Shut Up and Give Me the Mic

by Dee Snider

  I quickly found out the Beatles were a really cool-looking rock band who sang incredible songs. I couldn’t be an actual Beatle, but I could be in my own rock band and hopefully cause that same hysteria. I didn’t care about any of the trappings of rock stardom other than the chance for me to once again be the golden child, the center of the universe. I was that desperate for attention. As it turned out, rock ’n’ roll stardom would be the only way I would get it.

  My road to becoming a “rich, famous rock ’n’ roll star” was long and arduous. The childish ideas I had on what it took, compounded by my natural procrastinating tendencies, didn’t have me actually sinking my teeth into the real process of becoming a star until I was fifteen or sixteen. My elementary-school wannabe rock star buddies and I figured we would literally be discovered by some music impresario, à la Sonny Fox,1 then whisked away to record an album and be on TV. We didn’t play instruments, rehearse, have original songs, or anything! We were friggin’ idiots.

  Along the way I did take some “baby steps.” I formed a number of “bands” in third and fourth grade, built solely around a kid I went to school with named Scott, who not only played guitar, but had an electric one and an amp. Our band was initially called Snider’s Spiders, playing off the Beatles’ “bug thing” and that my last name rhymes with spider. Great, right? It also foreshadowed the “spotlight hog” I was to become.

  The name lasted all of a day or so, before the other guys in the “band” got hip and started wondering why their names weren’t being used.

  Because your name didn’t rhyme with anything cool, Conway!

  The extent of our band experience was hanging out in Scott’s room, singing Beatles songs, and acting cool while he played guitar. Hey, we were nine.

  Occasionally, a bunch of us would get together and put on lip-synch shows for the neighborhood kids. We’d don our Sunday church clothes (contrary to popular belief, I’m not Jewish), put on readily available Beatles wigs (they were all the rage), use tennis rackets for guitars and overturned garbage cans for drums, stand atop a picnic table, and mouth Beatles songs played on a portable record player.

  We were good, too. We’d charge two cents per kid (it was the sixties) to watch us do our thing. I remember one show we made twenty-eight cents! That means fourteen neighborhood kids paid to see us. Not too shabby. I guess even then I could rock!

  IN 1965, FACED WITH the choice of putting an extension on our house to better fit our growing family or moving, my family opted for the latter, primarily because my parents hated the Neiderman family as much as I hated Russell. For the record, we weren’t the only ones. When the Neidermans finally moved out of the neighborhood years later, the entire block threw a going-away party . . . and didn’t invite the Neidermans. Oh, snap!

  The Snider family made the big move to the next town over, Baldwin, Long Island. A definite step up for us, but still very much middle/lower-middle-class suburbia . . . and we didn’t really do much to class the place up. Besides that eight of us were bursting out of a four-bedroom house, my father had a unique view on suburban living.

  An insurance salesman/state trooper, Dad once pulled over a guy illegally towing a car on the parkway and did him the favor of not giving him a ticket. Instead, he took the junker off the guy’s hands, promptly towed it to our house (illegally), and put it in the backyard “for the kids to play on.” The neighbors must have loved us (“Look, honey, we can see the Sniders’ junk car from our screen room”).

  In my old elementary school, Bayview Avenue, I was a fairly cool, fairly popular, and fairly smart kid. Fairly. Unbeknownst to me, the Freeport school district was easy, and I effortlessly achieved good grades. When I was in fourth grade, my parents received a letter from the school stating, grade-wise, I was in the top 10 percent. My mom and dad were so proud, they took me to IHOP (a Snider-family favorite, then and now) for dinner without my brothers and sister (center of attention! center of attention!), then bought me the thing I wanted more than anything else in the world . . . a pair of Beatle boots. The shoes the Beatles wore had pointed toes with a Cuban heel (a style of shoe I still wear to this day). They were a bit pricey and “tough,” but I had earned them with my effortlessly achieved good grades.

