It’s amazing Jack Russell’s sung as well as he has for as long as he has.
Before and after rising to fame in the late ‘80s with Los Angeles hard-rockers Great White, Russell’s been through hell personally and professionally, some of it due to his well-documented demons.
Russell’s a survivor though. Even later in his career, no matter how bad his health got, when he was onstage and had a mic in his hand, he could always deliver. Until, finally, his body wouldn’t let him any longer.
On July 17, Russell posted on social media he’s retiring from touring. “After a recent diagnosis of Lewy Body Dementia (LBD) and Multiple System Atrophy (MSA) in May 2024,” Russell wrote, “I am unable to perform at the level I desire and at the level you deserve. Words cannot express my gratitude for the many years of memories, love, and support. Thank you for letting me live my dreams. You have made my life a wonder.”
Even though Russell came up in an era filled with great hard-rock singers, his bluesy feel set him apart.
Great White’s best known for their hit 1989 makeover of Ian Hunter’s glam classic “Once Bitten, Twice Shy.” Powered by Russell’s lemon-squeezing vocal -- along with Micheal Lardie’s piano, Mark Kendall’s hot guitar and a swaggering groove by drummer Audie Desbrow and bassist Tony Montana -- Great White’s version smokes the original.
But what set Russell apart from many of his fellow frontmen was his ability to elevate a rock ballad with not only range but warmth and nuance. See his vocals on Great White cuts like “House of Broken Love,” “The Angel Song” and “Save Your Love.”
Great White’s biggest selling, best known albums are 1987′s “Once Bitten,” which boasted simmering epic “Rock Me,” and ‘89′s “…Twice Shy.” Listeners looking to dig deeper should spin rootsy ‘91 LP “Hooked,” ‘92′s slinky “Psycho City” and 1995 live album “Stage.” Great White’s 1984 self-titled debut oozes Sunset Strip seediness, on standout tracks like “Stick It” and a cover of The Who chestnut “Substitute.”
It’s important to note Great White’s classic-era manager, Alan Niven. In addition to managing the band, Niven -- who simultaneously steered Guns N’ Roses for a while, and later GN’R expat Izzy Stradlin -- cowrote and coproduced Great White recordings. One of the rock-biz’s last great pirates, Niven shaped the band’s sound and success.
Russell and Great White parted ways around 2011. In his wake, the band, which still features classic era members Kendall, Lardie and Desbrow, went through a couple other singers. Since 2022, talented twentysomething Alabama native Brett Carlisle has fronted the band. Meanwhile, Russell toured and recorded under the moniker Jack Russell’s Great White.
In 2023, I interviewed Russell for rebooted rock outlet Metal Edge. Unfortunately, Metal Edge discontinued publishing original content before the interview ran. With Russell’s retirement from the road, now feels like the time to finally share it.
The pyrotechnics-caused fire at Great White’s 2003 Rhode Island show that killed 100 fans is part of Russell’s story. But it’s not the whole story. The purpose of our interview was to talk music, which Russell and Great White should be remembered for, too.
This summer, the singer published his long-awaited memoir, “The True Tale of Mista Bone: A Rock & Roll Narrative.” The title nods to a vintage Great White track.
In his book, written with K.L. Doty and forwarded by rock legend Lita Ford, Russell details his MTV-era stardom, substance abuse, pre-fame jail time, and his account of the Rhode Island tragedy.
For our chat, the Southern California native checked in via video call from his Denver area home. Wearing a turquoise bandana and Billabong long-sleeve and seated on a couch in a white room, Russell was chill, friendly and humble in conversation. Below are edited excerpts.
Jack, I was listening to “Save Your Love” again recently and it made the hairs on my arm stand up. When you’re singing do you ever feel that kind of hair-raising thing too?
Jack Russell: Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes I get that, which is when I know I’m on the right path, you know? It’s like OK, this is the way to be doing it.
In the era you came up in, a lot of the rock ballads kind of sucked. But when you sing a ballad, it sounds cooler and soulful. What’s the key to making a rock ballad not suck?
Well, I appreciate the compliment first and foremost. But for me, I think you have to really believe in what you’re doing. You can’t just write a bunch of hokey lyrics. You’ve got to have a lyric that you believe in and that makes sense to not only you but to people listening to it. So I just try to be really honest and sing from the heart. Don’t try to over embellish. Some people think they have to put too much emotion into it, and then it starts to sound hokey.
