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University Press of New England Hanover and London

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University Press of New England www.upne.com © 2012 John Barylick All rights reserved

MAMA TOLD ME NOT TO COME Words and Music by RANDY NEWMAN Copyright © 1966, 1970 (Copyrights Renewed) UNICHAPPELL MUSIC INC. All Rights Reserved Used by Permission

For permission to reproduce any of the material in this book, contact Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court Street, Suite 250, Lebanon NH 03766; or visit www.upne.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Barylick, John. Killer show : The Station nightclub fire, America’s deadliest rock concert / John Barylick. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-61168-265-6 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-1-61168-204-5 (ebook) 1. Station (Nightclub : West Warwick, R.I.)—Fire, 2003. 2. Nightclubs—Fires and fire prevention—Rhode Island—West Warwick. 3. Fires—Rhode Island—West Warwick. 4. Great White (Musical group) I. Title. F89.W4B37 2012 974.5'4—dc23 2012002561

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FOR THE VICTIMS

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It’s gonna be a killer show. —Jack Russell, lead singer of Great White, February 20, 2003

killer adj. (orig. US) 1 [1970s+] terrific, amazing, effective.. 2 [1980s+] ghastly, terrible. —Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang, 1998

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CONTENTS

1. Sifting the Ashes 2. Mill Town Watering Hole 3. Rock Impresarios 4. Only Rock ’n’ Roll 5. That Ain’t No Way to Have Fun, Son 6. Lucky Day 7. Yours, in Fire Safety… 8. Suds, Sparks, and Sponsorship 9. Film at Eleven 10. This Way Out 11. Cause for Alarm 12. I’m with the Band 13. Fighting for Air 14. A Snowball’s Chance in Hell 15. The Way of All Flesh 16. Domino Theory 17. The Sound and the Fury 18. Into the Breach 19. Solid Gasoline 20. The Missing 21. Artifacts of Tragedy 22. Circling the Wagons 23. Crime and Punishment 24. “First, Survival; Then, Function; Then, Cosmetics” 25. Risky Business 26. Making the Tough Cases 27. Burning Question 28. Divining the Incalculable 29. Memento Mori

Epilogue Acknowledgments Appendixes List of Persons Killed in the Station Nightclub Fire Outcome of Criminal Prosecutions

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Outcome of Civil Lawsuits Notes and Sources Index

Illustrations

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Floor plan of The Station, with location of individuals at 11 p.m. on February 20, 2003. (Diagram courtesy of Jeff Drake, Drake Exhibits)

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CHAPTER 1

SIFTING THE ASHES

FEBRUARY 21, 2003, DAWNED STUNNINGLY CRISP and cold in New England. Over a foot of fresh snow had fallen the previous two days, and conditions were what skiers jokingly call “severe clear” — cloudless blue skies, bright sun, temperatures in the teens, and windchill in single digits. It was, in short, postcard picture-perfect. On this morning, however, the images being snapped by news photographers in the

town of West Warwick, Rhode Island, were hardly Currier and Ives material. In the southeast corner of town sat a nightclub called The Station — or what was

now left of it. At present, it consisted of a smoldering footprint of rubble at the end of a rutted parking lot, surrounded by banks of dirty snow into which burning bar patrons had blindly thrown themselves just eight hours earlier. The site resembled the scene of a battle, fought and lost. Discarded half-burned shirts littered the lot, along with soiled bandages and purple disposable rescuers’ gloves. Hearses had long since supplanted ambulances, the work of firefighters having shifted from rescue to recovery. Alongside the smoking remains of the club, a hulking yellow excavating machine

gingerly picked at the building’s remains. Its operator had demolished many fire- damaged buildings before, but none where each “pick” of the claw might reveal another victim. Yellow-coated state fire investigators and federal agents wearing “ATF” jackets

combed the scene, while a department chaplain divided his time between consoling first responders and praying over each body as it was removed. Only snippets of conversation among the firefighters could be overheard, but one — “bodies stacked like cordwood” — would become the tragedy’s reporting cliché. And there was no shortage of reporters covering the fire. By late morning, over one

hundred of them huddled in a loose group at the site, faces hidden by upturned collars, their steamy exhalations piercing the frigid air at irregular intervals. Stamping circulation into their cold-numbed feet, they awaited any morsel of news, then, fortified, drifted apart to phone in stories or do stand-ups beside network uplink trucks. Following protocol, all but designated spokesmen avoided contact with the press.

The area had immediately been declared a crime scene, and yellow tape, soon to be replaced by chain-link fence, kept reporters far from what remained of the building itself. During the first daylight hours, news helicopters clattered overhead, their rotor wash kicking up ash and blowing the tarps erected by firefighters to shield the grisly recovery effort from prying eyes. That vantage point was lost after one chopper got so low it blew open body bags containing victims’ remains. Immediately, the FAA declared the site a “no-fly” zone. Good footage would be hard to come by. That is, good post-fire footage. Video of the fire itself, from ignition to tragic

stampede, had already been broadcast throughout the United States and abroad,

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because a news cameraman happened to be shooting inside the club. The world had seen the riveting images: an ’80s heavy-metal band, Great White, sets off pyrotechnics, igniting foam insulation on the club’s walls; concertgoers’ festive mood changes in seconds to puzzlement, then concern, then horror as flames race up the stage walls and over the crowd, raining burning plastic on their heads; a deadly scrum forms at the main exit. Now, all that remained were reporters’ questions and a sickening burnt-flesh smell

when the biting wind shifted to the south. Among the questioners was Whitney Casey, CNN’S youngest reporter, who just hours earlier had exited a Manhattan nightclub following a friend’s birthday celebration. Dance music was still echoing in her sleep- deprived head when she arrived at a very different nightclub scene in West Warwick. Casey had covered the World Trade Center collapse as a cub reporter on September 11, 2001. From its preternaturally clear day to desperate families in search of the missing, the Station nightclub fire assignment would have eerie parallels to her 9/11 reporting baptism. It wasn’t long before the sweater and jeans from Casey’s “crash bag” (on hand for

just such short-notice call-outs) proved a poor match for New England’s winter. Shivering alongside the yellow tape line, the CNN reporter spotted State Fire Marshal Irving J. “Jesse” Owens huddling with West Warwick fire chief Charles Hall. She heard questions shouted by her fellow reporters: “Chief, how recently was the club inspected?” “What was the club’s capacity?” “Who put that foam up on the walls?” Neither responded. Nor would anyone in authority answer those and other critical questions for a very long time. State Fire Marshal Owens had the world-weary look of someone who had been

investigating fires for thirty years. Thin of hair and pudgy of build, Owens had seen many fatal fires before. But none like this. He had to have heard the reporters’ shouted questions in the same way one hears his doctor prattle on after having first pronounced the word “cancer” — as a faint sound drowned out by the rush of racing thoughts. Owens had a lot on his mind. Ten hours before the fire, he had given an interview to Bryan Rourke, a Providence Journal reporter, on the subject of a recent Chicago nightclub stampede in which twenty-one people had been killed. “It’s very remote something like that would happen here,” opined Owens. Now he wondered whether the phone message he left for Rourke while on his way to the Station conflagration would stop that story from running. “I guess we spoke too soon,” he said in a dejected voice-mail postscript. Owens had arrived at The Station to find it fully consumed by fire, and triage of

survivors already under way. Amid the crackle of flames and din of sirens, his cell phone rang. The caller ID displayed his home number. His wife’s first words were, “Jesse, Chris is missing.” “Who?” “Your nephew, Chris. He went to The Station last night and they can’t find him. Can you?” Given the stench of death around him, Owens must have thought, “I certainly don’t want to find him here.” The fire marshal was hardly alone in looking for family. Because video of the fire

had been broadcast almost immediately, distraught relatives of Station patrons flocked to the scene when their cell phone calls to loved ones went unanswered. Over the next several days, they would go from hospital to hospital in Providence, Boston, and Worcester, clutching photos for doctors to match to horrifically burned faces. And with

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each “not here,” the families’ options would shrink. Even though reporters were kept at a distance from the burnt-out rubble, TV crews

had something of an advantage. Television “live” trucks often sport video cameras on their telescoping communication masts, from which their crews can peer down upon “restricted access” scenes. Reporters like CNN’S Casey watched on their monitors as blue-gloved fire investigators combed through what looked, at a distance, like indistinguishable ashes. Had she been allowed closer (or if her truck’s mast camera had a higher resolution) she would have seen those techs bagging and labeling victims’ personal effects and body parts. A glove containing hand bones. A section of scalp, with hair attached. And, over by what remained of the stage, several charred cardboard tubes for pyrotechnic “gerbs” — a kind of heavy-duty sparkler — as well as a homemade stand for positioning them. These were the first of many discoveries that would begin to answer questions in the minds of everyone from Providence to Portugal who had seen the initial video: Why did the fire spread so fast? What was flammable packing foam doing on the walls of a nightclub? How could any thinking person ignite giant sparklers in that firetrap? Throughout the night of the fire and into the next day, the news media reported body

counts like a ghoulish sports score. First thirty-nine, “with fears of many more.” Then fifty, “and climbing.” By 11 a.m., the removal of body bags from what remained of The Station had ceased, with the “final” calculus an astounding ninety-five. That afternoon, Fire Marshal Owens’s cell phone roused him from his

overwhelming fatigue. It was his wife, telling him they’d found his nephew — at Rhode Island Hospital — burned, but alive. But many more remained missing. Shortly after the video aired, the region’s

hospitals began filling with relatives looking for their loved ones. There, smoke- stained survivors attempted to comfort them with information about where a son or daughter was last seen within the club. Other injured Station patrons chose to leave hospitals, untreated, in deference to the more seriously burned in need of urgent care. That night, Kent County Memorial Hospital, closest to the fire site, went through a three-month supply of morphine. Yet more friends and family members were drawn to the still-smoking remains of

the club, where they stood, hugging and weeping. One was Jackie Bernard, forty years old, who stared at the smoldering rubble and cried softly. She had been inside the club with her close friend and co-worker Tina Ayer when fire broke out. Both worked as housekeepers at the Fairfield Inn, where Great White was staying. Tina was still missing. No one among those gathered at the site took any particular notice of one fireman

lingering in the footprint of the burned-out club. “Rocky” was a familiar figure at fire scenes; as the town’s fire marshal, part of his job was investigating the cause and origin of fires there. As the fire marshal’s turn-out boots crunched in the ruins, he must have had the appalling realization that the ground beneath him was intermixed with what funeral directors euphemistically call “cremains.” And only he could have known that he was, perhaps, the single person most responsible for this tragedy. When the claw-armed excavating machine lifted the remaining section of collapsed

roof from the club, another grim discovery was made. The count was now ninety-six.

