While many an 80’s rock band dissolved due to egos, drugs, or creative differences, the musicians in Cinderella never had to call it quits for any of those reasons. But because a variety of unpleasant situations arose (vocalist Tom Keifer underwent a series of vocals surgeries in 1991 and a deal with Sony fell through in 1999), there is still plenty of Cinderella material that has yet to be heard. Although dealt a less-than-perfect hand over the past decade, the band’s bluesy rock sound was still an undeniable favorite with audiences, who made the albums Night Songs and Long Cold Winter platinum several times over.
Guitarist
Jeff LaBar doesn’t just want to live in the past, however. While he loves the fact that fans have remained loyal for so many years, he told
Ultimate-Guitar writer
Amy Kelly that he still hopes there’s another
Cinderella record in the near future. And considering he and the other members of the band remain amicable and continue to play at shows like the massive Rocklahoma event, a 5th album doesn’t seem so impossible.
UG: I remembered seeing you with Kramer guitars for many years in the 1980s, but I’ve noticed that Gibsons seem to be more prevalent onstage for you these days. Are you experimenting with several guitars or do you stick with Gibsons now?
Jeff: I absolutely have always used different guitars. When I first joined Cinderella, I only used 2 guitars. One was a Kramer and one was a Charvel. I started out as a kid with Gibson and Fender and stuff like that, but with the early 80s and Eddie Van Halen, I got into the Floyd Rose stuff. As I made money and as Cinderella got more popular, both Tom and I got into collecting guitars. Then I started getting into vintage Gibsons and Fenders. I started collecting Les Pauls, Strats, Teles, Firebirds, and stuff like that.
Since then, I’ve had the money to experiment with other things. So on the 2nd record, every song presented itself to me as, “Oh, I think that this is a Strat song. This is a Les Paul song. This is slide on a Firebird, I can tell.” I can’t play “Gypsy Road” on a Les Paul. I just can’t do it. I’ve just become such a creature of habit that it has to be played on a Strat. If I have a Les Paul, I won’t even know how it goes! It’s silly, I know!
Did you have a specific guitar in mind for “Shelter Me,” which has a more of a bluesy, soulful sound?
“Shelter Me” is absolutely a Telecaster song. In “Shelter Me” in the studio I played the acoustic guitar, and that’s all I played. Tom played the electric guitar part in G tuning. We do that song every tour, but I think it was a couple tours ago that Tom learned how to play the saxophone. Well, he learned how to play the sax solo. He bought himself a sax and he took lessons. I don’t think he knows how to play anything else on the sax, but he knows how to play the solo in that song. When we didn’t have a saxophone player on tour, we just made it a honky tonk piano solo instead of a sax. But he took it upon himself to do that.
I had always played acoustic guitar, so what I had to do was learn his electric guitar part and his solo – but I also had to buy a Telecaster! It’s done on a Telecaster and it’s got that sound in the studio. We try to duplicate everything we did in the studio. We try to duplicate the songs note for note when we play live, unless we have added stuff to songs like in “Coming Home.” Tom and I rewrote a whole double lead in the out section of “Coming Home,” which you hear on the Key Club CD. It was a whole part that was not on the studio version. It’s a really cool out section of harmony guitar solos, so to speak. So that’s when I went out and got a Telecaster. That was quite a few years ago.
 |
| "I think we could absolutely go in the studio tomorrow to make a record." |
Talk a little about how you and Tom collaborate on songs. Would you say that you work on songs together from the start, or do you wait until you have ideas to bring to the table?
Tom usually brings the ideas to the table. He’ll bring the ideas to pre-production. He brings a lot of ideas, some of them demos and some of them not. They are skeletons of songs that will have a verse and a chorus. Sometimes he has a song complete, but usually he brings a verse and a chorus to Eric and I. Then Eric and I hash it all out, telling him what is cool and what stinks! Then we’ll arrange a pre-chorus or a bridge, solo section, and all that. Then we’ll build it from there. We’ll build it from the skeleton on out.
Does everyone in the band pretty much share the same vision musically or do you ever butt heads?
I tell you, man, we’ve been together 23 years now. Surprisingly we pretty much agree on almost anything! We each have our own little idiosyncrasies, like there are some things that I like. If there is a part that repeats, I’ll change the 2nd one and the 4th one. Do you know what I mean? I’ll change maybe just a couple of notes for the feel of it, which is something I will always do just to make it a little different every other time. There is something about Eric that we know – Eric will hate everything! We just know that about Eric! If we come up with an idea we’ll be like, “Well, Eric won’t like it.” It’s just little things that we accept about each other. We never really butt heads on it. Musically we always end up with the coolest thing, and all 3 of us will always agree that it’s the coolest thing.
I noticed on your MySpace page that you have Jimmy Page as one of your favorite guitarists that you’d still like to meet. Would you say that Led Zeppelin is an influence that the entire band has in common?
