Andrew Freeman reflected on his five-month tenure with Great White during a recent interview with Edd Bazaar of Live Guitar Solos and shared insights into what led to his departure from the band.
The singer revealed that the band reached out to him to fill in for Mitch Malloy, who was unavailable for certain gigs in 2022 due to prior commitments. But the last-minute calls forcing him to cancel personal plans gradually frustrated him, and he eventually asked them to make a definitive decision about his role.
In May that year, Great White announced they had parted ways with Malloy and officially replaced him with Freeman, though the new frontman’s run didn’t last long.
Freeman told Bazaar that Great White was “not my favorite band musically. I did like their first record, but proficiency-wise, two of the guys in the band are really great musicians and two of the guys aren’t. So, that was a bit of a challenge, but the checks were nice. It was good, steady work all summer, and I had nothing going on. But I did have ‘Last In Line’ dates that I told them about. And we just made a handshake agreement. They wanted to get through the summer and I was available. I said, ‘If it doesn’t work out, we’ll just shake hands and part ways.’ And it turned into a… What happened? They were plotting…”
The singer explained, “I couldn’t do a show. They changed the date. It was on one of my ‘Last In Line’ dates that they knew about. There was a communication issue between the agent and the band, and then the one guy in the band and the other guy in the band. And that was it. So, they tried to pull something on me.”
“I kind of caught him in the act, and I said… on the Sunday, I said, ‘You’d better get somebody else to do Friday ’cause I’m not coming.’ I know they say that they fired me, and they were planning to fire me, but I kind of cut them off at the pass. ‘Cause I sent them a text message saying, ‘Hey, if this is my last gig, I’d like to know now.’ ‘Cause I was bringing my son on the road with me. We were doing something that weekend and they were planning on firing me with my son at the show. You know, like one of those, ‘Hey, it’s been fun. Here’s a beer. We’re not using you anymore.’”
“Like, ‘Well, that would that would really go bad for you. If you did that, that would go really bad for you. So, if your [new] guy’s ready to go, you can bring him in on Friday ’cause I’m not coming,’” he continued. “And it didn’t have to end that badly because, again, I like those guys. The majority of ’em are nice guys. But, yeah, I did it for a few months and sang all the tunes. And now I’m the guy who didn’t work out, or however they spun it.”
“Every Blabbermouth story is, ‘Oh, this guy replaced this guy,’ and I’m, like, dude, it wasn’t that dramatic. I came in, I did the job they asked me to do, and then that was it. They decided to go a different direction.”
In October 2022, Great White announced Brett Carlisle, who filled in for a show the previous month, as their new vocalist. The band’s updated lineup finished their 2024 dates in November. They’re now getting ready for a US tour starting at Chris Jericho’s Rock N’ Wrestling Rager at Sea: Six On The Beach in Miami on January 31.