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CHAPTER 2

MILL TOWN WATERING HOLE

IF WEST WARWICK, RHODE ISLAND, WERE A CAR, it would be a 1957 Studebaker — functional in its day, but now well past its prime. It has the look and feel of a place that time, and certainly prosperity, have long since passed by. Driving through the town today, one can catch glimpses of its industrial past.

Hulking textile mills, some boarded up, some converted to “luxury condos,” line the Pawtuxet River’s banks. Mill workers’ duplexes still squat in the river’s floodplain, while owners’ mansions, many now decrepit, occupy the high ground. Mac’s Bowlaway Lanes, its paint peeling, sits cheek-by-jowl with Louise’s Liquors. A red J. J. Newberry storefront harks back to its halcyon days as a sponsor of TV’S Romper Room, while the Portuguese Holy Ghost Society and St. Anthony’s Church remind visitors that Masses are still said in languages other than English or Latin. West Warwick homes are, for the most part, pre–World War II vintage, often

multifamily, and set impossibly close to one another. Vinyl siding over rotted wood is the dominant aesthetic. Which is not to say that pride in ownership does not occasionally shine through. Carefully tended window boxes grace otherwise bleak tenements. Manicured postage-stamp lawns hold their own against incursion by overgrown neighboring plots. In short, the town has seen much better days, but its close-knit, often blood-related residents refuse to give up on it. Which is one reason why tragedy hit so close, and so hard, that winter of 2003.

West Warwick may lie at the geographic center of America’s smallest state, but by 2003 it was as far from the state’s economic and cultural mainstream as could be. It had not always been so. Indeed, the town’s very existence was an ironic testament to greedy calculation. With straight borders to its north, west, and south and a tortured, winding border to

the east, the town appears to have been forcibly wrested from its easterly neighbor, Warwick — which is exactly what happened. While political subdivisions often use waterways as natural borders, West Warwick clings jealously to both banks of the Pawtuxet as that river makes its way east to Narragansett Bay. And that was the beauty of Patrick Quinn’s 1913 plan. By the early 1900s, Warwick’s Pawtuxet River Valley was the state’s most

industrialized and politically powerful region. Generations of immigrants had settled in ethnic enclaves bearing names like Arctic, Crompton, and Riverpoint. French Canadians, Irish, Poles, and Portuguese huddled among their own in neighborhoods often named for the area’s mill owners, such as Lippitt, Clyde, or Harris. While Patrick Quinn’s “come-over” Irish parents had labored in the mills, he would rise above those humble beginnings to become a lawyer and politician of influence, riding the tide of

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political change that transformed Rhode Island from a WASP-dominated Republican state to the ethnic Democratic one-party city-state it remains to this day. Quinn’s plan was to split West Warwick from Warwick so as to seize both banks of

the Pawtuxet — and its golden-goose textile mills — from the largely Republican eastern area of the city. It worked like a charm. As its first town council president, Quinn promptly appointed his nephew and law partner as city solicitor. Together they would dominate the affairs of the newly incorporated municipality for decades. Quinn’s creation remained prosperous through the 1940s and into the ’50s. Fruit of

the Loom products made in West Warwick stocked America’s underwear drawers. Weekdays, often in three shifts, a League of Nations labored in the mills. On weekends, its ambassadors would spend their overtime checks in Arctic’s bustling retail center. Then came the late ’50s and ’60s. One by one, the mills shut down, heading south

for cheaper labor, while new shopping centers sprang up in neighboring Warwick. In 1958, when Interstate Highway 95 was completed through Warwick proper, there was simply no reason for anyone to drive to Arctic to shop — or to visit West Warwick at all. By 2003, eastern Warwick had become the retail hub of Rhode Island and site of the state’s newly modernized airport, its tax base almost five times that of its western spin-off. Quinn’s dream of an independently prosperous West Warwick effectively died with him in 1956. Recent unsuccessful attempts to revitalize West Warwick have ranged from the

desperate to the comical. First, there was the proposal to create a tax-free shopping zone (dead on arrival in the legislature). Then, casting envious glances at one of the world’s largest casinos, in nearby Ledyard, Connecticut, West Warwick pols teamed with Harrah’s to develop a Narragansett Indian casino (defeated in multiple referenda). Most recently, plans for a “destination-resort indoor water park” were floated. (Progress on that slowed appreciably in the state legislature when rumors swirled that it was really an FBI sting operation, thereby seriously impairing its graft potential.) With economic downturns often come fire and arson, and West Warwick was not

spared their ravages. From the destruction of the Roger Williams mill in 1821 to the Crompton Mills fire in 1992, the town saw one spectacular blaze after another. In fact, following one such fire, a West Warwick neighborhood was renamed Phenix, after the mythological bird that rose from the ashes. A mill fire is a sight to behold. With foot-thick timbers and floors marinated in

decades of machine oil, old textile mills burn with ferocious intensity, producing inky smoke visible for miles. Many such West Warwick fires had human help. In the 1990s a string of twenty unsolved arson fires plagued the town, creating a persistent feeling of unease among its residents.

In a place the size of West Warwick, there’s a fine line between business-as-usual among old friends, and outright corruption. When members of the same family populate multiple municipal departments, opportunities for self-dealing and nepotism abound. A town councilman sought to negotiate contracts with the police union — of which his son was a member. A school committee member pressured a principal to hire his son as a teacher. A departing mayor illegally paid himself $15,000 in “sick

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time and vacation pay.” Few townsfolk were shocked. Nor has its fire department been immune from West Warwick’s brand of

opportunism. In 1977, a firefighter in the department helped his diner-owning cousin dynamite a competing Warwick restaurant. The next year, two town councilmen running for reelection promised a forty-one-year-old campaign worker a firefighter’s job, even though town policy barred hiring recruits over age twenty-eight. In 1980, a battalion chief was convicted of arson conspiracy for delaying the department’s response to a “successful” fire at a friend’s warehouse. Later, in 1996, an obese firefighter sought retirement on a disability pension when he could no longer fit into his boots. This, in a fire department of sixty-five employees. It takes a lot to raise eyebrows here.

In February of 2003 there sat in the southeast corner of West Warwick, at 211 Cowesett Avenue, a small roadhouse that had seen many different incarnations over the decades. During World War II it had been the Wheel, a navy bar catering to rowdy sailors from Quonset Point. Later, it was reborn as the Red Fox, the Cedar Acres Inn, and Tammany Hall (reportedly, bullet holes in the beer cooler attested to its rough- and-tumble crowd). The wood-frame building was modified from year to year and from owner to owner, often with materials of dubious quality and origin. A suspicious fire scarred its interior in 1971, but despite fuel containers later found in the dining area, no arrests were made. Raymond Villanova bought the building in 1974 and operated one of three “P. Brillo

and Sons” Italian restaurants there until 1982, peddling “spaghetti by the pound” to Rhode Islanders hungry for bargain eats. The success of “Papa Brillo’s” was to be the building’s “highest and best use,” in real estate parlance. All subsequent tenancies were short-lived, alcohol-based, and downscale by comparison. By the mid-’80s Villanova, his reputation as an aggressive businessman well

established, found commercial real estate development to be more profitable and less demanding than his restaurants. The dingy single-level building at 211 Cowesett Avenue became just one of his many holdings, rented to a succession of hapless entrepreneurs willing to sign onerous “as-is” leases under which Villanova had no obligation whatsoever to maintain or repair the building. Developer Villanova’s management of the property on Cowesett Avenue consisted primarily of collecting overdue rents and seeking property tax reductions for the deteriorating property. If he ever visited the building after 1995, his Rolls-Royce would hardly have blended in. The dubious allure of operating a marginal bar attracted a parade of renters who

changed the club’s name, made low-budget renovations, and more often than not ended up begging off their lease with Villanova and selling their “business” to the next, and greater, entrepreneurial fool. After Brillo’s came, variously, Glenn’s Pub, then CrackerJack’s, then the Filling Station. In late 1995, Howard Julian rose to the challenge. Julian liked rock music. A guitar player of sorts, he found the prospect of rubbing

(and bending) elbows with musicians too attractive to pass up. So he bought the restaurant-turned-pub-turned-rock-club from Skip Shogren, signing an “as-is” lease with Villanova’s realty company. The “Filling Station” name combined an automotive

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theme with, perhaps, a wishful allusion to anticipated drink sales. From its prior owner Julian inherited not only the club’s name but also a clientele, several employees, and its manager, Tim Arnold. He was also heir to the building’s prior brushes with fire. A tradesman changing a lightbulb for Julian once reached into the ceiling space. “All the rafters were charcoaled,” he said. “I put my hand on it, it was black.” Another thing that Julian’s club shared with its predecessor on the site was the

animosity of its neighbors. The area of Cowesett Avenue and Kulas Road in West Warwick was, to put it most charitably, mixed use. (Comprehensive zoning was never the town’s strong suit.) Across Cowesett Avenue from the Filling Station was a restaurant, the Cowesett Inn. Across Kulas Road from the club, an auto dealership. To the club’s west lay a wooded lot. To its immediate south, less than a hundred feet from the club itself, the property of one Barry Warner marked the beginning of a residential plat. Over the years, as tastes in musical volume came to surpass fans’ pain thresholds, it was inevitable that neighbors would complain about the noise. And Warner frequently led the charge. Each time successive owners sought transfer of liquor and entertainment licenses at

the site, Warner and others would complain to the town council of overcrowding, parking lot disturbances, and, invariably, the loud, bass-pounding music. And each would-be impresario, including Julian, would promise the council new measures to fight the noise: performing volume checks; keeping the door nearest Warner’s house tightly shut; installing noise-dampening materials. One application of soundproofing material occurred in the early summer of 1996.

