Shut Up and Give Me the Mic

by Dee Snider

  Ross walked into our show and was knocked out by what he saw. A new wave of British heavy metal was brewing, and whadaya know . . . a young American band was waving the new wave of heavy metal flag, too. He whipped out his ever-present camera and snapped away. The photos made their way back to the home office, and on Ross’s word about how great we were, editor Geoff Barton published a shot of me in the Sounds music paper. And English metal fans took notice.

  18

  bang the drum slowly

  By September of 1980 a couple of major things in my personal life came to a head. My terrible money-managing skills caused me to get—once again—into a ridiculous amount of debt. I don’t know what it was about me (besides that I’m foolishly optimistic), but I always owed somebody money. When I was a kid, it was friends, and as a young man, it was friends and landlords and phone companies and insurance companies and . . . you get the picture.

  The funny thing is, I didn’t drink, do drugs, gamble, or spend a lot of money on my fiancée (Suzette was incredibly low-maintenance and not big on jewelry)—all the typical things people blow money on. I was just insanely irresponsible with the limited money I made.

  Cases in point: Some credit company gave me my first credit card, with a $500 limit on it, and I bought a dog with the entire $500 the first week! What?! Another time the bank mistakenly credited my account with several hundred dollars, and what did I do? I immediately withdrew the money and spent it on . . . stuff. Of course the bank discovered the mistake and I had to pay it back over time. I was an idiot.

  By the end of my third year in New York City, I was deep in debt (for a twenty-five-year-old) and had to give up the apartment. It had always been too expensive for what I was making, which was the key to my economic crisis. But it had been across from Suzette’s school!

  SUZETTE, OUR TWO DOGS (Tosha, Suzette’s birthday-gift white German shepherd, and Woofie, my credit-card-bought chow chow), our three cats, and I moved back to Long Island and into a three-bedroom storefront apartment with my brother Matt (and his then fiancée, Joyce, and their black Lab), and various people in the third room. One couple had a Saint Bernard! It was like living in a kennel. Keeping the animals apart, feeding and walking them (sometimes on the roof of the neighboring business), required military-like planning and execution. But split three ways, the rent in the “Wantagh Roach Motel” was low enough that we could afford to live and I could pay off my debts.

  Another upside: after being engaged for a few years, Suzette and I decided we would get married when I finally straightened out my financial problems.1 Good incentive.

  The other thing I was finally coming to terms with was the dark path my life had been on. The violence, the arrests, my eye-opening experience with Billy Joel, and the repeated questioning of my Christian beliefs by my born-again friends, the Hausers, were all finally having an effect. I was, and still am, a Christian, but clearly my behavior didn’t always support those beliefs. I could be a nasty, cynical, angry asshole, and it was spilling over into my personal life. Moving out of New York and digging myself out of debt was the beginning of a new page for me. I could now separate truly negative and evil thoughts from my natural intensity and drive. I was starting to become more of the person I wanted to be. Even though I had a long road ahead of me—and I would falter along the way—at least I felt I was finally on it.

  BACK IN AUGUST OF 1980, drummer #3 tried to take our dislike for each other to the next level and introduce violence to our relationship. It wasn’t major; actually it’s almost comical in retrospect. I had always attested that drummer #3 was not a good guy, yet nobody else saw it. He was so good at appearing innocent, the others started to think I was the bad one for trying to get drummer #3 in trouble. Realizing the reverse effect my finger-pointing was having, I stopped my active campaign.

  DEE LIFE LESSON

  If someone is a bad person, they are not only going to be bad to you. Given enough time, they will always show their true colors.

  Drummer #3 had yet to reveal his evil side to the band when, one night, he disappeared at a gig. When it came time for the band to go on, he was nowhere to be found. He was repeatedly paged over our PA system, and the crew searched everywhere for him. After delaying the show as long as we could, Jay Jay, Eddie, and Mark took the stage and started making noise, hoping that drummer #3 would hear it and come before we had to forfeit the night.

