Cindy Dunaway is Neal Smith's sister. In the early days she played an important role in the image of the band by designing some of the stage costumes as well as appearing on stage with the band. It was Cindy who first met future managers Shep Gordon and Joe Greenberg, creating the link that would take the band to the top. She was the original nurse on the 'Love It To Death' tour and the giant tooth on the 'Billion Dollar Babies' tour. She later married Dennis Dunaway and they are together to this day.
In 2017 Penny Black Music posted an exclusive interview with Cindy which is well worth reading. In it Cindy mentions she is also writing a book about her life which will be essential reading when it's evetually released.
"In the late sixty's I visited the Coopers in Topanga Canyon and saw the guys toasting themselves as the "Worlds Most Beautiful Band!" Neal's sister Cindy was making a lot of the clothes for the band. She liked to use metallic flashy fabrics for the Coopers and Fake Fur for my group the '20th Century Zoo'. She spent a lot of time putting on aurora borealis sequins on vests for Neal. Cindy liked to use the aurora borealis sequins because they gave rainbows of color with the flash. Dennis used to glue mirrors on his bass, it made it more fun to play. I used to put mirrors on my guitar strap, and found that lighting up someones drink on a table or flashing girls with it kept me amused. Later after I got drafted Cindy liked the red white & blue stars of the Surgeon General patch I sent her, she wanted more & more. She made a vest out of several packs of stars for her brother Neal.
(Skip Ladd, Sepember 1998)
