Great White’s Closet Ichthyologist

It was a very warm afternoon but Jack Russell, lead singer of the local hard-rock band Great White, was shivering slightly as he recalled a chilling encounter with a great white shark.

Russell, a hearty, good-natured macho man, got sidetracked into this tale during brunch in Westwood. He had just flown into town two hours earlier from Florida, one of the stops on the big Whitesnake tour. Great White is opening act on the tour, which includes shows Thursday at the Forum and Saturday and next Sunday at Irvine Meadows.

Caught up in the drama of his shark tale, Russell, who wears a long earring and has arms full of grisly tattoos, started talking faster than usual. “In the middle of the night me and five friends were on a boat, drunker than hell. We all had our lines out.

“ Zzzzzzzzzzzzz! “ he said, mimicking the sound of the line racing on the reel as the shark was hooked. “Then-- bam! --it stopped. Aw, hell. We thought the cable broke. But it was this incredibly strong cable. The next line was hooked and then the same thing happened. We didn’t know what the hell was happening.

“We knew there was something out there but we didn’t know what. Then I’m standing on the stern of my boat and this, this . . . thing pops out of the water.”

Russell clasped his head and his eyes bugged out, reliving his terror at seeing this great white shark. He spread his arms trying to show how huge it was. “It must have been 14 to 16 feet,” he said. “I’m not foolin’. A great white that size would weigh at least 2,500 pounds.”

“We all stood there in total silence. Everybody looked at each other. We realized that’s what had happened to the cable. This thing had snipped through this cable like nothing. It was ‘Jaws,’ man! We said, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here!’ We took off as fast as we could.”

He punctuated his tale with one last big shiver.

A shark freak as well as a fishing fanatic, the 27-year-old Russell insisted that he would be an ichthyologist--a zoologist who specializes in fish--if he weren’t a rock ‘n’ roll singer. “Sharks are my favorite,” he added.

Surprisingly, all this was not an explanation about why the band was named Great White. “Great White is a nickname for our guitarist,” Russell said, referring to Mark Kendall. “It just evolved into the name of the band. I wish I could say the band is called Great White because I’m a shark nut, but that’s not really the reason.”

In the past year, Great White has graduated from hot-local-band status to national prominence, thanks to its first hit album, “Once Bitten,” which has sold more than 900,000 copies. The stylish pop-metal single “Rock Me” launched this year-old album and turned the band into a sought-after support act. Opening shows for the likes of Night Ranger, Twisted Sister and Whitesnake has introduced the band to pop-metal audiences that have obviously been impressed enough to purchase the album.

Great White, which is neither sinister nor threatening, is really more hard rock than metal. Its greatest resource is Russell’s melodiously shrieking voice, which, when he’s really on, is up there with the best. Kendall’s bluesy guitar licks anchor this very polished sound.

Great White was one of the most promising bands on the local club circuit in the early ‘80s. EMI-America Records executives spotted the potential in the band’s five-song, 1983 EP “Out of the Night.” But the next year, its first EMI album, “Great White,” didn’t tap that potential.

“It wasn’t a great album,” Russell admitted. “We really lacked direction.”

They also lacked a good drummer. “Everybody had progressed musically but the drummer was the weak link in the chain,” Russell said. “We had to make a change.” So Audie Desbrow was hired.”

The addition of keyboardist Michael Lardie, who is also one of the band’s co-producers, added another pop dimension that has helped make the sound more commercial.

After the EMI fiasco, Great White couldn’t get another major record deal so it released an independent album, “Shot in the Dark.” Capitol Records liked the LP enough to sign the band and re-release the album. Aside from “Face the Day,” however, the material was run of the mill. The band, which writes its songs with the help of manager Alan Niven, came up with much better songs for the “Once Bitten” album, which has a strong ‘70s blues-rock feel.

Last summer, after the release of “Once Bitten” and just before the tour, there was another personnel upheaval. The band fired bassist Lorne Black and replaced him with Tony Montana.

“Some people don’t know when to stop partying and start playing,” said Russell, who had to be coaxed into talking about Black. The tour was too important to the band. We couldn’t afford any screw-ups. We had to make a change.”

Russell, a Whittier native who now lives in Redondo Beach, started singing in bands at age 11. He went through four bands, honing his vocal style, before landing in Great White. He admitted that he was wild and irresponsible in the ‘70s: “I was kicked out of some bands for being drugged out and obnoxious. I was on drugs real bad in those days. I’d show up stoned to some shows. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.”

Since then, Russell said, he’s calmed down quite a bit: “I take reasonable care of myself now, particularly when I’m working. If I have a show the next day I don’t get crazy.”

According to Russell, his real weakness is pretty women: “I love them all. They can make me crazy. I can get wild and obnoxious around them.”

The parade of attractive young women through the restaurant that day clearly intrigued him. “Hey,” he called out jokingly to a passing beauty. “Wanna see my tattoos?”