  I was still waiting in the dressing room to go on when drummer #3 slipped in, smug as can be. He thought it was funny. He had been in the club the whole time, ignoring the calls. I started giving him shit about his selfish behavior, and he picked up one of his platform boots and threw it, with force, right at my head. I ducked and he missed, but that was it. As I said earlier, the one thing I will not stand for is physical violence between band members, and his action toward me crossed the line. When I got onstage for the set, I walked directly over to Jay Jay and said, “Drummer #3 just threw a boot at my head. Either he goes, or I go.”

  The band didn’t have much of a choice, and they informed drummer #3 that he was going to be replaced. At first, he was classy about it—acting all innocent and protesting his dismissal, expressing his willingness to stay on until the band found a suitable replacement. Classic drummer #3. Once again, the band were looking at me as if I were the fucked-up and unreasonable one.

  But then an interesting thing happened. As the weeks rolled by, and we started auditioning new drummers, the reality that he was going to be replaced started to hit drummer #3. And he didn’t like it. Slowly but surely, he began to show his true, dark colors to the rest of the band. After over three months of looking, we still hadn’t found the right guy, but now the entire band knew exactly the type of guy drummer #3 was. He had to go.

  Twisted Sister was so popular and successful in our region that every area drummer wanted to be in the band. They all knew we were poised to go on to greatness, and potential candidates were auditioned by invitation only. The last thing we wanted was an open call.

  The difficulty we had finding a replacement for drummer #3 wasn’t always that the drummers weren’t good enough. After all, this was Twisted Sister, not Rush. Sometimes it was the regimen of being in Twisted Sister that scared potential candidates off. Twisted Sister were a machine. Being true professionals, everything was about the show . . . and I was a miserable taskmaster.

  The fun in playing in a band ended for me in 1977 when my vocal coach explained the sacrifices I had to make if I wanted to go the distance. In many ways for me, that was the day the music died. My ongoing throat problems never got better. I had a sore throat pretty much every day, for close to a decade. Can you imagine? It was always uncomfortable for me to even talk or laugh. By the end of each week of shows, I couldn’t even speak. With two days off, I’d barely get my voice back by Tuesday for the week to start all over again, week after week after week.

  And my physical performing style? I performed so aggressively that I felt like Linda Blair in The Exorcist when the demon inside her was whipping her back and forth on the bed! (“Make it stop! Make it stop!”) But if I wasn’t pushing myself to the point of pain every moment I was onstage, I would feel that I was phoning it in, that I was cheating the audience.

  Do you know what my favorite part of each night was? When it was over. I could stop the self-flagellation and rest, knowing I had blown the audience away. Though, being my own worst critic, I was rarely happy or satisfied with my performance. (Anyone who’s any good at what they do rarely is.) Talk about self-loathing! I know what you’re thinking. Why didn’t you just quit? I couldn’t. It was like a drug, I had to have that feeling of being completely spent and knowing I had given my all, and I couldn’t get that satisfied feeling without actually doing shows. Now that’s a catch-22.

  Each night I left everything I had on that stage. No voice or energy was left over for partying. I laugh when I hear about bands “going out and jamming” after their shows. As far as I’m concerned, if you have anything left
after your performance, you’ve ripped off your fans. There was no socializing for me backstage. Other than band and crew, nobody was even allowed in the dressing room except for Suzette, but as I grew more manic and intense about my performances, she didn’t want to be around me. Like the band, Suzette would leave to have fun. Who would want to sit in silence and watch me? But I was on a mission.

  I remember we auditioned one drummer who was perfect for the band: Walter “Woody” Woodward III, aka WW III. Woody looked the part and had a great playing style. The job was his; he was going to be in Twisted Sister. Then I told him “the rules.” I told him about our “no friends or groupies” backstage, the restrictions on drinking, drugs, and general partying, and our taking less of the money we made (except Eddie) to reinvest in ourselves. I told him of the Twisted Sister commitment to excellence and becoming international rock stars . . . and he passed! What?! Yup. Walter said thanks, but no thanks. Being in our band (and he was a huge Twisted fan) sounded like being in prison! He asked if he could just play his favorite Twisted Sister song with us one time before he left. We did (he played it great) and he said good-bye. Hey, if you can’t stand the heat . . .