When Great White did a 1990 episode of “MTV Unplugged,” you did a gorgeous cover of Led Zeppelin’s [version of the Joan Baez song] “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You.” Back in the day, Great White also covered Zep’s “Since I’ve Been Loving You” live. On the 2021 Jack Russell’s Great White release “Great Zeppelin II,” you covered “Whole Lotta Love” and “Heartbreaker,” but also songs like “Kashmir,” “House of the Holy” and “The Rover” not as many people do, let alone well. What do you enjoy about singing those more eclectic Zeppelin songs?
It was cool because they’re not what people would expect you to do. What you’ve got to understand is we [Great White] did an album [released in the late ‘90s] called “Great Zeppelin,” and there were like 15 songs on there. And it was all live. It was three shows and we recorded it and released it. But it was an amazing record. You should check that one out. But we just wanted to dip into something that wasn’t, you know, such mainline stuff. That was a lot of fun.
Another cool covers project Great White did was the “Recover” album, which the band cut live in the studio in 1989 and eventually released in 2002. That had the band’s take on everything from Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue” to The Cult’s “Love Removal Machine.” What’s something cool you have coming up?
Well, right now I’ve got a couple of albums coming out. One’s on [record label] Frontiers [Music], and Tracii Guns [of L.A. Guns] plays guitar on it. [This project was released on the album “Medusa” in early 2024 under the name Russell-Guns.] The thing is these aren’t songs that we wrote. These are songs written by somebody else, so it’s not going to be what people think, you know what I mean? But it’s still good.
The more hear it, the more I like it. At first I was like, this is like really heavy Queen, which isn’t bad, but I couldn’t wrap my head around it at first. And the more I got to get into the songs, and started singing and learning it, I started going, this is pretty cool.
And then I move on to Cleopatra [Records], where I’ve got another album coming out. It’s like half [Russell and Kendall’s pre-Great White band] Dante Fox rerecorded and half cover songs, just like cool covers that my record company picked out. I’m really excited about it.
We released some of the original Dante Fox stuff [in 2019 as “The Roots Of Great White 1978-1982″] a while ago. I mean, the actual original Dante Fox stuff, I was about 16 years old.
They [Cleopatra Records] wanted me to record a handful of songs. I said OK, but I’m gonna have to probably tune-down a little bit from when I was 16 years old. [Laughs] I don’t know if I can hit those notes anywhere -- like, only dogs can hear those.
What’s your origin story as a rock singer?
Well, you know, my initially my first band that I really ever got into and put me on a path of music was The Beatles. My parents bought me the “Help!” album for my sixth birthday. And it just stunned me. I listened to it and was like, this is what I want to do for a living.
I mean, I had like a vision -- no kidding, a serious vision of what my life was going to be like as a rock star. And everything came exactly the way it was laid out to me. It was really, really strange.
But I discovered bands like Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple and all the bands of the ‘70s and I really found a home there. I wanted to do that, what these people were doing, so I just kept doing it and doing it and doing it and doing it.
Started my own band when I was 11 and these guys are like 16 and stuff. Later on that evolved into another band and eventually I left that band ended up being in an original band with Mark [Kendall] and the rest is history. Those were some good days.
Hard-rock isn’t usually a forgiving style for singers as they get older. What do you attribute your durability to? Is it just your talent was touched by God or your higher power?
Well, yeah, I believe that’s all what it is, whether it’s led me down the path to great vocal teachers and ways to save my voice and warm it up for shows and warm down afterwards and take care of my [vocal] cords, you know, to just having the raw talent -- which is a total gift and I’m very humbled by it. I don’t take anything for granted. And I don’t think anything’s about me. It’s just a gift God has given me and continues to give it to me to this day.
Who knows when it’s going to be gone? It’ll be gone one of these days. I’m starting to feel my age a little bit, but so far so good. Where doing what we can with what we have. You know, I still love it. I’ll be completely devastated when it’s gone. But I have a lot of memories, you know?
Early in Great White, the band toured as the opening act for Judas Priest. Priest’s Rob Halford is a different singer than you, but a great singer …
Absolutely.
Anything that stuck with you from watching Rob do his thing on that tour?
Oh yeah, because I’m a big fan of Rob’s. I was a huge fan back then because we used to do a lot of Judas Priest [songs] when me and Mark first got together, just screwing around.
I remember we went to [legendary West Hollywood club] The Troubadour one night, and Rob Halford was there because they were in town. I made my way up to him and I said, “You don’t know me but one of these days I’m gonna open up for you.”
And almost two years later, I walked up to him at the gig, and I said, “You’re not gonna remember me. But about two years ago, I came up to you at The Troubadour and told you I’m gonna to open up for you.” He goes, “Oh, you’re kidding me, mate? What a great story.”
The stuff on Great White’s debut album is …
Heavier. Those were our “We’re gonna be Judas Priest” days.
