In a recent interview with Cassius Morris, Great White guitarist Mark Kendall opened up about the band’s early years, noting a US tour with Judas Priest that ‘almost gave him a heart attack.’
Mentioning what happened after Great White finished their UK tour with Whitesnake in the 1980s, the guitarist said:
“We’re looking for a tour in the States and ended up touring with Judas Priest. So, that was really – I mean, it almost gave me a heart attack.”
He detailed one of the performances and went on:
“We went to the arena in Niagara Falls, New York, and they were recording a video at the place we were gonna play with them, opening the following night. They were recording a video for MTV from a song called ‘Love Bites.'”
Describing what shocked him, Kendall added:
“He comes down in this huge claw. I mean, it was like Godzilla at this stage, and I’m going, ‘We’re gonna set up our amps and stuff in front of this.’ It was surreal, dude.”
Then, he talked more about his experience with Priest by saying:
“I drank like eight beers before the show. I mean, I was so – but one good thing is we came off that Whitesnake tour, so we had played for a lot of people. You know, like Wembley Arena, 20 000 people. Yeah. A little bit of warmup, but it was still – just their stage plot and everything was so enormous. But they really treated us great.”
Great White’s first US tour with Judas Priest also included some problems. During this period, their debut album was held back from the music stores by their old label EMI America, which affected the sales.
In a past interview with Capitol Chaos TV, the band’s former vocalist Jack Russell recounted those times:
“[…] We end up only selling only about 100,000 units, and we should have been way past that. And we had every label in town we could have chosen from, and the manager picked that label. I thought, ‘You idiot.’ So, we had to put our whole record out again and do the whole thing and signed with Capitol, the sister label. After that, we had some success.”
The band faced other changes during their first tours. Kendall mentioned them last month while paying tribute to Great White’s early career on Twitter. Under an old picture, he wrote:
“My band Dante Fox back in the day. We weren’t even a top 20 band in the Los Angeles area! Almost every band were my heroes, including Van Halen. We kind of had to force ourselves on people in hopes someone would eventually help us!”
Then, the guitarist added:
“We finally got help, changed our name & left on tour with Whitesnake in the UK in 1983, followed by a Judas Priest tour in the US. We’re grateful for everyone who helped us along the way in our early years!”
You can check out his new interview in the video below.
