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They've been dazzling headbangers for months on the David Lee Roth tour. Here, leader Tom Keifer explains how his Philadelphia quartet burst from obscurity to become heavy rock's brightest hope~
Cinderella become 1986's rock sensation.
The scene was like an outtake from Life's Most Embarrassing Moments. The location was an anonymous closet sized bar in North Jersey. The Priscilla Harriet band were hacksawing their way through the standard Scorpions-AC/DC-Judas Priest covers to a half-empty house when the vocalist drew the proceedings to a screeching halt in mid-song and demanded that the musicians turn down their amps so she could hear herself through her monitor better. The guitarist, a lanky youth with shoulder length black hair, complied, and shot the chanteuse a sideways look that told her they wouldn't be sharing the same stage for much longer.
After that set, aspiring axe-hero Tom Keifer turned to bassist Eric Brittingham and asked him if he thought it was worth it. The blond string thumper, who had been friends with Keifer since the two first played in Saints in Hell the year before, shook his head negative. That night, a rock & roll fable was born.
Three-and-a-half years later, Tom Keifer can reflect upon the incident and still manage a lopsided smile. It's easy to find humor in awkward situations when your debut album, which your own record company wasn't sure would ever see the light of day, has gone gold (500,000 units sold) after being on the charts for less than three months. But back then, a sense of humor was about all he could afford.
"The whole situation sucked," is how Keifer diplomatically assesses the scenario. "We were playing for six nights in a row and at the end of the week, we didn't have enough money to buy a doughnut. Then she pulls that. It was the most unprofessional thing I'd ever seen. I told Eric then and there that we weren't going to make a living playing covers. He agreed, so we decided to step over the line and do our own material."
The two drafted battle plans for obtaining a recording contract and began holding auditions, eventually turning up guitarist Mike Schermick and drummer Tony Destra. Keifer began writing and the foursome commenced with the slow, arduous process of building a following. They worked the Maryland-New Jersey-Pennsylvania bar circuit and sent out demos to all the record companies they thought could help - including Kiss' Gene Simmons, producer for fledgling bands like Keel and the pre-contract VanHalen.
"He helped us a lot," recalls Keifer. "He tried to get a deal together for us and he gave us a lot of really good advice. But we still came up empty handed."
The quartet carried on, thrashing around the local bars at night and working at demos and no-future jobs by day, until their big break came in the form of a then little-known singer whose Jersey-based band had gone the same route two years earlier.
"We heard that Jon Bon Jovi was in the audience one night while we were playing at The Empire in Philly," recollects Keifer. "He was in town recording 7800 Degrees Fahrenheit at the Wherehouse, and we thought, ya know, cool. We played our set and afterwards he came backstage and said, 'I really liked you guys, I heard a couple of hits, good luck.' We hung out with his band for a little while and then they left. I thought that was it."
But it wasn't. Jon went to Derek Schulman, the A & R man at PolyGram who had signed him, and told him that Cinderella warranted closer scrutiny. The two returned to check out the band, but Schulman came back with mixed feelings.
"We did get signed, to something called a six-month development option contract." explains Keifer. "It was a full record deal that didn't go into effect until a six-month period was up, at which time the record company would decide if they wanted it to go into effect."
It seems that Schulman was suitably impressed with Keifer and Brittingham, but felt that Schermick and Destra were somewhat lacking.
"Eric and I noticed what he was talking about, and we were on (Schermick and Destra) about it, but they weren't working at it. They couldn't get it together, so it was either replace them or let them hold us back."
The guitarist and drummer were out - auditions were again held, this time yielding guitarist Jeff LaBar (who had previously been in a band which opened for Cinderella) and drummer Jim Drnc (pronounced darnick).
"Everything looked pretty good until we got into the studio." claims Keifer. "Andy (Johns), our producer, said that Drnc wasn't cutting it and that we'd have to replace him. We thought he was wrong, and we fought him over it, but he eventually proved it to us, so we had to get a session drummer (Jody Cortez) to finish the album."
After Night Songs was completed, a third round of auditions were held, this time turning up drummer Fred Coury.
"Fred had substituted for Randy Castillo in Ozzy's band for a while when Randy had a broken foot. Someone who knew Ozzy turned him onto us through a secretary at PolyGram," elaborates the Springfield, Pennsylvania-born frontman.
With the line-up finally stabilized, PolyGram agreed to release Night Songs, but their method of promotion and choice for a lead-off single left the band somewhat uneasy..<
"Their intent was to break us without any airplay at all," notes Keifer. "What with the radio not playing metal and all, it didn't look too good. They wanted to break us through touring and videos. They decided our first single was going to be 'Shake Me.'"
While possessing a strong hook and a great chorus, "Shake Me" seemed a highly unlikely candidate for a 45. With raunchy lyrics that would send most radio programmers scrambling for the Tylenol and a pair of scissors, it seemed an unwise choice.
"I didn't think that any radio stations would play it,"confesses the singer. "Much to my surprise, a few of them did. And it always gets a strong response when we play it live. Apparently it caught on, which surprised us."
The startling speed with which Night Songs has leap-frogged up the charts wasn't expected either. In less than three months, the album has jumped into the Top 15 on Billboard's charts, and at press time, was zeroing in on platinum.
A package tour with Japanese rockers Loudness and West Coast upstarts Poison (who, ironically enough, were formed around the same time and in the same state as Cinderella) proved successful and helped set the band up for their first major cross-country sweep, opening for David Lee Roth.
"The tour with Dave is going really well," Keifer allows. "We haven't had any trouble adapting to the bigger places that we're playing. The tour with Loudness and Poison helped us clear that. It was a good stepping stone, but this is exactly what I wanted to do in the first place."
With the present looking fairly secure, many of the band's new-found supporters are eagerly looking to the future and the follow-up to Night Songs. Tentatively scheduled to be recorded in June, with Andy Johns again producing, Keifer claims the album will be "the same, but different."
"For the first album, we had to choose from over 60 songs I'd written, so we still have a lot of good old material. Plus I've been writing and we've got some really good new stuff. We've all learned a lot about writing from Andy Johns, so the newer stuff might be more sophisticated melody-wise. Who knows? We may even do a blues song that I'm working on. But at this point, I'm more concerned with what I'm doing now," concludes Keifer. "We've got a few miles left on (Night Songs) and we're going to have fun with it as long as we can."
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