July 16–23, 1998

music

I'm With the (Hair) Band

Tales from a Cinderella groupie.

by Jennifer Darr

SEEING SPOTS... AND STRIPES: The author (CENTER, IN ZEBRA STRIPES), with her hair, her friends, and their hair.

The first time I laid my eyes on Cinderella they were singing on TV.

Not MTV. Delaware County TV.

In broad daylight, dressed in shiny Spandex with Aqua-Netted locks, frontman Tommy Keifer and bandmates Eric Brittingham, Fred Coury and Jeff LaBar writhed in the parking lot of Pat's Chili Dogs, a popular Delaware County haunt, hawking spicy red hots for a TV commercial.

Tommy glared into the camera and snarled, "Pat's dawgs. Pat's chili dawgs!"

I fell in love.

That day in the mid '80s marked an end. Never again would I dance to "Lucky Star" at the MacDade House teen dance in stocking feet. I would never again wear lingerie on top of my clothes. I threw all my fluorescent gummy bracelets in the trash. That was what 13-year-olds wore.

It also marked a beginning. I was 14. I now only wore animal print. And no more cotton—Spandex only.

I was officially a glam metalhead.

When I recently heard that Philly's Cinderella was getting back together, I was reminded of my decadent teenage years—a time when I wore pants too tight and makeup too thick. I've spent the last ten years trying to forget that I once wore zebra Spandex.

After a five-year hiatus, Philly's big hair boys who made the big time have come back into my life. They are releasing a new album, and are playing a show next week at the Trocadero.

They were the glam boys whom I adored. They spent as much time on their hair as I did.

 

Being glam was not easy.

Back then, I bought my clothes in John Wanamaker's exercise department. I spent hours teasing and curling my frosted hair. I bought a big silver cross necklace.

I tried to learn how to play guitar. I mastered "Sloop John B" and "Smoke on the Water" but it was hard to see what I was playing with all that hair in my face.

I bought new cassette tapes: Ozzy, Alice Cooper, King Diamond, Dio, AC/DC, Anthrax, Metallica, Queensryche, Bon Jovi, Poison, Motley Crüe.

But Cinderella was local. It wasn't unrealistic to try to get a date with one of them.

Though they never played my hometown in Delaware County, they frequently did gigs in Philly. One night, it must have been right before they hit it big on MTV, they had a show at Northeast Philly's Empire rock club. I wasn't even 15 yet, and I had no way to get there.

Mom, who refused to drive me around looking the way I did, handed me a SEPTA schedule.

As my fellow Cinderella devotee Rachell and I boarded the bus on South Avenue in Secane, we discussed the band.

I liked singer Tommy. He was Steven Tyler without the skinny ass. Mick Jagger without the wrinkles. Rachell liked Tom too, but we couldn't like the same guy. So she chose the more sensitive Jeff.

After an hour-and-a-half bus trip, we arrived at the Empire - a nondescript bar wedged between a car dealership and a supermarket.

We were early, so we stood up front. My toes ached from my spiked heels, but I looked the part and that's all that I cared about.

We continued our discussion over Coca-Colas in plastic cups.

I told Rachell that if Tom didn't pay attention to me, that Eric, the guitar player, was my second choice. He seemed real sensitive, I said. He probably doesn't have a big ego like singers do.

Then the lights went down, the purple lights came up and the smoke machine started spewing. Through the haze, four guys in headbands and ripped Spandex emerged.

The crowd shook their heads and thrust their fists in the air.

When Tom sang, I hoped to catch his eye, if even for a brief second.

He wouldn't look at me.

No matter what I did, he just wouldn't look at this pudgy 14-year-old.

So I threw my raccoon tail roach clip at him.

He caught it and clipped it on his microphone stand.

He twirled it around while he sang the chorus to "Shake Me."

By the second verse, he was looking off to the side, checking out a blonde who thought she was Lita Ford.

Eric always was kind of cute, I thought.

The show ended and we hung around, still hoping to get back stage.

The club was getting emptier and emptier. Then it was just me and Rachell and handful of pathetic groupies.

A few weeks later, Cinderella's video came out.

I scanned every frame looking for my raccoon tail.

He probably threw it away, I thought. Now that they hit the big time, touring with the likes of Bon Jovi, David Lee Roth and Judas Priest, they didn't need the support of girls like us.

Besides, being in love with a famous rock star is hard, I reasoned. Not only will he rarely play Philly, now I have to compete with rock chicks all over the country—the world even.

So I gave up on Tom and the boys in Cinderella. I no longer scrawled their logo on my book covers. I stopped running out to buy their latest releases. I switched the channel when they were on MTV.

Instead, I went to an Alice Cooper gig, got backstage at a King Diamond show, and dozed off at an AC/DC concert.

Then the '80s ended, I graduated from high school, and my friends and I had become bored with glam metal.

We, apparently, weren't the only ones who felt that way.

MTV stopped playing their videos.

Pat's Chili Dogs became a Lee's Hoagie House.

Cinderella released their third album in 1994. A year later they broke up.

Since then, they've gone through family deaths, breakups and surgeries.

And it's rumored that they've left the Spandex and hairspray back in the '80s where they belong. Now they just play rock and roll.

They've been in town practicing for a week at the Trocadero. But, when I tried to get an interview, their management gave me a curt "No."

I considered sneaking into the Troc. You think Tommy still has my raccoon tail?

Cinderella plays an all-ages show on Tuesday, July 21, at 7 p.m., at The Trocadero, 10th and Arch Sts., 922-LIVE.