Cinderella guitarist Tom Keifer sat down with Loudwire to play a few of his favorite riffs as he geared up for the release of his new album Rise.

He celebrated the influence of Cream, the Rolling Stones, Michael Schenker, AC/DC and others in the video, which you can watch below.

Revealing that the first rock riff he ever played was on an acoustic guitar because he didn’t own an electric one, Keifer recalled "there were a lot of kids in my neighborhood or teenagers that were older than me and they were coming up on that '60s hard-rock stuff. There were a few garage bands that played around and they were older than me, and I used to sit and watch them jam in their garages. One of the guys across the street showed me the Cream riff for ‘Sunshine of Your Love.’ … It just felt so cool that I played it over and over and over again.”

He continued with the Stones’ “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and then two UFO tracks, “Only You Can Rock Me” and “Pack It Up and Go,” saying of the first, "What was so great about that song is that the solo was like an anthem. It's so melodic in that song, and Michael Schenker's ability to mix really nasty blues with melody, he was just like nobody else.”

Keifer recalled how he’d discovered the blues and “started soaking all that stuff up too,” name-checking Johnny Winter’s slide guitar, B.B. King’s simplicity and Elmore James’ sound, which he connected with Cinderella’s 1988 album Long Cold Winter. He then played AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell,” remembering how he used to listen to the band on a “little crappy radio” beside his bed, thinking “Bon Scott was just so bad-ass” and enjoying the “electricity” of the band’s sound.

He closed by delivering two riffs from Rise, which comes out on Sept. 13. “It’s got tons of heavy stuff, it’s got some acoustic stuff and it’s got stuff in between,” he said.

 

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