Eric Brittingham: From Cinderella to Naked Beggars

Hair Today is a special series here at antiMUSIC by Marie Braden that answers the question “Hair are they now?” Each month Marie will catch us up with the latest from some of biggest names of the “Hair metal” era.  She kicks things off with this special feature on Cinderella’s Eric Brittingham and his wife Inga’s search for the glass slipper of solo success with their project Naked Beggars. 
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Hearts broke all across America when it became clear that Cinderella's headlining tour this summer fell through, but fans of the Aquanet blues can rejoice that, while drummer Fred Coury is exploring the techno scene, guitarist Jeff Labar and bassist Eric Brittingham are giving audiences what they love best--a powerhouse hard rocking performance from side project Naked Beggars.

Eric Brittingham and his wife Inga (Naked Beggars’ vocalist) are an absolute delight. Eric is warm and personable, and makes it easy to forget the years when his face was one of the repeated motifs of a homemade wallpaper literally snatched from the pages of Metal Edge and Circus. “Just regular folks” may be an overused phrase, but it fits. To talk to Eric and Inga is to feel instantly at home, sharing a good joke with plain-spoken people who just happen to be in the limelight—the kind you’d want to share a beer with at your local watering hole (Although Inga actually prefers Jagermeister).

antiMUSIC (Marie): A husband-wife team is rather unusual in rock and roll? How did you two meet?

Eric: Actually, we met in a mall. My drummer, Fred, noticed Inga first, but after she had hung around a little bit, he decided she wasn't really his type--he tends to like the kind of girls that are quiet and good decoration. Inga is very much her own person, kind of outspoken, and meanwhile, she and I hit it off and just really became good friends.

antiMUSIC: When you're on the road, is there a jealousy factor at work? Obviously, there are going to be people hitting on either or both of you.

Inga: When Eric tours, I do get jealous, but not for the reason you think. I get jealous that he is out there, PLAYING, and I am not. Because *I* want to be out there onstage, too!

antiMUSIC: Inga, who would you describe as your main influences?

Inga: Oh God, I don't know. There are so many, Elvis Presley obviously... Eric, can you take this one over?

Eric: She listens to everything from the Judds to rock and roll to show tunes. She's a child of the Eighties, so you've got your Thompson Twins, Madonna, things like that. It's really an eclectic mix.

Inga: You said you noticed a sort of country feel in my voice, and I guess I don't see that.

antiMUSIC: Which tracks do you consider the real standouts on the Naked Beggars disc?

Inga: Well, "Bitch" is our first single and it's just a fun song. We've come out with an edited version of that, for radio. Obviously, we haven't removed the word "bitch", but cleaned it up a little bit for airplay.

antiMUSIC: I suppose that is even more important now since the post-Super Bowl controversies over Janet Jackson and Howard Stern?

Eric: For God's sake, people, it was just a titty! In Europe, people wouldn't think twice about something like that. But, I suppose, it got her attention in America, so whoever orchestrated that, it worked. It was obviously deliberate.

Inga: Howard Stern, well, maybe he needed to be fired; he's always pushed the envelope. But it does hurt other performers.

"No More" is one that I had actually been given the music to, wrote lyrics, and then Kris (Casamento, guitar) said, "Wait, wait, that's the wrong song." But I think it turned out well. A lot of my songs have come out of old relationships. "Kind of Girl" is one of my babies, from when I was around 19, and it has a much more punk feel to it. The lyrics can be taken really sexually, and while that's part of it, it was more just about wanting to be so completely WITH someone, wanting them to be part of you.

Eric: The next pressing of the CD is going to have our new song on it; it's very much a Van Halen kind of tune.  We'll be removing "Wastin' Time" and replacing it with this track.

antiMUSIC: Now, Inga, a lot of your songs have a strong feminist edge to them, but the work Eric is best known for is from a very sexist genre of music. Does that feel somewhat strange to you?

Inga:  I never thought of it THAT way! (laughs)

Eric: Well, I don't know that our music was all that sexist. Maybe a few hormonally-driven songs when we first started out, things like "Shake Me". But it's not something that was a conscious effort. And our music grew up really fast, after that.

antiMUSIC: Eric, does it feel strange to be touring clubs now, after having played arenas for so long?

Eric:  I kind of prefer playing the clubs. There's a real intimacy you don't get in arenas, where the closest person is like 20 feet away from you. There's an immediacy and a closeness. Cinderella has done club tours--during the Poison tours, we would do clubs on our off days. And I just enjoy it more, there's more feedback, I guess, when you're that close to the audience. 

antiMUSIC: What is the strangest thing that has ever happened to you at a show?

Eric: When Cinderella was first starting out, we did this tour with Loudness and Poison, and one of the places we played was like this huge bar in San Bernardino. Some fighting was breaking out, and I looked down and there was a knife sticking out of my bass! Some people had been throwing darts, I guess, and someone threw a knife. It's always strange to look out in the audience and see someone standing in like the third row, flipping you off. Why even pay for the ticket if you don't want to be there?

