Great White shot the music video for “Once Bitten Twice Shy” inside a Southern California warehouse.
“We did it in Bakersfield, I believe,” guitarist Mark Kendall recalls.
The deftly shot vid - of the Los Angeles band rehearsing and hanging out - perfectly fit Great White’s adrenalized 1989 cover of a winking ’70s-glam Ian Hunter single. It also didn’t hurt future “Cherry Pie” video vixen Bobbie Brown was in the clip.
During a decade with many contenders, “Once Bitten Twice Shy” became an era-defining rock video. Directed by Nigel Dick, who (in addition to having a “Spinal Tap” worthy name) also helmed classic clips by stars from Guns N’ Roses to Oasis to Britney Spears, “Once Bitten Twice Shy” lit up MTV request lines. The song zoomed to the Billboard singles chart’s top five. And was nominated for a Grammy.
The day of the “Once Bitten Twice Shy” shoot, Kendall brought along a friend, who’d been stricken with multiple sclerosis and had a short time to live, to watch the video being made. “It’s a special memory,” Kendall says. “There were a lot of good things that day. We really enjoyed that video, and the way this song took on a life of its own was really mind-blowing.”
Kendall’s playing on “Once Bitten Twice Shy,” and other vintage Great White tracks, strikes a rare balance of bluesy and ’80s. Classic feel and melodic sense, with searing contemporary tone and slicing attack essential to rock’s ultimate guitar decade. Another prime specimen: “Rock Me,” Great White’s sultry, seven-minute plus hit from 1987. Kendall’s lead guitar smoothly shifts between saunter and soar, breathe and speed. “Lady Red Light,” another key cut, opens and closes with an electric-swarm of notes. And check out his cascading solo on piano ballad “The Angel Song.”
I’m not the first person to assert Great White’s bluesier take on ’80s hard-rock helped pave the way, at least to some degree, for Guns N’ Roses’ gargantuan success. Perhaps not coincidentally, the two bands shared management back then.
Now in 2021, 12 months into the pandemic, the concert business is cautiously preparing for liftoff again, particularly outdoor shows. And so is Great White. Beginning with a May 15 Summer Stage gig in Big Flats, N.Y. with Slaughter, Steven Adler and Vixen, the band has a growing number of tour dates on the books. An updated schedule can be found at officialgreatwhite.com.
In addition to Kendall, Great White’s lineup boasts classic-era members Audie Desbrow on drums and Michael Lardie on keyboards/rhythm guitar. Scott Snyder is on bass. And most intriguingly, Mitch Malloy, known for his clandestine late ’90s stint as Van Halen’s kinda/sorta fourth lead-singer, is on vocals, filling original singer Jack Russell’s snakeskin boots.
The tragic fire at a 2003 Rhode Island show is forever part of Great White’s story, but the band deserves to be remembered for more than that. They should be remembered for their music. On a recent afternoon, Kendall calls in for a phone interview from his Yucaipa, Calif. home, located in the foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains. Exited excerpts below.
COCONUT CREEK, FL - DECEMBER 15: Mark Kendall of Great White performs at Seminole Casino Coconut Creek on December 15, 2012 in Coconut Creek, Florida. (Photo by Larry Marano/Getty Images)Getty Images
Mark, how long does Great White rehearse before getting back on the road after a break?
We usually go in for two or three days and just get our set together. And talk about what we’re going to do because there’s a lot of material to deal with when you have 14 records. We’ve got to include all the hits. If it’s a festival sometimes it’s only an hour, if we’re headlining it’ll be an hour-and-a-half or an hour-and-40-minutes, so we’ll have different sets that we play.
So, yeah, we’re pumped. I’ve been playing a lot of guitar over the last year, just writing songs and doing the Zoom thing, and flying up north every once in a while and going into my keyboard player’s studio and stuff. So it’s not like we’ve been absent from playing. I play guitar every day.
I always liked how Great White was a hard-rock band with a keyboard player, which you don’t always see. As a guitarist what do you like about having keyboards to work with?
When we started out on our first album, we didn’t have keyboards, it was just a trio - you know, bass, guitar, drums and lead singer. And on our second album, Michael (Lardie) had worked as a second engineer in the studio, and we wanted to put keyboards on one of the tracks. And he goes, “I play keyboards.” So we go OK, and we kind of showed him what we needed and he put some keyboards on the album.
