BRITNY FOX

BRITNY FOX

Velvet Undergrads

Anne Leighton

"I had the Britny Fox dream as a kid,” swears frontman Dizzy Dean Davidson. "I used to write it on all my schoolbooks, along with Kiss and Slade.” The singer got the name of his future band from an old family coat-of-arms moniker, Brittany Foxx. Dean chopped off a few letters and got to work.

After playing in a number of rock combos in his native Philly/South Jersey stomping ground, Davidson moved to L.A., where he added several more obscure groups to his resume. One of them, World War III, even made a longforgotten indie record.

Meanwhile, in another musical dimension, guitarist Michael Schermerick was doing his thing in a Pennsylvanian band that also featured Tom Keifer and Eric Brittingham—an aggregation which, with the addition of drummer Tony Destra, became the original lineup of Cinderella.

Cinderella, of course, got a record deal and became big stars—without Michael and Tony, who were unceremoniously dumped after three and a half years of hard work. “You can’t even describe it,” rues Michael. “You’ve worked all your life to get to a point. Finally you find a bad that you love. Then you’ve gotten a record deal, but you’ve got to go! There weren’t any problems internally until outside people—such as the record company—came into the story.”

Sacked from the soon-to-be-huge Cinderella, Michael and Tony were down but not out. “We had each other,” Michael recalls. “We were jerked off, so we had a point to prove!” As it happened, Dizzy Dean was back in Jersey working on demos, and invited Michael, Tony and bassist Billy Childs to back him on the sessions.

The demos became a hit on the international tape-trading circuit. After a year and a half, Columbia Records signed the group, and everything looked hunky-dory. Then Tony Destra was killed in an automobile accident.

Now, with new drummer Johnny Dee and a popular John Jansen-produced debut LP, Britny Fox are fast on their way to recognition as the hard-rock world’s most prominent new fashion plates. “Bands like Guns ’N Roses or Poison’s name fits them, because their look also fits them,” Dean offers. “Britny Fox was such a cool name that it was easy to dress the band. The name goes with us, and it goes with our fans—at our shows, girls are wearing ruffled shirts and jewelry.

“We’ve been through a lot of thick and thin and it’s paid off,” Dean continues. “I’m really indebted to all the people who made it happen. Some bands will go out and they’ll just have a record with no one behind them—Britny Fox is different. A year and a half into the band, when we got signed, we already had articles and fans.”

And, Davidson promises, “I’m gonna write back to everybody who writes me. Even if it takes me a year, I will. I didn’t work all this time just to be stuck up.”