“If I could go back and change my life, or anybody’s life I would do it. That wasn’t supposed to happen; it was supposed to be a concert. I just try to take it one day at a time, and sometimes one day [is] worse… some days I can’t even get out of bed. I am so sorry. I just don’t want to cause any more pain – ever. It’s just…I don’t know.”
That’s what Jack Russell said to me in the summer of 2015 when I was working on one of the hardest pieces I’ve ever written and to this day the one that I’m most proud. It was a dozen years after The Station nightclub fire in Rhode Island took the lives of 100 people who were there to attend a show by the rock group he fronted, Great White. The February 2003 blaze was a result of the band’s pyrotechnics igniting the acoustic foam in the venue, creating a near-immediate inferno as the space was engulfed with thick, black smoke.
Afterward, there was a lot of blame to go around. Multiple trials and settlements took place following lengthy court proceedings. The owners of the club, the makers of the foam, and even a television station whose cameraman was accused of blocking an exit and not assisting those trying to escape all had the finger pointed at them.
But no one took more brunt of the blame than Russell.
He was the easiest scapegoat. The figurehead for Great White. The one who was endlessly chastised for offhandedly saying into the microphone, “Wow… that’s not good,” when the fire began. The onetime ‘80s hair metal sex symbol who looked anything but as news stations ran and re-ran interview footage of Russell, still at the site of the nightclub the next morning.
Visibly shaking and shell-shocked, the bloated and double-chinned singer sported a New England Patriots wool hat and breathed out clouds of the frigid Rhode Island winter as he expressed sadness at the incident while defending the use of pyro.
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To say he was never the same cannot be overstated. Victims scarred for life, families of the dead, and armchair pundits; it was a long list of people who held Russell liable. He was a leper for a time, even within his own genre, and, truth be told, it never abated. Others saw him as a scapegoat. An easy target for people’s grief and suffering.
Russell was set to make his first return to New England since the tragedy, headlining the inaugural “Party in the Pasture” on August 15, 2015. At that juncture, the band who delivered hits like “Once Bitten, Twice Shy” and “Rock Me” had been split into two factions, with “Jack Russell’s Great White” where the frontman had landed.
It never happened. Call it coincidence, eerie, or even karma, but midway through the set of direct support Steelheart, the power went out. It never came back, and neither did Russell. Today, exactly nine years from when he was supposed to take the stage in Maine, he died. A little less than a month prior, he announced his retirement after a diagnosis of Lewy Body Dementia just months along from finding out he had Multiple System Atrophy. He was 63 years old.
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When it was revealed Russell would be returning to New England to perform, many were not happy – and that’s putting it lightly. I started working on a story about it for Vanyaland, spending several weeks speaking with survivors of the fire, relatives and friends of concertgoers who lost their lives, the promoters of the event, and many more.
And I talked with Russell. He was hands down the most haunted man I’d ever encountered. The cross he bore and the self-flagellating undertone to his words were almost tangible. He choked up multiple times. The man wept. He regretted not being able to speak his truth as the legal wranglings wore on for years. It almost sounded as if he didn’t even want to play the show in Maine, but by then was contractually obligated.
The Vanyaland article ran in early August, and then it got weird.
One of the people behind the Party in the Pasture reached out and said we had to take down the piece immediately or they would take legal action. Perhaps realizing there was nothing wrong with what was written, the person then began threatening me in other ways.
He said he was good friends with members of a well-known outlaw motorcycle gang who would be paying me a visit. I started getting crank calls. My editor insisted I file a police report. Then, one night I was out at a neighborhood dive in Boston when the individual called me. He said Jack was at a festival in Montana hanging out with “some of the brothers” and they weren’t too happy with the article. They were furious, in fact, and planned to do something about it.
I finally blocked the guy’s number and then texted Russell to see if any of this was remotely true. He immediately called me. No, of course, it wasn’t true, he said. He couldn’t understand why those people were so pissed about the article. He read it and said it was fair and that he usually gets “a lot worse” from journalists. Then, over the din of the drunken conversations around me, I could hear he’d started crying. Once again, he told me he wouldn’t ever hurt a thing, that he lets spiders go if he finds them in his house instead of killing them.
It was hard not to feel for Russell. He never really got back on track professionally and, as far as I can tell, personally. I’m sure there were times of happiness and moments of joy, but all of it was in-between knowing there were untold numbers out there who hated him and put him at the top of the list of those accountable for The Station catastrophe.
If ever there was a man who not so much deserved but needed to rest in peace, it was Jack Russell.
The Chronicles of Michael Christopher 
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