The Filling Station’s manager, Tim Arnold, observed Julian screwing white plastic foam blocks to the walls of the drummer’s alcove at the center of the stage. They were seventeen-inch-square, two-inch-thick blocks of stiff foam, each the consistency of “swimming pool noodles.” Julian applied 192 square feet of the stuff to the alcove’s three walls. It is unclear where he obtained this plastic foam; however, this was not the last time that materials of questionable quality would compromise the building at 211 Cowesett Avenue. Notwithstanding Julian’s parsimony, his club formula was still a bust. By late 1999,

he was resorting to gimmicks like karaoke, mud wrestling, and male stripper nights to stay afloat. A video shot at the club (which by then had been renamed, simply, The Station) captured Julian onstage with the featured act, engrossed in fish-faced guitar noodling. Heady as such moments must have been for him, they did not pay the rent. Almost four years into his venture, Julian still owed purchase money to prior owner Skip Shogren. In arrears to his landlord by over $40,000 in February 2000, Julian, like so many before him, sought a buyer for his failing business. He implored his landlord not to tip any prospective buyer to the fact that months of unpaid back rent (as well as the balance of his debt to Shogren) would be escrowed from any purchase closing. “I firmly believe that if the amount of rent in rears [sic] is disclosed, the potential buyer will be scared away,” wrote Julian to Villanova. One potential purchaser, Al Prudhomme, played drums with a local band, Fathead,

and was a regular at the club. He dearly wanted to buy it from Julian, but his wife, Charlene, “just wouldn’t go for it.” He would one day thank her. Julian’s potential salvation arrived in December 1999, in the persons of two

thirtyish brothers, Michael and Jeffrey Derderian. Native Rhode Islanders, the

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Derderians were, respectively, a businessman and a reporter for a Boston TV station. They hardly blended with The Station’s blue-collar clientele (one of the bar’s denizens later described them as sporting “Wally Cleaver haircuts”); however, they were sufficiently bitten by the club-owner bug as to seriously consider buying Julian’s business. It could not have been the ramshackle building that attracted the Derderians. And,

yet, standing inside facing west toward the stage, the brothers must have entertained grand visions for the dingy space. The stage itself was a platform, approximately two feet higher than the dance floor area. Another six inches above that sat the drummer’s alcove, a bump-out on the club’s exterior wall. To the right of the stage was the only door on the building’s west or south sides. This “stage door” was used to load band gear in and out. It was actually two doors hung back to back. The first hinged inward and bore a sign, Keep Door Closed at All Times. Immediately behind it was another door, hinged outward. This double-thickness door was on the side closest to the house of that vocal neighbor, Barry Warner. It would certainly appear to be sound-deadening. To the far right of the stage was the club’s pool table area. Its north wall was not

really a wall, but an “atrium” (not open to the outside, as in a true atrium) with curved Plexiglas windows of ’70s fern-bar style arching from roof to floor. Unbreakable save for three low glass panels, that tough Plexiglas would never need replacement by the new owners. Walking east through Julian’s club, the Derderian brothers had to pass the narrow

hallway leading to the men’s and ladies’ rooms. Windowless (and sometimes doorless, in the case of the men’s room), they were dead ends off a dead-end corridor. There had been an exit door in that corridor sometime in the past, as evidenced by concrete steps outside; however, it had long since been walled over. Further along their tour, the southeast corner of the building housed a little-used

game room, business office, and storage area — with walled-over windows and no exterior doors. Probably good for security. Separating this quadrant from the main bar area was a small kitchen, its outside door hidden from public view. The club’s main bar area consisted of a large horseshoe-shaped bar and several

small stand-up tables. Occupying the very farthest end of the club from the stage, this room had its own exit door and several single and double windows. Like the game room, its walls were lined with framed photos of second- and third-rate bands that had appeared at the venue. As the two prospective purchasers exited the club on their tour, they passed through

the ticket-sale area of the front entrance. Jutting diagonally into the entrance corridor, the ticket desk left a narrow thirty-three-inch path through which the brothers took turns passing. If they were worried about patrons sneaking in without paying, this pinch point had to allay any such fears. A single interior door eight feet farther down the main entrance corridor probably slowed entering patrons, as well. They’d have to pay to play at the Derderians’ club. As the brothers exited through the front corridor and double doors of The Station,

they probably didn’t notice the downward-sloping pitch of the tile floor beneath their feet. It was really not any cause for concern. Especially if no one behind them was in a hurry to leave.

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CHAPTER 3

ROCK IMPRESARIOS

“IT’S A PLACE WHERE GOOD BANDS GO TO DIE,” quipped Steven Scarpetti years before the fire. Scarpetti, a promotions executive at radio station WHJY, was referring to The Station’s prestige among third-rate concert venues, but he could as well have been talking about the club’s potential for actual tragedy. When the Derderian brothers bought The Station from Howard Julian in March of

2000, they knew little about operating a rock club. But they would soon learn on the job that cutting corners on payroll, stuffing patrons into the club, and stiffing local bands were all part of the economic equation for small-time promoters. The closing date for their purchase from Julian was to be March 22, 2000; however,

several acts were already booked to appear that month. The first such gig would be W.A.S.P., an ’80s heavy-metal band famous for its raunchy lyrics and violent themes. It was anticipated that the W.A.S.P. performance on March 8, 2000, would be “run on the Derderians’ license” with all proceeds going to Julian, and all expenses for the performance borne by Julian. This would be a dry run, of sorts, for the new owners. Jeff Derderian worked with W.A.S.P.’s road manager to prepare for the show. The lead singer for W.A.S.P., who calls himself Blackie Lawless (born: Steven

Edward Duren), embodies heavy-metal shock-schlock. Lawless’s stagecraft with a previous group, Sister, included lighting his boots on fire and eating live worms. With W.A.S.P., he graduated to throwing raw meat into the audience and positioning girls on torture racks. (It’s a safe bet that the band’s debut single from 1982, “Animal (Fuck Like A Beast),” never made it onto Tipper Gore’s iPod.) “Blackie,” in studded, cut-out leathers, would posture onstage sporting raven-dyed shoulder-length hair and heavy eyeliner, sometimes mounting a demonic-looking metal sculpture that doubled as a microphone stand. W.A.S.P.’s road manager in the spring of 2000 was Dan Biechele, who would later

manage Great White’s 2003 tour. In addition to handling all business with each venue, Biechele set up and operated pyrotechnics for W.A.S.P.’s show, the highlight of which was an electrically triggered sparkler known as a “gerb,” attached to Lawless’s codpiece. At the show’s climax, Biechele flipped a switch, causing Lawless’s crotch to erupt, showering pyrotechnic sparks over The Station’s stage and front-row patrons. If it had not dawned on the Derderians earlier, they had to realize at that seminal

moment that they were not purchasing a cultural mecca.

The Derderian brothers bore such physical similarity to each other that some patrons of The Station claimed not to be able to tell them apart. Both were short, with hair and clothes running more to L. L. Bean than Harley-Davidson, the preferred logo of their club’s clientele. Less similar, however, were their respective balance sheets. According

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to their accountant’s statements at the time of the Derderians’ club purchase, Jeff Derderian had a net worth of only $199,000, while his older brother, Mike, was doing much better at $1.39 million. Together, they agreed to pay Howard Julian $130,000 for his club ($60,000 in a note held by Julian) and signed an “as-is” lease with Raymond Villanova’s realty company to rent the Station building for $3,500 a month. Jeff ’s day job was reporting for WHDH, a Boston TV station. Having cut his

journalistic teeth as news director for Rhode Island College’s radio station in the 1980s, the younger Derderian advanced to working on-camera for WLNE Channel 6 in Providence, where he appeared on “You Paid for It,” a recurring feature dedicated to uncovering wasteful public spending. Jeff ’s regular appearances on WLNE made him “world famous in Rhode Island,” as they say. He later moved to WHDH in Boston, where, as is common in the industry, he simply read on-air stories written for him by the station’s producers. One of Jeff Derderian’s stories for WHDH was a piece entitled “In Case of

Emergency.” It opened with the reporter lying on a bed in a “smoke-filled room,” and featured him crawling along the floor to safety as he instructed viewers how to escape a building fire: “You won’t be able to breathe; you won’t be able to see; you may go unconscious. That’s why firefighters say it’s so important to go down low, where the air is.” Later in the segment, Derderian donned full firefighter’s gear with breathing apparatus and stood, eerily backlit like an astronaut, in the midst of a room fire at the Massachusetts Firefighting Academy. He closed out his dramatic narration with a punchy admonition about smoke detectors: “They’re cheap. Buy them. Install them. They work. We’re live in North Quincy tonight. I’m Jeff Derderian, 7 News Night Team.” Older brother Mike was more of a highflier. He had sold insurance and then

investments. Mike even owned and leased out a Cessna 172 airplane. The outward picture of success, Michael Derderian owned a twenty-six-foot powerboat, homes in Saunderstown and Narragansett, Rhode Island (both a far cry from West Warwick), and drove a BMW. One birthday, he gave his wife a Mercedes. He and his brother were far less generous, however, in their business dealings. The heartbeat of a rock club is its sound system. When Howard Julian ran the club,

its sound system was part-owned, and sometimes operated, by Dan Gauvin, who had previously run sound for Julian’s band. Gauvin charged Julian a rental fee for the system, and a “mixing fee” for the vital function of running the sound board. When the Derderians took over, they immediately clashed with Gauvin. The dispute resulted in Gauvin’s removing his equipment from The Station and never again working as its sound man. His departure was punctuated by a caustic note written to the Derderians on the back of a final invoice. It was a measure of the brothers’ hubris that they framed the diatribe for their office wall. Amazingly, it survived the fire completely unscathed. Uncovered from The Station’s ashes, it read:

