TOM KEIFER We were playing at a place in Philadelphia called the Empire, and Jon Bon Jovi was in town working on 7800° Fahrenheit at the time and walked into the club and saw us play. I think some people look back and they look at Jon and say, “Oh, multiplatinum artist went in and waved the magic wand and got Cinderella a record deal.” He wasn’t a multiplatinum artist at the time. But he did tell Derek Shulman at PolyGram that we were worth checking out, and I’ll be forever grateful for whatever words he uttered, which eventually—and I say eventually—led to a record deal. Because Derek came down and saw the band.
DEREK SHULMAN (executive, Mercury/Polygram Records) I went down to see the guys and Thomas was superb, as was Eric. But they had a couple of other guys who weren’t superb. And I told Larry Mazer that the songs were great and Thomas was a fantastic guitarist and a great singer, but the band was not quite up to snuff … and that if he could get a new guitar player and drummer, I’d be very interested in doing something.
LARRY MAZER Derek basically sat with Tom and he said, “Look, I want to be honest with you. You’re a star. Eric’s great. I don’t buy Tony Destra and Michael Kelly Smith. Here’s what I’m willing to do. I will sign you. I will give you $25,000 for three months, but you need to get rid of those two guys and replace them and show me that it’s more of the band that I want to be involved with.” This was a mega moment, because Tom had known these guys for almost his entire life.
TOM KEIFER The only way I can put it is that if I had disagreed with the criticisms, I wouldn’t have let them go. But let’s just say there were musical differences before Derek ever came into the picture. And it was still a very hard decision. And to their credit they went and started Britny Fox and they did well for themselves, too.
BILLY CHILDS (bassist, Britny Fox) Britny Fox were modeled on Cinderella. We did step right into their spot. We had a buzz because we had two of their original members. We had Michael Kelly Smith and we had Tony Destra. I mean, it gets thrown at us a lot, it gets denied a lot, but there’s really no denying that we were pretty much just by luck and by design modeled after Cinderella. I couldn’t really help the fact that I had long blond hair kinda like Brittingham, you know what I mean? It was what it was. And Dean I think consciously and subconsciously did model himself after Keifer.
“DIZZY” DEAN DAVIDSON (singer, Guitarist, Britny Fox) Tony Destra and I, we were painting a house. We walked into the kitchen to get coffee and here’s a magazine and Cinderella is on the front cover. He lost his shit! He was a Sicilian and if they had been anywhere within ten feet of him they would’ve had broken arms and legs. He was like, “That was a shitty move that they did!”
BILLY CHILDS Tony died in a car crash on February 8, 1987, in Somerdale, New Jersey. It was about two hundred yards from where Pelle Lindbergh, the goalie for the Philadelphia Flyers, had died two years before. We’d played a gig and we’re hanging out, typical Saturday night. And me and this girl and ironically this guy Adam, who became our next drummer, were outside sitting in a car smoking a joint. And Tony and our light man came out and said, “Yeah, we’re going to this party, blah blah.” And they split.
Well, it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes and here comes the light man back. And we’re still smoking this joint. That’s how fast this all happened. And we said, “What the fuck’s going on?” And he said, “Tony just had an accident down the street.” So we start driving down and we’re like laughing. I remember going like, “We better get there quick because Tony’s gonna fucking kill somebody if they fucked up his car.” And all of a sudden we see a fucking transmission laying in the road. I mean this accident was spread out like a fucking plane crash. We got up around the next turn and we saw his car. And we saw the engine of his car about fifty yards away sitting on a front lawn near this house. It was like smoking because it’s so fucking cold out. And we got out of the car, there was nobody there, man. No cops, no ambulances, nothing. And I went over and Tony was laying behind the car. And I remember looking at him and thinking, Well, there’s not a fucking mark on him. And I looked around a little bit and then I realized the whole back of his head was gone.
