Hooked

Hooked, Great White's fifth studio album, was released by Capitol Records in February 1991. It was recorded between September and November 1990 at Total Access Recording Studios in Redondo Beach, California, and produced and arranged by manager Alan Niven together with guitarist and keyboard player Michael Lardie, who also engineered it. The line-up was Jack Russell on vocals, Mark Kendall and Lardie on guitars, Tony Montana on bass and Audie Desbrow on drums, with Lardie adding piano, synthesizer and Hammond organ. The opening "Call It Rock N' Roll" was the first single; it climbed to number four on Billboard's Album Rock Tracks chart and to 53 on the Hot 100, and "Desert Moon", a later single, reached 16 on the same rock chart. Michael Thompson added slide guitar to "Cold Hearted Lovin'", "Can't Shake It" was written by John Brewster, Rick Brewster and Doc Neeson, and the closing "Afterglow" by Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane. Capitol marked the release with a beach party in its Hollywood parking lot, where about 1,000 guests under a circus tent saw the first showing of the "Call It Rock N' Roll" video and heard Great White and the surf band the Ventures play. Billboard's review expected the band to reach platinum again and singled out "Cold Hearted Lovin'" and "Afterglow" as the next songs to follow. The album entered the Billboard 200 on the chart dated 16 March 1991, peaked at number 18 a week later and stayed for 25 weeks; in Britain it spent one week at 43, while the singles "Congo Square" and "Call It Rock N' Roll" reached 62 and 67. The RIAA certified it gold on 18 April 1991, exactly two months after the release date it records. The Japanese edition followed on 6 March 1991, and later that year a two-disc set (TOCP-6964/5) paired Hooked with a disc of live recordings.