Killer Show: The Station Nightclub Fire (7 page)

Rock concerts featuring pyrotechnics first took hold in the 1970s with bands such as
KISS
. Heavy on makeup and stagecraft, metal bands of the
KISS
ilk safely fired pyrotechnics in stadium-size venues. The pyro usually consisted of “gerbs” and “flashpots,” electrically triggered effects that, respectively, showered a fountain of sparks or created an instantaneous vertical tongue of flame. Either could be synchronized with music, creating a flux of radiant heat intense enough to be felt by the audience. Sometimes “fire-breathing” by the performers was added to the mix. Unfortunately, lesser-known bands would follow suit in smaller, indoor settings — without the precautions taken by professionals, such as site planning and ample fire extinguishers.

When “Jack Russell’s Great White” set off on its ill-fated tour, it consisted of Jack Russell on vocals, Mark Kendall on lead guitar, Ty Longley on rhythm guitar, David Filice on bass, and Eric Powers on drums. All but Russell were salaried session musicians sharing no part of the tour’s profits. Powers was still owed over $3,000 from Russell’s abortive solo tour. The drummer agreed to come along if he were paid a little extra on top of his $1,100 weekly salary to gradually pay him back.

Session musicians were definitely second-class citizens on this tour. Their contract with Jack Russell’s Great White specified that as session musicians they were not part of Great White and could not represent themselves as such (presumably to keep them from pairing off and later touring as Great White themselves). They were also forbidden from consuming alcohol or nonprescription drugs, a particularly ironic proscription in light of Russell’s admitted personal habits.

This tour of Jack Russell’s Great White has been referred to by one rock historian as the “Fake White” period. Starting off in Honolulu, Hawaii, the band played three nights at a club called Gussie Lamour’s. Word of mouth was either ineffective, or very effective, because each night’s audience was smaller than the one previous.

At 9:43 on the morning of January 20, 2003, the rear doorbell rang at Shark City, a sports bar in Glendale Heights, Illinois, where Great White would next appear. Club owner Karen Hruska opened the door and signed for FedEx delivery of a single box, about two feet by three feet in size, addressed, “Hold for Dan Biechele, Great White, c/o Shark City.” On its side was an orange label:
DANGER — EXPLOSIVES
.

Shark City’s night manager, Terry Barr, had handled the advance for Great White’s show and, in an earlier conversation with Biechele, had rejected pyrotechnics, explaining that a permit would have to be obtained. When the ominously labeled package showed up at Shark City, Barr phoned Biechele, who again urged pyro for the show. When Barr stood fast, Biechele offered no argument. Upon arriving at the club, he stowed the box in the band’s bus for future use.

The tour moved on to Hewitt, Minnesota, where Great White appeared at a club called Checkers. Biechele set up his pyro there on a homemade stand consisting of a board with broom clips to hold the tubular cardboard gerbs. He placed the stand on the floor in front of Powers’s drum kit, but behind the other musicians. With two gerbs angled outward at a forty-five-degree angle and two facing upward, they produced a fan of sparks across the stage for fifteen seconds. That night, the fountains of sparks produced by the gerbs were so bright that drummer Powers recalls not being able to see the crowd through them.

The next stop on Great White’s 2002–3 tour, Louie’s Sports and Bowl, in Sioux City, Iowa, was a far cry from the
LA
Forum. An actual bowling alley, it had a small bar where the band set up — and set off — their pyrotechnics. As with all other stops on the tour, Biechele informed the band just before they went on whether pyro would be part of the show. According to Mark Kendall, when pyro was not used, Biechele would tell them it was because the venue would not give permission. Where permission was given, Biechele would open the show by flipping a switch, temporarily blinding drummer Powers and thrilling the small-town audience.

Subsequent stops on the tour included Altoona, Wisconsin; Lemont, Illinois; and Evansville, Indiana. Sometimes Biechele would use pyro; sometimes not. Each time he would advise the band which it would be. Clearly, some venues would not permit it. Others welcomed it, or simply didn’t care one way or the other.

The tour moved on to Florida. When the Ovation club in Boynton Beach said no to pyro, it was not used. Great White then worked its way up the eastern seaboard to a gig at the Stone Pony Nightclub in Asbury Park, New Jersey. At none of the venues where Biechele shot pyro did he secure the required pyrotechnics permits.

Moving northward, the Great White / Trip tour bus arrived in Bangor, Maine, for a February 18 appearance at Russells, a sports bar holding about two hundred people. That morning, as he had at other stops, Jack Russell gave a promotional interview to a local radio station. Urging his fans to
come out that night, he told Chris Rush, WTOS-FM’s program director, that the band “had a new pyrotechnics guy” and that Great White would “be melting the snow tonight.” It almost did, as Biechele again set off his pyro without a permit. The gerbs’ glare prevented drummer Powers from clearly seeing whether or not sparks actually grazed the club’s fifteen-foot ceiling.

The Great White tour bus rolled out of Bangor after 2 a.m. on February 19, 2003, and drove straight to West Warwick, Rhode Island, for the band’s appearance on February 20 at The Station. Its occupants were dropped off at the Fairfield Inn motel, a few miles from the club, where they spent a day off. Biechele, the tour manager, would print from his laptop computer a “day sheet” specifying when the band members had to appear the next day for load-in, sound check, and meals at The Station. The day sheet also had a space for Biechele to check off whether or not pyro would be shot at the venue. Opposite the single-word question, “Pyro:” Biechele typed “Yes.” If he recalled his March 2000 W.A.S.P. experience at The Station, Biechele would not have been concerned about pyro’s acceptability there.