Talking with you now, it sounds like you still have a spark.
I think it’s just appreciating that at 62 years old, I’m still pretty good at what I do, and I don’t really want to end. So I’m just really trying to get the last hurrah out of it. I mean, I’m definitely in the twilight if not the winter of my career, so I just want to try and suck the marrow out of it, man.
Because it’s not gonna last forever. I understand that. It’s hard to admit, you start to notice that your voice isn’t quite what it used to be. It’s like, oh, that’s a little harder to hit than it used to be, and I have to duck that note every once in a while, and I never had to do that.
So I’m really trying to get the last out of it, do the best I can and put as much down on recording as I can for posterity, so when I get older, and I can’t sing anymore, I can sit there laying in my bed, listening to my old bands.
I was just listening to “Rock Me.” On vinyl, you can really hear the dynamics, more so than I remember from watching the video on MTV. Got a memory from cutting that vocal?
Well, a lot of people don’t notice this, but the video is different song. We recorded it differently for the video because we had to shorten it for MTV, so we did a different version with different lyrics and a different arrangement. Because it was a seven-minute song and MTV didn’t want to play no seven-minute song from a brand new [to mainstream] band in a video, so we shortened it.
Even on the album, one side of the album says all the songs are 3:57 [in running time] and on the other side, they all say 3:58. So on “Rock Me” that way when the [radio] DJ was going to play it, he didn’t realize it was a seven minute song. They just put it on, and they’re like, “God, this is a long song.” So we just faked them out. And after that it was too late because the song became a hit so they couldn’t stop playing.
Do you remember how many takes it took to get your vocal on [the album version of] “Rock Me”?
Um, it wasn’t many. It went about really quick. I didn’t have it so memorized, I had kind of a rough idea of how the song was gonna go, so I just kind of did my own thing as we went along. Some of it I had already, but a lot of it was just off the cuff.
Wanted to ask you about “Once Bitten, Twice Shy.” When could you tell that’s wasn’t going to be just a cover but something special? And is it true Izzy Stradlin from Guns N’ Roses suggested that song for Great White to record?
Yeah, he [Stradlin’ did]. We were in a car one night and he mentioned it. Izzy and my manager [at the time] Alan [Niven], both had an integral part in getting that song on the record.
It was quite the cool thing because I had never heard the song before, because it was an East Coast hit, it was never really a West Coast hit. And when I heard it, I was like, this is perfect.
And the only thing that was changed was instead of [Hunter’s lyric/vocal of] “I, I, I, I’m once bitten twice shy” we changed it to “My, my, my, I’m once bitten twice shy.” It just sounded better, you know?
Guns N’ Roses’ 1988 show at The Ritz in New York is one of their most legendary performances and was later broadcast on MTV. Great White opened up for GN’R that night and your set was great, too. GN’R was originally supposed to open up for Great White that night but the slots were switched. What are your memories of that?
Yeah, it was funny. We were supposed to headline that night. And on the way to the gig on the gig, we’re in a van and our manager turns around he goes, “Hey, guys, I got some bad news.” We’re like, what? “Well, you’re not headlining, Guns N’ Roses are headlining.” We’re like, what’s up? What are you talking about? Those guys just started.
He said, “Yeah, but the record company and MTV wants to make a really big thing about them. They think they’re going to do something really big, so they want to push them hard.” We were like, whatever.
So we go out and we just busted ass. The energy was just off the hook. And apparently, [Guns N’ Roses guitarist] Slash told our manager, “How do you expect us to follow that?” So I was like, alright, I’m vindicated.
We used to have breakfast with Guns N’ Roses for Christmas every year, while our manager was managing them and managing us. And Axl [Rose, GN’R singer] always treated me with this kind of really weird, standoffish thing.
And one morning at Christmas, I said, “Hey, dude, Axl, it seems like there’s a problem with you and I, what is it?” He goes, “You don’t remember me, do you?” I go, “No.”
He goes, “Well, I met you at The Troubadour years ago because I used to go see Dante Fox all the time, and I gave you my [pre-GN’R] demo tape. I asked you to check it out and let me know what you thought of it. And you listened to it. You said you thought my singing was great, but the band sucked. I hated you for that.”
And he goes, “But, you know, you were right. The band did suck, and I ended up leaving them. I appreciate the compliment about my voice, but for the longest time, I was just pissed off at you, but I guess I’m over it by now.”
I go, “That’s cool. You’d asked me to tell you what I thought and I was just being honest.” Somebody wants to ask me a question, I’m not gonna bullshit ‘em. That’s not gonna serve any purpose.
Well, it worked out for Axl in the long run.
Absolutely. It certainly did.
