The pride of New York City: A beginner's guide to White Lion in five essential albums

Fight To Survive (Asylum, 1985)

Recorded in early 1984, White Lion’s debut album, Fight To Survive, was heavily influenced by what Tramp calls “the classic 70s bands”: Van Halen, Queen and Journey. But if Tramp looked like a David Lee Roth clone – something he freely admits, laughing: “I paid attention to the right things!” – his voice was more melodic and distinctly European.

And Tramp’s lyrics had more depth, as illustrated by the song El Salvador, which he wrote in Spain in 1980 after hearing Kim Wilde’s hit Cambodia. “Being from Europe, I knew about history,” he says. “I wanted to write about serious subjects.”

Pride (Atlantic, 1987)

Pride, White Lion’s second album, released in summer 1987, was the definition of a sleeper hit, with sales only taking off after eight months when the video for Wait secured heavy rotation on MTV. And it was Mike Tramp who made that happen. “MTV was playing that video once a day at 3am,” he says. “So I called MTV, got the right person and read them riot act. And the next week, when all of America had seen it, Wait was at No.1 on MTV’s Top 10 Most Requested.

After that, it was Texas wildfire. Atlantic was never pushing the band from the beginning, but when they saw units moving they pushed the button. We became the classic product that has to be sold.”

Big Game (Atlantic, 1989)

There were good songs on Big Game, White Lion’s third album, such as Little Fighter and Goin’ Home Tonight. But overall, the band’s summer 1989 offering was no match for its predecessor, Pride.

There was also a sense that White Lion were suffering an identity crisis. Just one year earlier, on the AC/DC tour, they had vowed: “We have to be the band that we are.” But on Big Game, they compromised by covering Golden Earring’s Radar Love – a failed attempt to repeat the success that other 80s bands, notably Quiet Riot, Great White and Mötley Crüe, had enjoyed by revamping 70s rock classics.

And worse, White Lion even tried to appeal to Metallica fans with a dour heavy metal song, If My Mind Is Evil. “We were so stupid,” Tramp admits. “We actually thought we’d reel in some Metallica fans with that song. I mean, why the fuck did we want their fans? We already had millions of our own.”

Mane Attraction (Atlantic, 1991)

Mane Attraction, White Lion’s fourth album, released in summer 1991, was a strong one – in places, as good as Pride. Its opening track Lights And Thunder was a spectacular eight-minute heavy rock epic with a complex structure inspired by Led Zeppelin’s Achilles Last Stand. And as Tramp says, Love Don’t Come Easy would surely have been a huge hit had it been released circa 1988.

But when Atlantic insisted that the band re-recorded Broken Heart from the first album, Tramp and Bratta felt insulted. “It was a smack in the face,” Tramp sighs. “It was if we couldn’t write a new song.”

Return of the Pride (Frontiers Records, 2008)

17 years after the inconsistent swansong of Mane Attraction, Mike Tramp breathed new life into White Lion. That the singer replicated the group’s signature sound without co-founder Vito Bratta, a guitarist who enjoyed favourable comparisons to Edward Van Halen when 1987’s Pride went double platinum, was against all the odds.

At almost nine minutes long, Sangre De Cristo was an ambitiously colourful opening number, Battle At Little Big Horn only marginally less epic. However, Tramp and colleagues largely stuck to what they knew best with the party-friendly strains of Live Your Life, Set Me Free and Gonna Do It My Way, Never Let You Go an emphatic tick in the box marked ‘lighter-waving ballad’ (DL)