So then, after the album was finished, we asked him, “What do you think about coming and playing the keyboard parts? And we’ll kind of put you behind the curtain or something.” [Laughs] He goes, “Well, not only can I do that, but I can play rhythm guitar, too.” So I go, “Oh, that’d be great because then we get sound just exactly like the record.” And so we started out that way to where you couldn’t really see him, and then we got him a (riser) on the stage and pretty soon girls were hunting for him.
Eventually we just made him a member of the band, and it expanded our musical range from, adding keyboards and more orchestration. And you can do more things live. We like the keyboards and the rhythm guitar and the two guitars. We have two guitar parts, so it’s kind of like the way Aerosmith puts guitars together. We’re never playing the same part. It’s always an arrangement to where we’re both playing two different musical parts. And it’s pretty cool.
You mentioned Aerosmith. And I read when you first started on guitar you were really into Hendrix, Cream and The Doors. But who’s a guitarist that might surprise people that influenced your playing?
Well, when I was 14-years-old, I in a band in El Monte California, and I suggested that we only play Santana. [Laughs] Because I loved Carlos Santana so much, just the way he played with so much feeling and melody and everything. I just loved the songs. And we played a lot of Santana. So that was an influence in my early teenage years which I don’t think a lot of people would expect.
And one of things you’re known for as a guitarist is your feel. An example is the solo for “Rock Me.” Take me back to cutting that solo and how that all went down.
Usually I try to make the (chord) changes fun to solo over. I just play along to the section where the solo is, and when something sounds like it’s melding in with the track and it has good dynamics and everything I like, maybe some good melodic structure, then we just kind of go with that.
Sometimes I’ll practice where the solo goes, before I go in, but most of the time I don’t and it’s pretty random. So that’s the way that (“Rock Me” solo) came together. Just taking a few takes until you see everybody kind of light up and go, “Wow, that was it!”
As you said earlier, in your live shows you’ve got to play your hits. And of course, one of those is Great White’s cover of the Ian Hunter song “Once Bitten Twice Shy.” I like the original, but I like your version better, which rocks harder. I’m guessing you guys made Ian Hunter a lot of money with that cover. Did you ever hear back if he liked Great White’s version of “Once Bitten Twice Shy”?
Well, just take it back a little bit before that, we met him in 1984 because we were touring with Judas Priest and our sound man was friends with him. And we went by his house and borrowed Ian Hunter’s drum riser out of his backyard and used that on the Judas Priest tour.
And then in 1988 he came to a show in New York, but neither one of those events had anything to do with us doing his song. That was totally random.
Our manager (Alan Niven) managed Guns N’ Roses, and we had an album called “Once Bitten,” and so we felt like the obvious follow up would be “…Twice Shy,” and Izzy Stradlin, who played guitar in Guns N’ Roses, came to our manager with that Ian Hunter track. I had never heard it before. I knew a little bit about and heard Mott the Hoople, but I’d never heard Ian Hunter, any of his solo work.
But anyways, Izzy Stradlin brought that song in and he goes, “This would be cool for you guys to do because you have the album ‘Once Bitten’ and then you have ‘…Twice Shy.’ He presented it to our manager. We didn’t hear it. Our manager really liked the lyrics and everything, so he presented it to us and we thought it was OK, we liked it. We just kind of put our own twist on it.
Since Alan Niven was managing both Great White and Guns N’ Roses back then, and with Izzy suggesting the “Once Bitten Twice Shy” cover, did your band have a camaraderie with the GN’R guys?
Yeah, we got along with them really good and we were around them a few times. I think I jammed with Slash one time at some event - you know, just kind of switching back and forth, jamming on some blues and stuff like that.
But we’d only done one single show together, as far as both bands playing on the same stage. It was a day off for us on the Whitesnake tour. (Guns N’ Roses) were just starting to play out, and their album, I believe it had just gone gold, so “Welcome to the Jungle” was a going big on the radio and everything.
And we did a show in New York at a place called The Ritz and MTV was down there, they kind of put on the show and filmed it. We actually opened the show, even though we were over 2 million sales at that time and had a big, big hit with Rock Me.”But there was such a big buzz in New York on Guns N’ Roses that our manager says, “Why don’t you guys open?” and we said fine. We both played the same length set, but we played first. And it was just a great night for both bands.
