Shut Up and Give Me the Mic

by Dee Snider

  Suzette didn’t just make costumes for Twisted Sister. Another band who had hired her were Swiss heavy-metal rockers Krapus. Being half-Swiss, I actually liked Krapus and was proud of a metal band from my mother’s native land. That pride was about to disappear.

  Upon hiring Suzette, Krapus had paid her the traditional half of the total cost down (for materials), the other half due upon delivery. While I was away, Suzette agreed to meet with Krapus and deliver some of the costumes she had finished. She showed them the pieces she’d made and they loved her work. Naturally, Suzette asked for the balance of the money, $1,500. Krapus’s towering, six-foot-five-inch, 275-pound tour manager tells my wife that they’re not going to pay her. Suzette immediately tells him she wants the costumes back. With Krapus looking on, he steps up to my five-foot-three-inch, 110-pound wife, holding my five-month-old baby boy, and tells her they aren’t giving them back, they aren’t paying her any more money, and if she doesn’t send them the remaining costume pieces she’s working on, they are going to have her “taken care of.” What the fuck!?

  I was on a pay phone, in England, hearing this story and losing my friggin’ mind. These guys threatened my wife—with my son in her arms—ripped her off, and I could do absolutely nothing. However, other people could do something.

  My wife’s godfather and uncle, Hugh MacIntosh (RIP), was at that time the enforcer for the Persico crime family. “Hughie Apples” was a real-deal, no-bullshit mob hit man, and he didn’t deal in idle threats. Google him. “The Icepick” fucked people up. When Suzette’s family got wind of what had happened, the call was made to have Krapus and their management taken care of . . . for real. But Suzette wouldn’t have it.

  “You don’t kill people for fifteen hundred dollars,” she told her family. (They did in Uncle Mac’s world!) My wife is a too kind, and benevolent woman. Krapus, you have no idea how close you came to buying the farm . . . or should I say, the bottom of a lake. Be careful whom you rip off.

  SO NOW THE CHOICE was mine. Would I stand strong for my wife’s honor and say, “‘Fuck that! I’m not touring with the assholes who threatened my wife, with my son in her arms!” It would effectively kill my band’s chances of promoting our record and pull the plug on what we had all worked on for over seven years. Or, would I swallow my pride, opt for the big picture—the greater good—and agree to grab on to the one vine left for the band to swing out of that suffocating jungle of defeat. (How’s that for a metaphor?)

  On the one hand, it was nice of the guys to leave the decision up to me—they would back whatever I chose. On the other hand, they left the fucking decision up to me! No one said “Don’t do it.” “We wouldn’t do it if the same thing happened to us.” “Don’t worry, Dee, something else will come along; the band will survive.” No. They just looked at me with puppy-dog eyes (they hate it when I say that), and said, “It’s up to you, Dee.” And I caved.

  As I agreed to do the tour, in my mind I was plotting, Okay. When I see Krapus and their piece-of-shit tour manager, I can get even with those fucks for the way they treated Suzette. PAMF! That’s when my manager added a caveat.

  Krapi’s (that’s the possessive plural for Krapus) management had anticipated my plan and stipulated that if I did anything to their band in retaliation, Twisted Sister would immediately be kicked off the tour. To that our booking agency had added that Twisted Sister would be blackballed from any future tours, that they would cease to represent us and that no other agency would take on a band that beats up the bands they tour with. Curses . . . foiled again!

  I went home and broke the news to Suzette, who could not have been more disappointed in me. She could not understand or accept why I was doing the tour. I felt like shit and still do. Though years later, when our fame and notoriety surpassed Krapi’s, I would have them banned and dropped from concert bills and refuse to play them on my international radio show, The House of Hair (effectively killing a prime source of airplay for their music), it still is not enough to make me feel I got even with them for what they did. I let my best friend down. That can’t be changed. I’m sorry, Suzette.

  THE BLACKFOOT TOUR WAS “bargain basement.” With no financial support from the record label, Twisted Sister traveled in a motor home (as opposed to the tour buses Blackfoot and Krapus traveled on), which quickly turned to two Ugly Duckling rent-a-cars3 when the motor home’s engine blew up in the middle of nowhere in the Southwest. We stayed, three to a room, in the cheapest fleabag motels we could book and lived off a $7-a-day allowance.

