Shot in the Dark

Dropped by EMI America, Great White went back to the seven other labels that had once made offers and found none of them interested. Alan Niven raised the money for another independent release, and Mark Kendall remembers the band borrowing $15,000 to make it. The album came out on the band's own label, Telegraph, distributed by Greenworld. Wyn Davis, an assistant engineer on the first album, produced it at Total Access Recording Studios, and Niven himself produced the cover of the Angels' "Face the Day". Audie Desbrow, an old friend of Jack Russell's, was now on drums, and Michael Lardie, the session's second engineer, played keyboards and went on to join the band. Billboard reviewed the Telegraph pressing, GWD90540, in its issue of 21 June 1986, praising the band's playing, its backing vocals and Davis's production. Kendall wrote most of the music of the title track, while the chorus and the title were Russell's idea. "Waiting for Love" came out of three weeks of writing with Kendall's friend Stephan Williams, who had played with the band for a month, and the album also covers "Gimme Some Lovin'", written by Steve Winwood, Spencer Davis and Muff Winwood. Russell said in 1987 that Lardie's keyboards had opened up new directions for the band. Kendall says "Face the Day" was being played on three radio stations while the band had no record deal at all. What followed was a contract with Capitol, the parent company of the label that had just dropped them, a turn Kendall still finds hard to explain. Capitol reissued the album in 1986 as ST-12525; it entered the Billboard 200 on 16 August and peaked at number 82. The album was never released in Britain, Russell said in 1987, but "Face the Day" reached number 97 on the UK singles chart in January 1987. A Japanese LP, ECS-81769, was issued in 1986.