DAVE “SNAKE” SABO I auditioned for Cinderella. Jon Bon Jovi turned me on to the band. They were playing at the Galaxy in South Jersey, and Jon called me up and said, “Why don’t you come down and hang out?” And Jon’s A&R guy, Derek Shulman, was there, there was this big buzz going on. And it was either Jon or Derek who told me that they were probably gonna get rid of their guitar player. And I was like, “That’s all I need to hear.” And I went up and introduced myself to Tom after one of their shows, when he was outside. I said, “My name’s Snake, I’m friends with Jon, blah, blah, blah.” And I said, “I know you’re gonna get a deal and I know you’re gonna get rid of your guitar player and I’m your next guitarist.” I guess he was taken aback by my unabashed forwardness and confidence but he invited me down after they made that move. And I jammed with them three times. As did Jeff LaBar. And Jeff got the gig and I was heartbroken. I was crushed. But it was great because I told myself, I’ll never audition for anybody ever again. I’m gonna do my own thing. That was the kick in the ass that I needed to start putting Skid Row together.
ERIC BRITTINGHAM It was down to Dave and Jeff LaBar. We were like, Well they both play great and look cool, but Dave has an edge because he’s Jon’s friend and Jon helped us get the deal, so we should probably go with him. But Dave used to call me and Tom twenty times a day like, “Do I have the gig? Do I have the gig?” And we were like, This guy is gonna drive us fucking nuts if we hire him! So we went with Jeff.
DAVE “SNAKE” SABO I was relentless ’cause I wanted it so bad. I knew how good of a band they were and I knew that they were going to do well. And I wanted to be a part of that. I called Eric and Tommy like crazy!
JEFF LABAR (guitarist, Cinderella) The way it was quoted to me, Derek’s words were “You need a flashier guitar player, a Jake E. Lee type.” And that’s what they got basically, they got somebody that’s half Asian as well! I met Jake in ’85, maybe ’86, and we look like brothers.
TOM KEIFER Jeff was in a band that opened for Cinderella at the Galaxy from time to time. We had seen him onstage, and he just had kind of a vibe about him. Then when he came in to actually play with us, he locked right in. There’s always an intangible that’s hard to put your finger on, something that just feels right.
JEFF LABAR There was a band down on the Jersey Shore called the Dead End Kids, and that’s who we got the move from where we flip the guitar around our backs. They had two guitar players and the bass player that would all do it at the same time. I would go out in the yard and try to do it: I hit myself, I cracked my elbow, I hit myself in the back of the head. But when I got into Cinderella, Eric showed me that you use a seatbelt and you get extra-long screws and washers and bolt the seatbelt right into your guitar. All it really takes is someone to show you, someone in front of you to show you where to place the guitar and exactly how to do it. And then after that, all it takes is the balls to do it.
FRED COURY (drummer, Chastain, London, Cinderella) I was in L.A. playing in the band London and I knew Eric Singer, who is in Kiss now but was in Lita Ford’s band at the time. I called him out of the blue and was like, “Hey, anything happening? Do you know of any bands?” He said there was this band called Cinderella looking for a drummer and I said, “I don’t want to play in a band with girls unless it’s Heart.” He said, “There are no girls in the band.” I said, “Then why the dumb name?” He said, “Before you make fun of the name, listen to the band. It’s like Kiss or Queen. When you hear it, it’s not what you expect.” I got the demos, and the first thing I heard was “Night Songs,” and I was floored. Everything was so raw and I was like, Oh, my goodness, this is AC/DC and Aerosmith in one band! I have to get this gig! Eric gave me an address of someone to send my tape to at PolyGram.
ROSS HALFIN Fred Coury was Persian, as you’d call him now. As a kid his mother was so wealthy, he’d been all over the world. He was a spoiled bastard. I would shoot the band and everyone else would look at the pictures and say, “These are great.” And he’d go, “Well, I don’t like my cheekbones.” Tom used to make fun of him all the time.
JEFF LABAR PolyGram’s first choice was Eric Singer and Eric turned us down. But I actually knew of Fred because I was a big collector of all the underground Shrapnel, Megaforce, guitar hero records and Fred had played on Mystery of Illusion by Chastain. So when I saw his name, I was like wait, Fred Coury, you mean the drummer for Chastain?
FRED COURY When Eric and Jeff came to pick me up at the airport, I had a big bag of candy. You’ve got to hedge the bet, as they say. You’ve got to stack the deck, and I don’t think anybody else showed up and was like, “Hey, you guys want some mints?” Eric met me in the terminal and I was like, This guy looks like a rock star. This is awesome. Then we get to Eric’s Datsun B210, and Jeff pops out of the back seat and goes, “Hey, is this you?” And hands me the Chastain record that I played on when I was sixteen. Then he goes, “Would you sign it?” The first autograph I ever gave was to Jeff LaBar on a Chastain record that I had recorded a year prior, which he bought, not knowing anything about me. I was like, This is really good. I’ve got candy and this guy wants my autograph. I’d better get this gig!