  I became an expert at finding buffets for the band. Mendoza, our resident wheelman, would drive and I’d ride shotgun with all of my senses on high alert, barking out seemingly nonsensical directions, which would ultimately lead to the promised land . . . EAT, SIT ’N’ GULP! ALL-U-CAN-EAT BUFFET! (or the like). I got so good at nursing my daily pittance, at the end of the week I’d have money left over for toiletries and gifts to bring home.

  FROM THE MOMENT WE played Salt Lake City, our first non–East Coast stop in America, I knew this axiom would always hold true:

  DEE LIFE LESSON

  Great heavy metal fans are fans of great heavy metal, no matter where they are from.

  It’s always held true. Along the way, some people have warned me that Twisted Sister wouldn’t be as successful in non-English-speaking countries, believing that all of our success in concert stemmed from my ability to verbally interact with and incite a crowd. Not only is that a total pile of jealousy-driven bullshit, but Twisted Sister has been able to win over virtually any crowd—no matter what language they speak. As long as they want to rock, we can rock ’em!

  City after city, Twisted Sister—the opening band on a three-band bill—were taking the show. Blackfoot were a great Southern rock band with a couple of big songs, but they were on their way out. Krapus were a typical, AC/DC-esque, also-ran metal band, who understandably never did much in the United States. Twisted Sister were pure aggression, with everything to lose. We were the band to beat.

  Having to see Krapus and their tour manager backstage and not say or do anything was tough. Being at the hothead stage of my career, and coming off incendiary live performances each night, I was pretty much terminally angry. With great effort I would walk past PU or the Krapus band members without so much as a hostile glance at them. But those were the rules for being on the tour, and I was keeping my eye on the prize.

  That wasn’t good enough for Krapi’s asshole American-tour manager. He decided to try to push my buttons and make me snap. That was one way of stopping Twisted Sister from making his band of Lilliputians look bad every night! One night, as I walked offstage, their tour manager was waiting for me with a big smile offered me a towel and said, “Great show, Dee!” What the fuck!? Was he kidding?! Without a word I walked past him and went to the dressing room. The fucking asshole! The next night, he did the same thing . . . and the night after that . . . and the night after that. Each occasion I did the same thing: bit my tongue, refused to take the bait, and walked past the piece of shit. I knew what he was up to.

  After about a week of this, I got a call from my manager. Puma had received a call from our agent saying he was getting reports that I was being rude to Krapus. What!? Not being able to get me to break, their tour manager was using our nightly lack of exchange to try to get the band and me tossed off the bill! That was it! I didn’t give a shit if we lost the tour! It was bad enough that I had to endure being around them each night without confronting them; now they wanted me to smile and be nice! Fuck that!

  Quickly calming me down, Joe Gerber (who I know would have had my back in a second if I ever threw down with Krapus) decided he would take one for the team and be friendly to the tour manager and Krapus, intercepting him each night before he got to me. We made it through the rest of the tour without any further problems.

  TWISTED SISTER BECAME AN international sensation; Krapus an also-ran. My career continues to thrive; Krapus is a dime-a-dance shadow of their limited past. Life is fi
lled with shades-of-gray decisions that move you forward on your path to ultimate success, and the memory of most of those choices fades with the passing years. But not that one. Accepting that tour with Krapus, and never truly avenging the way they treated my wife, still haunts me and will until the day I die. I should never have done it.

  29

  welcome to the promised land

  By the summer of 1983, Twisted Sister had been fighting the good fight for glitter-rock-infused heavy metal for almost seven and a half years. Fighting for our right to rock the way we wanted to rock, at times we felt we were up against insurmountable odds. Discovering the burgeoning new wave of British heavy metal certainly gave us hope, a much-needed boost, and reason to keep believing, but it was still a struggle.

  In August, the band and I drove through the heat of the night to Los Angeles, for the first time. With the sun coming up behind us, coming out of the Mojave Desert and the San Gabriel Mountains, we were at last in range to tune in the LA radio station KMET and discovered Iron Maiden’s “Flight of Icarus” playing. We could not believe it! We had heard that heavy metal was big in Los Angeles and KMET had garnered the nickname K-Metal, but we never imagined it would be like this. Metal on the radio in the morning? We had reached the promised land!

