The 1980s was a great time for fans of heavy metal. Albums now regarded as classics were released almost monthly, and metal music enjoyed a level of mainstream popularity that has never been seen before or since. It was riding high in the charts and selling out arenas the size of which only the biggest bands of the genre do today.
Metal came in all shapes and forms – the new wave of British heavy metal, the hair metal of the Sunset Strip, poppier metal bands vs true metal, thrash, speed, and arena rock.
And then there were the power ballads.
Every type of metal had them. Even non-metal bands would amp up a little so they, too, could dabble in power ballads. Just add a few fuzzy guitar, a powerful vocal track and a very singable, melodic chorus, and you were home free. It was a very popular way of arranging them, and they were intensely popular at the time.
Just like any other genre or type of songs, there were good and bad power ballads. They were nearly a dime a dozen at some point, and most of them sounded very similar and were unremarkable. The good ones were really good, though. The best ones were phenomenal.
Cinderella had one of the most popular ones. It was also one of the best.
Don’t Know What You Got (Till It’s Gone) would be Cinderella’s biggest chart success, peaking at #12 on the US Billboard Hot 100 in November 1988. The heart-rending ballad blew up on MTV and was everywhere on radio. Its staying power is still strong, and it continues to be played on radio around the world.
A key strength of the song is that it offers more depth of emotion, combined with sincerity, than other bands did in their own power ballads. Tom Keifer’s lyrics of sorrow and forgiveness are accompanied by soaring minor guitar chords, universally known as chords of sadness. They fit the lyrics perfectly.
Cinderella came along at the exact right time to catch and ride the 1980s metal wave. They had spent the early years of the decade playing in clubs around the greater Philadelphia area, building a solid live reputation.
Jon Bon Jovi is often the one credited as the one who got the band their record deal, but vocalist/guitarist Tom Keifer is quick to add another name to that discussion. “Gene Simmons was actually the guy who first took an interest in the band,” Keifer told BigMusicGeek.com. “He took it to some labels and he actually did take it to Polygram, but they just weren’t interested. […] Gene was the first to take an interest and then a couple years later, Jon wandered into that club and went to his A&R guy. We finally won him over and he signed us to a full deal, but that was a bit of a process too. I’m grateful to both Gene and Jon for the interest they took in the band.”
Things happened very quickly once the deal was inked. The band’s rise seemed amazingly fast, with their first album Night Songs peaking at #3 on America’s Billboard chart, selling over two million copies and later being certified triple-platinum. While their success hadn’t come overnight, to most people they seemed to come out of nowhere and just explode.
This was a prolific time with several songs being written. Tom Keifer was always the main songwriter in the band, with occasional input from the others. Don’t Know What You Got was included on their 1988 album Long Cold Winter, so it is often a surprise to people to learn that Keifer wrote it shortly after the band signed their contract with Mercury Records in 1985.
“I was on an absolute high back then,” the singer told Classic Rock Magazine. “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. “I was thinking about how great life was and how sad I would be if it 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.”
The band was on a tight schedule to finish the album, but were on track. All the songs had been decided on. They were rehearsed and lined up. The map had been drawn, the plans had been made. In producer Andy Johns’ mind, they just had to get on with it and make it sound good. He was eager to proceed with the album, and certainly not in the mood to listen to a brand new song idea.
When he heard that Keifer had another ballad in mind, he even became frustrated. They already had Nobody’s Fool lined up for the album. Another one was seen as too much – there was no desire to let the band be known as a power ballad band. One more song of that ilk was neither needed nor welcomed.
“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’.”
Keifer would not let it go, and 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 recalled in Classic Rock Magazine. “At that moment I knew I had quite a song.”
I can’t tell ya baby what went wrong
I can’t make you feel what you felt so long ago
I’ll let it show
I can’t give you back what’s been hurt
Heartaches come and go and all that’s left are the words
I can’t let go
If we take some time to think it over baby
Take some time let me know
If you really wanna go
Don’t know what you got till it’s gone
Don’t know what it is I did so wrong
Now I know what I got
It’s just this song
And it ain’t easy to get back
Takes so long
As they had already made plans for the immediate album, they agreed to put this song in their back pocket and pull it out for the next one. Cinderella would work with Johns again for their follow-up Long Cold Winter, and there was no question that Don’t Know What You Got (Till It’s Gone) would be included on that one.
The second album was recorded at Bearsville Studios in the rolling hills west of Woodstock, New York. Bands often recorded here so they could reflect and get away from it all.
Keifer would end up giving the lyrics a relationship angle rather than being about the end of successful times. It made the topic more universal, and ended up tugging a bit stronger at the heartstrings for it.
