyday.
But this is the first time anyone has suggested that Great White wasn’t properly billed for the Station performance, a night that ended as the fourth-deadliest nightclub fire in our country’s history.
The New York Daily News reached out to Russell, and the often contrite frontman quickly disputed Kendall’s claim. “I just wanted to throw up when I heard he said that,” Russell says. “I’m not saying it’s anyone’s fault. But to not acknowledge that he was there, and trying to distance himself from the event … why even bring it up now?”
Read Vanyaland’s extensive 2015 interview with Russell about the Station fire and its lingering aftermath, a few weeks before Great White were set to perform in Maine. Russell and the band never took the stage, thanks to a mysterious last-minute power outage at Harvest Hill Farms in Mechanic Falls.