Dear Mike, I wish you all the luck with the club. When we had our meeting you said to me, “We want the same deal

as Howard.[”] I said I couldn’t do that and you said, “When can you have the system out?[”] That’s when you pissed me off. Then you shorted me $55. . . . As you said, you know very little about this biz — I agree. It shows. Good luck. As you said, you know very little about this biz . . . Dan

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After the falling-out with Gauvin, the Derderians bought some sound equipment and hired Paul Vanner to operate the sound board. Vanner worked several nights each week. But the brothers paid him weekly by check for only one night’s work; the rest was in cash. As to why any of it was paid by check, they told Vanner, with no apparent irony, “If anything happens to you, you’ll be covered by workers’ compensation.” The Derderians were tightfisted with all their employees. John Arpin, a bouncer,

recalls being paid $50 in cash “only if there were at least seventy people in the club.” If there were fewer, he got a bar tab of up to $27, “but no cash.” This was for duties that sometimes included cooking in the club’s meager kitchen — a comforting thought for diners. Arpin also worked for the Derderians at a nearby gas station, which they had

recently purchased. His co-worker, Troy Costa, worked for the gas station’s prior owner, but lasted just two weeks after the brothers took over. Costa “didn’t like that they paid him cash under the table.” He asked, “How about TDI?” — referring to state- mandated temporary disability insurance. “What if I get hurt?” Michael Derderian replied, “You’ll be all right.” After the brothers shorted his pay two weeks running, Costa quit. The Derderians knew that, while they had to negotiate with national acts to appear

at The Station, local bands could be used — and abused — on the cheap. Musicians’ recollections of their gigs at The Station strike a consistent chord. Thomas Walason, of the bands Rock Show and Catch-22, played at The Station

“nine or ten times.” (Walason’s girlfriend, Kathleen Sullivan, would escape the ill- fated Great White concert in 2003 with serious burns.) As he later told the police, “Jeff usually shorted us.” Geoffrey Read, a volunteer firefighter who would help fight the Station fire,

managed a local band called What Matters. The last time Read’s band played at The Station, Jeff Derderian refused to pay him half the agreed price, claiming it was “a slow night.” Justin Pomfret, who escaped from the fire with his wife, played with another local

band, the Hype. He was shorted $100 “by one of the brothers” when his band played The Station. Paul Dean, a carpet installer by day and musician by night, echoed the refrain that

“Jeff Derderian shorted me $100 on our agreed-upon price.” Even if a musician had other business relations with the club, he was equally likely

to get stiffed by the Derderians. Richard Antonelli, who designed the club’s website, thestationrocks.com, appeared several times at The Station with his band, Sky High. They played the night of September 28, 2002, for their usual $200, which just about covered expenses. When Antonelli saw Mike Derderian in his office for payment at the end of the night, the club owner asked, “What are we gonna do about tonight?” Antonelli was perplexed. Derderian spelled it out: “About the money.” “I guess the usual two hundred,” shrugged Antonelli. “Two hundred? You want me to pay you two hundred dollars for 100 people in

here?” sputtered Derderian. “Yeah, that’s the agreement we had,” said Antonelli. Derderian continued, “We don’t pay bands $200 to bring in 100 people.”

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Dumbfounded, Antonelli said, “I don’t know what to tell you. That was our agreement.” Then Derderian put it to him. “All right. Are you sure you want to do this? If you

take this money, that’s it. You guys are done here. No more shows. Nothing.” Antonelli took the $200, then went outside to talk to his band. After a short

conversation, his drummer walked back inside, handed Derderian back the $200, and told him Sky High would not appear there again. The Derderians’ business reputation became known to booking agents, as well.

According to Richard Carr, who booked bands at The Station with prior owners Skip Shogren and Howard Julian, the brothers initially said they’d “honor the same deal Howard gave him,” then reneged. “Word quickly spread that the Derderians’ word meant nothing,” he said. In the fall of 2002, Jeff Derderian hired nineteen-year-old Anthony Baldino to paint

a rock-themed mural across the club’s façade. (Typical of Rhode Island’s interconnectedness, Anthony’s father’s girlfriend was the sister of Jeff Derderian’s wife.) At an agreed rate of $10 per hour, Baldino spent seventy-two hours painting likenesses of Elvis Presley, Janis Joplin, Steven Tyler, Jimi Hendrix, and Ozzy Osbourne on the club’s street-side wall. When it came time to pay for the work, Jeff Derderian gave Baldino only $600, claiming he wasn’t satisfied with it. However, Derderian dangled “the possibility of more mural work inside the club.” Baldino, incredulous, declined. Not that the Derderians didn’t give aesthetics a high priority at The Station. Lewis

Cook had the unenviable task of cleaning the club after each show. He recounts having to clear the floor of cups, bottles, and other detritus with a snow shovel before more conventional cleaning means could be employed. When the cheaply constructed men’s room door got punched through enough times (eventually creating a hole large enough to step through), the Derderians simply left it off. If the brothers were to succeed as rock impresarios, they would have to book

national acts. Negotiating with “name” bands involved a set of skills entirely different from simply stiffing the locals. Touring bands were booked months in advance, and their contracts commonly called for a minimum fee, paid half in advance, with the balance paid on the day of the band’s appearance; this, plus a percentage of the “gate.” Accordingly, the club’s capacity would be an important factor in attracting acts. Howard Julian routinely told bands that The Station’s capacity was more than its

then-permitted 317 in order to get them to sign contracts. He probably figured they’d discover the deception once they saw the club, so prior to the March 2000 W.A.S.P. concert, Julian faxed Jay Frey, W.A.S.P.’s booking agent, with the terse message, “CAPACITY DOWNGRADED TO 350. New Fire Marshal (Asshole Maximus!)” Of course, there had been no downgrade. And no new fire marshal. The Derderians caught on to the capacity game quickly. Even though the club’s

legal occupancy under their ownership could not exceed 404 (with all tables removed), the 2003 Talent Buyers’ Directory, a music industry guidebook used by agents to book acts, listed The Station’s capacity as 550. The guide, which relies upon owners for their clubs’ capacity information, listed Michael Derderian as the “owner and booking contact.” The brothers’ contracts with national acts similarly overstated the potential gate.

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Great White’s contract for an April 2000 appearance at The Station represented a capacity of 500; Warrant’s, for later that month, the same. A contract for Poundhound in May 2001 stated that 550 patrons could fill the club; the agreement for Anthrax to appear that October also read 550. Eddie Money and the Dead Kennedys were each promised a club with room for 550 when they played The Station in 2002. So was Quiet Riot. Apparently, the Derderians were no more candid with their patrons about permitted

capacity. At 6 o’clock on the evening of Great White’s final appearance at The Station, Frank Canillas called the club to see if there were still tickets available. He was told that there would be 100 business cards (used as tickets) available for purchase at the door, that the last show there had drawn 480 fans, and that the club “fit about 600 people.” He would later recount this to the police from beneath bandages in his hospital bed.

Barry Warner’s house was the closest neighboring structure to The Station’s stage door. About one hundred feet distant and up a small rise, the house was separated from the club property by a thin stand of trees. On concert nights the bass speakers at the club would sometimes rattle pictures on Warner’s walls. Warner or his wife called police with noise complaints numerous times when Skip

Shogren owned the club. When Howard Julian operated it as the Filling Station, the Warners continued their crusade in letters to the town council. By the time Julian sought to transfer the club’s liquor and entertainment licenses to the Derderians, the Warners had had enough and vocally opposed the transfer unless something was done about the noise, parking lot fights, and overcrowding. Transfer of a liquor or entertainment license in West Warwick requires sign-offs by

the building inspector, the fire chief, and the police chief. In 2000 the police chief was Peter Brousseau. He spoke with Mike Derderian in May of that year, “strongly advising him that his entertainment license would not be approved unless he corrected the noise problems.” “He is going to speak to the neighbors to work on issues,” wrote Chief Brousseau in a memo dated May 12. On a quiet afternoon that same month, Barry Warner and his son, Matthew, were

sitting on their back porch when two clean-cut young men rounded a corner of the house and introduced themselves. They were Jeff and Mike Derderian. They’d just bought The Station, you see, and they wanted to assure Warner that they would be “good neighbors.” Warner listened as they explained how they “were very proactive” and wanted to do a good job running the club. At one point, the brothers offered to buy him an air conditioner so that he could keep his windows closed, and the noise out, on summer nights. Warner passed on that. Then the Derderians gave Warner their personal phone numbers and stressed that if noise were ever a problem, he should call them directly, rather than the police. The Derderians’ awkward social call on Barry Warner was drawing to an uncertain

close when Warner spoke up. “One option might be to use polyurethane foam for sound insulation in the club.” It appeared that he had caught their attention. Warner continued. “I work for American Foam. . . . I know that people purchase foam for sound deadening. There’s different qualities of foam you can use.” The brothers asked

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Warner if he could bring them some samples; then, sensing that they had stumbled upon a relatively easy solution to a difficult problem, they took their leave. Back at the club, Mike Derderian spoke with manager Tim Arnold about the Warner

meeting. “Well, I’m going to buy some soundproofing from this guy because it’ll kill two birds with one stone. He’ll be happy we bought it from him to stop the noise and probably put some money in his pocket,” Derderian explained. Later that week, Patricia Byrnes, an entertainment booking agent, stood with Jeff

