09:30 AM EDT on Monday, September 29, 2003

BY JENNIFER LEVITZ
Journal Staff Writer

ALLENTOWN, Pa. -- Two van loads of survivors of the Rhode Island nightclub fire descended on Allentown two nights ago to face Jack Russell, whose band Great White set off the indoor fireworks that started the blaze.

They faced him -- and asked for his autograph, his picture, and his rock-star presence.

"I'm Brian," one man told Russell. "I was talking to you in the hospital."

"Right on, brother," Russell said.

"My buddy's got a guitar out there to be signed," another fan said.

"For sure, for sure."

Journal photo / Gretchen Ertl FIRE SURVIVOR: Liz Arruda, of Westport, Mass., as Great White singer Jack Russell takes the stage Saturday in Allentown, Pa.

Russell was handed a framed picture of himself.

"Oh, right on man. Thanks, dude. Damn, I was fat," the 40ish rocker said as he studied his image.

And they belly-laughed.

Great White might have its detractors, such as those who forced the band to cancel a gig in New England last week. But since the fire seven months ago, a small, unlikely core of supporters has stood by Russell -- fans whose Great White memorabilia now might include a melted backstage pass.

They are people like John Fairbairn, a friendly pressman from Brockton who has a long mane of red hair. He and his wife bought tickets at Strawberries just a few hours before the deadly concert, and ended their night stuck in the door. Yet he is grateful to Great White for touring to raise money for victims of the fire, rather than hiding. The Allentown stop was part of that benefit tour.

"We're all part of what happened that night," he said. "They're doing their best to help kids who lost families . . . they should be raised up a little instead of put down."

The reception all around was welcoming to Great White in Allentown -- some 300 miles from The Station nightclub -- where the local alternative weekly ran a story about the benefit tour under the headline, "A Labor of Love."

On Saturday, a man who gave his name as "Ed the Painter" Skotarczak smoked a cigarette and worked outside The Sterling Hotel, a brick nightclub with an orange sign and pink and blue facade. Great White was playing that night.

"Isn't that the band that burned that bar down?" he said.

But Skotarczak, who wore a steelworker's union T-shirt and had a tattoo of a wizard on his right arm and a flying horse on his left, said it was better that Great White played in Allentown rather than Billy Joel, who wrote the song about all the factories closing down.

"They can't stand that song," he said of the people in the town. A while later, he went to see about a Great White ticket.

The two vans of 20 or so survivors from Rhode Island arrived in the early evening, none of them as visibly hurt as was Linda Fisher, a Cranston woman who sold T-shirts at The Station on the night of the fire, and who had driven to Allentown with a friend earlier in the day -- and gotten a chance to meet with Russell.

The contingent from the vans met with Russell, too, in a sort of surreal reunion. As Russell posed for a picture with one young woman, he asked her, of The Station fire, "So how did you get out?" She had crawled out a window, she answered. And then they smiled for the camera.

Russell wore jeans, a radio station T-shirt, a black leather jacket, and a black bandana tied around his head like a pirate.

He said he had lost 15 pounds partly because, in articles written after the fire, reporters referred to him as looking paunchy.

In an interview at The Sterling, he said he had also quit smoking and had "cut out the booze." He said he will never get another tattoo, out of respect for the West Warwick tattoo artist he visited before The Station show and invited to the show. The artist didn't make it out.

He refused to answer any questions about the ongoing criminal investigation into the fire, which began when foam used as soundproofing ignited during the band's pyrotechnics display, saying that was not why he was in Allentown.

Asked how it was to meet Fisher, the visibly burned woman who had come to the Allentown club earlier that day, he said: "It was horrifying. What do you say?"

By 11:30 p.m., near show time, the cavernous bar was comfortably crowded; the stage area was packed and smelled of cigarettes and perfume. Pretty soon, those standing up by the stage could only see people behind them. This was where the Rhode Island contingent stood, and it eerily resembled the scene on Feb. 20 at The Station. There was even a videographer up by the stage, a man with "Jesus Saves Us" tattooed on his arm. Being hemmed in was too much for Andrea Fairbairn, a survivor from Brockton.

"She started having a little panic attack," said her husband, John Fairbairn.

Word went through The Sterling Hotel that they were there.

"You're all survivors?" a woman asked. When they nodded, she tapped their bottles with her Miller Lite. Eugene Goguen smiled back. He is a supervisor of a schoolbus company, a Burrillville resident who escaped The Station fire.

"We all started something seven months ago that we will finish tonight," he said.

Russell came into the spotlight wearing a black Station Family Fund tank top that would be raffled off, unwashed, at the night's end. He promptly announced that his drummer, Derrick Pontier, 36, had been in a car accident in the area that day and wouldn't be at the show, but the brother of the owner of the nightclub would be filling in. Gasps about the drummer went through the crowd, until Russell held up his hands. "He's OK. He's OK," Russell said.

"Tonight is not about Great White," Russell said.

It was about "people, not politics," he said to whoops and hollers from the crowd.

He asked for 100 seconds of silence to honor "the 100 fans we lost" -- the 100 who died in the nightclub fire.

The crowd went silent, except for a chorus of sniffles.

One young woman, who had fled out the windows of The Station seven months ago, broke into sobs.

She put her head on her friend's shoulder.

"Your silence says more about your compassion than your words ever could," Russell said.

"We still love you!" someone shouted.

And then he started singing, belting out the lyrics, "I don't want to face the day." The young woman who had been sobbing kept crying as she lifted one hand into the heavy metal horn sign.