Great White with Slaughter perform at the Hollywood Casino in Columbus on Friday, April 10. Music starts at 8pm. Tickets available via Ticketmaster
Michael Lardie joined the L.A. rock band Great White as an official member in 1986 after doing some studio work with them prior to that. Little did he know that 40 years later, Great White would still be a touring band with three original members, something that is pretty rare these days for bands that formed in the ’80s. During his time with the band, Lardie’s worn many hats – if you’ve seen Great White videos from the ’80s, you’ve seen him playing keyboards and guitars; and he co-wrote most of the Great White songs you know and love.
After spending the major label days playing shows coast to coast while traveling in a tour bus, Great White has slowed down on the non-stop touring and now primarily does fly-in dates, often on weekends. It’s still a lot of work but gives the individual members (Lardie, Mark Kendall (guitars), Audie Desbrow (drums), Scott Snyder (bass), and Brett Carlisle (vocals)) the semblance of a real life at home where they get to hang out with family throughout the week before jetting off for a show or two. It’s something the band has earned after being at it for so many decades.
As someone who was a teenager in the ’80s, it never fails to amaze me when I have the chance to talk members of bands that I read about in Hit Parader, Circus, Metal Edge and RIP and saw regularly on MTV‘s Headbanger’s Ball. I’m not sure the teenage Chip would believe that the adult Chip would be given these sort of opportunities.
A few days before hopping on a flight to Columbus to join his Great White bandmates for a show at the Hollywood Casino with Slaughter, Lardie joined me via a Zoom call.
For the fly-in date for Columbus, do you fly into town Thursday or take an early Friday flight?
We’ll fly in Thursday late afternoon, get a night’s sleep, and then start the 10-day in a row tour. We’ve got the date with you in Columbus, then we’ve got SeaWorld in Orlando, then get on the (Monsters of Rock) cruise on the next day, do the cruise for 5 days, get off the cruise, fly to Jackson, Mississippi to do a casino in Choctaw, Mississippi before we fly home on the 19th. So it’s a long week out, and we’re all looking forward to it.
Coast to coast — and your SkyMiles must be piling up every year, right?
Yeah, it’s pretty awesome to be Diamond and a million miler. It does help.
There’s gotta be pros and cons from back in the day, like being in a tour bus. Do you miss anything about those days?
One thing about the tour bus that was great is when you got tired, you went to sleep, and then you could just sleep as long as your body would tell you to sleep. With the airline scenario, because we always do flight dates, it is a little bit different animal in that you might sleep 3 or 4 hours after a show, but have to get up early enough to get to the airport, to get to the next city, to do the sound check. The advantage of the tour bus is having the consistency of better sleep, or at least more elongated sleep. I don’t know how I’d feel about it now. One of the advantages to doing the fly thing is we’re home three to four days a week — good to have some assemblage of family life. We get to do things, be around the house, take care of things we need to take care of, and then go out on a Thursday and play a Friday and Saturday, or Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and come back and do it all again. And I’ll be danged if we aren’t lucky enough to already be at 47 dates this year.
That’s crazy.
Yeah, I would love nothing more than to hit 60, because it’s been a while since we had that kind of year. I keep telling our agent, “let’s go, we wanna work, work, work.” There are disadvantages — you do lose sleep, and you usually have to use your first day coming back to try to catch up with the sleep thing. Usually, by the time you start to feel normal again, it’s time to go again.
On this tour, besides the band members, do you have a traveling crew that goes with you?
We have a front-of-house guy who does a lot of the logistical stuff — he advances all the shows and gets us from point A to point B. I do the monitors every day myself, dialing in all the sounds and getting the levels, because we’re all in-ears. These days, thank goodness, we probably have another 10 years if we want it, because we’re being nice to our ears. During the show, the local crew guy will sort of babysit the situation. And we have a merch guy that’s amazing and also helps Audie, our drummer, set his stuff up during the day. We’ve done it both ways — we’ve had 3 or 4 guys out, and we’ve done it when there was nobody out. The pocket we have right now with the two guys seems to be working really, really well. It’s not so many people in the entourage that it gets crowded, but everybody works extra hard to make the show happen every day. It’s a nice group of people within the band and the two crew guys — part of the family. People have always commented on that. They say, “you guys always treat people like you are a family, and you present yourself in such a way that you come across like that.” I don’t know if it’s something we work hard on — it’s just something we’ve always had, because this is something we’ve been doing together, collectively, since 1986. We’re talking 40 years.
40 years. Do you take a step back and realize that?