The song has a solid, emotional build and structure befitting of the better power ballads of that time, using well-established production techniques. This turned out to be a long-term strength, as the song does not sound dated in any way. The piano intro and consequent build into full band arrangement is timeless, matching the vivid imagery and emotion in the lyric.
The song has a unique sonic quality which makes it stand out, the drums sounding particularly satisfying – they sound fat, roomy, and just huge. This is not accident. Fred Coury had joined the band just prior to the sessions, and was young and full of energy – but also a bit inexperienced. Andy Johns felt he fell short of standards, and was asked to sit out on the recording of the album. This mirrored the situation on Night Songs, when Jim Durnick was similarly sat aside for the recording.
Enter the legendary Cozy Powell. The band could not believe that the drum legend agreed to sit in for most of the album. His unique groove and drive can be felt on all the songs he plays on. Powell was known as a hard hitter, and the band was quite happy with that approach on their power ballad, giving it some extra weight and panache.
A further secret to the drum sound was an accident which turned out to be a blessing. When the song was first recorded it was cut too fast, forcing the band to go back to it later and start over again. They wanted to keep the drum track, though, so rather than calling Powell back they found it worked wonderfully to just slow it down. This added a lot to the huge drum sound, as Varispeeding affects the pitch.
Long Cold Winter was released on 5 July 1988. Knowing they didn’t want to come out the gate with a power ballad as the first single, they first released Gypsy Road as the first one in June. Don’t Know What You Got (Till It’s Gone) would eventually be released as the second single in August 1988. The song was an instant hit, just as they had hoped.
A big song requires a big music video, leading to a grand production. The video was shot at Mono Lake in Bodie National Park, which is near the Nevada border in California. This was the time when record labels would assign big budgets to music video productions, allowing them to be created in exotic locales, complete with actors, extras, props, locations, boats, cars, and anything up to and including hiring helicopters to capture the action.
This video created a lasting image, with Tom Keifer playing a grand piano on the beach, quite a logistical challenge when shooting in a national park where the landscape cannot be disturbed.
Nick Morris, a British film-maker who did most of the early videos for Cinderella, Europe, and Warrant, was the director. He was given 10 days and a big budget to shoot videos for the two new Cinderella singles: Don’t Know What You Got and Gypsy Road. Using a photo book, he discovered Mono Lake, which had the added benefit of a ghost town nearby. After doing Gypsy Road in Mexico, they decamped to Bodie.
“The helicopter pilot was an ex-Vietnam guy,” Morris told Songfacts, “and one of those guys who is just a bit odd. He didn’t charge it properly or something, so the second morning we were about to shoot there, it wouldn’t start. So the truck driver gave the helicopter a jump start off the terminals of his truck. That was quite surreal watching the rotors go round about an inch above the truck. We had a lot of people who were just there to carry stuff because we weren’t allowed to drag anything down to the water’s edge, so we basically had to assemble in the car park and then walk it back and forth. But we were getting some really good stuff and the band were really up for anything. They were standing around for hours sometimes waiting for the sun to come down, and then suddenly I’d be screaming at them: ‘Keep playing the song!'”
The band’s association with the 1980s metal scene, whether correct or not, would eventually hurt them in the 1990s when fashions changed and 80s bands were seen as passé. Their fourth and final studio album Still Climbing was released in 1994, and they called it a day shortly after. The band would get together for sporadic reunion gigs and over the years, playing their final show in 2014. For a band that seemed to fizzle out, they have always had an audience that were more than ready to see them live.
Time has been particularly kind to Don’t Know What You Got. The song has never been allowed to be forgotten, and made an especially 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 said, laughing. The song has also been featured in a number of other TV and movie productions, ranging from the 2008 film The Wrestler to the US version of The Office TV series.
These days, Tom Keifer keeps touring under his own name, and as a self-confessed ‘sucker for ballads’ Keifer has no plans to stop performing Don’t Know What You Got as a solo artist – albeit these days in a slightly different form.
“A few years ago my wife Savanah [Snow, Nashville-based singer/songwriter] and I remodelled it in acoustic form for VH-1, and now we do it unplugged for a while before the band busts into the electric version that everybody knows,” he explains, smiling. “It brings the house down every night. You just have to see it. It’s pretty cool. We brought the piano back, and we’ve been doing this version [recently].”
“Sometimes when Savanah’s not with me on tour at that part of the show when the roadies pull up the stools, I’ll call her and ask the audience to sing the chorus to her at the top of their lungs,” he adds, smiling. “It helps us both out. Nobody wants to be lonely, right?”
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