  My having those boots totally elevated my cool status. When I combined them with a black turtleneck shirt, relatively tight pants, and my faux-silver ID bracelet, I was really stylin’. What a tool.

  Our move “up” to Baldwin was a rude awakening for me, yet another baby step toward the dysfunctional rocker I was to become. You see, being cool and popular as a kid works directly against the drive and motivation you need to become a rock star. You can’t be out partying, dating, and having a great time after school and on weekends. You need to be locked in your room, miserable and working on your craft.

  The very first day of fifth grade in my new school, I fixed that.

  I was dressed to impress. My mom always got us some new clothes for the start of the school year, and I was wearing the best I had. Resplendent in dark green pants, green button-down shirt (what was I, a leprechaun?) with a black turtleneck dickey underneath, and my Beatle boots, I was ready to take Shubert Elementary School by storm.

  DEE LIFE LESSON

  Never walk into a completely new environment as if you own the place. Take the time to get to know the lay of the land before you throw your weight around.

  I walked into Mrs. Saltzman’s class with all the cool and attitude a new kid could muster. I knew I was really making points with my classmates, especially when I got in the face of this big, dumb guy who thought he was tough. Things quickly escalated, and the stage was set for a classic, after-school showdown: 3:00 p.m. at the flagpole!

  For the rest of the day, I was the talk of the school. I was the cool (crazy?) new kid who had the guts to call out “Hammy.”

  Unbeknownst to me, Robert “Hammy” Hemburger (what a horrible name) was the toughest kid in the school. Besides having kicked the asses of all comers over the years, his claim to fame was that when he was only eight years old, he picked up a cast-iron manhole cover to gain sewer access to retrieve a lost ball. This is the kid physical equivalent of a grown man lifting a car! Unfortunately for Hammy, he crushed the tips of all his fingers while putting the manhole cover back in place. His fingers eventually healed, but they—and his fingernails—seemed to have a pronounced “smooshed” look to them.

  The school day finally ended, and I strode out to the flagpole in my “Irish pride” outfit (no, I’m not Irish) to set this moron straight and cement my reputation in my new school. I cemented a reputation all right. Hammy literally picked me up and threw me against a brick wall. I’m sure some other things happened between my striding and being thrown, but for the life of me I can’t remember. I probably had a minor concussion.

  The entire school was there to witness it (as is the case anytime the toughest guy in the school fights someone, especially an unknown new kid), and the only thing I earned that day was my reputation as the moron who called out Hammy.

  Shortly after that, Hammy decided my last name, Snider, rhymed with snot(?!), and that became his nickname for me: Snots. Nobody else called me that, but since I wasn’t prepared to get back in the ring with Hammy, Snots I remained. Having him call me Snots for all of fifth and sixth grade, and occasionally when he ran into me over the years until he dropped out of school, didn’t do wonders for my coolness factor or popularity.

  But ponder this: If I had beat Hammy that day, I would have become popular. If I had been popular, my road to becoming a rock ’n’ roll star would have been cut short.

  DEE LIFE LESSON

  Popularity = attention.

  Attention = socializing.

  Socializing = the end of motivation.

  It’s a fact: popularity kills creativity and drive. Why sit in your room working on your craft if you can be out getting laid? Show me truly great-looking entertainers and I guarantee that for some reason they weren’t popular and partyin
g and were, instead, holed up in their bedrooms and practicing their craft.

  My favorite example of this is the time I met an eighties Canadian pop/rock sensation on The Howard Stern Show. I used to spend a lot of time in the mid to late eighties hanging out on Howard’s show, and this guy came in one morning to promote his new record. He had striking, James Dean good looks, so, during an extended commercial break, I asked him what had happened in his youth that kept him from using his “handsomeness” to hang out, party, and get laid. His face dropped and he looked at me as if I had psychic powers.

  “How did you know?” the heartthrob asked, truly unnerved by my query. I quickly explained my theory to him, and he spilled his guts.

  When he was just six years old, dead in the middle of a brutal winter, he was invited to the birthday party of a girl in his class; all of his classmates were invited.

