Great White’s Mark Kendall On His Health, Autobiography, And New Music

It's always great to catch up with Mark Kendall of Great White. 17 years sober, the dude gets better with age!

Recently, he was diagnosed with kidney cancer. We have an update, and things are improving, which is great news.

He's also working on his autobiography. He was first approached to do this book, but it was more of a guitar book, not necessarily about Mark himself. "I'm trying not to make it a real dirt book, but some feelings might get hurt," he told me. He said his ghostwriter, Jeffrey Mangus, has been bringing back a lot of memories with some of the questions and stories he's elicited from Mark. "A lot of things are coming up....my childhood stuff, oh, God."

What's it going to be called? "I was trying to think of a title for it, and I ended up calling it Soul of a Man because I'm pretty much burying my soul on this thing. I'm going all the way back to childhood, telling every story you can imagine, you know, with the guitar in there."

Mark told me about meeting the original GW singer, Jack Russell, for the first time, another story that he brings up in the book. He went on to tell the story of meeting him when he was just 16 years old. "There's a lot to tell. We were connected at the hip our whole career." Mark went on, "We came from nothing."

Jack and Mark wanted to play originals, but in a sharp piece of irony, one of their biggest songs was a cover song. Mark spoke about why they covered the song Once Biten, Twice Shy, and meeting its writer, Ian Hunter, later on. "We never thought it was going to be a single, we just wanted it on the album," he said.

Mark said they are indeed working on new Great White music. He says they probably have around seven songs on tape. "We've been going in the studio, just me and Brett. I have a friend of mine, Tracy G. He used to be in Dio. We've been friends since we were teenagers. So I played on one of his records. He's done, like, 28 records in his studio. It's just a home one. You know, it's a pretty nice studio. And I played on one of his records. So he goes, hey, man, if you ever have any ideas, go ahead and come over, you know, lay it down. So I eventually do that. And I laid down an entire song. He just thought I was going to do a couple of riffs, you know. He goes, You're doing whole songs? I go, yeah, bro. That's the way I roll, you know. So I flew Brett down, and we probably got seven songs on tape. Because I like to show it to the band like that instead of a raw riff."

Mark also went into the difference between working with Jack, as opposed to working with the current Great White singer, Brett Carlisle. He told me about how Jack would work with his ideas, and then eventually their manager, Alan Niven, would also contribute to the process.

"In the beginning, I wrote all the music. And I would hum the melody to Jack because he wasn't like, I couldn't just hand him music and have him come back with a song. You know, both of us had our weaknesses and strengths, you know what I mean? His strength was his voice. His voice is like incredible, right? So I would, you know, he might have a little trouble getting started, but I would feed him the melody, what I'm hearing in the song. Because that's the way I write. I'm kind of making sure you can put something good here. And then once he got started, then he was just like, you know, coming up with all these ideas. And he'd sing it better. He might change a few things, you know. But at least he's in it. He gets it."

As I said, it's always great to talk with Mark who I've become friends with over the past few years. Solid dude, awesome player!