  We pulled into West Hollywood to find a major metropolis that had completely embraced heavy metal. It was actually in style! Heavy music and headbangers had never experienced this before; our music was being accepted on a cultural level. Everywhere I looked, I saw evidence of this acceptance. Kids walking down the street were imitating the style of dress of their rock heroes, more often than not that of David Lee Roth of Van Halen. And the women? Metal had never been that big with the female rock audience, but they, too, had found the style and attitude in it, particularly from Pat Benatar. Pat wasn’t metal, but she definitely rocked and had attitude. The girls were totally hooking into that. But something didn’t feel quite right.

  As I read the local papers, saw the billboards and marquees, and simply met the metal fans in LA, it became clear they were more into the look and attitude of heavy metal than the music. They were clearly more interested in stylized heavy-metal bands and less so in the traditional “denim and leather.” Mainstay Sunset Strip clubs such as Gazzarri’s openly advertised bands with “only the best-looking guys” to entice the local rock chicks. Where the girls go, the boys follow. Much of the LA metal scene was hollow—like the facades of Hollywood sets—mostly about style and not substance.

  This is not to say there were no real metalheads or metal bands in Los Angeles. Slayer—one of heavy metal’s Big Four—were from Huntington Park, just outside LA, but I could see what was fueling the Sunset Strip scene . . . and it wasn’t the heaviness of the music.

  Los Angeles was set to brand its own specific form of heavy metal, and Twisted Sister was a perfect fit for the LA metal scene at that time. We were a metal band first and foremost, but stylized with our extreme makeup and costumes. Eddie and Jay Jay certainly had female appeal, and I was just . . . Dee. While I most definitely fell short in the “pretty boy” department, I was an over-the-top wild man, and the LA metal scene loved that. But for how long?

  Usually when we hit the stage as the opener on a three-band bill, the venue would be maybe half to two-thirds full. Not in LA. When we took the stage at the Hollywood Palladium that night, the place was wall-to-wall. While there was interest in Krapus, the buzz on Twisted Sister was huge. Metal fans out there had been hearing about us long before our You Can’t Stop Rock ’n’ Roll or even Under the Blade albums had been released. Word of the East Coast phenomenon, the makeup-wearing heavy metal band, had reached the Left Coast when we were still in the bars.

  We did our usual thing (including verbally tearing apart an arrogant LA elitist in the VIP balcony who deliberately dumped her ashtray on the crowd below), and after the show we got our first exposure to the whole Hollywood thing. Local notables all wanted to meet the band, and even a fellow up-and-comer from a band we’d heard about called Mötley Crüe, came back, excited to meet us. I remember Vince Neil asking me if his girlfriend “da jour” could come back and take a picture with me (“She’s a big fan!”).

  The big surprise was when Atlantic Records’ West Coast senior VP, Paul Cooper, came backstage to meet us. Resplendent in an expensive suit, manicured, tanned, coiffed, and walking with an elegant-looking cane, he told us how much he enjoyed the show. Stunned that any executive from Atlantic Records US had come to see us period (hadn’t he got the memo?), I expressed my appreciation, especially considering this was clearly not his cup of tea.

  That upset him. “Not my cup of tea? My cup of tea is making money. Your band is going to make this label a lot of money. You’re my cup of tea.”

  I liked this guy! To have an Atlantic Records exec—who wasn’t Phil Carson—say that meant the world to us. And seeing firsthand the heavy metal explosion that was happening in Los Angeles gave us incredible hope. After missing the boat in 1979 (when Eddie had his seizure and new wave took hold), it looked as if, four years later, the music scene was finally coming back around. Twisted Sister was going to have a real chance.

  IN SEPTEMBER OF ’83, my childhood dreams of being a rich, famous rock ’n’ roll star started to become a reality. I already had a degree of fame and was technically a rock ’n’ roll star (at least to some people), but the rich part had definitely been eluding me. With the signing of Twisted Sister to Atlantic Records came two other economic pieces to every band’s rock ’n’ roll pie: a merchandising deal and a music-publishing deal. While Twisted Sister shared the monetary signing advance and proceeds from merchandise sales, that wouldn’t be the case with the songwriting/publishing advance.