  In the next couple of years, we would go through two more drummers before finally finding the perfect match.

  Drummer #4 was Ritchie Teeter, formally of the Dictators. He had played with Mark, was a solid drummer and a good guy. It was understood from the beginning that he would only be an interim drummer, until we found the right fit. Ritchie wasn’t heavy enough for the band and just wasn’t into the whole costume and makeup thing. He would actually take his stuff off between each set, then put it on all over again, so he wouldn’t be seen wearing it in the club. Drummers would have killed to have his job, and he didn’t care. It just wasn’t the right fit for him. I can respect that. He was stupid . . . but I respect it.

  Drummer #5 was Joey Markowski, aka “Fast” Joey Brighton. At first we thought we had found our perfect match. Joey was a prodigy with an impressive résumé. He was a drum teacher at the prestigious Carmine Appice2 School of Drumming, actually filling in for Carmine when he was on tour. Joey had also been the original drummer in the Good Rats (one of his students, Joe Franco, replaced him) and had been immortalized in the popular Good Rats song “Tasty.”

  We had a drummer name of Joe

  He played so fast we let him go

  He ran away with all our songs

  Now he’s in school where he belongs.

  You’d think we could take a hint. The only thing we got from that song was to call him Fast Joey. Idiots. Turned out Fast Joey ran away (tempo-wise) with all our songs, too. Apparently, he had a drug addiction, which culminated in his having a full-blown seizure on our dressing-room floor, the (rare) night an important record industry type came down to see us. Next!

  19

  the doldrums

  Historically, Great Britain has always been a trendsetter on the international music scene. Geographically not even the size of some of the larger states in America, pound for pound no other country or place is more influential. The bands that have launched their careers out of the UK are legion, and not just English, Irish, Welsh, and Scottish acts. More than a few recording artists who couldn’t get signed or attention in the States had to head to Blighty to find a warmer welcome. Jimi Hendrix, Joan Jett, and the Stray Cats had all been “discovered” by way of Great Britain . . . so why not Twisted Sister?

  While we hadn’t completely given up on the States, with a glimmer of a positive reaction from the UK press, we decided to send our “A team” overseas on an exploratory mission—was there life for Twisted Sister in England? In November of 1980, our manager, Mark Puma, and our psuedomanager, Jay Jay French, got on a plane, armed with Twisted Sister demos and press kits, determined to plant some seeds with the UK record industry.

  They returned several days later with tales of a land where a renewed interest in heavy metal was growing. They had met with Doug Smith, the band manager of the biggest metal group in Britain at the time, Motörhead. The bass player/vocalist for the band was there, too. Jay Jay told me that the guy from Motörhead—Lemmy something?—was really dirty and scruffy and looked more like a biker than a rocker. Then he handed me an advance tape of an album from a new band coming up. The band, virtually unknown at that time in the States, was Iron Maiden; the album, Killers.

  I listened to the amazing Maiden album and saw a glimmer of hope. We weren’t alone out there. All over the world, a new movement of heavy metal was starting up. Disco was dead, new wave was fading, and punk was dying. The punk fans, in particular, were looking for some kind of intense music to invest their righteous anger in, and the new heavy metal—much of it with punk influence—fit the bill.

  Jay Jay and Puma had planted some seeds for us in the UK and developed some new relationships, but we still hadn’t given up on getting signed in the States. This was our home. We didn’t want to leave our massive Northeast fan base and everything we knew to get a deal. Why should we? We were the hugely popular Twisted fucking Sister and it was just a matter of time before a major American record company realized what was rocking, right under their nose, and snapped us up. All we needed was another grand gesture to get their attention. So, we booked the New York Palladium for a second time, on January 3, 1981. Happy New Year!