The MTV footage is really great from both the Great White and GN’R sets for that 1988 Ritz show. Your band had a successful connection with MTV, including doing an episode of “MTV Unplugged.” What was interesting about filming “Unplugged”?
I think one of the most interesting things was my manager calling me the night before, literally, I mean in the latter evening, and he asked me to learn “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” by Led Zeppelin. To do it the next day without rehearsing. [Laughs] I’m like, “Dude. I could learn it, no problem, but it’s a big arrangement,” there’s a lot of picking, “but to not really rehearse … " And he goes, “Oh, we’ll go over it in the dressing room and do it at soundcheck.” So I learned it, and we went over it a couple times in the dressing room and played it once at the soundcheck. So I didn’t have the arrangement really locked down that great, but because the singer knew the song so well, it was a good guide for me. And a couple of times I start going into another part, but I catch myself and it just sounds like I’m playing a little fill.
Anyway, I was thrilled to get through it. Of course, MTV chooses that song to put in rotation, but it turned out fine, and so yeah, that was a good night, man. And also, we were the very first band to play on the “Unplugged” show. We recorded the same day as Don Henley and the Damn Yankees, and they released all three shows in separate weeks. But we were on their first idea to present your music with acoustic guitars, and I thought it was a good idea to hear the song stripped down. If a song’s good, it’s supposed to sound good with acoustic guitar. It was fun to play the songs that way.
Following you on social media, I know you’ve been sober for many years and rightly proud of that. Every musician I’m a fan of that gets sober, they play their instrument better. But does being sober help you be better at the business side of music too?
Yeah. It’s just everything gets better You deal with anything, any adversity better when you’re focused. I play guitar, I feel, just a lot better - I really feel the music. The difference now is that I’m comfortable in my own skin sober, so it makes everything easier. When you’re kind of a using alcoholic or whatever, it’s just a lot of work and it gets in the way of everything.
I call it chasing normal. Because it’s not, “I want to be wasted,” but I just don’t want to feel bad. But it still worked, get the mixture right and all that, when all you have to do is just not do that, and you’re just fine, from the get-go.
But it’s a wonderful life. I tell newcomers that I work with it’s going to be rough in the beginning, but once you’re a couple months in, you’re going to notice things get better. It’s a more positive atmosphere around you. Your family’s more trusting, your kids love you more, just so many good things happen when you’re living right.
That’s why I really enjoy seeing people, that transformation from somebody who’s in a lot of trouble and not doing so good, and then you see then after like a year of sobriety and they look better, things are going good, they’re feeling good. And it’s just a great thing to look at.
You’re onstage look back in the day was distinctive. You wore kind of bolero hats and had guitars decorated with shark imagery and even shark-shaped guitars. Do you still have any of those hats or the shark guitars?
I’ve still got them. The shark guitar I actually gave to Dick Clark. He called our offices a long time ago and says, “I’ve got to have that shark guitar from my Hard Rock Café,” and there’s no way we’re gonna say no to Dick Clark so I just gave it to him. I don’t know if it’s because of that, but I’m sure it got some of his attention because we got to play on the American Music Awards, with people like Little Richard in the crowd and stuff. It was amazing. And Alice Cooper introduced us because we were actually on tour with him that year. We played about 40 countries with them for about four months. But as far as the hats go, I had a lot of hair back then. Now they don’t even fit. But yeah, you know, trying to find a little bit of any image. The band really wasn’t like a spectacle type of a band, but you want to look good on stage so I started wearing those hats and it kind of caught on.
My friend Greg Renoff wrote this great book called “Van Halen Rising.” You came up in the Los Angeles music scene and actually got to see Van Halen in the early days, around ’74 and ’76?
I was just kind of a beginner on guitar, starting to learn my way around the neck or whatever. I believe I was about 16. And a friend of mine had seen Van Halen, somewhere in a backyard, and he goes, “You’ve got to come see this guitar player,” and we went and saw them.
They played at a junkyard just like three blocks from my house, so we just walked over there. You pay a dollar and they had kegs and stuff. Eddie Van Halen was playing, it looked like a Les Paul. He didn’t have the whammy bar and all that he wasn’t doing the “Eruption” type stuff, but I could tell right away that he was special.
There were a lot of great guitar players around but nobody, apart from Jimmy Bates, really played like he did. There was a guy called Jimmy Bates that played with the band called Stormer. He was ahead of his time as well and he kind of played like Eddie, sort of, and I think Eddie really liked him - he was an influence, because I’d seen Eddie Van Halen at their shows, watching him play.
