Flammable polyurethane foam can be seen on the walls surrounding the drummers alcove, as opening band Trip plays before Great White. Trip bass player Jason Williams, left, is pictured with drummer John Reagle.

special to the journal / Dan davidson

Great White was never Dan Davidson’s favorite ’80s band, but to a teenager who played guitar, wore his hair long and harbored his own rock ’n’ roll dreams, they were genuine headbangers.

“Hair bands” ruled as Davidson came of age, and he saw many of the big-name acts. One of his greatest memories is a 1991 Iron Maiden concert at the Providence Civic Center. He’d won a contest through a local rock station and was invited on stage with other fans to sing backup. The song was “Heaven Can Wait.”

One band he didn’t see during the hair heyday was Great White.

The Los Angeles-based rockers had faded during the ’90s and eventually broke up, only to reform, playing smaller clubs before diehard fans. In February 2003, when Davidson heard they were coming to The Station nightclub in West Warwick, there was no question that he was going. A producer and public access coordinator at Cox Communications, he wanted to see the band he’d missed. Knowing that The Station allowed cameras, he also relished the chance to capture his idols on film.

That was the plan. But in the easygoing, enjoy-the-moment manner that makes Davidson who he is, he almost forgot that Great White was coming.

On the afternoon of Feb. 20, 2003, he was in the company van, headed back from a canceled training session to Cox’s office in Westerly when he heard a radio spot for that night’s show. Davidson detoured off Route 95 and headed for The Station, a former restaurant turned pub turned rock club.

Inside, he greeted club manager Kevin Beese, who remembered Davidson from his attempts to book his own band there. Davidson paid $17 for his ticket. It was a business card for Jeffrey A. Derderian, one of the club’s owners. Then he started talking with Johnny Reagle, the drummer for Trip, the second of three bands on that night’s bill.

They talked about the future of hard rock — whether it could reclaim its glory or was destined to languish in alternative rock’s shadow. While they talked, Mark Kendall, Great White’s lead guitarist, got on stage for a sound check. Davidson didn’t recognize him at first because Kendall, once known for his long blond hair, was bald.

BACK AT the Cox office in Westerly, Davidson told his friends, Zach and Jennifer Dustin, who run a music store next to the Cox office, about the show. He jokingly asked whether they wanted to go, but Jennifer Dustin didn’t laugh. Just three days earlier, 21 people had died in a stampede at a Chicago nightclub. She thought Davidson’s plan to see Great White — and go by himself — was a bad one.

“As he walked out, I said ‘Stand near an exit,’ ” she said.

Davidson, 31 at the time, laughed. He had been to more than a dozen Station shows.

At home in Richmond that night, Davidson hit a second line of resistance. This time, it was his mother urging him not to go.

He changed into a black T-shirt and grabbed two cameras, a Sony Mavica digital for still pictures and a Cannon GL for video, just in case he got permission to tape.

After he left, his mother sat at the dining room table.

“It was just some kind of a weird feeling,” she said. “I sat down at the table and I said, ‘Oh God, just bring him back to me safely.’ I can remember praying so hard.”

HE ARRIVED ABOUT 10:15 p.m., parking across the street at the Cowesett Inn restaurant.

Inside The Station, Trip was nearing the end of its show.

Spooked by the warnings from his mother and Jennifer Dustin, Davidson took a moment to look around the club — at the corners, at the smaller rooms that opened into the stage/dance floor area, at the main entrance that seemed to be the only way out. For the first time, he noticed that the club seemed like a deathtrap.

He took out his Sony camera. Moving to a variety of spots, he took about 30 shots of Trip and then stopped, wanting to save space for Great White.

He chatted with Trip bassist Jason Williams while Great White was setting up and bought three CDs at the merchandise table — one by Trip, one by Great White and one by Great White singer Jack Russell. He saw Kevin Beese and wanted to ask permission to videotape, but Beese was too busy helping the band set up.