  AS I SIT HERE writing, I don’t remember anything about our second New York City Palladium show. Maybe because it represents when I truly began to realize that things were coming apart for the band (or maybe I’m just getting old). Unfortunately, this would not be the last time I would know that terrible feeling.

  The only actual memory I have of the event is the image of one concert photo—that’s it. I’m bent over to the left and singing, and Mark the Animal is wearing fur boots. The only reason I remember it at all is because I see it in my photo album from time to time. That concert did nothing to change Twisted Sister’s trajectory, which at that time was horizontal, and it even hurt us. The show didn’t sell out and the record companies cared less about it than the first time we performed at the Palladium.

  We had been together for almost five years, built what had to be the largest local following for an unsigned band in history, become true rock stars in our own backyard, and achieved things considered unachievable, yet we were still wallowing in virtual international obscurity, and making $240 a week each. (Except Eddie.)

  THE PALLADIUM SHOW RESULTED in all of one offer, from a start-up boutique record company called Handshake Records. It was run by a former industry heavyweight named Ron Alexenburg, and the deal he offered amounted to little more than an employment contract. Handshake would own the rights to everything we did and pay us a salary! Handshake Records indeed. Hand job is more like it. We declined.

  DO YOU KNOW WHAT the Doldrums are? They’re a region of calm winds, centered slightly north of the equator. With virtually not a breeze to speak of, sailboats can get mired in them for mind-numbingly long periods. Now, imagine being stuck there . . . with a hole in your boat. That was 1981 for Twisted Sister.

  After the failure of our second Palladium show, not only were we dealing with, once again, essentially no label interest, but our local fan base was beginning to erode. You can only scream “We’re gonna make it!” for so long before people start to think of you as “the band that cried wolf.”

  Throughout the Doldrums we continued to work on ways to freshen things up on every level. I realize now that this time saw our most creative advancements as a band, which may be what ultimately led to our breaking out.

  Staging-wise, we made some significant changes. I got the idea for what came to be our signature stage look: the pink, barbed-wire chain-link fences. The idea was to create a prison yard or inner-city schoolyard vibe for the band onstage. The fans loved it.

  Suzette started hitting her stride with the band’s stage clothes as well. Her method of designing and creating for artists (she’s worked with other people besides Twisted Sister) has always been to
help them look their best at how they want to look. Suzette will guide you and give you input, but she understands that if you don’t feel confident in how you look, it will affect the way you perform. If sometimes that means sending an entertainer out looking terrible, so be it . . . as long as the performer thinks he or she looks great. Savvy?

  This said, Suzette had known for a long time that the whole “sweet transvestite” thing would not ultimately work for Twisted. I was starting to finally figure that out for myself, too. I couldn’t help but notice that when I picked photos of myself to use for promotion, they were always the “pretty” shots, which had no connection to the reality of how I looked. When fans would present me with a gift (as they often did) of some blown-up and beautifully framed photo of me, it was always some hideous shot of me snarling or screaming or just looking generally insane. Clearly, they saw me differently than I saw myself. Suzette’s costume designs for the band (always with my and the band’s approval) were starting to look less femmy and a lot more tough. Belts and straps, buckles and tatters, were becoming prevalent, and the band’s stage outfits were becoming unified. Sure they were still spandex, but they were harder-looking. We now had costumes that complemented each other’s, and we even started to establish colors that represented each of us. I was pink, Jay Jay was yellow, Eddie was red, Mark was green and animal fur (get it?), and our drummer “du jour” was blue.

  Our sound started to become more defined as we got turned on to new five-piece, two-guitarist metal bands. Judas Priest and AC/DC became templates for the twin-guitar sound we wanted, and my songwriting began to better reflect it.

  SONGWRITING IS LIKE ANY craft: the more you do it, the better you get at it. Since we were constantly in need of new originals, I was always working on songs . . . and I was starting to home in on our band’s sound.