Audie Desbrow

Great White is an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1977.

Vocalist Jack Russell met guitarist Mark Kendall in 1977, and Kendall asked Russell to join his band.

They decided to form a band together and they called it Highway later changing it to Livewire and then played one final show as Wires.

Then in 1979, Russell was arrested for shooting a live-in maid in a botched robbery attempt, and sentenced to eight years in prison.

The band went its separate ways and Kendall was left to start over.

He recruited bassist Don Costa (later a one-time member of Ozzy Osbourne and also briefly in W.A.S.P. ) and drummer Tony Richards (later a member of W.A.S.P.).

They auditioned several singers including John Bush from Armored Saint, They then got a singer named Butch Say whose style was similar to that of Rob Halford, but finally settling on a female singer Lisa Baker.

The name they decided to go with was Dante Fox.

They played their first gig in 1979 with singer Lisa Baker and played around Orange County and the Los Angeles area for six months with Lisa, until she joined George Lynch's band Xciter and Butch rejoined briefly.

Later they found out that Russell was released from prison after serving only 18 months of his sentence and Russell talked Kendall into an audition and he got in the band by a two to one band vote.

They played their first gig with Russell at The Troubadour in Hollywood, California.

After recording several demos, the band chose as manager Alan Niven, who had worked for the independent distributor Greenworld in Torrance, California, and had dealt with Mötley Crüe's debut self-release.

Niven suggested the name change from Dante Fox after seeing Kendall stick his head out of a car window while driving by the Troubador and some kid in the crowd said "there goes Great White".

Kendall got the nickname due to his naturally white-blonde hair, white Fender Telecaster guitar, white jumpsuit, and white Capezio shoes.

The band peaked with several albums during the mid-to-late 1980s, including the platinum-selling records Once Bitten (1987) and ...Twice Shy (1989), and those albums' singles "Rock Me" and "Once Bitten, Twice Shy" received considerable airplay through radio and MTV.

They charted two Top 40 hit singles on the Billboard Hot 100, with "Once Bitten, Twice Shy" and "The Angel Song."

In 1982, the members by this time (as Costa and Richards had left) were Mark Kendall, Jack Russell, drummer Gary Holland, and bassist Lorne Black.

They were soon in the studio and they recorded and released a 5-song EP, Out of the Night, on the independent label Aegean formed by Niven.

Niven then convinced the Los Angeles radio station KMET to begin adding songs from the EP to its playlist in heavy rotation.

KLOS-FM soon did the same.

The band suddenly went from drawing 100 people to a local club to drawing thousands in L.A. concert halls such as Perkins Palace in Pasadena, The Palace in Hollywood and the Country Club in Reseda.

As an unsigned act, Great White headlined at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia playing to 6,250 people.

Near the end of 1983, EMI America signed the band and subsequently released Great White's eponymous debut album in early 1984.

The band immediately toured the UK supporting Whitesnake's Slide It In tour and the entire US and Canada opening for Judas Priest's Defenders of the Faith tour.

They also supported Kiss on their Lick It Up tour.

Shot in the Dark, their follow-up independent release, marked the arrival of drummer Audie Desbrow after the firing of Holland on December 27, 1984.

By the time Capitol Records signed the band and reissued Shot in the Dark, keyboardist-guitarist Michael Lardie, who had played on that album as a session musician, had come aboard as a full member.

After the release of Shot in the Dark, Great White hit the road with Dokken for 5 shows and was on the verge of even bigger success.

The band hit the mainstream in 1987 when they released their third album Once Bitten, accompanied by the hits "Rock Me", "Save Your Love" and "Lady Red Light", all of which received significant airplay on mainstream rock radio stations such as KNAC and Z Rock.

The model Tracy Martinson appeared on the cover of the album and also appeared in the video for "Save Your Love".

In late 1987, Great White parted ways with bassist Lorne Black and replaced him with Tony Montana (Tony Cardenas).

Once Bitten... was certified platinum in April 1988, and a year-long tour in support of the album cemented Great White's popularity worldwide, performing with Guns N' Roses, Twisted Sister, Whitesnake, David Lee Roth and TNT, and appearing on several dates as part the European Monsters of Rock tour in the summer of 1988 with several acts such as Kiss, Iron Maiden, Guns N' Roses, David Lee Roth, Megadeth, Helloween, Anthrax and Testament.

They continued to release new material into the 1990s.

The band is named after both the shark with the same name, and Mark Kendall’s former stage nickname.

Great White disbanded in 2001; over the next few years, the band performed as Jack Russell's Great White, which also made headlines when, in 2003, their show pyrotechnics set a Rhode Island nightclub on fire, leading to the deaths of 100 people, including band member Ty Longley.

By 2006, Jack Russell's Great White had reverted its name to its original name Great White.

As of August 2008, Great White estimated they had sold around eight million records worldwide.

After more than three decades as their singer, Russell left the band in 2011, again using the moniker Jack Russell's Great White.

Great White has since continued on without Russell, who was first replaced by XYZ vocalist Terry Ilous, who stayed in the band until 2018 when Mitch Malloy replaced him.

Malloy left in 2022 and was replaced by Andrew Freeman, later followed by Brett Carlisle the same year.