Another time, you know how you'll shake hands with people from stage? Well, I clapped this guy's hand, and he like held on, then SWUNG on me with the other arm. Holding me in place so he could clock me! Needless to say, I had on my boots, so I put a stop to that REAL quick. And then there was the time I got  jumped at the Hard Rock in Vegas. It's a casino, you'd think there would be security everywhere, but NOT when you need them. So this guy jumped me, and I was holding my own, Inga jumped in, too, and around us, all the fans are just streaming by, saying "Hey, good show" and I'm like, "Could one of you GET SECURITY?"

Then again, back in the late Eighties, pretty much any guy with long blonde hair could run around and claim to be me. And quite a few of them did, apparently. I would hear stories like, "Hey, I hung out with him in a bar in Chicago", and I'd be like, "Uh, I was in Europe then...."

antiMUSIC: So, in addition to touring behind this disc, what other projects do you have going?

Inga:  Well, obviously the tour and the new songs. 

Eric: But there's another thing that we're excited about. Inga's grandfather was a writer--he wrote several of the Hardy Boys books, things like that--and now Inga has written a children's book. My daughter is going to help illustrate it, and we'll be releasing that with a CD, like the old Disney books had with the narration, and then the songs, and instrumental at the end, kind of like a lullaby.

Inga: I had some of those books... I had "Cinderella" of all things!

Eric:  Anyway, we'll be making a family project out of this, with my daughter as the artist, and working together on the CD. 

Inga: Move over, Madonna! (laughs)

antiMUSIC: So what sort of distribution do you have lined up for this disc?

Eric:  We're currently working out the distribution deal; as you know, we recorded and released this ourselves, did it all at SMA Studios--Suck My Ass Studios--because that's sort of how I feel about the major labels these days. We wouldn't say "No" if some major label came in and offered us a lot of money, but I've had some pretty bad experiences with major labels. Not just Sony, but our first label, Mercury, as well. I mean, our (Cinderella's) first album sold 3 million, the second and third sold like 1.3 million each, and we were being told it was a FLOP?

antiMUSIC: How do you feel about the RIAA's anti-filesharing campaign?

Inga: I think they forget, sometimes, that people used to even tape songs off of the radio. Sure, the quality wasn't there, but people did it. 

Eric:  I don't think that they are losing any more sales to MP3 traders than they ever did to home tapers. I think the percentage is probably pretty much the same. We're even running a contest for people that buy our CD. If it goes gold, then one person will be drawn, and they will receive $50,000 cash. We figure that a major label would put that much into independent promotion--which is the new name for payola--and we'd rather just promote by word of mouth. If it sells gold, then we're just gonna give some of that BACK to the people who made it a success.

antiMUSIC: At Metal Sludge, one poster said, "At this point, it looks like Kurt Cobain will rejoin Nirvana before Cinderella releases a new CD."

Eric: That's not far from the truth. I can almost see that happening! (laughs) Recently, as you know, there was a rumour going around that Tom (Keifer, vocalist) had quit Cinderella. And the bass player is always the last to know, so I called him up, and he just started laughing. He was, like, "I can fire the whole band, but how can *I* quit? It's MY band!" So that was kind of funny. 

antiMUSIC: After all these years, there has to be at least one question that you are tired of hearing in interviews, Eric. What question do you wish would NEVER be asked of you again?

Eric:  The one that I am SO sick of is "How did you come up with the name Cinderella?" It was literally a last-minute choice, from some soft-core porn film in the HBO guide, and I'm tired of explaining it over and over again. We thought we could always change it later... Little did we know! (laughs) I guess it was just divine intervention.

antiMUSIC: Well, I'm not so sure there was anything divine about some of the outfits Cinderella wore back in the day. I've heard people still in shock that you no longer have that "blond palm tree" hairstyle. 

Eric:  You know, I haven't had that hairstyle since 1987! I didn't even have it for very long, but that's what people remember. I dyed everything black a couple of years ago, but now I'm blonde again--I've had seven treatments already, to strip the black dye out. But people remember the makeup and... I don't know...the only makeup I would wear now is just some eyeliner, and that's pretty much accepted for guys onstage now.

Inga: Hey, guys in eyeliner are sexy! Especially after they've been onstage, and sweating, and it starts to run just a little bit? Eric will come offstage, and say, "I look like s***", and I'll be, "Oh, no, come here baby, you look GOOD! It's HOT!" (laughs)

antiMUSIC: Well, thank you for talking with us today. Is there anything you'd like to add?

Inga:  Just for people to come out and see us. We're looking forward to the tour and we hope people enjoy it.
 

Check out the Naked Beggars official website to learn more. 

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antiMUSIC columnist Marie Braden is a veteran rock journalist and photographer who always thought that Cinderella, not Skid Row, should have recorded a song called “When the Clock Strikes Midnight”