Derderian and Paul Vanner before the stage at The Station while her band client “loaded in.” She noticed several colored twelve-by-twelve-inch squares of foam laid out on the stage floor and a man explaining the differences between each. Byrnes pointed to one of the samples and kidded Derderian, “You can’t put peach foam up in a rock club. That’s a decorating faux pas.” They all laughed. There was no discussion of fire-retardant foam being an option. After the foam salesman left, Byrnes told Derderian that she used special fireproof

carpet for sound insulation in her home studio, and offered to show him a piece of it that she had in her van. Derderian demurred, saying, “No, no. I’ve got to get it from this, you know, this guy because the neighbors are complaining.” Warner thereafter created an American Foam quotation sheet for “25 blocks” (fifty

three-foot by seven-foot sheets) of polyurethane “sound foam” to be sold to The Station. Price: $580. He would later admit that this was “the cheap stuff — the ‘Ford Taurus’ of foam.” According to Warner’s secretary at American Foam, Desiree Labrie, it was not a common practice by anyone at the company to advise a buyer of a fire- or flame-retardant option. Around the same time, Todd Bryant of B&G Gutters Inc. was asked by Michael

Derderian to prepare a quote for installing sound insulation at The Station. Bryant had previously done work for both Derderian brothers at their homes, so he agreed to meet Jeff at the club to scope out the work. On May 18, 2000, he provided a written quote to “Mike Derian [sic], 211 Cowesett Avenue, West Warwick, R.I.” for the installation of fire-retardant blown-in cellulose insulation in the main ceiling and roof slopes of the club, along with fiberglass insulation in a knee wall. Bryant’s price was $1,980. He never heard from the Derderians again. On June 9, 2000, Mike Derderian wrote to Barry Warner at American Foam:

“Please accept our order for 25 blocks of sound foam.” Three weeks later, a truck bearing the markings of American Foam Corporation

pulled up outside The Station. As its driver loaded over one thousand square feet of corrugated foam sheets into The Station, he might have wondered why a rock club needed so much cheap packing foam. Over the following week, club manager Tim Arnold glued sheets of the charcoal

gray, corrugated “egg-crate” polyurethane foam over the walls and ceiling of the entire west end of The Station using 3M Super 77 spray adhesive. He covered the south wall, too, above the wainscoting, all the way to the corridor leading to the men’s and ladies’ rooms. Arnold lined the sloped ceiling over the dance floor on the south roof pitch with the gray material, as well as the unusual double-thickness door that served as the band’s load-in door on the end nearest Warner’s house. He even glued the gray polyurethane foam directly on top of the stiff, seventeen-inch-square blocks of two- inch-thick white foam (later spray-painted black) that Howard Julian had screwed onto

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the three walls of the drummer’s alcove back in 1996. Surely this would deaden the sound and silence Warner’s complaints. Neither Jeff nor Mike Derderian quit his day job to run The Station. Jeff continued

reporting for WHDH in Boston. Less than a year after he and his brother lined the club’s walls with polyurethane foam, he appeared on-camera in a story on the fire hazards of foam mattresses. Shot in the apartment of one of the TV station’s producers, the story was one of several Jeff recorded that day. Jeff Derderian was known at WHDH as “talent” who could arrive on-site, glance at

his producer-written story line, and do a stand-up with minimal preparation. He would ad lib and “punch his words for dramatic emphasis,” according to producer Michael Boudo. On the afternoon of the mattress fire shoot, he was definitely on his game, hitting his marks in a single take. “Another problem is what’s inside the mattress: polyurethane foam,” Derderian gravely intoned. “Fire safety experts call it ‘solid gasoline.’ It can cause a smoldering mattress to burst into flames.” Then, he unclipped his microphone and left for his 4 p.m. assignment.

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CHAPTER 4

ONLY ROCK ’N’ ROLL

FOR MOST, THE TERM “HARDSCRABBLE LIFE” conjures up images of dustbowl Oklahoma, or Appalachia. People tend not to think of America’s smallest state, with its hundred- plus miles of lush coastline, as Steinbeck country, where life is hard, and fun times, few. But Rhode Island of the twenty-first century is not the Gilded Age mansions of

Newport. Neither is it those Industrial Age monuments to middle-class prosperity, the textile mills. Instead, Little Rhody is a state that, for many, is a land of modest educational and employment opportunities. For a goodly number of its inhabitants, life in the Ocean State means hard work and conservative aspirations. Home for many Rhode Island thirty-somethings is an unassuming rental, or even a

bedroom in the parents’ house. Work, if they can find it, tends to be of the kind that rewards longevity or political connections, rather than cutting-edge skills. Rhode Island’s total population has not changed materially over the last forty years, hovering right around one million. Most who are born here stay here, and rarely venture far from home. Even fun, when the opportunity presents itself, is for the most part on a modest

scale. Rhode Islanders don’t weekend in the Hamptons or jet to Aspen for the holidays. A summer day at Scarborough Beach, where oiled sunbathers bask in sea- lion proximity and serious neck jewelry is de rigueur (for guys and girls), might be the recreational high point of the year. And, in the depth of winter, it can get even bleaker. Cabin fever sets in around January, and by February, a night out in a rock club, where sound levels dull pain and body heat raises the temperature to summertime, can look pretty attractive.

Erin Pucino worked the 6 a.m. shift at the self-serve Shell station in Warwick that the Derderian brothers had purchased two months before they bought the Station nightclub. She had worked for the gas station’s previous owner, but shortly after the Derderians bought it, the brothers set her straight about finances. “Things are going to be different now,” instructed Michael Derderian. “From here on, instead of your regular paycheck, you’re going to get half your salary in a paycheck and the rest in cash.” “And, by the way, turn the outside lights off as soon as the sun comes up. And keep that damned electric heater low. It’s too expensive to run.” Pucino, shivering in her drafty cashier’s shack, thought, “You cheap bastards.” Erin was the single mother of a six-year-old boy, and she worked two jobs. With her

red-streaked black hair, multiple facial piercings, and tattoos, Erin looked every bit the heavy-metal rock fan, but economic realities prevented her from actually following the bands she liked.

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Working for the Derderians at their newly acquired gas station was a switch from working under its prior owner, Danny Saad, and Pucino found it to be a change for the worse. Saad had paid her by check with full contributions to such niceties as workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, and Social Security. The Derderian brothers’ inveterate cheapness and penchant for under-the-table payroll were hardly outweighed by the occasional discount coupon she’d receive to see some national act play at The Station. But that was the deal. Work for peanuts, and sometimes she’d get comped into their club for a show. Pucino put up with it for a couple of years, then finally had enough. She gave her

notice in late January 2003, a few weeks before Great White was scheduled to play at The Station. But when another clerk was absent on that concert night, Erin reluctantly agreed to cover for him at the gas station — on the condition that she could leave in time to hear Great White’s first song. Pressed for help that night, the Derderians agreed. At the time, Pucino thought she’d struck a pretty good deal. Her escape from life’s tedium would be purchased with a few more hours of work tedium — for many Rhode Islanders, the coin of the realm.

Mike Iannone was not what could be called a regular at The Station. But he was a good friend of Steve Mancini, Keith Mancini, and Tom Conte — whose band, Fathead, regularly played there. Iannone hung out with his Fathead buddies and even helped them load their equipment into the club on occasion. He shared their excitement at opening for Great White, and planned to be there cheering them on. Mike knew where he was going in life, and it was far beyond any dingy rock club.

By 2003 Iannone was a senior education major at Rhode Island College. In just a few more months, he’d have his bachelor’s degree and a teaching certificate for high school mathematics. He had purpose, drive, and a sense of what felt right in a given situation — and what didn’t. One night at The Station in 2002, while he was listening to a band called Rebellion,

Iannone’s sense of something being “not quite right” triggered quick action on his part. He was standing near the stage when two flashpots on either side of the band erupted in five-foot tongues of flame. Iannone “just didn’t feel right” with the flame effects because the club “just seemed too small” for them, he later explained. So, he simply walked out of the club, unimpeded. Mike Iannone was, apparently, the only person at The Station who was troubled by Rebellion’s pyrotechnics that evening.

Nightclub safety was the farthest thing from Gina Gauvin’s mind in the winter of 2003. At forty-two, Gauvin, a single, stay-at home mom, had little time or money for “clubbing.” But when she heard that Great White was going to appear at The Station on a Thursday night, Gina arranged for her son, Joseph, and daughter, Shayna, to stay with their grandparents, so that she could stop in at the club just before the band, one of her favorites, went on. Her eldest daughter, Heather, eighteen, would be on her own for the night. It would be a night out for Gina, whose life had always been light on luxury. Gauvin wasn’t often seen at The Station, but she was easily recognizable there by

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her flaming-red, down-the-back, wavy hair. She hoped to meet friends — perhaps Mike Gonsalves, the radio DJ who’d be emceeing the event, or others she’d known from growing up in Providence. Gina had married young, but neither that marriage, nor subsequent relationships, had survived. She stayed at home, making do on child support from her children’s fathers. Years earlier, Gauvin had rented a house in a rural corner of Rhode Island where she

kept rabbits and geese. Over time, she developed a fondness for pet reptiles, and expertise in breeding them. Eventually, Gina became the go-to girl for online tips on nursing droopy dragons and lethargic lizards. She was also an art hobbyist, painting detailed, colorful portraits of her beloved pets. Kids and lizards and rock ’n’ roll — not exactly the stuff of song lyrics, but the makings of a full life for Gina.

