The rock band Great White plans to perform together for the first time since the band’s Feb. 20 concert in Rhode Island resulted in a nightclub fire that killed 99 people.
Survivors of the group say they will perform one song at West Hollywood’s Key Club on April 29 to raise money for a memorial fund in honor of their late guitarist, Ty Longley, the group’s manager, Paul Woolnough, said Friday.
The charity concert will benefit the late guitarist’s pregnant girlfriend, victim relief funds and students seeking art scholarships.
Great White has no other plans to perform again, Woolnough added, although surviving band members may make individual appearances at various other benefits.
Other bands in the Key Club lineup include the glam-metal group XYZ and 5 Cent Shine, of which Longley was a former member.
Longley, a 31-year-old Ohio native who had lived in Los Angeles for the last five years, was among the dozens who perished at the Station nightclub in West Warwick, R.I. Investigators suspect the band’s pyrotechnics ignited soundproofing foam.
A grand jury is investigating the case.
Longley listened to Great White in the late 1980s and idolized guitarist Mark Kendall, said Longley’s sister, 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. The band had recently performed mainly as a nostalgia act at small venues after reaching the peak of its fame with the 1990 hit “Once Bitten, Twice Shy.”
