Wait took White Lion into the US Top 10, but follow-up single Tell Me stalled at No.58. Why hadn’t the record company done that?” “The video had already been around for seven months, but now that the song was big on the radio I picked up the phone and managed to get through to somebody who agreed the situation was unfair,” he recalls. With MTV it took intervention from Tramp himself to secure heavy rotation for Wait. Then a station in San Diego picked up on it. Tramp admits now that “our management came close to giving up on the band”.Ī chink of daylight emerged when a radio station in Minnesota started to play the album’s first single, Wait. But progress remained slow, despite a North American tour with Ace Frehley and Y&T. The review in Kerrang! said Pride was “the most essential melodic hard rock purchase in years”. “And although Guns N’ Roses eventually won the race, for a time things were neck-and-neck.” “We were like two race cars lined up at the starter’s gun,” Tramp says, chuckling at the memory. In a strange coincidence, Pride was released on June 21, 1987, the same day as GN’R’s Appetite For Destruction. “ Pride was our live set at that point,” he continues, “and as those songs were laid down there were no arguments or debates, just smiles.” “All of Vito’s guitar solos were songs in themselves,” Tramp says. The air of sympatico was a bedrock element to Pride, which still sizzles with flamboyant, virtuoso musicianship and swaggering self-confidence.
“Michael became the fifth member of White Lion,” Tramp recalls. An original guitarist with German metalheads Accept, he brought a musician’s perspective to the studio. Wagener had already worked with Great White, and also Dokken and Stryper, and would become one of the decade’s biggest production names. When he came out, our Italian-American managers had to remind him about the offer." He gets completely plastered, returns to New York and checks into rehab. "Back then, Jason was at a time in his life when he was drinking and taking drugs. The way Tramp tells things, Flom didn’t even watch the headliners, but fell in love with White Lion and agreed to sign them – and then forgot all about it. When management heard that Atlantic A&R scout Jason Flom was headed to Florida to check out a band called Mannequin, at a show at which White Lion were the support, they sent Flom a limo with a fully stocked bar. The band then made a version of Pride which they themselves scrapped. Several bassists and drummers came and went, although the band’s success in Japan was enough to nurture the faith of mainstays Tramp and Bratta. Their debut album, Fight To Survive, had been recorded for Elektra Records, who shelved it but returned the rights to the band, leading to a deal with US indie label Grand Slamm. In early ’87, White Lion needed another break – and fast. “The second time it happened, Michael Wagener told me that even though we didn’t have a label deal, he was taking us to his studio in Los Angeles to make a record.” “I had only done so once before, and the voice on the other end of the line was Kelv Hellrazer, which led to White Lion’s first exposure in Europe,” the singer says. To this day, Mike Tramp has no idea what compelled him to jump off the stage and pick up the receiver. Given that the band’s managers George and Michael Parente also co-own the building, most incoming calls are business-related. Somewhere in the empty L’Amour nightclub in New York City, a phone rings incessantly during a White Lion rehearsal.
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