Unlike Gina Gauvin and Erin Pucino, others who found themselves at The Station for Great White’s concert were not necessarily fans of the group. Thirty-three-year-old Pam Gruttadauria was normally not even a late-night person. As food buyer and breakfast supervisor for the Holiday Inn Express in Warwick, she began her mornings before 5 each day, so her evenings were not party friendly. Pam was single and lived with her parents and rottweiler-shepherd mix, JD, in Johnston, Rhode Island. When she wasn’t earning one of several employee-of-the-month awards at the Holiday Inn, Pam mostly spent time with her brother’s three kids. Trips to karate class and nights out for pizza with the niece and nephews filled what little spare time she had. When Pam’s co-worker at the Holiday Inn, Donna Mitchell, suggested that they go

to The Station to hear Great White, Pam was ambivalent. Donna was a big fan of Great White, but Pam’s musical tastes favored easy listening over heavy metal. And the show wouldn’t start until 11 p.m. Still, Pam could take the following day off. She thought, “One late night really couldn’t hurt.” So, on Thursday evening, February 20, 2003, Pam Gruttadauria left a note for her

father that read, “Dad, don’t wake me up. I have a personal day. Love, Pam.”

Thirty-four-year-old Joe Kinan had even less interest in Great White than did Pam Gruttadauria. But he wasn’t immune to midwinter boredom, either. Joe worked as a manager at a formal-wear shop in Canton, Massachusetts. An obsessive physical conditioning devotee, Kinan worked out seven days a week, often twice a day, with morning cardio and afternoon weight training by body part. He once competed in a contest to lose the greatest percentage of body fat and increase his muscle mass over twelve weeks. Joe’s buddy Karla Bagtaz had two tickets to Great White’s show at The Station and

wanted somebody — anybody — to go with her. In truth, Kinan couldn’t have cared less about the band. He had never heard of them. But Joe and Karla had been friends for many years, and tagging along with her to a roadhouse to hear some ’80s band would be small sacrifice. It might even be cheap fun on a bitter-cold Thursday night.

Three hundred miles north of Rhode Island, Bangor, Maine, was even colder. There,

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an over-the-hill heavy metal band was doing its best to give the locals their money’s worth — melting the snow, as it were, with volume and special effects inside a small club called Russells. In forty-eight hours, it would be doing the same at The Station.

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CHAPTER 5

THAT AIN’T NO WAY TO HAVE FUN, SON

TO THE RIGHT OF THE AISLE, immediately behind the driver, lay a table littered with empty soda cans, a cigarette pack, and CDS. To the left was a sitting area with cracked Naugahyde bench seats. Farther back, twelve bunks were stacked three high, six on either side of a narrow corridor — about as commodious as aboard a nuclear submarine. If groupies were ever invited “back to the bus,” they would have to be contortionists. This was the “luxury motorcoach” that Great White shared with its opening band, Trip, for their 2002–3 tour of little-known venues. Its occupants received $25 per day for expenses, on which each was to live his own rock ’n’ roll dream. The glamorous life, indeed. It had not always been so. Great White, originally called Dante Fox, was formed by singer Jack Russell and

guitarist Mark Kendall in 1978. A self-described “backyard keg band,” the group drew a following in Southern California during the early ’80s. Great White’s 1989 album, . . . Twice Shy, was the high-water mark of the band’s success. Certified double-platinum (two million copies sold), the group’s third album contained a Grammy Award–nominated (Best Hard Rock Performance) single, “Once Bitten, Twice Shy,” which would become Jack Russell’s anthem for the next twelve years. That song reached number five on the 1989 singles chart, and its video was an MTV staple — not bad for a “surfer stoner guy from Whittier, California,” as Russell later described himself. The year 1990 saw Great White appear on MTV Unplugged and sell out the LA

Forum; however, it was all downhill from there. Throughout the ’90s the band’s popularity faded, along with that of most heavy-metal groups. One of Great White’s albums released in the 1990s, Hooked (1991) and one single, “Rollin’ Stoned” (1999), may have described Russell’s personal lifestyle, but they did not capture the public’s imagination or its pocketbook. Pressed for cash, Russell sold all his copyright interest in Great White recordings in 1996. In 1999, he sold the rights to any royalties from post-1996 CDS. In mid-2000, Mark Kendall and the two other original members left the group. By New Year’s Eve 2001, Great White had completely lost its bite. The band briefly

surfaced that night for one “farewell show” at the Galaxy Theatre in Santa Ana, California, then went belly-up, seemingly for good. Lacking a broader skill set, Russell tried touring as a solo act, singing mostly “adult

contemporary” numbers with four session musicians; however, even with some Great White tunes thrown into the mix, audiences stayed home. His new solo album, For You, was, alas, not for many, selling 770 copies nationwide. Russell, forty-two years old and a decade past his MTV prime, had ridden his one-trick pony into the ground. By March 2002 he was hopelessly in arrears on lease payments for $86,000 worth of

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sound equipment. In July of that year, Colonial Pacific Leasing Company obtained a judgment against him, seizing the last $6,687.93 in his savings account and repossessing his mixing console. When Russell filed for personal bankruptcy on August 21, 2002, he had less than

$20,000 in assets and over $200,000 in debts. He owed money to the IRS, to a finance company, to a credit card company — even to his dentist ($160). Nevertheless, his promotional bio still waxed optimistic: “All I want is for the people to decide. . . . There’s nothing worse than a song you believe in and no one hears it.” It’s doubtful that Russell’s creditors were whistling any of his tunes when his debts were discharged by the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California. It is a music industry convention that unless an act has at least two of its original

members, it may not tour under the original band’s name. Laws have been enacted in some states to ensure this. So, it was not surprising that Russell, once freed of his debt burden by personal bankruptcy, contacted Mark Kendall in 2002 and suggested that they tour with some of Russell’s session musicians from his short-lived solo act, calling themselves “Jack Russell’s Great White.” Kendall had been no more successful than Russell in garnering a solo following, and his day job as a newspaper telephone solicitor wasn’t cutting it. So he agreed to join Russell for a tour of marginal venues in late 2002 and 2003, riding a bus from city to city with another band, Trip, and a sound man, Bob Rager. The tour would be budget conscious, to say the least. It would be road managed by Dan Biechele, the same fellow who ran W.A.S.P.’s tour in 2000. Biechele would not only control costs, but he’d also operate the tour’s single extravagance, pyrotechnics. 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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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. Believer’s front man was as frugal as he was careful. In the summer of 1996, while

his band packed up after playing a gig at The Station (then owned by Howard Julian), Mikutowicz noticed a stack of discarded white plastic foam blocks, approximately two inches thick and seventeen inches square, near the band door. Figuring he could use them to pad instrument cases, he threw several in his van and returned home to western Massachusetts, where he cut them up and used them over the years. A scrounger by nature, Mikutowicz did not give the recycled foam blocks a second thought until 2003 when he saw news accounts of the Station fire. Holy Diver was not the only local band to bring pyrotechnics into The Station. Rev

Tyler’s now-defunct Massachusetts band, Lovin’ Kry, opened for W.A.S.P. at the March 8, 2000, concert marking the transition of club ownership from Julian to the Derderian brothers. A videotape from that night shows Lovin’ Kry using white- sparking pyrotechnic gerbs. Nor was that the only time Lovin’ Kry used pyro at The Station. “We did it every time, and every time they invited us back. They loved us there,” said Tyler. Explaining that The Station not only permitted pyro, but encouraged it, Tyler added, “They knew they’d get a better show every time we used it — a lot of tickets sold; a lot of booze sold.” Other bands using pyro at The Station included the ironically named Hotter Than

Hell, Looks That Kill, and Destroyer. They joined the ranks of just-plain-stupidly- named non-pyro bands at The Station like Mutha Ugly and Wet Her Belly, as well as the marginally witty Shirley Temple of Doom. Pyrotechnics and marginal economics can sometimes intersect in dangerous ways.

Nathan Conti ran sound for Dirty Deeds, an AC/DC tribute band that occasionally appeared at The Station. His father was Dirty Deeds’ lead singer, and, in true Rhode Island two-degrees-of-separation fashion, his sister was Station manager Kevin Beese’s girlfriend. Nathan was no musician, but he used his electronics training from New England Tech to save the band some money. AC/DC used flame-shooting flashpots in its stadium act, and Dirty Deeds wanted to look just like the real thing. But flashpots and a controller cost over a thousand dollars. Ever resourceful, Nathan built his own pyro apparatus from tomato-juice cans, switches, and four model airplane glow plugs for $150. He’d fill each can with a shot-glass of gunpowder (obtained using his mother’s firearms permit), then energize its glow plug to spark a flame six feet high. Nathan used his apparatus twelve times per show, on at least five occasions at The Station. Sometimes the club’s soundman, Paul Vanner, would provide cables and help him wire it. Conti signaled the band with a high-pitched tone through the sound system (presumably, not detracting much from the musicianship) before firing the flashpots, so that his father and the other musicians could first step forward on The Station’s small stage. Then the flames would erupt vertically between them and their drummer, a few feet from the club’s foam-covered walls. Nothing to it. And a bargain, too. Some pyro bands at The Station eschewed equipment altogether. Forty-year-old

Edward Ducharme did “theatrical stunts” for the Halloween-themed band 10/31. His main stunt was a party trick involving a can of butane fuel and a cigarette lighter. He’d