LARRY MAZER I got a copy of a record by a band called Stone Fury, which was Lenny Wolf’s band that later on became Kingdom Come. Andy Johns, who of course worked with Zeppelin and the Stones, had produced it. It was very Zeppelinesque, and the production was just in your face. I called Tom and I said, “You’ve gotta come to my house right now, I’ve gotta play you this,” and he came over, I played it for him, his head exploded, and we called Derek Shulman on Monday morning and said, “You should reach out to Andy Johns to produce Night Songs.”
DEREK SHULMAN Andy absolutely had the right feel for what this band needed but he was completely crazy.
LARRY MAZER He was the best rock engineer that ever lived, but then you had to deal with all the other bullshit. He was a mess. He trashed his hotel room in Chinatown here in Philadelphia.
FRED COURY I think he scared everyone in the band once or twice, like seriously scared like … “I don’t want to get killed.”
TOM KEIFER I could sit here and list all his flaws, but everyone has flaws. The thing that was just amazing about Andy was that he had an endless passion and energy to get it right. He was the one who taught us everything about making records and music. And he reminded us constantly of my heroes and how great they were, almost to the point of belittling us sometimes. He was very intimidating and hypercritical, and that was good for us; we needed it. I remember one night, we were working really late, and I was trying to be my best, but he was just wearing me out on this one overdub. And he finally just stopped the tape—he loved to imitate John Houseman, particularly when he was a bit buzzed—and said, “Thomas, what we’re trying to achieve here is when the listener gets to the end of the record, they pick the needle up, and put it back at the beginning again.” And then all of a sudden, a lightbulb went off. It was like, What’s going in these grooves is for all time. There’s no do-overs.
JEFF LABAR When we were working on basic tracks up at Bearsville Studios in upstate New York, Andy told me that I was one of the best rhythm guitarists that he had ever worked with. And then when we went to do guitar solos he said the exact opposite. He said, “Jeff, you’re terrible.” I was like, Oh my god, are you serious? But I’ll tell you man, that was better for me than the ego boost. I got a lot better after that.
LARRY MAZER Andy was even more tough on drummers. He didn’t like the way Fred played and was like, “I don’t want to fuck around, I gotta make a record, Fred can’t cut it.” So he used this guy, Jody Cortez, who was in Stone Fury, on that record. It was heartbreaking telling Fred.
FRED COURY I learned everything from him about being a producer, a composer, and drummer and playing for the song. Now I play on movies. I play on records. I play on video games. I think that all came through him. When you’re beaten down, whether it be by a drill sergeant or whatever it is, you’ve got two choices. You can overcome it or you can just collapse.
LARRY MAZER The Night Songs album cover is how everybody looked in those days, the costume look. Everybody had the big hair, they had the long coats, the ripped-up this, the ripped-up that. Cinderella had done an independent single in 1984 for “Shake Me” and the photo was ten times worse! Totally glammed up and teased.
ERIC BRITTINGHAM We dressed and looked like how we thought a rock band should look. I remember reading reviews of our shows and people would write about getting past all of the hairspray and lipstick and, for one thing, we never wore any fucking lipstick!
MARK WEISS I had just done the Dokken Under Lock and Key album and I think they liked the way I lit it and the way I had the smoke and everything. I shot them in Philly during the day, and Tom goes, “Why are you shooting us in the daytime? It’s called Night Songs,” you know? And I said to him the famous words, “I shoot day for night.” And he looked at me and goes, “I don’t know what the fuck that is, but it sounds cool!”
TOM KEIFER There was another album cover that we submitted first, where “Night Songs” was written in water on a piece of glass, or the windshield of a car with light shining through it, and there was no picture of the band. And the label insisted on a band picture. I preferred the original cover because it had a really cool vibe, but the truth of the matter was that everybody, even Aerosmith, looked like that at the time. I don’t think anybody at that time had a crystal ball saying, “You don’t want to be too in sync with the times because you’re going to end up stuck with this label that you don’t want.”