Jim Thomsen
By Jim Thomsen
A few weeks ago, I shared some thoughts in this space about the not-quite-a-hit-single “Cinderella,” (see below) recorded and released by the soft-rock band Firefall in 1976. As I wrote, it’s a pretty tune wrapped around some shocking and seemingly misogynistic lyrics. (Cinderella, can’t you see/I don’t want your company/Better leave this morning, leave today/Take your love and your child away.)
Since then, as hoped for, the songwriter — Firefall band member Larry Burnett — agreed to talk to me about what’s informed the song he wrote as a 16-year-old in 1968 — and what’s continued to inform it in his private life and in the public consciousness. I think you’ll enjoy this remarkably candid, self-effacing conversation with a musician who had a backstage ticket to the never-ending show that is classic rock.
Q: I’ve seen you discuss this in a few interviews that can be found online, but can you talk a little about what you saw around you as a teenager that led to the writing of “Cinderella”?
A: I, like so many (even my own son), come from a broken home (Mom left Dad when I was 4-ish). For most of my adolescent and adult life, all was filtered through a lens of betrayal and suspicion. It was easy to look around and notice lives going awry and against their own standards.
Q: Was the lyrical view of “Cinderella” typical or different from the themes expressed in other songs you wrote in those formative years? What were your obsessions of the time?
A: Other songs I wrote during my teen years sucked. I was mostly obsessed with narcotics and having sex with some forty-something divorcee in the neighborhood … or any female, for that matter. I didn’t get laid until I was 18 and moved out of my folks’ house. Nancy Neal … I’ll never forget her. I actually crossed paths again with her when I was in Firefall.
Q: When the time came to choose songs for the first Firefall album, were there any misgivings within the band or the label about putting “Cinderella” on it? It seems quaint now, but it WAS 1976, and Middle America was still presumed to be churchgoing and innocent, and a song with “Goddamn, girl!” as the punchline passage must have at least raised a few eyebrows.
A: Once I wrote a song, I didn’t really care how it was handled for “business reasons.” For the single, Atlantic edited out the word “God” from “Goddamn”, thinking that might help soften the impact. I was never a fan of softening the impact, but, like I said, I didn’t really care.
Q: Feminists protested the playing of “Cinderella” on the radio, leading to it stalling out as a single just short of the Top 40, according to Firefall’s Wikipedia site. What do you remember about that?
A: I remember everyone being surprised at that … bunch of men, what do you expect? Again, I write ‘em as I see ‘em. People react how they react. Some of the kindest words I’ve gotten regarding that song over the years have come from women. Why? I couldn’t tell you, but kind words are kind words. I’ll take them gratefully.
Q: In reading your 2008 blog, I saw that you came to be a father relatively late in life, and now have a son who’s almost college age. How did you take the news that you were to be a father … and how did you take to BEING a father? How do you characterize your relationship with your son?
A: For many years I never saw myself as a husband or a father … and rightly so. As I healed up from years of drinking and drug addiction, my self-image began to shift to one in which I thought I actually had something to offer in those roles.
I have an astonishing relationship with my son and I believe that he would agree. I am driving to Connecticut on Saturday to see him in his last high school play (he is in them all, and quite the charismatic thespian, much to both of our pleasant surprises).
It was not as I had planned or hoped. His mother informed me that she did not want to be married to me anymore when he was about a year and a half old … and then had me removed from the house by the courts a week before his second birthday. I was deeply disturbed by it all, but figured as long as I didn’t disappear, like my own father had, it would be, at least, better than my own experience.
So, I was as present as I could be. I saw him every few days throughout his childhood. We spent many series of days and nights together. I attended and was present for all the big moments. We vacationed together.
To her credit, his mother was a strong supporter of our relationship and time together, she just didn’t want to be married to me.
Q: How does the man that you are now, nearing sixty, relate to the kid who wrote “Cinderella”? Can you imagine having that mindset today, living what you’ve lived? What would the 2011 Larry Burnett say about the 1968 Larry Burnett?
A: I can imagine anything … bit of a curse. “A little less self-absorption, son …”
Q: When you pull out a guitar and start to compose a song nowadays, what do those songs tend to want to be about?
A: Same ol’ stuff … life and folks around me and the stories that lie therein … observing things (foibles, weakness, fear) that most won’t self-observe out loud. I provide a service. Other writers that I bow down to provide that same service for me.
Q: You’re still writing and recording music, and playing the occasional live gig, but as recently as 2008, you were working in a UPS store for $10 an hour. Do you think of yourself as a happy man, even content? Or are you still chasing after something?
A: Still chasing. Passes the time … and occasionally leads to some extraordinary music being made. I’ve actually had some pretty lucrative jobs over the years (classic rock on-air talent, transportation and logistics sales, copyediting) but my willingness to drop it all in pursuit of that chase has led me here.
Q: How do you look back on your Firefall days? Any big regrets, or do you see the journey — however it spun — as the destination, and every experience as a constructive learning moment? Could you take the stage with (Firefall bandleader) Jock Bartley and the others just as easily now as you did in 1975, or has there been too much time gone by and too much bad blood spilled?
A: I actually took the stage with Jock, Mark, David, Joe Lala and current members of Jock’s ghost band in 2009 for a reunion concert. The concert went very well. Jock and I will never get along, (but) all that stops when we play … as it did in the ‘70s.
Regrets? Nothing that keeps me up at night or ruins my days. It all could have been handled better by us and those around us. We all did the best we could.
Whenever someone I am speaking with discovers that I was in Firefall (and many hundreds have over the years), I never have heard this: “Firefall? Yeah, I remember them. They sucked.”
Postscript: I ordered the two CDs that Larry Burnett has recorded in the last decade, via CD Baby, and found them to be full of accessible, enjoyable acoustic folk-blues tunes. Take a listen and judge for yourself.
Jim Thomsen is a freelance writer and manuscript copyeditor who lives near Seattle. His clients have included well-known crime authors Gregg Olsen, M. William Phelps and J.D. Rhoades. He is at work onThe Last Ferry of the Night, a literary crime novel, among other projects, but he could always use more work to pay the bills. Reach him at thomsen1965@gmail.com.
Interesting interview. The subject was honest and articulate, up to the questions. The interviewer let the guy talk — many interviewers fail to do that.
I’ll join the world in NOT saying that Firefall sucked.
Thanks, Wayne. At the end of his reply e-mail, he said: “Thanks for not asking a lot of stupid questions.”