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White Lion music biography continued...

Mike Tramp moved from Denmark to New York and met Brooklyn guitarist Vito Bratta (ex-Dreamer) and decided to form a band. The two recruited drummer Nicki Capozzi and bassist Felix Robinson (formerly of Angel) and named the group White Lion. Signed by Elektra in 1983, White Lion soon after came out with their debut album, Fight to Survive, but if fared poorly and the label dropped the band. After some lineup changes, White Lion was signed to Atlantic and came out with their breakthrough album, Pride, in 1987. The album's first single, "Wait," hit # 8 on the singles chart, after its music video was placed in heavy rotation on MTV in late 1987. In August 1988, the album's second single "Tell Me" hit #58. Like Guns N' Roses before them, White Lion's show at New York City's the Ritz was filmed and later aired on MTV. The Pride album's third single, a gentle acoustic ballad titled "When the Children Cry", made it all the way to #3 with heavy MTV rotation, making Pride one of about 20 hard rock albums to ever have multiple top 10 hits. The success of "When the Children Cry" would eventually push sales of Pride over the two million mark and make White Lion on of the hottest bands heading into the 90s.



White Lion released Big Game, their follow-up to Pride, in August 1989 and the album quickly went gold, but without a hit single, slowly declined, peaking at # 19 on the album charts. After two years of writing and recording, the band's fourth album, Mane Attraction, was released and it fared even worse than Big Game. Soon after, there were more line-up changes before Tramp and Bratta decided to pack it in. They played White Lion's last show in Boston in September 1991. In 2005, with legal battles with Bratta finally out of the way, Mike Tramp organized a group of unknown musicians and named the act Tramp's White Lion, finally giving the classic band's fans a reason to cheer.