After the fire: Great White, survivors live with the horror of Rhode Island tragedy
Band is playing sold-out shows, but some wish they would just stay home
Friday, March 25, 2005
By Scott Mervis, Pittsburgh Post-GazetteJohn Van Deusen III was one of the lucky ones -- if you care to stretch the definition of the word.
In 1993, Great White's members were Jack Russell, standing, and Audie Desbrow, seated left, Mark Kendall and Michael Lardie. Russell and Kendall are still with the band, which is touring to benefit the fund formed to help victims of the 2003 fire that started during the band's performance at a nightclub in West Warwick, R.I.
Click photo for larger image.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Great White
With: Warrant and Firehouse.
Where: Pepsi-Cola Roadhouse, Burgettstown.
When: 8 p.m. Saturday.
Tickets: Sold out.
The aircraft mechanic from Carver, Mass., took a first date to see one of his favorite bands, Great White, at the Station on that February night in 2003 and managed to come out alive.
Barely.
He lost eight friends and his date was badly injured in the Rhode Island club fire that killed 100 and injured 200 more. Van Deusen managed to crawl from the pile and grab a fireman's boot, but when he made it to the hospital, he pleaded with the nurses to "just let me die."
Van Deusen, a 40-year-old father of two boys, suffered second- and third-degree burns to 35 percent of his body and endured pain so severe he was placed in an induced coma for two months. He was the last survivor to leave Rhode Island Hospital three months after the fire. His lungs were damaged, and he has battled a blood infection, pneumonia and kidney problems. More than two years later, he is still unable to use his hands.
"It's destroyed my life completely," he says in a phone interview. "I'm having a hard time trying to put myself back together. It's hard for me to get up every day knowing that I have to go through the pain of therapy. And the days I don't have therapy, I don't even get up half the time. I just got nothing to get up for."
One thing Van Deusen doesn't get up for is the anger. Long before that night, he had picked up a logo design for a Great White tattoo. Someday he still wants to have it applied. "No one," he says, "understands why."
Great White way
Great White was well on its way to becoming a footnote, at best, in the history of rock 'n' roll.
As the hair-metal bands were about to lose their bounce in the late '80s, the Los Angeles band hit the Top 5 with a cover of Ian Hunter's "Once Bitten, Twice Shy."
Beyond that, there wasn't much that distinguished them from any other spandex band trying to sound like Zeppelin or Van Halen. Until the decision was made to use pyrotechnics in the small nightclub in West Warwick, R.I. Great White didn't even get through the first song on Feb. 20, 2003, before the Station was engulfed in flames.
In the wake of the fourth worst nightclub fire in the nation's history, the idea that Great White would ever play again seemed unthinkable, even for the band.
Mark Kendall, who was with Great White when it formed in 1982, says, "I pretty much sat my guitar down, and I don't think I touched it for like four months."
That night, Kendall swiftly made it out the side door, thinking he would get out of the way so firefighters could put out the fire and the band could go back and finish the show. He and singer Jack Russell watched the club burn in minutes. They're still not sure why Ty Longley, their likable guitarist from Sharon, Mercer County, didn't make it, though some say he was out and went back in for his guitar.
Stew Milne, Associated Press
A guitar is left at the memorial fence enclosing the wreckage of the Station nightclub in West Warwick, R.I., in memory of the victims who died in a fire that started during a Great White performance in February 2003.
Click photo for larger image.
In the weeks following the tragedy, Great White was the target of public outrage and faced the possibility of prosecution. Privately, Kendall, who lives with his wife and four kids in Palm Desert, Calif., came to understand survivor's guilt.
"I saw so many psychotherapists until I settled on one that I felt comfortable pouring my heart out to," he says. "And praying with my pastor on a daily basis, not just in church -- he was helping me through. It felt like temporary relief. I was having mixed emotions a lot."
Kendall and Russell, who play their first show in the Pittsburgh area since the tragedy Saturday night at the Pepsi Roadhouse, doubted they could ever play again. When they contacted the United Way, which had set up the Station Nightclub Fire Relief Fund, to see if anything could be done for the victims and their families, they learned that some survivors were launching a smaller volunteer effort called the Station Family Fund (
www.stationfamilyfund.org).
"We spoke with them," says Kendall, "and said, 'Is there a way we could help?' They were all for it. That's how the whole process started."
In the spring of 2003, Great White re-emerged on stage to play a benefit for Longley's girlfriend and unborn child. Later, they launched a tour with three new members to benefit the fund.
"We're on this crusade to help the families and really to create awareness because playing the size venues that we play, we can only raise so much money on our own. But what we can do is put the word out. We're on TV all the time. We're constantly telling people about what a great foundation it is. By creating the awareness, we've been able to generate a lot more dollars just through that. That was the whole inspiration for the tour."
Controversial comeback
Not everyone has embraced Great White's decision to carry on. In September 2003, a concert in Weymouth, Mass., was canceled after dozens of survivors spoke out against the appearance. There also was an online petition calling for its ban in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Stew Milne, Associated Press
A victim's son places a card on his father's cross at the site on the one-year anniversary of the blaze.
Click photo for larger image.
Nancy Noyes, who suffered second- and third-degree burns and spent 10 weeks in a hospital, told Time magazine at the time, "They don't deserve applause and people dancing to their music. I would never go see them again because there was such severe stupidity involved."
Diane Mattera, mother of 29-year-old Tammy Mattera-Housa, who died in the fire, went to the site of the blaze in the fall of 2003 and removed the memorial cross left there in the name of Longley. She replaced it with a note calling him a "killer." When the band resumed touring, Mattera told the Rocky Mountain News, "They're making a living off of our dead."
Although Van Deusen's mother has spoken out against the band's decision to tour, Van Deusen says he's bitter about what happened but not toward the band.
