Long Cold Winter – Cinderella

 

Producer: Andy Johns, Tom Keifer & Eric Brittingham

Released: May 21, 1988

Rating: **** 1/2

Some albums are good simply based on their own merits. Other albums are good because they bring you back to a certain moment in time. These albums don’t necessarily have to represent a great musical accomplishment, but they do represent, or more importantly evoke, pleasant memories. Some albums are both. For me, Long Cold Winter is one of those albums. In 1988, I was 14 years old. This album was released as school was letting out for the summer. At 14 I was no new-comer to music. Truth be told, music is a part of my earliest memories. Because both of my parents enjoy music, it’s just always “been there”. It was around this time that I really began to appreciate music and understand the elements that can help make a good song great.

I can’t recall which road trip my family took that summer, but it was a lengthy one and this album spent a lot of time in my Walkman. I devoured this album. The band’s debut effort, Night Songs, is a classic hair metal album. Two years after the release of that album hair metal had become the soundtrack for a generation. 1987 and 1988 were probably the pinnacle years for this brand of music that many of us adored, even if critics told us not to. When it came time for Cinderella to follow-up their debut album, they chose to take their sound in a different direction. Rather than sticking to the standard hair metal sound that helped them achieve success with Night Songs, they opted for more of a “classic rock” sound.

Opening the album is the amazing slide guitar intro, Bad Seamstress Blues, which leads into Fallin’ Apart At The Seams. These tracks clearly reveal a bluesier sound and at 14 years old I truly felt awakened the first time I heard these songs. 22 years later I still think these tunes sound fresh and relevant. The criminally underrated Gypsy Road was the album’s first single and first indicator that this wasn’t just going to be another forgettable hair metal album. The album’s second single was the painfully beautiful Don’t Know What You Got (Till It’s Gone). This wasn’t a run-of-the-mill, record label mandated ballad. This is a perfectly written song of love lost. From the somber sound of the piano that opens the track to the mournful guitar outro, this song perfectly captures love’s more painful side. Surely, the mainly teen audience that Tom Keifer was singing to could relate. For me, the album’s highlight is the fourth single, The Last Mile. This is absolutely a “feel-good” song, which benefits from superior production, courtesy of Andy Johns. For the last twenty plus years, I’ve quietly included this on my list of favorite songs of all time. Closing out the first half of the album is one of the weaker tracks, Second Wind. By no means is the song bad, but it doesn’t quite live up to the same greatness as the first four tracks

When the album was first released, I was blown away by the title track, Long Cold Winter, but two decades later the song sounds a bit forced. It’s a good track, but a tad less impressive than it was when I was an impressionable teen. Although the anti authority lyrics are somewhat cliché, If You Don’t Like It, with its impossible to resist chorus and killer background vocals, is another stand out track. Coming Home is an amazing road song. The tune transcends genre and is simply a great song. It’s when I hear a song like Coming Home that I have a problem with Cinderella being labeled a hair band. This is just a great tune. Fire & Ice is another track that kind of gets lost among some of the album’s stronger songs, but Take Me Back finishes the album in fine style.

Not only did the band adopt a more mature sound for Long Cold Winter, but they also toned down their image. Night Songs was all about animal print spandex, whereas the band chose to stick with jeans and leather for the follow-up album. A wise choice that suited the album’s bluesier sound very well. Long Cold Winter has been certified triple platinum and is the last Cinderella album to achieve that level of success. I gave Night Songs a 5 star rating while Long Cold Winter fell a bit short at 4 1/2. It’s odd. If you asked me what I think is the band’s best, most accomplished album, I would tell you Long Cold Winter. If you asked me which Cinderella album I listened to the most, I’d tell you Night Songs. Both albums are great and for different reasons. I think with Night Songs you have a great hair metal album, whereas with Long Cold Winter you simply have a great album. More than Night Songs, Long Cold Winter is a time capsule album that truly takes me back to a very exciting period in my life, when I was discovering and truly “hearing” music for the first time, in a way that I never had before. While it may never be that special for a lot of people, I do recommend this album to anyone who enjoys straight forward rock n’ roll.