Absolutely. On my MySpace page it says, “The 5 greatest guitar players that I had never met.” I mean there are other people that I like that I know, but those are the 5 that I idolize that I’ve never met. But definitely all 3 of us… I mean, I should include Fred in all of this. He’s not as involved in the writing and arranging as the 3 of us have been, and he doesn’t have the same influences, either. Me, Tom, and Eric all come from 70’s rock. So basically Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, and AC/DC are bands that we all have in common. Tom is very influenced by The Stones. Me, not so much. Eric is very influenced by Kiss. Me, not so much. But Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, and pretty much all 70’s rock – my influences extend to the British classic rock like Yes and Genesis and Pink Floyd.
Were you influenced by older, straightforward blues artists as well?
That’s more of a Tom thing. Both of us were influenced by 2nd generation blues, meaning 70’s rock. Those guys learned from the old blues guys. But since we’ve earned some money and we’re able to invest in old guitars, Tom went back in time and started buying old blues CDs. He started getting more into it as we became popular and started to do this for a living. He basically went back in time and started buying Muddy Waters’ CDs, old blues guys. He played me some stuff, but I don’t really get into it as much as he does. I just play the way I play because of learning from 2nd generation blues guys.
Have you both played slide parts on past records?
Uh-huh. He’s much better than I am at it, but I’m getting there! On the 1st Cinderella record, I had never played slide before. The song “Hell On Wheels,” I was supposed to play a slide solo. I was like, “I don’t know how to play slide!” At the time, I didn’t even know you put it in special tuning. You know, you tune it to a chord. So the slide solo on “Hell On Wheels” is in standard tuning. Looking back I was like, “How stupid was I?” I just didn’t know how to play slide back then, and I just waited. Since then, Tom has taught me quite a bit about slide, essentially just by listening to him and watching him. We influence each other a lot.
 |
| "I just play the way I play because of learning from 2nd generation blues guys." |
I read that Cinderella had an album ready to be released through Sony back in 1999, but that deal eventually fell though. Do you think that album will ever be released?
We did get signed by Sony and we started demoing songs. The 4 of us demoed like 6 songs. John Kalodner at Sony was like, “Keep writing. Keep demoing.” We kept writing and we kept demoing, and he wasn’t happy. We did that for about a year and a tour came up in 2000. Then they were like, “Oh, by all means, go.” We toured with Poison, came back, we demoed some more, and then they dropped us from the label. The CEO of the company – I forget his name; it will come to me later. He went in and cleaned house basically. John had a label, Portrait, and he was signing a lot of old 80’s bands. They put out some records. We had signed with the company Sony, so we weren’t necessarily going to be on Portrait.
Basically they went in and cleaned house, and we were just dead space. We weren’t doing anything. They didn’t even check out any of our demos. Since then, Tom has taken those demos and started working on a solo record. This was ’99, so he’s still working on this record! That’s what he’s been doing. He’s been working on the solo record. Since the Cinderella demos of ’99, he has just kept going.
Do you foresee Cinderella releasing another record in the future?
I would love to. Tom tells me the circumstances would have to be right. I think we could absolutely go in the studio tomorrow to make a record. But unfortunately we don’t have a record deal. I guess we’re not so much into the indie thing. There are a lot of 80’s bands that are still putting out records that sell 20,000 copies. I don’t know. It just doesn’t sound appealing! I would love to make another record if the circumstances were right. If somebody came along and offered us a lucrative record deal…I don’t want to say “lucrative.” Something of substance rather than just putting out some indie thing that you can download and get lost in the shuffle. It’s like, “Uh, you know what? We’ll just tour and have people remember us for our famous songs.”
It’s got to feel good knowing that a festival like Rocklahoma, which celebrates metal in the 80’s, has become such a success.
It’s great, but it’s definitely nostalgic. I would love to become a current band, so I’m definitely not dismissing making another record. Like I said, I would love to. I would just like it to be something of substance rather than just some 80’s band trying to cling off of their past. I’ll do that as far as playing live because I love to play live and it’s a lot of fun. It’s what I do for a living. But yeah, I would love to do that as far as making a CD.
I know that you were doing a radio show with your wife and for a while and you also had a stint in the band Naked Beggars, which didn’t turn out so well.
I’m actually not doing either of those. I’m not in Naked Beggars anymore nor am I doing my radio show with my wife. Naked Beggars is in my past – I’m out. But as far as the radio show, me and my wife are fielding some offers from other online sites as well as real radio. When we get the time, maybe after this tour, I think we would like to get it up and running. Our radio show was very popular and it was a lot of fun. We would get the numbers every weekend. It’s so cool because online you get people from all over the world. We were getting emails from freaking Brazil and countries I’ve never even been to. It was very cool and people miss it. We still have a MySpace for the radio show, but it’s currently not airing. But yeah, we would like to get that back up and running.
Interview by Amy Kelly
Ultimate-Guitar.Com © 2008
Cinderella Music
/ my profile 