But anyways, yeah, I kind of followed them around. I was like a little Van Halen groupie. Really, really liked them. Dave Roth was really a good frontman, and they were so tight. They played almost every night, all around. And yeah, Greg Renoff, I went to his book signing, they had a Van Halen tribute band. Greg did an excellent job at his research.
Mitch Malloy, who has some history with Van Halen too, is Great White’s singer now. From the live videos I’ve seen online he sounds like a good fit for your band. What do you like about playing Great White music with Mitch Malloy? And what do you hope to do with new Great White music with Mitch singing?
Well, one thing as far as his live performances, he really comes with a lot of energy and gives everything he has, every show, so I really like that. And he sings really good. And when I send him music, he sends me back a full song with lyrics melody and everything. I love that. He has a great song sense. Most singers in the past that I’ve worked with, I kind of showed them the melodies and how it goes and all that. I don’t have to do that with Mitch. He takes care of himself, doesn’t drink or smoke. He has a great personality. He’s funny. There’s not much that I can say that I don’t like about Mitch, he’s awesome.
The late great Jani Lane, of Warrant, sang for Great White for a little bit. What was interesting about what Jani brought to Great White as a frontman? Because Great White’s material isn’t easy to sing.
This was when we were getting singers to fill in. Jani, it was no secret that he had battled alcohol and stuff, so we had that in common. I’d been sober for years. And I worked with him. And we spoke a lot about that, and he told me, “You know, people don’t realize that I want to be sober more than anything.” And he did wonderful. He did about 10 shows with us. We went over to Portugal, played a show there, played some shows in the States. Always a pro. He didn’t drink. People were saying he sounded better than he had in 20 years. He was trim and looking good and singing great.
And I don’t know what happened, but the demons overcame him and he passed away. I went and spoke at his memorial just because I wanted his family and fans and friends to know that he wanted to be sober, just so they know that. And he was really a good guy. That was my experience with Jani. We were on a daily basis, kind of contact. I sent him prayers and meditation every day and he would always comment on it, how we related to it. It was a joy to be his friend.
It’s out there in the press that you wish Jack Russell well. Those questions have been asked. But I was curious when’s the last time you and Jack spoke? And would you be up for talking again with him, not getting him back in the band or anything, just talking?
If it ever presented itself, it’s not like I would run away or anything. I don’t have any ill will towards Jack Russell or anything. He has his battles. And I do wish him well. I haven’t spoken to him for a few years, but it’s not I’m not it’s not like I’m avoiding him or anything. We just both have our own lives.
Great White’s two signature, biggest selling albums are “Once Bitten” and “…Twice Shy.” For rock fans who just know those two, what’s another Great White album you recommend? I also really like “Hooked,” the live album “Stage” and the covers album “Recovery.”
One that kind of got missed, and I think it kind of has a little to do with marketing dollars, was called, “Can’t Get There From Here.” That is a really strong album. We recorded at Jack Blades’ ranch, from Night Ranger, and we just kind of lived on his property for about a month and did that record. But that has a lot of good songs on it. And it was just, I don’t know, timing, you know - Nirvana, the Seattle scene. Like I was talking to (Scorpions guitarist) Rudolf Schenker about the ’90s and he goes, “It seems like we’ve been around a long time. But we really didn’t play that much in the ’90s,” you know what I mean? [Laughs] We played though the ’90s. Just kind of played little mid-sized places and stuff and really didn’t change what we’re doing, even though we were kind of put on the backburner from the much welcomed Nirvana era. [Laughs]
I read that one of those ’90s Seattle bands, Alice in Chains, opened for Great White. Do you remember that?
I don’t. But great, great band.
And finally since this interview is for a media outlet in The South, is there a Southern rock band or guitarist you really enjoy?
I like guitar players like Dickey Betts (of the Allman Brothers), and those guys are just gangsters on the guitar, man. [Laughs] I always loved the Allman Brothers. They’re so good. The thing I like about Dickey Betts is how fluid he was. A lot of guitar players, they start and stop a lot, whereas Dickey Betts was so continuous, he wouldn’t stop, it just went on … I know from being a player myself that that’s not easy to do, so he just made it seem really easy. Very melodic player, my god.
