August 9, 2011
Nearly a year ago, Great White vocalist Russell underwent emergency surgery for a perforated bowel. It was so serious that he nearly died and remained in the hospital for more than eight weeks. Doctors instructed Russell to take a year off from touring, and ex-Warrant frontman Jani Lane stepped in to help Great White finish their 2010 tour while Terry Ilous, former lead singer of XYZ, is now fronting the band until Russell feels he is capable of returning. Asked how Jack Russell is doing and when the band expects him to return, Great White guitarist/keyboardist Michael Lardie told the Belgrade News' Dan Chesnet, "He is recovering. Any time you have your midsection cut into - they had to reach a section of his large intestine - any time you open up your body that far, it takes quite a while to rehab the body to reanimate the nerves and all the muscles and stuff. As far as a projected date, it's really more often than not up to Jack. I hear, and I've talked to him a couple or three times a week, he's working, very, very hard to get back. He misses it terribly. He misses all of us. And we'd like him to come back when he's 150 percent ready if you follow my line of thinking. Because I'd hate for him to come back too soon and realize, 'Oh wow I really should have done rehab for another month before I tried to come back. Now I gotta take more time off.' I want him to be just so ready to go that he just blows people's minds. So we're all being very supportive of him. And the great thing is he's being very supportive of our scenario by endorsing us to go out and do what we're doing. And giving Terry Ilous, who's filling in for Jack, encouragement. He calls him a couple a times a month, and says 'I'm hearing great things about you, thanks for singing my songs so well.' We're having a great time with Terry, so it's a win-win situation. By like I said, I will reiterate, I don't want him coming back to soon. I want it to be right, so when he's back he's back all the way."
"We always write songs because that's what we do", said Lardie about working on a new album. "And we always think in terms of how it would sound with Jack singing them. Mark and I have created music and melody for these songs over the years. Kind of like in your mind when you're at home working on a song going 'where would Jack go with this. How would he approach this.' We keep doing it no matter if we have a project specifically in mind or not. So when we do get to that point where we're doing another record we have a wealth of catalog to be able to draw from. And hopefully have 10 or 11 really good songs on it out of 100 ideas."
To read the entire Michael Lardie interview visit http://www.belgrade-news.com/features/article_75ddb72c-c2ce-11e0-8d5f-001cc4c002e0.html.
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