  He was excited about going, especially because his mom had bought the girl a cool gift: a live, baby painted turtle, completely set up in a bowl with gravel, a rock, and a fake plastic palm tree. Though illegal to sell in many places now, back in the sixties this was pretty much the ultimate gift you could get a kid. His mom wrapped the bowl—turtle safely ensconced inside—and dropped him off at the party. When he entered the house, the little girl’s mom took the gift and put it with the others, on top of the radiator.

  The party was going great, and when it finally came time for the birthday girl to open her gifts, all of her classmates gathered around to ooh and aah. His classmate finally got to his unopened gift, and he pushed through the crowd to the front, proudly exclaiming, “That one’s from me! That one’s from me!”

  The excitement in the room was palpable as the little girl excitedly tore off the wrapping paper, revealing the turtle bowl . . . with a dead baby turtle hanging out of its shell inside. The blazing-hot radiator had cooked the poor thing alive.

  Well, the birthday girl screamed, children cried, and from that moment on, he was known to all as Turtle Boy. He grew up an outcast and the brunt of jokes, and no matter how handsome he got, no matter how talented he was or what he did, he was always just a loser to the kids in his town. So, he sat in his room alone and . . . you know the rest. Lack of popularity = creative development and ambition.

  Meanwhile, back at my personal humiliating, life-defining moment, my popularity was crushed like Hammy’s fingers, and I sank further into my dreamworld of becoming a rich, famous rock ’n’ roll star.

  Funny how things work out.

  2

  “this boy can sing!”

  With the options of being the tough kid, the cool kid, or the popular kid removed from my class-hierarchy choices, I opted for another position . . . class clown. Mildly disruptive and at times entertaining, this job gave me some needed attention (albeit often negative), and the girls kind of liked it. Plus, it beat the hell out of being a nothing.

  To add insult to my new school injury, the Baldwin school district was at that time one of the top-rated school districts in the country. My effortless A’s in Freeport turned into effortless C’s in Baldwin. My parents were less than pleased. One of the few ways I could get special attention from them had dried up. I had to struggle to get decent grades pretty much the rest of my time in school. It wasn’t that I wasn’t smart, I just didn’t want to “apply myself” (as just about every one of my report cards stated).

  Early in my sixth-grade year, auditions were held for a solo in the glee club. I had always sung in music class, but so did everyone else. This was the first time I had to audition for something. Like all the others, I went down to sing for the glee club conductor, Mrs. Sarullo, who was also my teacher. A dark, mothering Italian woman, Mrs. Sarullo was easy to like and knew how to handle her class. She was a lot of fun, but nobody’s fool. She nicknamed me “Hood” because of my pointy shoes and obvious desire to look like a dirtbag. It was a hell of a lot better than “Snots.”

  I walked into the “cafe-gym-itorium” for my audition, Beatle boots clacking loudly on the floor. Mrs. Sarullo sat at the piano, awaiting her next victim. I don’t remember if I was nervous or not (I probably was. Who isn’t?), and I don’t remember what song I sang. All I remember is Mrs. Sarullo stopped the song halfway through and exclaimed, “This boy can sing like a bird!” I can? “Hood, you’ve got a beautiful voice!”

  And just like that, my life was changed.

  I not only got the glee club solo, but Mrs. Sarullo smiled her big, toothy smile down upon me, and I was the center of attention . . . in choir. Which is where I remained for all my school years. It was the one place where people thought I was special. Add to that, I now knew I brought something to any rock band: I was a singer!

  CLICK. (Sound of a tumbler in a combination lock falling in place.)

  Each year the school had a Spring Concert, and of course the sixth-grade glee club’s was the featured performance. The plan was for the choir to sing first, then I would enter for my solo on cue. The glee club headed down to the stage and I had a bit of time to kill. I made my way to the side of the stage for my entrance. When I heard my cue, I walked out onto the stage to unusually wild applause and cheering. I was blown away! I hadn’t even sung yet.

