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At this stage in their careers, "having fun" seems to be the operative words for the band members of Cinderella. They've been recording and touring since 1982, and while the band was dropped from their recording contract with Mercury Records well over a year ago, according to drummer Fred Coury, several major record labels are courting them to sign Big Bucks recording contracts.
"It seems like Mercury's loss was our gain,"Coury said with a laugh. "You know we're just happy to be back in the game and playing these concert dates and seeing the response we've been getting from the fans. It's amazing."
Cinderella is comprised of band members Tom Keifer(vocals,guitars), Jeff LeBar(guitar), Eric Brittingham(bass) and Coury. They first hit the big time in 1982 when they drew the attention of Mercury Records while gigging around their Philadelphia home town. Two of their albums "Night Songs" and "Long Cold Winter" when platinum and Cinderella landed an opening spot on the 1986-1987 Bon Jovi world tour. During the Bon Jovi tour, things really clicked for the band.
"There were a lot of party bands in the business back then,"Coury said. "We've just never been one of them. We don't come from LA and we're not part of that scene, though I have a lot of good friends who are. We've always been a hard working act and being on the Bon Jovi tour as well as our own headliner tours that followed for the next four years, proved to be a real solid opportunity for us."
Right up until 1991, Cinderella was one of the top touring rock acts in the USA, as well as Japan. Other rock bands from that era such as Warrant, Winger, Poison, Skid Row and Great White, gradually lost their audience, in part because they ventured too far from the hard rock music that made their careers in the first place. Cinderella kept recording hard rock music that, for the most part stayed true to their blues rock roots. It wasn't until Cinderella released the album "Heartbreak Station", that the band members noticed any shift in their fan base.
"You know,"Coury said,"I've been a long time fan of what's now called that bubblegum rock style of music. I guess I'm just a closet bubblegum rock fan. I really liked the music that groups like Warrant were recorded years ago. But somewhere along the line, they changed what they were doing and that in turn alienated the majority of their fan base. I mean these guys were huge and then they put out an album of dramatically different music and boom, suddenly nobody knew who they were almost overnight. With Cinderella, we may have strayed a bit off of the path with "Heartbreak Station", but we never went so far away from our roots, that our fans forgot who we were.
Coury,who is currently on tour with Cinderella has noticed not only is the band selling out nearly every place they're booked, numerous rock radio stations across the country are once again, adding such Cinderella hits as "Gypsy Road" and "Shake Me" to their playlists. It's a trend which Coury attributes to the increased interest in bands that play good old rock and roll.
"I believe that most people are getting tiered of seeing these bands on MTV who spend about $1,000 on clothes at the mall, so they look like they should be standing on the street corner, with a cup in their hand,"he said. "I mean that whole grunge thing pretty much is over and a lot of these modern rock acts can't even play their instruments all that well. After all, is someone who works hard all day going to fork out serious money to see a band that is all image with no solid music? Of course not. We're entertainers and that's what's important.
People who pay their hard earned dollars to see us know they're going to be entertained,"Coury continued. "I don't see too many of these modern rock acts with one hit on the charts, selling very many concert tickets when they go out on tour. As a matter of fact, a lot of them are playing to nearly empty halls.
So that's why people are calling radio stations requesting our songs and then coming out to see our show. They want to be entertained."
End.