By JAY ROBERTS

The Cassette Chronicles is a continuing series of mini reviews and reflections on albums from the 1980’s and 1990’s. The aim of this series is to highlight both known and under-appreciated albums from rock, pop and metal genres from this time period through the cassette editions of their releases. Some of the albums I have known about and loved for years, while others are new to me and were music I’ve always wanted to hear. There will be some review analysis and my own personal stories about my connection with various albums. These opinions are strictly my own and do not reflect the views of anyone else at Limelight Magazine.

(WRITER’S NOTE: THIS IS THE LAST CASSETTE CHRONICLES ARTICLE OF 2024. THERE WILL BE A BEST OF 2024 PIECE COMING NEXT WEEK. I WANT TO THANK EVERYONE FOR CONTINUING TO READ THE SERIES AND I HOPE THAT YOU WILL CONTINUE TO DO SO BECAUSE THE SERIES WILL RETURN WITH NEW ARTICLES AT THE BEGINNING OF JANUARY 2025!)

GREAT WHITE – GREAT WHITE (1984)

I’m sure you will be shocked…shocked I say…to learn that I’ve never listened to Great White’s self-titled debut album before now. I’m a little surprised myself but I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a copy of this album (in any format) out in the wild before a recent excursion.

Now, that’s not to say I’m not at least somewhat familiar with some of the music from this album. In fact, two of the songs on Side One of the album are two of their better known songs even now.

I’m pretty sure I’ve heard both “Stick It” and “On Your Knees” both on the radio back in the day and through the greatest hits compilations I have in my collection. But before I talk about those songs, let’s pull back a little and talk about the tone or rather sound of this album.

When I was looking up information about the album, the one thing I noticed is that most articles describe Great White’s sound as being a lot more metal (aka heavier) than what we generally think about the band’s music. And while I do think the music leans more heavy and rocking than pretty much the rest of their catalog, singer Jack Russell’s voice still makes the music pretty identifiable as GREAT WHITE. He just has a readily identifiable sound so whether metal or blues rock is the musical style, Jack Russell still stands out.

This is the fifth Great White album I’ve written about overall but because I haven’t listened to it in full before, there was plenty to discover.

So now we can get back to those two songs I mentioned above. In regards to “Stick It”, the music is certainly in-your-face and so is the attitude the vocals project in the song. Particulary when Russell is intoning the song’s title. Being 1984 and metal developing a certain style that prevailed in the decade, the music also had a kind of echo to the production at times.

The song “On Your Knees” was co-written with Don Dokken and it is a hard-hitting straight forward rocker. I can definitely understand why it is still a well known track from Great White’s catalog.

Oh, and it is one of three tracks that originally appeared on the Out of the Night EP, even though the versions on Great White were fully new recordings.

The song “Out of the Night” itself opens up Side One and I noted pretty early on how fast and heavy it sounded. Definitely more of a metal track. But I tell you, despite what their record label and maybe other fans themselves might think, I thought this track was fantastic! Definitely showed the earlier style the band was employing at the time but it’s a darn good song no matter what.

For me, “Bad Boys” was OK. Solid rocker but of the five songs on the album’s first side, it is the one that left the least impression on me. 

But you know what song actually really surprised me and blew me away? It was the cover of The Who song “Substitute”. HOLY CRAP!  For me, I’ve been a fan of the many and varied songs from The Who that get played on the radio over and over again. But as surprising as this may be to some readers, I don’t actually own any of their catalog. And to the best of my knowledge I’ve never heard their original version of “Substitute”.  As I was listening to Great White’s quite masterful and rocking rendition, I was really getting into the song. I love the lyrics a lot but I thought Jack Russell did a fantastic job with his vocal performance as a whole. So much so that I actually find myself a bit fearful of looking up the original song on Youtube because I don’t want to spoil my feeling and/or love of this version.

For Side Two of the album, the song “Streetkiller” sure sounds like an 80s metal song title. But the song’s intro starts out establishing a moody almost eerie vibe. But as that intro ends, the music kicks in full burst and rocking pretty fast. I found myself getting into this track a lot.

But the song “No Better Than Hell” was a song that took more work to appreciate. It’s mostly got a mid-tempo delivery but the music seems like it was hushed a little, as if it wasn’t coming through the speakers in a full throated style. Maybe that was the planned method for establishing the feel of the song or something. But while the song does come off as interesting enough that I don’t hate it, I found that it wasn’t quite as intriguing as I might’ve hoped. 

On “Hold On”, Great White started out with a more subdued delivery of the song, picking up the pace a bit for the song’s choruse but by the end, the song was fully uptempo, albeit not quite as fast as a track like “Out of the Night” or anything. Okay song overall.

But the pacing picks up in full with the song “Nightmares”. It’s got a creepy sound to the guitar solo and just one of the tracks that does lend itself to that description of this album being a completely different sound than the rest of Great White’s discography.

That fast pacing continues on the album closing “Dead End” (which is the 3rd song re-recorded from the Out of the Night EP). It’s got a thunder and lightning delivery that I really found enjoyable and the vocals are delivered with Russell sounding at times as if he’s delivering the lines in a rapid fire manner. The band goes out a very high note with this song.

While there are of course definite differences between this first full-length Great White album and the slightly softer blues rock driven sound they adopted after it, I’d be remiss not to say that the band’s talent shines through with their songwriting and performances on the Great White  album. Sure it may not be perfect considering a couple of songs gave me pause but overall, this one turned out to be a very welcome surprise as I edge closer and closer to completing my Great White studio album collection.

I love Great White the band and Great White the album is the early primer on why that came to be. Check it out for yourself and I’m sure you’ll be as pleased as I ended up being.

NOTES OF INTEREST – The Great White debut album (which peaked at #144 on the Billboard album chart) was reissued on CD in 1999 with 5 cover songs included as bonus tracks. It was done by a French record label who re-titled the album as Stick It.

The four members of the lineup (singer Jack Russell, guitarist Mark Kendall, bassist Lorne Black and drummer Gary Holland are credited with writing the 9 original tracks on Great White. They shared writing credits with producer Michael Wagener on the song “No Better Than Hell” while the band’s manager Alan Niven provided backing vocals and got co-writing credits on two songs.

Gary Holland was a member of an earlier version of Dokken and was briefly a member of the band Sister which would eventually become W.A.S.P. He is credited with appearances on 2 Ozzy Osbourne releases and worked on albums by Twisted Sister, Autograph and Don Dokken as well.

Keyboardist Michael Lardie was not yet a member of the band but he is credited on this album as an assistant engineer and provided backing vocals.