Oh, I absolutely do, and the more years you’re able to do it, the more of a joy it becomes and the more of a privilege it is to actually be doing it. You appreciate aspects of what it’s like — yeah, it could be a lot of hard work with sound checks, maybe equipment’s not perfect, days can be challenging. But when I see a 10-year-old on his grandpa’s shoulder singing the verse to “House of Broken Love,” it kind of reminds me that we’re lucky enough to have a catalog that people deem worthy of passing on to their children. In that sense, it’s the greatest compliment as a songwriter, to have your music passed on from generation to generation, and when you see it in the flesh happening, it kind of kicks you back a little bit. I look for those moments, and I’m very proud of that.
When you’re a 25- or 30-year-old kid writing these songs, I’m sure at that time you’re like, these songs are gonna live forever, but then reality hits. But the fact that 40 years later, people are singing back — amazing.
It is. It’s such a joy to see that actually happening, and it’s such a full-circle moment — from creation, to performance, to performance 40 years later. It’s just a bit of a gobsmack. It definitely kicks your butt.
Great White wasn’t a one-hit wonder in the ‘80s. You’ve got a number of hits. I remember the last time I saw you, song after song I was like, “Oh yeah, I forgot about this one.” There wasn’t that lull where there’s four songs I didn’t recognize. A testament to those songs that have lasted, that they were well-written at the time and have held their own.
That was always the hope when we were doing it, and it was always in the back of our mind — is this something that’s gonna play in Peoria 50 years from now? At the time, you’re young, and you’re cocky, and you do everything you do, and you just work, work, work. I don’t know if you take it for granted at the time, but now it’s really actually happening. Like you said, it is a testament to our ability to craft songs that have the longevity.
I think it was Ace Frehley that I read this interview with, and somebody asked him, does it ever get tiring playing the same song? And his answer was something along the lines of, “for me it’s playing the same song every night, but for the audience it’s a new audience every night, and that gives me the energy to play that song. I might have played that song 50 nights in a row, but it’s 50 different audiences, and so I react the way they react.” I’m sure that probably keeps you going — playing “Once Bitten” isn’t so much an “oh God, we have to play it again,” it’s more like, “I can’t wait to see the people here reacting tonight.”
That’s exactly it. When you talk about that group of people in the audience responding to you playing that song, the challenge of playing quality musicianship every show, pushing yourself to really dig into the songs — that group of people have never heard you play that song that way in that moment. That is what the magic is, and that’s why it doesn’t get tiring.
I remember learning about Great White because I was flipping through Hit Parader magazine, and there was an ad for Shot in the Dark featuring the single “Face of the Day.” I was a 14- or 15-year-old kid, I didn’t have money to go buy stuff, so I called Z-Rock requesting the song. That was the way — we didn’t have every single song right here in our hand on our phones. You had to seek it out, read magazines, and if you had lawn mowing money, maybe go buy a cassette. I love that I can listen to any song whenever I want now, but I sort of miss that magic.
Don’t you find it unusual because of the attention span of society now, compared to what it was like 30, 40 years ago? My thing that I always say is, I cannot imagine not sitting down and listening from the first groove to the last groove of Zeppelin IV — because that’s how it hit me when I was a teenager. I would never just listen to one song, I’d never skip songs. It was a work, a complete entity, and it made me feel a certain way, so I listened to it from top to bottom. That, unfortunately, is sadly missing in the way people consume music now. Having every song you can think of in the moment on your phone is very convenient, but it’s the double-edged sword — which lane do you want to drive in?
You want to create new music, maybe you are creating new music, but the way you distribute it is so different that it’s probably not worth it at the end, right? Because at this point, Great White’s probably not gonna end up on the radio with a new song. There’s no MTV anymore, so it’s harder to reach people. I thought the last full length, 2017’s Full Circle was great. But you were still making great music in 2017.
We are still creating. In fact, we’re working on three songs right now. The idea — because you’re talking about the delivery system of how music is put out — the plan we have is to do 2 or 3 songs at a time, release one of them with a video to YouTube, and then see if we can get some action on Hair Nation, whatever, just to let people know what’s going on. Then maybe about 4 or 5 months from now, do another 3, and just keep doing that till we’ve amassed an entire album’s worth. At that point, you put them all together for our die-hard fans who always want to go out and buy a CD to have a physical product in their hands, because there is a certain amount of our fan base that wants to have a Great White album. We’ll see how that works this time. I think it’s a way to keep us in people’s minds for 18 months, 24 months, by having new material all the time. I think that’s gonna be fun.
I think that is the right way to release music — maybe not for young bands, but for bands who’ve been around. I want 12 new Great White songs, but I think dropping them 2 or 3 at a time makes a lot more sense.
