Great White really didn't have enough mainstream hits to outweigh the band's later notorious involvement in the horrific and tragic Station nightclub fire, but the one big hit they left behind, Once Bitten, Twice Shy, holds a special place in my nostalgic heart. I've mentioned my sixth grade “bad” buddy Holly a number of times on this blog before; the two of us would listen to Eazy E in her very witchy bedroom in between playing this hair metal classic over and over.
But it wasn't Great White that first performed it. Ian Hunter of Mott the Hopple fame (who was a frequent collaborator with this week's hunk Mick Ronson) introduced this song to the world on his MC Escher meets the 80s first solo album. It's a song that fits nicely in the both glam rock and hair metal canons, two genres that in some ways are really not all that different.
Great White's version earned the band a radio and a subsequent video hit thanks to the inclusion of pinup girl Bobbie Brown. No, not the former Mr Whitney Houston, but the girl from Warrant's Cherry Pie video – which really was quite ahead of its time when you consider how the white background craze hit TV ads in the last decade. It was released on their album “Twice Shy”, an album that came two years after “Once Bitten” and it features wonderfully of the time album art with sexy legs in a sea of red satin sheets lying dangerously close to the fin of a predatory great white shark.
But what do you think?