The band helps out its late guitarist’s family.
LOS ANGELES (AP) -The rock band Great White planned to perform one song at a benefit concert Tuesday, nearly nine weeks after a fire during their show at a Rhode Island nightclub killed 99 people – including the group’s guitarist Ty Longley.
Surviving members of the group agreed to perform one song at West Hollywood’s Key Club to raise money for a memorial fund in honor of Longley. Concert organizers promised that funds raised would be donated to a charity overseen by his parents and earmarked for his pregnant girlfriend, whose child is due in late July or early August.
It was unclear which song the group planned to perform. The band’s manager, Paul Woolnough, and attorney, Ed McPherson, did not immediately return calls seeking comment. Other bands in the Key Club lineup include the glam-metal group XYZ and 5 Cent Shine – a group Longley once played with.
Longley, a 31-year-old Ohio native who had lived in Los Angeles for the past five years, was among 99 who perished at The Station in West Warwick, R.I.
Investigators suspect the band’s pyrotechnics ignited foam that was placed on the club’s walls as soundproofing.
A grand jury is investigating.
Longley listened to Great White in the late 1980s and idolized guitarist Mark Kendall, according to family members. He joined the band about four years ago.
Kendall and singer Jack Russell are the only members from the original lineup. In recent years, the band has performed mainly as a nostalgia act at small venues after reaching the peak of its fame with the 1990 hit “Once Bitten, Twice Shy.”
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