The stage was dark when Great White, without Russell, took their places. Davidson remembers prerecorded techno music playing as he turned to face the band.

The sequence that follows plays back in his head like a shuttle countdown.The guitarists play the intro to “Desert Moon.” Russell bursts out of the dressing room near the stage, jumping up and down like a boxer. He leaps onto the stage. And the pyrotechnics go off.

Three blasts, one straight up and two at 45-degree angles, shower the front edges of the drum alcove — covered, investigators later learn, in flammable polyurethane foam.Davidson has seen rock show fireworks, but not this big in a club this small. He takes a picture. The crowd, meanwhile, is going wild.

The blasts last about 15 seconds and then stop. Russell starts singing.

Let’s shake this town

Baby come with me

I need a little lovin’ company

According to his camera’s time stamps, Davidson took that first Great White photo at precisely 11:07 p.m.

In the second frame, taken 10 seconds later, the fireworks have stopped but flames streak from the top front corners of the drum alcove. The band members, apparently unaware, keep playing.

In the third, 12 seconds later, band manager Daniel Biechele, a flashlight in his mouth, is on stage, staring at flames that now gush from the top alcove corners toward the ceiling. A side exit door, to the right of the stage, has been opened.

In the fourth, eight seconds later, the music has stopped. A frantic looking Biechele is headed off the right side of the stage as an unidentified person, eyed by a club bouncer, points toward the exit to the right of the stage. In eight seconds, the flames have almost doubled in length and now stretch down toward the stage floor.

In the fifth, six seconds later, the flames appear almost white. Two band members, Russell and bassist Dave Filice, remain on stage. Kendall and others are headed for the side exit.

In the sixth, taken at 11:07 and 38 seconds, the remaining band members are headed off the stage and Davidson has backed away. He is getting out.

He sees the flames reaching the ceiling and then “flashing over” before they dispersed into heavy smoke. He puts his hand on the shoulder of Trip drummer Johnny Reagle, in front of him, and tells him to “walk a little faster.”

“It’s almost like I had tunnel vision,” he said. “I didn’t see anything else but that doorway.”

The wall above the door is on fire, but Davidson ducks and gets out unscathed. Turning around, he sees there is no one behind him. To this day he is not sure why. Contrary to reports since the fire, he does not see anyone blocking people from the side exit.

Outside, Filice still has his bass strapped on. Russell’s fingers are up to his mouth and he almost looks like he is in tears. A man is vomiting in the snow.

Then someone runs from the front of the building and yells: “What are you doing? People are dying in there.”

Davidson walks around to the front. He hears a thumping sound, almost like a trampoline, which he realizes is people inside trying to break through the atrium.

At the front door, he sees a jam of people trying to pull others out. He also notices a smell, which he realizes is partly from burning flesh.

Davidson almost gets hit by a police car pulling up. He sees one victim walking in the middle of the street.

“His face was all burned and he was full of soot,” he said.

He sees one fire truck on the scene.

Sickened, fearing the building might blow up, he has one thought: to get away.

He crosses the road and gets into his car. Detouring through a maze of side roads, he gets back onto Cowesett Avenue and makes his way to Route 95.

At home, he calls Zach and Jennifer Dustin.

“He said, ‘Holy [expletive], put on the TV’, and he was almost crying,” said Jennifer Dustin, who had gone to bed about half an hour before. “I said, ‘Dan are you OK?’ He said, ‘Just put on the TV.’ ”

She asked whether Davidson wanted them to come over, but he said no, just stay on the phone.

On the TV, he heard the first reports of casualties. He knew from being there that the numbers were too low.

At about 2:30 a.m., the phone rang.

Thirty miles away, in Ledyard, Conn., Davidson’s mother was working the late shift as a slot attendant at Foxwoods Resort Casino.

Shortly after the story went national, a resort security officer had asked whether Muriel Davidson had heard about the fire in Rhode Island. She said no and kept working.

