GREAT WHITE To Record 'Proper' DVD

Jennifer Maurer of PopStar recently conducted an interview with GREAT WHITE guitarist Michael Lardie. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

PopStar: Michael, GREAT WHITE has been playing together off and on for the greater part of 25 years, actually a little more than that right?

Lardie: Yeah, the core four as we like to call it consisting of myself, Audie Desbrow, our drummer, Mark Kendall, our lead guitarist, and Jack Russell, our lead vocalist, have been performing together since 1985. It's actually been GREAT WHITE since 1982, with Jack and Mark being the core members, so yes, we're definitely past that 25-year mark now.

PopStar: So you're touring together, and it's been a while since you've done this, so what's different now vs. back then. Is there any differences that you've noticed? Is it more fun now?

Lardie: I think it's more fun in that the way we tour now is a little different than we used to. We used to go out on a bus for seven to ten weeks, do five shows a week and that was the business model that seemed appropriate at the time. Now we do what we call the weekend-warrior thing where we go out on a Thursday, play Friday and Saturday, and fly home on Monday, so we have some semblance of a home life for two to three days a week, then we get to go out and play two or three shows a week, and we do that pretty much from April to October. The other months of the year, we'll do two or three selected dates in each month.

PopStar: What is the best part of touring this time around?

Lardie: The thing that I've been noticing a lot the last couple of years is a resurgence of multi-generational audience attendance. Once of my best moments last summer was to see at a festival, a grandpa, a son, and a grandson, wearing his grandpa's GREAT WHITE shirt from 1987. This little kid is singing the hooks of every song. He's like six years old, and I'm going "Wow!" That just kind of struck me as one of those things you dream about. You hope your music can make a difference for one, but that it could be appreciated by multi generations, that just struck me up side the head like a lightning bolt. It really can happen. I'm so lucky. Hopefully we still try to make that kind of music, not try to reinvent ourselves. We are what we are. Some people call us the world's biggest backyard party band, and it's all about having a good time with us. And getting back to your other question about what's different and what's fun now? It really is a blast. I mean, I guess it still feels like we're getting away with something. Even after 25 years, I think "I get to do this for a living?"

PopStar: You've pretty much answered my next question. I was going to ask you who your audience is made up of. I suspected that you were going to say that you've got the fans who followed you back in the '80s, and maybe some of their kids, and now you're saying that even the grand kids are attending. That's amazing.

Lardie: It's crazy, because you think about when we broke out of L.A. in '87. The one thing about that, because it was classic rock and it was blues-based, it wasn't unusual to get the people in their 30's to like that music. It wasn't just the 18 years that were going for it. Fast forward 25, 30 years later you have people 55, 60 years old who love the band, it makes sense that they would have kids and their kids would have kids. We've been lucky in that regard. Like you said, with having those classic strains of rock in you, like LED ZEPPELIN, AEROSMITH, that's been the kind of thing that spans a lot of time, and generations.

PopStar: What's next for GREAT WHITE after the tour?

Lardie: Well, this year, sometime during the tour, we're actually going to record a proper DVD. We'll put out an audio record as well from the live record. One of our favorite things to do over the years has been to do is live records. The studio has always been a great vehicle for us, but I think the quintessential sound of GREAT WHITE is when we're actually playing, and live records really capture that. We're looking forward to doing that this year. There are a couple of DVDs that are out there that are not endorsed by the band, one-camera shoots, terrible audio etc., put out by small record companies who realize that if they put the stuff out and you go after them, it's going to cost you as much in legal fees to cease and desist on this than what you'd recover in royalties. So it's people making small amounts of money off of you without your permission. So what we're trying to do is clean the slate this year and say, "this is what the band endorses, this is what we're really about, don't feel ripped off, pick up the real thing." Going to see all these live bands back in the '80s was an event. That's one of the things that Jack says about the '80s in the show, we were talking about some songs have a harkening back to the feeling you had when coming to a show in the '80s and what he says to the audience is, "if you missed the '80s, you f'in missed out"...think about that. The pomp and circumstance, the fact that when you went to a show, it was a celebratory thing. It was about a smile on your face, it wasn't about a guy looking down at his shoes. You were entertained. Think about going to a DAVID LEE ROTH show or going to see POISON, when you went, it's like it was a big deal. You were entertained. I think about playing the Rosemont with WHITESNAKE in '97 and it was amazing. It goes on, playing the Aragon with TESLA, years later. These are all things I remember very clearly and it was very much a celebration.

Read the entire interview from PopStar.

(Thanks: Fullshred)