  It turned out I was late, and the choir had for several minutes been repeating my musical cue over and over, waiting for me. Be that as it may, the audience reaction when I walked out on the stage changed me forever. This was what I wanted. This is what I needed. I had to experience that rush of audience reaction again and I wouldn’t stop until I did.

  WHEN I MOVED TO seventh grade the following year, Mrs. Sarullo—for reasons unbeknownst to me—moved up to the junior high school as well. Unfortunately, due to scheduling conflicts, and a lack of room in the class, I was unable to get into Concert Choir, a daily class for singers. Bummer.

  A few days into the school year, I ran into Mrs. Sarullo in the hall and she asked me how choir was going. While she handled both general education and glee club as a teacher in elementary school, as a junior-high-school teacher she was solely relegated to teaching social studies. I told my “choral fairy godmother” I wasn’t in the choir, and she became enraged. “We’ll see about that!” she said as she stormed off down the hall.

  The next day I got a note from the office saying my schedule had been changed and I was now in Concert Choir. As I said before, there I remained until the end of my school days. There I was special. There I was somebody. I don’t have fond memories of school—no glory days for me—but I loved singing in choir. It was my only solace. Thank you for that, Dolores Sarullo, wherever you are. Thank you for recognizing and championing my talent. Thank you for making me feel special when I needed to feel special. I couldn’t have done it without you. You were a great teacher.

  AS I REFLECT ON these pivotal moments in my life, the realization sets in that relatively few life experiences make us who we are, define us as individuals, and set the course by which our lives will be guided. It’s terrifying. Not that I wasn’t aware of this before, but setting it down in words makes me painfully aware of the arbitrariness of it all and how the slightest change in any of these events could have had me careening down some other path, in a completely different direction. Then again, I can’t help but feel when you want something badly and life events occur that continually push you toward your goal . . . exactly how arbitrary were they? Was it fate? Is a higher power guiding us? Are we subconsciously causing our own experiences, thus guiding ourselves? Take the CPO debacle, for example.

  When I was in sixth grade, a fashion trend swept my school: CPOs. Standing for “chief petty officer,” they were shirtlike light jackets that absolutely everybody was wearing. They came in navy blue or maroon and I desperately wanted to get one. I had to fit in.

  Now, fashionable and clothes were mutually exclusive words in the Snider household. With eight mouths to feed, clothe, and take care of, my dad was working two, sometimes three jobs to make ends meet. Thanks for that, Dad. We always had three meals a day, though we d
idn’t have meat on the table every night (and when we did, organ meats such as liver, kidney, and tongue were not uncommon; yikes!) . . . and we didn’t have fashionable clothes. It was not unusual for my family to shop at the Salvation Army. There’s no shame in that, but for a young boy desperately trying to fit in, it wasn’t really cutting it.

  Christmas was coming, and traditionally my siblings and I could expect one “frivolous” gift—something that we really wanted—and a bunch of other practical things we needed, such as socks and such. Party. I decided I would campaign for my one gift to be a CPO.

  Because I was the oldest of six, my parents worked extrahard to keep me in the dark regarding “the truth” about Santa, for fear that once I knew, I would either deliberately or unintentionally spill the beans to my younger brothers and sister and ruin Christmas for everyone. The smarter and more suspicious I became, the more intense my parents’ machinations got to keep me a believer. When I noticed the wrapping paper on all the gifts was the same, they asked in disbelief, “You didn’t actually think Santa wrapped every gift in the world himself, did you?” What an idiot! Of course parents needed to help. When I stumbled on all the gifts under my parents’ bed, weeks before Christmas, I was mocked, “You really thought St. Nick delivered all the gifts in the world in one night?” I guess I’m a moron! Obviously he would have to spread his deliveries out. On and on it went, my parents capitalizing on a child’s insecurities inherent to not believing. Of course, if all else failed, they had their fail-safe: “Well, children who don’t believe don’t get presents.” I believe! I believe! That is, until one Sunday at church when I was twelve . . . and the news was broken to me in an awkward way.