Yeah, the way people ingest music these days, I think it’s palatable to do it in such a way that is not overwhelming. For somebody who might know “Once Bitten Twice Shy” and then finds out that’s the same band — having a couple, three songs to maybe listen and check out at a time, that’s probably right on the edge of not being too much. Want to make sure that it still stays interesting to people. One of the things I always loved about making Great White records is we had 3 or 4 months of pre-production, working out all the kinks, so the records usually went pretty fast. Our fastest was 8 weeks and our longest was 5 months, but generally we could average almost 10 to 11 weeks, including mix. Everybody knew what was going on, they knew what they were gonna play, so they could really concentrate on playing it with the right attitude. When it’s brand new material and you don’t really know what you’re doing, you’re a little bit timid about how you’re approaching the thing. That’s why I think a lot of people’s first records sound so great — they’ve been playing those songs in clubs, refining them, digging into them, figuring out the perfect part, and after a while when they get into the studio, it’s like they know those songs cold. They can put all kinds of energy and emotion into the performance. And then a second record usually has to come so fast if you’ve had success, so you don’t have the time. We always tried to have a good amount of pre-production to really refine the tune before we’d go in and cut it.
Going back to the live stuff for a second — you’re playing basically the same set, but it’s a different audience. There are songs that you expect a certain reaction from. Does it change night to night? Are there songs that might hit in Columbus this week, but then another song in Orlando? The ones that aren’t “Once Bitten” or “Rock Me” — are there other songs that hit on different nights, where you get a bigger reaction and you’re like, “oh, that one is working with this audience”?
Well, just recently we added back “Call It Rock and Roll,” “All Over Now,” and “Gonna Getcha.” It’s funny because “Gonna Getcha” is such an upbeat tune, so high energy — people have really been responding to that. “All Over Now” — I think people who had bought the album, when you listen to the album as an album, “All Over Now” was very recognizable because it was right after “Rock Me,” so it’s a song that people know but haven’t heard from us in probably over 15 years. We haven’t opened with “Call It Rock and Roll” since probably ’99. These are fun things to do to shake up the set. One of the songs that wasn’t as big a hit as “Once Bitten Twice Shy,” but always surprises me with the response, is “The Angel Song.” For some reason, I think it was actually popular, but it never really coalesced with all the different radio stations — they all didn’t get on the track at the same time, so it was kind of disjointed in its popularity. But Brett, our new singer, Brett Carlisle, loves singing that song and really digs into it, and I think people respond to that. Even if you’ve played something 5,000 times, if it’s in earnest when you perform it and you really give it your all, people dig it. We always try to tweak the set a little bit. We’re gonna have 5 shows this week — 2 on the cruise, Columbus, Orlando, and Choctaw — and there are different set lengths: some are 75, some are 60, some are 45. On a 45-minute set, what do you not play? That’s a tough one. But that’s another thing that keeps it fresh — interchange a couple of songs, and that’s usually all it takes to keep it from becoming any kind of robotic. Just to change up a song or two, or move things around, to get a new face on something — it really makes a difference.
The fact that you have a kid now singing — does that energize the whole band?
Yeah. That was one of the first things that everybody — Audie, Mark, and myself — said: there is such an honest energy with integrity with this young man singing our songs. He is so honoring the melodies, just putting a little bit of his thing into it, and it’s just perfect, because when people are singing the songs they know where the melody’s gonna go, and they’re singing right along with him. We are one of his bands growing up — his dad and his mom played that music when he was a kid, so he knew a lot of those songs cold even before he walked in. He came in as just a fill-in for a show in 2022, and he did such a great job that we asked him to do the next show in New York at a state fair type thing up by Syracuse. Then Mark and I were talking on the phone, and I said, this guy sounds more like Jack than anybody we’ve ever had. He respects the melodies, he’s the sweetest guy, there’s nothing lead singer-ish about him. He’s just a sweet young man from Birmingham, Alabama, and he fit in so well. One day when he was living in Nashville, he happened to be out running and he stopped. Mark and I were on the call together with him, and we just said, “well, we were wondering if you wanted to actually be our singer going forward?” It’s been such a wonderful, harmonious, great energy from this guy. It pushes us — if we ever lost sight of how cool the songs are and how great the reaction is from people, just being around his energy is like a little kick in the pants.
Going back to what I said before about playing the songs — you’ve been playing some of these songs for 40 years, but he hasn’t. He must be in wonder, also, to see the reaction he gets for songs that have been around longer than he’s been alive.
One of the things I like about him is he talks just enough to the audience to feel endeared — so they feel endeared to him — but it’s not elongated, boring stories. He’s really got a gift. He’s really honing his craft to be a frontman, and I watch him develop every night, and I just get more excited by his development.
You said you were gonna work on music with him?
We just finished something the other day, and I’m pretty psyched about it.
Really, to sort of wrap things up — Columbus is with Slaughter. I saw an interview you did, and your touring partners basically all have the same booking agent. Is that mainly how this stuff comes up?