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fill his mouth with butane gas, expel it toward the ceiling, and light the plume with his lighter. One time at The Station he performed his fire-breathing trick a little too close to the band’s wheelchair-bound bass player, Chad Custodio, setting the musician’s hair on fire. Custodio’s brother, Jack, took a break from his lead guitar duties to pat out the flames. “The guys in the band are pretty much expendable,” joked Ducharme afterward. Two days before that gig, Ducharme had shown Station soundman Vanner a videotape of his fire-breathing stunt being performed at another club. Vanner’s only comment was, “Keep it away from the walls.” One user of pyrotechnics at The Station should have known better. Frank Davidson

grew up in Rhode Island and had run lighting at The Station during the club’s prior lives under previous owners. He was a regular there until 1996, when he moved to Florida. There, he found work as a licensed pyrotechnician for a company called Beyond Belief Productions. Among other assignments, Davidson handled pyro displays for TNN’s World Championship Wrestling at venues around the country. Millions of Americans watched his work on TNN’s Monday Night Nitro and Thursday Thunder wrestling programs. He well knew the dangers of pyro and the permitting requirements of every state, including Rhode Island. Specifically, he understood that every state required that a licensed pyrotechnician obtain a local permit before shooting gerbs or flashpots. Issuance of a permit usually required a preshow safety demonstration for local officials and poised extinguishers at showtime. When Davidson, who went by the nickname “Grimace,” returned to New England,

he brought with him several gerbs and flashpots liberated from his Florida employer. He agreed to do pyro for Human Clay (a Creed tribute band), which was scheduled to appear at The Station in November 2001, and again on New Year’s Eve 2002. Several days before the November gig, Davidson demonstrated a gerb in The Station for the club’s manager, Kevin Beese, and light man David “Scooter” Stone. He shot a twelve- foot (spark distance) gerb with twenty-second duration, and it hit the roof above the stage area. Then Davidson shot a ten-foot gerb without complication. “Grimace” was assisted in the demo by Scott Gorman, a Cumberland, Rhode Island, volunteer firefighter, who stood by with fire extinguisher at the ready. After the demonstration, Beese approved the pyro, so “Grimace” Davidson used it

for Human Clay’s November Station gig, as well as the New Year’s Eve bash. Station regular Cliff Koehler clearly recalls that Jeff Derderian was on hand for Human Clay’s New Year’s pyro show. Shortly thereafter, Beese scheduled Davidson to do a pyrotechnic display at The

Station during the week of February 24, 2003, as part of a promotional video shoot for a band called Super Unknown. In that same conversation Beese offered him a position handling pyro and lighting at The Station on a regular basis. Davidson replied, “We’d have to do things the right way. You know. Permits, insurance.” Beese immediately balked, rescinding the employment offer. Davidson’s February Station gig for the promotional video did not take place as

scheduled. Three days earlier, someone else’s pyro reduced the club to ashes. As Mickey Mikutowicz had noticed, The Station had long been less than vigilant

about fire safety. Alfred Gomes noticed, too. Gomes promoted a few bands that appeared at The Station. In August of 2000, six months after the Derderians took over (and a few weeks before Mick Taylor’s stay at the West Warwick Super 8), he watched

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as a band packed up its gear. When one of its members absentmindedly flicked a lit cigarette to the floor of the drummer’s alcove, it came to rest against a foam-covered wall — which immediately began to burn. The musician hurriedly stomped it out, then looked to see if the club’s soundman had noticed. He hadn’t. When Gomes approached the soundman and said, “I think that guy over there just ignited your wall with a cigarette,” he was told “in a nice way” to mind his own business. “The club gets inspected all the time. That stuff is perfectly safe,” was the response.

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CHAPTER 6

LUCKY DAY

IT WASN’T OFTEN THAT ROCK IDOLS, even past-their-prime players like Great White front man Jack Russell, graced the streets of West Warwick. So when his tour bus rolled into town, the locals were starstruck — even if they weren’t quite sure who he was. But they could see from his high-mileage face and full-sleeve tattoos that he lived a life the average Rhode Island warehouseman or carpenter could only dream of. He was very, very cool. At least that’s what crossed Tina Ayer’s mind as she peered over the small bottles of

shampoo and conditioner on her supply cart at the guy stepping out of room 210. The Fairfield Inn motel, where she worked as a housekeeper, had its share of lonely salesmen, lost tourists, and trysting couples, but this guy was different. He wore a bandanna pirate-style over his chin-length, dirty-blond hair and exuded the confidence of someone who was used to being recognized. He looked familiar to Ayer, though perhaps older and jowlier than she could place. Tina Ayer had done the ’80s heavy-metal thing. But now a thirty-three-year-old

single mother, she confined her metal trappings to rings on almost every finger (some multiple) and blond highlights in her black hair. Early mornings, Tina was responsible for cleaning guest rooms at the Fairfield Inn; the rest of the time, for raising her son, Danny, and daughter, Kayla. The burdens of adulthood left her little time or money for the concert scene. So, when small talk with the mysterious man in the hallway gave way to introductions and an autograph, Tina couldn’t believe her good fortune. Jack Russell. Great White. Oh, my God. He’d be appearing at The Station the next night, and Russell told Ayer she could go as his guest. Tina’s best friend, Jackie Bernard, also cleaned rooms at the motel. “Can she come,

too?” pleaded the chatty Ayer. “Sure,” said Russell, and he placed a call on his cell phone to Dan Biechele, who kept a notebook page for this very purpose. Under a handwritten heading, “Guest List,” Biechele printed the names “Tina Ayer” and “Jackie Bernard.” Given The Station’s history of overselling and overcrowding, Tina and Jackie were lucky to get in. Luckier still would be those who got out. Some would escape the club with their

lives. Others, whose interest in The Station was more business than pleasure, would be lucky to get out with their fortunes. By November 2002 the Derderian brothers had tired of running the club. Michael Derderian was in the middle of a bitter divorce, and his wife was seeking a court order that he sell The Station. The brothers placed an ad in the Providence Journal offering to sell the business for $199,000. One interested reader was Armando Machado. Machado had been a building contractor for years, and he and his wife, Nancy, were looking for a side business they could both run to “help them get ahead.” Machado saw the newspaper ad, called the number in it, and spoke with Jeff Derderian. A visit to The Station soon followed.

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The Machados were shown into the club by Jeff and Michael Derderian, who chatted with them on the dance floor for about a half hour. The brothers explained that they’d been in the club business for three years and “were moving on to bigger and better things in the real estate field.” (Presumably, in their next venture they would stay current on water charges, sewer charges, and rent — always bones of contention with their Station landlord.) The group then adjourned to the club’s back office to talk terms. Michael Derderian did most of the talking. When the Machados inquired about the finances of the club, they were told that a

deposit of $20,000 was required “to prove they were interested” before the Derderians would show them the books. Mike Derderian told them this was because “two other parties were interested in purchasing the club.” The Machados were serious about their bid for financial independence, so they took

out a home equity loan to finance their deposit. Once they handed over the $20,000, the sellers showed them a handwritten book listing daily cash receipts for the club — nothing about profit or loss. On November 24, Armando Machado signed a purchase- and-sale agreement for “The Station Rock Club.” Only thereafter did he learn of one small problem: the Derderians didn’t own the building. When Armando Machado checked with the West Warwick Town Hall he learned

that the building at 211 Cowesett Avenue belonged to Triton Realty, Ray Villanova’s company. Machado arranged to meet with Villanova (himself unaware that the Derderians were trying to sell the club), who told him that the brothers were locked into a five-year lease, and Villanova wouldn’t let them assign it to the Machados without the Derderians’ remaining on the hook for its final two years. When Machado told Mike Derderian that he’d spoken with Villanova, Derderian

became incensed, fuming, “I wish you hadn’t done that!” With the deal dead, Machado pleaded for his $20,000 deposit back, because “they couldn’t sell something they had no right to sell,” and because “the business was worth nothing without the real estate.” The Derderians told Machado that the deposit was nonrefundable, but they would return it “when they got another buyer.” If Machado thought himself ill-used, he would thank his lucky stars only a short

time later. The Derderians’ “other two buyers” were not exactly waiting in the wings, because

the next person to show serious interest in the club didn’t call until January 27, 2003. He was Michael O’Connor. More sophisticated than Machado, O’Connor and a partner, Dan Gormley, arranged to meet with Michael Derderian at the club on January 28. The pair took the tour, checking out the stage area with its unusual egg-crate foam walls, the blacked-out atrium windows (“too dark for a lunch crowd,” thought O’Connor), and the polished horseshoe bar. They discussed the equipment that would be included in the sale — sound system, stage lighting, furniture. Mike Derderian explained to O’Connor how they’d book national acts “four or five

times a year” but use “cover” bands Thursdays through Saturdays. He pointed to the rock-themed mural they’d commissioned from Anthony Baldino as a valuable property improvement. O’Connor was impressed at how positively Derderian spoke of his employees’ teamwork. Derderian also spoke of the club’s “very good” relationship with its residential

neighbors. He told about giving them Jeff ’s cell phone number to call if things got too

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loud. They never discussed buying soundproofing materials from Barry Warner. Asked about permitted occupancy, the club owners told O’Connor they were “never really given an occupancy limit.” Five days later, buyers and sellers negotiated terms. Derderian asked for $195,000.

O’Connor countered with 165. They settled on 190, but there remained issues of the lease assignment to work out. Nevertheless, they inked a “pre-purchase agreement” on February 7, and the buyers handed the Derderians a $19,000 deposit. The plan was for O’Connor to return on the twentieth, to see the club in operation when a national act — Great White — was appearing. Then they would close on the deal.