  Since many hit songs are not written by the band or the artist performing them, the songwriters get an independent royalty (free of all record company recoupment) per song, per record sold. As the band’s sole songwriter, all of the publishing money and the five-figure advance coming with it from the publishing deal was mine. While some bands take the all-for-one, one-for-all approach to royalties and share them equally (Black Sabbath, Van Halen, etc.), I didn’t consider sharing the wealth with my bandmates for a second (other than the 15 percent of my publishing royalties that I had given Jay Jay). I was finally receiving compensation for all my hard work and sacrifice.

  It should be noted, an advance is just that: money given against your share of future earnings. While it’s a great thing to get, it’s only your own money being given to you ahead of time. Of course, the company is taking the risk that you may not sell enough to pay it back, but they get a larger percentage of the total receipts for extending you this courtesy. Few young artists can resist the offer of an advance. It’s usually the first time you ever see a sizable amount of money in your career.

  Upon returning home from the Blackfoot tour, I had my first chance to do something with the publishing advance for the You Can’t Stop Rock ’n’ Roll album. I had already had the immense pleasure of depositing said check into my bank account. With my son’s first birthday approaching, the fact that I had now been away for more than seven months of his life was not lost on me. Not to mention, my young wife had been left to raise him on her own. At last I was in the position to start to making good on the promise of being a rock star. That fall we bought our first house and a brand-new car.

  After being mostly in the red my entire adult life, it felt great to walk into a place and tell them what I wanted and how I wanted it, but it was the start down a slippery slope.

  IN AUGUST OF 1983, Twisted Sister was booked to play the legendary Monsters of Rock Festival, Castle Donington, in the UK. Not only was this the premier heavy metal event for a band like ours to play, but after the amazing response we’d had with our album and singles earlier in the year, Twisted Sister’s playing Donington would be a triumphant return to Great Britain.

  The bill spoke volumes about how far we’d come. It was the original Whitesnake (with Jon Lord, Ian Pa
ice, and Cozy Powell), Meat Loaf (his career was dead at that time in the United States, but in Europe he was still a viable heavy metal act—go figure), ZZ Top, Twisted Sister, Dio, and Diamond Head. Just nine months earlier, we were going to open for Diamond Head, and to be higher on the bill than a legend and hero such as Ronnie James Dio was just amazing.

  The Castle Donington audience were of the same ilk as the Reading crowd, expressing their dissatisfaction—or whatever—by throwing things at the bands, crews, metal-DJ/host Tommy Vance (who wore a lacrosse helmet for protection when he was onstage)—pretty much anything that moved. We were sure that our major success in the UK would keep the “shite” throwing to a minimum, but when we hit the stage, it was worse than Reading. It was raining garbage!

  We couldn’t believe it! The band and I had every reason to believe that the headbangers in the UK liked us. But let’s do the math. Say we were beloved; what would you say is a great percentage of a festival audience to like us? Ninety percent? Surely even the Beatles couldn’t expect a much greater number than that. Which means, in a crowd of over forty thousand people . . . four thousand didn’t like the band. Do you have any idea how much stuff four thousand people can throw? I do. It was off the hook! So much garbage and food and so many liter bottles—filled with everything from dirt to piss—were descending onto the stage while Twisted Sister was on, some of the guys in the band wanted to walk off.

  In an ultimate act of futility, the intrepid Joe Gerber jumped off the stage into the front section of the audience and began running through the crowd, punching the people throwing things in the face! I asked him later what he could possibly have hoped to accomplish against so many aggressors, to which Joe responded, “Hey—that section stopped throwing things!” I love that guy.

  No way were we walking off the stage. It would have meant admitting defeat, and Twisted would never have lived it down. Instead, I resorted to my effective Reading Festival rap and challenged the entire crowd to a fight. By that time, everyone had heard about my now legendary Reading ploy and weren’t backing me as they had at Reading. They threw even more stuff. Thinking quickly, I pulled out an old nugget I’d used in the tristate clubs on occasion, albeit on a much smaller scale.