"It was an unfortunate accident that it happened. It wasn't their fault. Jack Russell, I talked to him [on the phone] a couple months ago, and I'd like to see him again. I'd like to see him on stage and shake his hand and let him know that there are still people who care about him."
The band's tour schedule for the past two years shows a concentration of dates on the West Coast, in the South, Midwest and Canada, but it's as if there is an invisible line blocking them from playing anywhere northeast of Pennsylvania.
Van Deusen would like to see Great White back in New England.
"I think the people of the towns who won't let them play are selfish, because the proceeds from the concerts go to us, and we need all the help we can get."
Kendall says he is well aware of the band's critics.
"We know that there are going to be people who don't want us out there, or whatever. But the thing is: What do we do because of that. Stay home and not help? ... I'm sorry but these people need help, and I'm not going to stay home just because you say we shouldn't be helping. This is the only way we know how to help, by playing music. This is what we do. This is something we're in for life; we're not just doing it temporarily."
The Station Family Fund has raised more than $700,000 ($85,000 directly from Great White) and has distributed it to survivors for everything from health insurance to buying groceries. Unfortunately, it had to shut down temporarily this winter for lack of funds. (This week, a California judge threw out a slander suit filed by Russell against a former publicist who accused him of embezzling some of the money the band owed to the fund.) Numerous stories have been written about the financial hardships of the victims, some of whom have received about $8,000 from Rhode Island's Crime Victims Compensation Fund.
That money became available when the Station fire became a criminal case. The band's former manager, Daniel Biechele, who set off the pyrotechnics, is under criminal indictment along with club owners Michael and Jeffrey Derderian, also a TV news reporter, for involuntary manslaughter. They have all pleaded innocent and await a trial that may begin in January.
Last summer, a group of more than 200 victims and family members filed a federal civil suit targeting Russell and 46 others -- including the local fire marshal and TV cameraman accused of blocking an exit. In January, Russell took the Fifth Amendment, fearing possible criminal charges against him in the future.
"I think there is one civil suit against Jack Russell," Kendall says, "but it's just going to go away eventually. We're not too concerned. We understand the lawsuits because of that night."
The band refuses to discuss details of using pyrotechnics, other than to say that it never used them before that tour and had been lighting them for two or three weeks before the Rhode Island show.
In a recent segment of "Larry King Live," Russell and Kendall were joined by two badly wounded survivors who were remarkably forgiving.
"They know that it's not our fault," Kendall says. "They're kind of students of the night. They know why things happened and they know all the facts. Blame-casting really isn't going to help anybody."
When pressed, though, Kendall says, "I will say this: I think if you're going to have foam inside your building, it should be flame retardant ... especially if you're going to allow smoking in your building. You should be conscious of material like that that is so flammable."
Kendall says the club was using the low-grade foam for soundproofing purposes. "That's the only time I've seen that. I've never seen it in a club before. They used it for soundproofing because neighbors were complaining about the music at night. At first, they started out by buying air conditioners [for them]. That wasn't getting it. Then they started with the soundproofing and double doors."
Rocking out
Although they drew an over-capacity crowd of 432 fans to the Station that night, Great White was all but an afterthought in 2003. After Nirvana wiped out the hair-metal bands in '91, Great White was unable to repeat the success of "Twice Shy" with '90s releases like "Sail Away" and "Let It Rock." The band's last studio records were the Led Zeppelin tribute "Great Zeppelin" and "Can't Get There From Here" in 1999.
Tony Dejak, Associated Press
A photo of Great White guitarist Ty Longley rests next to flowers in March 2003 at the Yankee Lake Ballroom in his hometown of Brookfield, Ohio. The 31-year-old was among those who died in the nightclub fire.
Click photo for larger image.
Kendall, who just released a solo record called "2.0.," says Great White was never interested in trying to step away from its hard-rock roots.
"I just write the way I write. It's called '80s rock, because that's when we were going. I've never really written songs for the radio. I'm not going to write some new kind of music just because it's popular. You can consider Great White almost like blues-rock, straight-ahead rock with blues overtones to it. We could write songs like Prong if we wanted to, but it would be kind of like cheating the fans. We can't change our music just because another sound gets popular."
Kendall says there is a chance Great White might record again this year, particularly since the pop-metal sound is making small inroads.
"I'm not saying it's some huge comeback, but Motley Crue has a new record, Velvet Revolver are doing really well, there's a little bit going on. I wouldn't say it's totally back, but there's a certain amount of freshness to the music, because it's been away for so long."
The show on Saturday night with Warrant at the Pepsi-Cola Roadhouse is already a sell-out. It's the country music club's first foray into "active rock," according to owner-operator Ray Bologna. Great White was not part of the decision to add a band called Firehouse. This is a one-off show that Bologna booked, and he says it was just a matter of the three bands sharing an agent. "I didn't give that any thought, nor was it planned. That's just the name of those bands."
"They've been around for years and years," Kendall says of Firehouse. "There are going to be a million things that people are going to come up with, but what are you going to do? That's the name of their band, and it has nothing to do with anything."
As for Great White, Kendall says the band, despite living with the tragedy, tries to approach its shows with the sense of fun it always did. They take care each night to stop and remember the Station.
"We used to have a hundred seconds of silence," he says. "We kind of moved on from that. We have a moment where we talk to the audience about that night and how we never want to forget our friends, and say a prayer for their families. Apart from our show itself, we just rock out like we always did. Nothing's really changed."
Of course, there's never going to be pyro at another Great White show. And fans won't be hearing "Desert Moon," the song they were playing when the blaze began.
"We haven't played that song. Things that bring back memories of that night we try to stay away from. And that song reminds us of that night. We haven't played it since then and probably never will."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05084/477106.stm