Around 9 o’clock on the morning of February 20, Jack Russell and the band headed to Denny’s restaurant for breakfast. Russell hardly had time to order the Grand Slam Breakfast when a tradesman in dusty work boots approached from a nearby table. “You guys have got to be a rock band,” declared Richard “Rick” Sanetti. Sanetti had been working with a crew installing flooring at the Hampton Inn then under construction in nearby Coventry, Rhode Island. That same crew was now working on some serious breakfast at Denny’s. Sanetti could not believe it. Back in the ’80s he had bought Great White CDS. He

had once cribbed lyrics from the band’s “Save Your Love” for a note he wrote to his then girlfriend, now wife. And here he was, twenty years later, with only a plate of hash browns standing between him and the great Jack Russell. Life was good. Russell, the gracious celebrity, invited Sanetti and friends to The Station as his

guests the following night. He told them that the Station concert would be a “killer show,” complete with pyrotechnics. They accepted in a heartbeat. Great White road manager Dan Biechele added Sanetti and friends to the guest-list

page in his notebook, penning a special reminder for Russell to dedicate “Save Your Love” to Rick’s wife, Patty. It would be a night to remember. In addition to his friends from work, Rick Sanetti planned to bring his wife and their beloved niece, Bridget Sanetti. Bridget was only twenty-five and knew little of Great White. But she had lived with Sanetti and his wife the last three years while working as a career counselor with at-risk kids. Bridget was responsible beyond her years, but Richard knew that her fun-loving side would not let her miss a chance to see an ’80s band so dear to her old aunt and uncle. The morning of February 20, Michael O’Connor and Dan Gormley took an

important step toward owning their very own rock club. They filed articles of organization with the Rhode Island secretary of state for “The Station Club, LLC,” a limited liability company. Pretty soon they’d be in business. That same day, Jack Russell woke up with an idea. Notwithstanding the paucity of

free space on his arms, he decided that what he really needed was another tattoo, and so set about finding the best local artist. He asked around and was told that Doors of Perception was the place to go. When Russell called the tattoo shop, the phone was answered by its owner, Skott Greene. Greene, thirty-five, had always wanted to tattoo a rock star, but when Russell sought an appointment, Greene smelled a practical joke. The caller wanted him to “bring his equipment to Russell’s tour bus” late that afternoon, but Greene was already committed to an in-shop appointment. Canceling on

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a customer was not how Greene had built his reputation. If this “Jack Russell” really wanted a tattoo, he could come to the shop. Skott Greene was a gentle bear of a man, huge, bearded, and covered with the art of

his trade. Thursday night at his shop was “geek night,” when he and friends Brian O’Donnell and Richard Cabral would gather to drink soda and work on model airplanes, surrounded by Greene’s Star Wars collectibles. O’Donnell was in the shop when Greene took the call from someone claiming to be Jack Russell. He stuck around all afternoon and evening just to see if the call had been legit. Greene’s late-afternoon appointment was Michael Hoogasian. That Hoogasian was

accompanied by his beautiful wife, Sandy, was no surprise. The two were inseparable. Hard workers both, they had saved from Mike’s job as a Coke deliveryman and Sandy’s at the Gap in Warwick Mall to impeccably furnish a small house they’d bought in Cranston. Married just sixteen months, they came to the shop to get a tattoo for Mike’s thirty-first birthday. Mike already had a couple of tattoos, but this one would be different — a flame design. Even though Sandy and Mike lived in Cranston, they were very familiar with West

Warwick. Mike Hoogasian’s bachelor party had been held at The Station. Not only did Mike have a history with The Station, he had past exposure to Great White. In 1984 Mike, then twelve years old, attended a concert at the Providence Civic Center with his childhood friend, Derek Knight. The opening act was Great White, starring Jack Russell. Hoogasian never forgot it. So when he heard that Great White was coming to West Warwick in 2003, he immediately downloaded Jack Russell’s new solo album. Come nightfall, Russell still hadn’t forgotten his tattoo. But he had one thing to do

before he could get it. The rocker had agreed to be interviewed by two DJs from the campus radio station of Nichols College in Dudley, Massachusetts. So, at 6:30 that night, Russell sat with Jimmy Gahan, twenty-one, and Mike Ricardi, nineteen, in the galley of his tour bus, their camcorder rolling. Gahan and Ricardi planned to air the interview on their hard-rock program, Jim and Mikey’s Power Hour, back at school. Each asked Russell a handful of questions, and the singer was expansive in his answers. Russell explained to his rapt listeners, “I don’t do this to make money. I don’t need to work right now. I do this because I love playing for people.” Speaking wistfully of the ’80s, Russell mused, “We grew up in those days, and those days were special to us. A lot of people seem to forget that. They get older. They get [gesturing with ‘air quotes’] responsible.” Russell told the boys that they, too, were on his guest list for the show that night.

Both stepped off the bus elated. When Jack Russell finally strode into the Doors of Perception at 7:15 that night, it

was like Jesse James walking through the swinging doors of a saloon. Heads turned and conversations stopped. It was really him. Russell turned out to be a regular guy, though, bantering with the crowd as Greene’s needle buzzed and another dark figure joined the dense ranks of Russell’s body art. Mike Hoogasian regaled Russell with his knowledge of Great White’s old songs, as well as material from Russell’s recent solo album. Russell even sang a little. Then, he invited all in the shop to The Station that night as his personal guests. “If they give you any trouble at the club, come to my bus. Come get me. You’re on my VIP list.” A phone call to Dan Biechele was all it took to put them on that lucky list.

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As Mike and Sandy drove home to change for the concert, Mike excitedly called his boyhood friend, Derek Knight, with whom he had seen Great White almost twenty years before. “Come on, Derek, I can invite anybody I want. He put us on his guest list.” Knight was tempted, but thought better of it. It was past nine, and his young family was tucked in for the night. Knight had gotten “responsible.” About ten minutes after nine, Mike O’Connor arrived at the nightclub that would

soon belong to him. He eyed the huge Budweiser banners over the front door and on the railing of the club’s front steps. Sponsorship would be something he’d have to learn about. Tracy King, working front door security, welcomed him as he passed through the double white doors, up the gently sloping corridor to the ticket desk staffed by Andrea Mancini. Her long blond hair and dazzling smile were disarming, but O’Connor never let on that he would soon be her boss. Andrea confirmed that he was a guest of the house, then waved him past her husband, Steven, who was checking IDs. O’Connor spoke briefly with Jeff Derderian, who was busy running the place — at the door, behind the bar, in the back office. Derderian pointed out the emcee for the night’s show, Mike Gonsalves, a DJ with rock station WHJY who went by the moniker “Dr. Metal.” O’Connor was surprised that the crowd was close to his age — thirty to forty-five

years old. The band opening for Great White, Trip, was onstage, so he retreated from that noisy area to the less crowded horseshoe bar, where he bought a drink and watched the operation. Eventually, O’Connor’s gaze was drawn to the bar’s two cash registers. Their constant ringing was more music to his ears than anything coming from the stage. By 10:25 Mike O’Connor had seen enough. He didn’t need to hear Great White, so

he walked out the front door, through the packed parking lot, and got in his car to drive home, buzzing at the prospect of owning a cash cow. On his way out of The Station’s parking lot, he noticed a news van from Channel 12 TV turning toward the club — and then he remembered that Jeff Derderian was a reporter for that station. Jason Lund, twenty-six, was in the thick of The Station crowd pressed to the front

of the stage, anxiously awaiting Great White’s appearance. His wife was expecting their third child, and he hadn’t felt right going to the show alone. But she had persuaded him to go and have a good time with his friends. When his cell phone rang, Lund barely heard it over The Station’s din, so he elbowed his way to the men’s room to talk. It was his wife. She was having contractions. He’d better get home. Lund immediately left to join her, but by the time he got home, the contractions had diminished to a false labor. “Too bad,” he thought. As of 10:30, all the people on Jack Russell’s guest list had arrived at The Station:

the housekeepers from the Fairfield Inn, the construction crew from Denny’s, the two college DJs, and everyone from the Doors of Perception tattoo parlor. But at 10:55 Patty Sanetti left to go home. Her job required her to activate a computer program at 11 p.m., “but she’d be back,” she assured her husband and niece. She’d miss the beginning of Great White’s set, but what could she do? Everyone else on the guest list remained at the club, in a state of high anticipation.

Right up until 11 p.m., when Great White struck the opening chords of “Desert Moon,” each would consider it to be the very luckiest of days.

41

CHAPTER 7

YOURS, IN FIRE SAFETY …

AS THE HOUR APPROACHED FOR GREAT WHITE to go on, Mike and Sandy Hoogasian huddled together facing the stage, feeling the crush and the excitement of the crowd. They tried to take in the whole scene, but the sheer number of bodies, shoulder to shoulder and back to belly, made appreciation of anyone beyond a six-foot radius impossible. Mike thought back to his bachelor party at The Station two years earlier, when his firefighter brother-in-law had asked him, “You hang out in this firetrap?” and wondered about the room’s legal occupancy. Every other restaurant or club he’d been in had a sign prominently displaying the maximum occupancy. But Hoogasian saw none here. Perhaps the reason no maximum occupancy was posted at The Station was that

legal capacity there was a fluid concept, depending upon when the calculation was performed and who performed it. The last person to undertake that calculus, Denis Larocque, did so as part of the club’s transfer of ownership from Howard Julian to the Derderians. To call Larocque’s methodology creative would be putting a most benign gloss on it. In Rhode Island, local fire inspections are carried out by a member of each town’s

fire department who has been appointed a deputy state fire marshal. In West Warwick in the late 1990s that responsibility fell to Denis Larocque. Larocque was responsible for enforcing the state fire code, which specified, among other things, how legal occupancies were to be calculated for restaurants and nightclubs. Having lived his entire life in West Warwick, Larocque was more than familiar with every street and building in town. Larocque had graduated from West Warwick High School, where he played on the

Wizards football team. His father, a son of French Canadian mill workers, toiled for years as a second-shift grinder at Electric Boat Shipyard in Groton, Connecticut. Young Denis would not follow in those footsteps. Rather, when he was twenty-one, Larocque joined West Warwick’s close-knit fire department, where he rose steadily through the ranks. He married a local girl, had three children, and settled in the Arctic Hill neighborhood, just blocks from where he’d been raised — only this time, Larocque lived in the neighborhood’s largest house, with a pool in the backyard. In addition to his home, he owned a dozen apartments in town, an industrial park unit in nearby Warwick, and an undeveloped house lot in a desirable cul-de-sac. By all accounts, Larocque balanced personal ambition with public service, coaching youth sports and supporting children’s activities. His friends and co-workers called him Rocky. The job of fire code inspector in West Warwick has never been regarded as