Several minutes later, she started wondering.

What fire, she asked.

The Station nightclub, he said.

She started shaking.

She got permission to leave her post and went to the slot manager’s office. She was crying and shaking so badly that the manager dialed home for her.

Dan Davidson remembers picking up on the second ring. His mother was frantic.

“Thank God you picked up the phone,” she said. “Thank God you made it out.”

They talked about it later.

“She told me she couldn’t even imagine the feeling of impending doom,” Davidson said. “Here she was calling and she didn’t know if I was going to pick up.”

He hadn’t thought of calling her because he didn’t know the story was national news.

That night, he stayed on the living room couch, watching a movie, unable to sleep.

He was on the couch again the next night, and he would sleep on it for two years.

IN THE WEEKS and months after the fire, Davidson felt happy to be alive.

He built up the courage to call an ex-girlfriend (she didn’t call back). He enrolled in a photojournalism course. He sold a few pictures from the fire to Life, Rolling Stone, The National Enquirer and The Boston Herald.

The only outward sign that something was wrong was his habit of sleeping on the couch. Each night he would turn on the TV, putting it on a timer so it would shut off after he was asleep.

As time passed, so did the feeling of exuberance at having a second chance, at having survived Rhode Island’s deadliest fire. In its place came feelings of frustration and doubt.

“Part of the survival guilt is trying to figure out why I was spared over X, Y and Z,” he said. “You start saying, ‘I’m going to live every day as if it was my last day.’ When you realize you can’t do that, that’s when the depression starts setting in.”

The fire caught up with him in February 2005, when his grandmother died. At the funeral, his mouth was dry, his face was numb and his left arm started to tingle. Four days later, he asked his mother to drive him to the hospital.

He felt better as soon as he told the doctor that he’d been in the Station nightclub fire. He was told to see his own doctor, who prescribed medications for anxiety and depression.

More recently, a second feeling has emerged. He is angry — about the 100 deaths, about the mistakes that led to them and the legal aftermath that resulted in no charges against former West Warwick Fire Marshal Denis P. Larocque and a plea deal with club owners Michael A. and Jeffrey A. Derderian.

“When they said they were going to make a plea agreement, my first thought was how can they,” he said. “So much manpower and money was spent to get these prosecutions, and it was all for naught.”

“I wanted to hear the cross-examination. I wanted to hear the Derderians talk about the fire inspector. I wanted to hear the truth.”

Davidson’s pictures – his camera’s memory card was turned over to the police after he made a copy for himself -- were to be used as evidence. In an appearance before the grand jury that investigated the fire, he was asked to describe each picture, what he saw, what was taking place. The jurors also looked at the pictures of Trip, some of which provided clear views of the polyurethane foam. Davidson’s testimony will be among some 10,000 pages of grand jury transcripts expected to be released Thursday by the attorney general.

With civil suits winding through the courts, including one to which he is a party, Davidson believes the plea deals were no accident.

“I think the criminal trial was going to overwhelmingly make public the negligence of the State of Rhode Island and the Town of West Warwick, because of the dereliction of duty of the fire inspectors,” he said.

Still trying to process the events of four years ago, Davidson fluctuates between cynicism and feeling helpless at not knowing what to do with his life. On a few occasions, he has gone to church with his mother. But he also thinks about escaping to Canaan, Vt., on the Canadian border. In 2005, he bought 1.6 acres for $3,500.

He went to a few clubs after the Station fire, playing gigs with his own band, but he hasn’t been back to one since the summer of 2003.

He’s seen a few concerts, including two that used pyrotechnics.

One was a show at Mohegan Sun by the country duo Big & Rich. The fireworks ruined it for him, but his girlfriend was enjoying it so he “sucked it up.”

The other show, also at Mohegan Sun, featured three metal bands.

When the fireworks started he got up and went to the concession stand, trying to stop his mind from wandering back to thoughts of a hundred people who died.

redgar@projo.com