The singer of the band Great White, Jack Russell, has died. His band enjoyed success in the 80s, but later became remembered mainly for a terrible accident.
The US singer and frontman of the rock band Great White, Jack Russell, has died. He passed away peacefully in the presence of his family and two friends, his relatives announced on the musician’s official Facebook page.
The musician died as a result of so-called Lewy body dementia and the associated multisystem atrophy, as his biographer KL Doty told the New York Times and Rolling Stone magazine. Russell, whose 1980s band went down in music history primarily in connection with a tragic fire in a nightclub, was 63 years old.
He toured as Jack Russell’s Great White
According to US media, the singer founded the band Great White together with guitarist Mark Kendall. The group’s biggest hit, “Once Bitten Twice Shy”, was a cover version of the song of the same name by singer Ian Hunter and reached number five in the US Billboard charts in 1989. The song earned the band a Grammy nomination. The group officially disbanded in 2001, but continued to tour as Jack Russell’s Great White with a different line-up.
The hard rockers experienced the terrible low point of their career in 2003, when 100 people died in a fire and a subsequent mass panic at their concert at The Station club in West Warwick (Rhode Island). Pyrotechnics set the club’s ceiling on fire, and the band’s guitarist Ty Longley was among the dead. The band later used their concerts to collect donations for the victims’ families.
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In July, Russell made his illnesses public and announced that he would be retiring from the music business. “I am unable to perform as I want and as you deserve,” he wrote on Instagram. “Words cannot express my gratitude for the many years of memories, love and support.”
Lewy body dementia is similar to Alzheimer’s disease. According to the German Alzheimer’s Society, patients show psychotic symptoms or movement disorders in addition to progressive memory impairment. Multiple system atrophy is a rare Parkinson’s-like disease.
Source: Stern
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
