Cinderella

by

Firefall

Album: Firefall      Released: 1977

US Chart: 34     

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This song shares its name with the title character in Disney's classic Cinderella, but that's the only thing it has in common with that fairytale. Firefall founding member Larry Burnett wrote this song about a girl who wants the fairytale ending, but when she gets pregnant, her boyfriend kicks her out to raise their son on her own.

This wasn't, however, based on personal experience. Burnett was 16 years old when he wrote this song and says, "I certainly didn't have a wife or a girlfriend who was pregnant and I was working my butt off trying to support us. None of that was going on. But it was certainly happening around me in other people's lives."

It took Larry about 15 minutes to write this song. He says it happened so quick he almost never saw it coming. "It was already there, and I was just sort of this vessel. And *poof* I went, whoa, that was interesting. It was a nice moment."

Larry absorbs things happening in his surroundings, "like a reporter," without even realizing it, and turns them into song lyrics. He's not what he calls a "typical" songwriter, as he usually doesn't know what he's going to write about until he puts pen to paper. He says, "I know guys who sit down, and they have a concept and they want to work a song around the concept, and rhyming words and yadda, yadda. It's like a construction project. And I have attempted that, and in my view failed miserably, or come up with a lesser product, I guess, at the end of something like that. But what I noticed when I was really young is that, wow, this thing happened, and if there's a way I can access that environment, then perhaps it will happen more. And so that's kind of me."

Most of what Larry wrote on the first couple of Firefall albums were written when he was between 16 and 19. So he was prepared when the opportunity - in the form of Rick Roberts - presented itself to form a band. As Burnett tells it: "I lived in Washington, D.C. At the time there was a widely known club called The Cellar Door. They had Ray Charles and Bonnie Raitt, they had all these people there during the week, and on Sunday nights they had something that today would be called open mike day, I guess. I used to go down there on Sunday nights and I'd play these little songs that I'd written. And the sound man there, who I am still friends with to this day, Jimmy Geisler, he used to record me. He thought I was really good, he recorded me. He had a little tape deck and a light and sound booth. And then during the week when all of these real people would be coming through, he'd be handing them these tapes going, 'Hey, I've got this guy writing songs, I think they're pretty good. Give him a listen.' I think he handed tapes of me on stage Sunday night at The Cellar Door to everybody that came through. Anyway, Rick Roberts was playing solo, and he came through as the headline act. And Jimmy gave him one of these tapes. And Rick went, 'Ooo, I'd like to meet him.' So Jimmy hooked me and Rick up. He called me up and said, 'Come down to the club tonight, this guy wants to meet you finally.' And so those songs that I was performing then when I was like 18 and 19 on this little stage at The Cellar Door, I had a boatload of them. And 2 or 3 years later when we finally got Firefall together, that's what we started out with, I had all this stuff already written. Believe me, the first time I heard 'Cinderella' on the radio, I kind of went, 'Whoa, that's pretty wild.'"

Just after Firefall was formed, the band was looking for a good publicist to get their name out and get their product heard. They met with Howard Blume, who was the go-to publicist in Los Angeles at the time. Larry says, "We were thinking of engaging him and his servitude. And," he says laughing, "we had some idiots in this band, and I was one of them. We were nuts. Anyway, at that meeting, everybody in the band was very concerned about controlling what was said in the press about us. And we were looking to Howard to be the guy to do that. And Howard listened to everybody, and he was kind of smiling and chuckling, and he said, 'Look, here's the deal guys. Honestly, I don't care what they say about you, as long as they're saying something. My job is to make sure that they spell your name right.' I thought about that and I thought, Well, of course. You want to get famous, he doesn't care what for, he's just there to make sure everybody knows who you are. So I will repeat that because I thought that was a giant pearl of wisdom. Make sure you spell my name right." (Thanks to Larry Burnett for talking with us about this song. Learn more at larryburnett.com - yes, this is spelled correctly.)

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Comments:

I love this song but the last refrain kind of throws me. Did she leave when he kicked her out or end up staying? He says "SHOULD HAVE left that morning left that day . . ." Guess it doesn't matter, if he was just 16 when he wrote it, even he probably didn't know what he meant.
- Jack, Mesa, AZ

Always one of my Firefall faves, love the guitar and flute work. Fun to sing along with, too.
- Bill, Downers Grove, IL

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