CINDERELLA: Don’t Know What You Got (Till It’s Gone) 12″ UK includes Fire And Ice and Push, Push (live). Check video

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CINDERELLA: Don’t Know What You Got (Till It Gone) [includes Fire And Ice and Push, Push (live)
Country – UK
Label – VERTIGO
Extra Info – Ps, 3 Tracks Inc Fire And Ice+Push Push-Live, Ver 43 (Ex-/Ex)

Don’t Know What You Got (Till It’s Gone)” is a power ballad written and performed by the glam metal band Cinderella, from their second album Long Cold Winter. Released in August 1988, it was their most successful single, peaking at number 12 on US Billboard Hot 100 in November 1988.

The music video for this song was filmed at Mono Lake and Bodie, California. This fact is revealed in the Tales From the Gypsy Road video collection.

Tom Kiefer’s high pitched raspy voice was pretty polarizing, and Cinderella had a few more haters than a lot of the hair bands, but “Don’t Know What You Got (Til It’s Gone) is memorable and has held up better over the years. They cracked the pop charts with singles including “Gypsy Road” and “Shake Me.”

Chart (1988–1989) Peak
position
Canada Top Singles (RPM) 68
UK Singles (Official Charts Company) 54
US Billboard Album Rock Tracks 10
US Billboard Hot 100 12
US Cash Box 17

The story behind Cinderella’s Don’t Know What You Got (Till It’s Gone)

Cinderella back in the 80s

Don’t Know What You Got (Till It’s Gone) is a heart-rending ballad and MTV favourite recorded by the Philadelphia-based foursome Cinderella during the hair-rock explosion of the 1980s. Cinderella singer/guitarist Tom Keifer wrote the song shortly after the band signed their contract with Mercury Records in 1985, but it wasn’t until the summer of ’88 that it became their biggest ever hit single.

“I was on an absolute high back then,” the singer recalls. “We were working with Andy Johns, the legendary producer of the Rolling Stones and Free, on our debut album, Night Songs, and things could scarcely have gotten any better.”

It was while driving to the studio in Gladwyn, Pennsylvania during the recording of Night Songs that Keifer was struck by the idea for a song. Little did he know that it was destined to become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“I was thinking about how great life was and how sad I would be if [the success] all went away,” he explains. “The chorus made a big impression upon me. And although we already had another similar song, Nobody’s Fool, lined up for our first record, when I got to Kajem Studios I sat right down at the piano.”

Cue the arrival of Andy Johns, keen to crack on with the album and in no mood to listen to a half-written song idea.

“Andy is no longer with us and I miss him dearly,” Keifer sighs. “He was well over six feet tall and had quite a presence. He told me: ‘Stop dicking around and get in here, there’s work to do. We don’t need yet another ballad’.”

Under playful duress from Keifer – “Andy said: ‘Okay, Thomas…’ well, he was English!” – Johns agreed to sit alongside Keifer at the piano for an impromptu preview of his new song’s first draft.

“I became carried away with my playing, and when I finally turned around, Andy, this hard-as-nails guy, had a tear streaming down his cheek,” Keifer recalls. “At that moment I knew I had quite a song.”

By Keifer’s own admission, Cinderella had been “banging around in the clubs of Philadelphia” before being discovered by Jon Bon Jovi, although Gene Simmons had sniffed around them a little earlier. However, once JBJ recommended them to his label their rise seemed amazingly fast. The Night Songs album peaked at No.3 on America’s Billboard chart, selling two million copies and later being certified triple-platinum. When Cinderella renewed their relationship with Johns on the follow-up, Long Cold Winter, the inclusion of Don’t Know What You Got (Till It’s Gone) was a complete no-brainer.

“The problem was that we cut the song way too fast,” Keifer recalls. “So here’s a secret: we had to start over again and slow down the drums, which we wanted to keep. That’s why they sound so huge; because Varispeeding affects the pitch.”

Those drum parts were actually played by Cozy Powell, and not the credited band member Fred Coury, who Johns considered “a little inexperienced” for the track’s groove and drive.

In what became a puzzling trend over the course of Cinderella’s first three albums, Long Cold Winter was a better record than Night Songs and yet it sold fewer copies than its celebrated predecessor. The bluesy maturity of 1990’s Long Cold Winter also defied an artistic spike to continue the group’s commercial decline.

“I didn’t see it that way, but people accused us of changing our style from record to record,” Keifer says with a shrug. “To me it was a progression; we became better musicians and learned how to paint landscapes, using Dobros, pianos and harmonicas to build up the colours. The writing style didn’t change at all because it was all based on the blues, country and gospel – the ups and downs of life, or falling in and out of love.”

Cinderella’s early status as press darlings would soon cool, and one bemused UK reviewer famously said of Long Cold Winter: “Tom Keifer wouldn’t know the blues if somebody rubbed him face face-down in Mississippi mud”. However, tougher times still lay ahead for Keifer; the four-year wait for Cinderella’s next album, Still Climbing, was due to paresis of his left vocal cord that had been diagnosed as career-ending.

By contrast, Don’t Know What You Got (Till It’s Gone) grew ever more popular, and made a poignant appearance in the cartoon TV series South Park as Eric Cartman lay motionless on his bed for its entire duration, surrounded by tissues. “That was hilarious, it really sums up what the song’s about,” Keifer says, laughing.

The facts…

RELEASE DATE – August 1988

HIGHEST CHART POSITION – US No,12, UK No.54

PERSONNEL Tom Keifer – Vocals, guitar, harmonica, Jeff LaBar – Guitar, Eric Brittingham – Bass, Fred Coury – Drums

WRITTEN BY – Tom Keifer

PRODUCER – Andy Johns, Tom Keifer, Eric Brittingham

LABEL – Vertigo

How Tom Keifer defied the odds…

Cinderella singer Tom Keifer lost his voice due to to paresis after the band’s world tour for their 1990 album Heartbreak Station. Getting it back involved a long, involved and painful process that saw him tumble into severe depression.

“It was a neurological condition, and I was told that there was no known cure,” Keifer explains. “A doctor actually told me that I’d never sing again. I ended up working with a speech pathologist coach but there was collateral damage. It took six surgeries to repair what happened when I tried to sing.”

Keifer eventually retrained himself to both talk and sing, but, he reveals, “my voice still requires daily maintenance”.

Additional information

Weight 0.25 kg

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