Great White’s contract with The Station provided that the band would be paid $5,000 for its appearance — $2,500 in advance and the remaining $2,500 “one hour before show time in cash or cashier’s check.” The document also recited a capacity of 550 for the club. Food and other amenities to be provided Great White by The Station were dictated by the contract’s “hospitality rider.”

In the pantheon of has-been rock gods, the resident deities run less to the Homeric than to Homer Simpson. And nowhere is their silliness more apparent than in the hospitality riders they attach to their touring contracts. Great White’s contract had one. Every band has one. These wish-lists detail everything the venue must provide for its visiting rock dignitaries. Frequently, the demands appear to be in inverse proportion to the acts’ star power. The hospitality rider for Jack Russell’s Great White carefully instructed, “A nutritious meal shall be served, including salad, chicken breast or prime rib, baked or mashed potatoes and freshly steamed vegetables.” It continued, in a more practical vein, “Please provide all utensils required to stop the crew from eating with their hands.”

Rock band Warrant’s hospitality rider to its Station contract required one case of Coors beer, one case of Coors Light beer, one twelve-pack of Corona, one twelve-pack of Sam Adams, one small bottle of Crown Royal, one bottle of chardonnay, a twelve-pack of Mountain Dew, a twelve-pack of Coke, a twelve-pack of 7-Up, a twelve-pack of Diet 7-Up, and a six-pack
of V-8 juice. Water was to be provided in the form of two cases (forty-eight one-liter bottles) of Evian brand bottled water. (A schedule was provided for icing down the drinks prior to and during shows.) After the show, Warrant’s rider specified “one huge tray of deli meats,” “two large pepperoni pizzas,” and “on Sundays, 2 large buckets of
KFC
Fried Chicken.” It would appear that touring groups not only tank up for the show, but stock their (hopefully, restroom-equipped) bus from these lists.

The first clue that you’re getting to be an over-the-hill rocker (Dokken) is when your catering rider calls for “1 box of Zantac 75.” And your strangeness quotient (Black Label Society) is definitely hyped if your rider demands, in addition to the requisite liquor and snacks, “6
PAIR OF BLACK ATHLETIC SOCKS, MID-CALF
.”

W.A.S.P.’s contract for The Station specified, in addition to “1 bottle of Mumm’s Cordon Rouge or Piper Heidsieck Champagne,” “1 medium-size jar of creamy peanut butter and 1 large-size jar of
SEEDLESS
blackberry or boysenberry jam.” Blackie Lawless must be either a picky eater or a very fastidious flosser.

One measure of clout in the rock touring world is how firmly a band can insist on the provisions of its hospitality rider. Englishman Mick Taylor had been a guitarist with the Rolling Stones in the late ’60s and early ’70s, pursuing a solo career thereafter. In 2000 he was still touring with backup musicians. Taylor’s proposal to the Derderians for a September 3, 2000, appearance at The Station demanded “7 return tickets to London, 7 single rooms in a first class hotel, and transportation to and from the airport in an air-conditioned mini-bus.” The revisions dictated by the Derderians were, “
No
7 return tickets to London,
no
7 single rooms in a first-class hotel, and
no
transportation in an air-conditioned van from airport.” Instead, they would provide Taylor with “5 single rooms at the Super 8 Motel.” Deal. It’s a long way down from the Royal Albert Hall to The Station, Mick.

Several rungs down the status ladder from even washed-up touring bands are so-called “tribute bands.” Tribute bands (read: copycats) are local bands that play the music and ape the trappings of a famous group. Heavy metal as a genre afforded ample opportunities for easy imitation. To the extent that a national act’s fame results more from its stagecraft than from its musicianship, impersonators have a field day.
KISS
, alone, has probably spawned a hundred tribute bands. Conversely, and not surprisingly, there are precious few good Aerosmith or Heart tribute bands. It’s one thing to don greasepaint and costumes; another entirely to convincingly duplicate Steven Tyler’s or Ann Wilson’s vocal licks.

In addition to the costumes and pyrotechnics favored by metal bands, horror motifs are common. Skulls, blood, barbed wire, and flames are often depicted. One such band, Firehouse, which played The Station not long before Great White’s own fiery appearance there, had as its logo a skull wearing a fireman’s helmet, over a guitar and flames. Even equipment manufacturers cash in on faux horror themes. One instrument-case maker sells coffin-shaped guitar cases for rock bands. (A “Coffin Case” was found among the charred debris of The Station.)

Of course, faux horror themes are easily copied. Bands like Megadeth, Slayer,
KISS
, and Poison were all imitated. And if the famous bands also used pyrotechnics to shock and awe, so would their low-budget tribute bands.

But why do people spend hard-earned cash to hear the vocal stylings of a Michael Mikutowicz? “Mickey” Mikutowicz is a landscaper and snowboard instructor by day, who pretends to be Ozzy Osbourne by night. He has done it for years. And the crowds keep coming out. As Mikutowicz explains, “Tickets to a Black Sabbath concert start at $100. The average working stiff can’t afford that. But for $15 and the price of a few beers, he can convince himself for a little while that he’s seeing a rock star playing his local bar. It works out well for everybody.”

Mikutowicz’s Black Sabbath tribute band, Believer, played The Station three or four times a year from 1996 through 2002. In fact, it was scheduled to appear at the club in February 2003, eight days after Great White. Over those years, Mikutowicz came to realize that safety often yielded to spectacle there. One night at The Station, before the Derderians owned the club, Believer’s bass player, Steve Lewis, walked into the band room and observed a member of another band, Holy Diver (a Dio tribute band), pouring explosive powder into a flashpot device with a lit cigarette dangling from his mouth. Mikutowicz complained to the club’s manager, who reprimanded the smoker. After that incident, Believer’s contract, rather then demanding champagne and peanut butter, forbade any club from having pyrotechnics in the band room.