Night Songs – Cinderella

Producer: Andy Johns

Released: August 2, 1986

Rating: *****

As the hair metal genre grew in popularity, several “sub genres” began to emerge, or at least it seemed that way. Sometimes these sub genres seemed legitimate, while other times it seemed like there was a lot being done to inject some credibility into a style of music that fans adored, but critics detested. The truth is, like any other style of music, some bands wrote some kick ass music, while other bands were just plain awful. One of the more legitimate sub genres to emerge within hair metal was the blues based sound. Simply put, these bands probably possessed more of a classic rock sound than their glitzy, Sunset Strip counterparts. Many of them may have been encouraged to adopt the teased look of the day, or perhaps they were willing to do anything to make it. Regardless, some of them were wrongly dismissed as just another hair metal act. Probably the best example, and one of the most underrated bands from this era that I can think of is Cinderella.

One look at the album cover for Night Songs and it’s easy to understand how this band got pigeon holed. As the band appears from the purple fog, draped in animal print spandex, leather, scarves and teased hair there’s no doubt what decade or genre of music they represent. Fortunately, the band’s look, although I was and still am a big fan, wasn’t their strong suit. With an intro that includes an ominous sounding church bell and a howling wind, the tempo of Night Songs, the album opening title track is a tad slow, yet it kicks ass. The slide guitar lick that is repeated throughout the song is pretty remarkable, but the rhythm track that backs it up is amazing. If the opening track was a bit too laid back for this genre of music, the second track and first single, Shake Me, truly gets the party started. The true sign of a great band is when an otherwise simple song or concept somehow sounds spectacular. There is nothing original about Shake Me and it could never be described as amazing. Yet this song is somehow able to sound fresh every time I hear it and it is probably one of the most memorable and infectious tunes from this era.

Nobody’s Fool is the albums obligatory ballad, but at the same time is not as formulaic as most of the syrupy, by-the-numbers ballads found on every hair metal album ever made. Keifer’s vocals are extremely powerful which help elevate the song to another level. This song reminds me a lot of Bringing On The Heartbreak from Def Leppard. In many ways, both tunes are actually anti-ballads. Closing out the first half of the album are two riff heavy songs, Nothin’ For Nothin’ and Once Around The Ride. By the time the listener reaches this point in the album it becomes clear that this isn’t your typical, glitzy Sunset Strip band with run-of-the-mill party anthems. Most of the tunes have a do or die attitude and are more about survival than partying.

Hell On Wheels clobbers the listener over the head as the second half of the album gets started. Somebody Save Me is the album’s third single and another unspoken gem. The mid-section and guitar solo on this track are simply stunning. The guitar tone in the solo is beautiful.

What really solidifies this album’s status as great rather than simply average is the power of the non-singles, specifically the last three songs on the album. Often times, by the time you reach this point in an album (of any genre) the band has “blown their wad” and you find yourself skipping to the next track halfway through each song. Cinderella closes out Night Songs with three of the album’s strongest tunes. In From The Outside with its swing-style riff is impossible to resist. The harder driving Push, Push is perhaps the album’s best track. Closing the album, much like the album opener, is another curiously, mournful sounding song, Back Home Again. The song itself is pretty hard-driving, but Keifer’s vocal performance brings an entirely different emotion to the track. Back Home Again is a somewhat hopeful song about the sacrifices it takes to “make it”. Not necessarily in a band either, this song tells the struggles of anyone who has chased a dream.

If you have read my blog with any consistency you probably know that I give credit to producers as much as I give credit to the bands. Andy Johns did an incredible job producing this album and Cinderella were probably all too happy to work with a man who served as engineer on several mega-successful albums from Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones. The guitars sound amazing and the album sound is thick, whereas a lot of hair metal albums are severely lacking on the bottom end. At the end of the day, a producer can only do so much and if the song writing isn’t there, nothing will save the album. Fortunately, Tom Keifer penned some exceptional songs for his band’s debut effort. The album has sold a modest 3 million copies (although, how many recent band can claim that), but true fans of the genre recognize this as one of the best.