Yeah, that’s true. Slaughter is represented by Bigg Time Entertainment, and so are we. People just love this package, so it’s really just whenever they are interested — it’s not like our agent is selling this particular package, promoters are calling in and wanting it. Other options we do: we’ll do shows with Quiet Riot, shows with Vixen, shows with Sebastian Bach, shows with Queensrÿche. Any combination you could imagine of all the bands — we’ve done festivals with Pearcy/DeMartini, us, Quiet Riot, and Vixen, all on one package. Our agent’s become kind of the king of agents for this genre, and it works out great. Everybody loves our agent.
A lot of those bands you mentioned, some of them don’t even have original members. Here’s my take: Foreigner, for instance — Foreigner is not anybody original, but I’ve seen Foreigner with nobody original, and it’s the songs. I’m okay as a fan. I want to hear these songs, and if the guys in Foreigner are too old or unable to do it, I’m glad the music is living on. I have friends, and I’m sure you deal with this, who will say if it’s not the original, I’m not gonna do it.
We had that occasion when Jack was still with us and he had his own version of it. There were die-hards that said, “if it’s not Jack singing the songs, I’m not gonna come see your particular version of it.” But our thinking was, to your point, that we had 3 members who were instrumental in recording and writing the material, so we were as close to it as anybody was. Being able to go out and feel proud about what we’re doing with these songs — we were the guys. That was kind of easy to think about doing it that way. I’m hoping we can keep the core of what we’re doing, because I think it makes a difference in the authenticity. But 10 years from now, I might be in my later 70s, and I might say I don’t want to work anymore, I don’t want to travel, it’s just killing me — but there’s still a demand for Great White. You plug in people that you would be proud to have represent it. Like with the Foreigner situation — you pick a guy like Jeff Pilson, perfect guy, great vocalist, strong bass player, he’s a musical director. He’s the right guy to represent what that music is. And that’s pretty much true of all the people they’ve chosen. Mick Jones has done a great job assembling a band that I’ve seen, without a single original Foreigner person on stage, and they represent, man. I hear those songs and I just go, to me, that sounds like Foreigner.
In 10 years, when you’re ready to hang it up, I’ll still go see Great White, and I’ll still love the songs — it’s the songs to me. Of course, I would like to see the people that played them play them, but I think the songs will outlast you.
That’s the thing about the branding of any particular band. If you have a catalog, it’s really down to the songs. I wouldn’t compare ourselves to Foreigner, because to me it’s like, bow down. But by the same token, if you have the songs, you can have other well-qualified players that are really into performing the music faithfully, do the songs, and it can be representative to the audience because they’re hearing the songs the way they’re supposed to hear them. In one form or another, so I think that’s great — and we’re so lucky that we have songs.
I saw that Paul McCartney played at a 1,500-seater in LA — kind of back to the roots, he played the Fonda Theater. Is there any part of you that’s ever like, “Friday night, we should just go play the Whisky?” Like, “we should just grab the guys and go play a small room, go back to the old days”?
We were actually thinking about that — there’s an opportunity for us to perhaps take a Whisky show. It would not be a bad thing to feel those boards again, because you think about 45 years ago when you were doing it coming up. That would be a fun thing to do. It’s an amazing career to be able to play in front of 200 people, or 65,000. Every artist could probably tell you that a large crowd is pretty great for the energy. But at the same time, we play a lot of casinos, maybe 1,200 to 1,500 people — and if you get an audience that’s ready to hear some rock and roll, and it sounds good to them, and it’s put forth where they can really get into it and relive that memory they had when they were 15 or 20, it can be just as powerful with that kind of group of people. We would say: build it, we’ll come play it.
I met you guys at a record store signing in 1987. I loved that when I was a kid — as a teenager, to be able to go to a record store and meet you. I met Faster Pussycat, I met Megadeth, Europe. It was fun for me as a fan to have that interaction with people I was watching on TV.
Yeah, that was such a cool part of the experience. When you roll into a town, you get the rep from the record label, and they had set up the in-store. You knew that you were gonna be at it for a couple of hours and maybe roll through 500, 600 people. Being able to hear what these kids were saying to you about how your music made them feel — people could say that things like that can be somewhat arduous, but to me, it was always a joy to meet the fans like that. There are a lot of people you’d love to be able to hear what they have to say. You could tell them it was great to see you sing along to that song — what does that mean to you? That kind of conversation you can’t really have unless you have it in store.
And it means so much — that’s 40 years old, and I’ve kept that for 40 years. It means a lot to your fans when you do that stuff. For you, it was a 5-second interaction of signing your name, but for me, it’s something I’ve kept for 40 years. I appreciate that.
That’s amazing, man.
Awesome. That is all I’ve got. It’s an honor to talk to you. You’ve been in my life for 40 years, so that’s very cool. Keep doing what you’re doing. I love the old stuff, and I can’t wait to hear new stuff.
You and me both. Thank you so much.
For more about Great White visit:
Website: officialgreatwhite.com
YouTube: officialgreatwhiteTV.com
Twitter: @GreatWhiteRocks
