Shut Up and Give Me the Mic

by Dee Snider

  This was some statement. Geoff had worked on a lot of hugely successful records. “Yeah? Will you put that in writing?” I joked.

  “Get me a piece of paper,” Workman commanded his assistant engineer, Gary McGachan. With that, Geoff wrote, The record I am presently working on with “Twisted Sister” is guaranteed to go at least platinum or I resign. . . . He then signed his name, and Gary signed as witness. It really cheered me up.

  I still have that piece of paper. It’s laminated and sits in the frame of my now triple-platinum Stay Hungry album. Thanks for that, Geoff. You have no idea how much I needed that emotional boost at that moment. You saved me.

  DURING RECORDING, WE DECIDED our new record would be called Stay Hungry. The band always used one of the song titles from the album. It focused attention on a “nonsingle” track of our choosing (radio always gave airplay to title tracks), which would inevitably be one of our heavier songs.

  The song “Stay Hungry,” and the rest of the music on the Stay Hungry album, was inspired by a book I had read in the early eighties, by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Published in 1977, during his bodybuilding heyday, Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder was part-autobiographical/part-motivational. One of Arnold’s motivational edicts was to “stay hungry,” to always keep that feeling of desperation and drive you have when you’re just starting out. He believed if you become too content, you will lose your edge and fail. (Boy, did I ever learn that the hard way!)

  Predating any of his later career successes, in the book Arnold laid out the game plan for his life. Paraphrased, he said, “First I will become the most successful bodybuilder in the history of the sport, then I will invest my winnings and become a real estate tycoon, then I will become the biggest movie star in the world, and then I will go into politics.” This was 1977! At the time I was inspired by Arnold’s “aiming for the stars in hopes of hitting the moon” attitude. As the years went by, and step by step he did exactly what he said he was going to do, I was completely blown away. I was one of the few who was not stunned when Arnold decided to run for governor. It was all in his book!

  Reading Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder taught me to never give up and inspired the biggest album of my career. Stay Hungry was dedicated to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

  Many years later, my music publishers received a call from Arnold’s campaign headquarters in the early days of his run for governor of California, requesting the use of “We’re Not Gonna Take It” as his campaign song. I was blown away. I had written that song (and the others from the Stay Hungry album) fired up on “Arnold-speak.” Now he was getting inspiration from a song he inspired me to write?! Talk about “going full circle.”

  I granted usage to Arnold gratis and wished him well. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a man who does what he commits to do, and even though I was not a resident of California, I fully supported him. You may not like the way he gets the job done, but he always achieves his goals. I respect that.

  When I was asked to perform my song at Arnold’s final rally, I jumped at the opportunity, mainly because it gave me the chance to meet a man who had changed my life for the better.

  As I stood on the stage, in front of the California state capitol, at the epicenter of a media maelstrom the likes of which I hadn’t seen since the PMRC hearings decades earlier (much more about that later), singing “We’re Not Gonna Take It” over and over and over to a roaring crowd, it was surreal. Who woulda thunk it?

  Suddenly, Arnold appeared in the distance at the end of a ridiculously long red carpet and began to approach the stage. I was thrilled when my hero1 came right up to me, warmly shook my hand, and rocked out to the song he inspired me to write! When Arnold acknowledged and thanked me to the crowd—with his legendary Austrian accent—it was the icing on the cake. Stay hungry indeed!

  I’M THE ASSHOLE. I admit it. I’m the one the band blames for all of their woes, all of the band’s failings and our eventual demise. Why not blame me? I wrote every song and was responsible for virtually every bit of creativity (with the help of Suzette) within the band. Besides . . . it’s a hell of a lot easier than taking responsibility for your own failings, or accepting one’s own inabilities.

  While my bandmates are at it, they should blame me for the success of the band, too. I’ll take personal responsibility for every bit of inventiveness, originality, and manic drive that made the band a success. That’s all my fault as well. Though my band will probably say nothing could be farther from the truth, I’ll let my post–Twisted Sister success do the talking. I haven’t noticed the rest of them doing all that much. I’m just sayin’ . . .

  During the recording of Stay Hungry, I was doing daily battle with Tom Werman to keep the integrity of our band intact. You would have been hard-pressed to find another band member there with me to fight the good fight, other than when they were needed to record something. Believe me, no one was stopping anybody from hanging out for hours on end, babysitting our producer.

  To make matters worse, the growing resentment Mark Mendoza had for me, along with his secret passive-aggressive behavior toward everything I tried to do, was making it increasingly difficult for me to get things done. The biggest problem was, I had no idea that Mark was upset with me. He never said anything to me about it. Maybe I should have been less oblivious.

  Still, I was sensing a problem, and when, from time to time, the band would have meetings to discuss various issues—even when asked directly if he would like to discuss anything—Mark would never say a word. I would hear about how he would bitch and moan to others about things—never offering an alternative plan of action—but when it came to openly discussing the issues with me, he would clam up or, even worse, deny there was a problem.

  I remember one meeting in which Jay Jay tried to clear up some issues he knew—but I didn’t—existed between Mark and me. When Jay Jay carefully worded some of Mark’s concerns, in an effort to help him communicate his feelings, Mark hung Jay Jay out to dry, saying, “I never said that.”

  Jay was livid! “You told me you were going to throw a wrench into anything Dee tried to do until you got what you wanted!”

  I couldn’t believe it! I had sensed something like that was going on, but to hear that Mark had actually verbalized it to Jay Jay (and Jay is no liar) absolutely stunned me! We were on the same fucking team! I was killing myself trying to make the band a success, and Mark was trying to stop me?!

  Mark just sat there in silence.

  At one point during the production and preparation for the Stay Hungry album, Mark proposed the band stop wearing makeup and costumes.

  What?! After eight years of championing a lost cause (wearing makeup and costumes)—fighting for the right to look the way we did—when the tide was finally turning and wearing makeup and costumes was being accepted, he wanted to take them off? If we were going to do that, we could have done it years earlier and had a far easier time getting accepted.

  Because Mark was a band member, his idea had to be put to a vote. Our partnership agreement stated the majority would rule in any band vote, so I had to stand there and make my case for continuing our course, while Mark argued against it. I still can’t believe it!

  Our drummer, A. J. Pero—being the youngest and the “new guy”—was a real follower at that time and very much into imitating everything Mendoza did. When the votes were cast, makeup and costumes won, three votes to two. In other words, if one more person had voted against makeup and costumes, by partnership rules the band would have had to abandon the image our very name was based on! How fucking ridiculous would that have been!? I’m not sure what I would have done if the vote had gone the other way. I would probably have quit the band.

  For all my band’s complaining about my not letting them be a part of the creative process, I am hard-pressed to remember them ever even making suggestions. Actually, one major idea does come to mind. . . .

  33

  twenty pounds of shite in a five-pound sack

  When we finished re
cording and mixing our new album, we all headed back home to deal with some of the other elements in record-releasing.

  Stay Hungry was the first album cover we controlled. It was finally up to us to come up with an idea. I don’t remember if I had any specific ideas for the cover—I’m sure I did—but Mark Mendoza made a great suggestion.

  His concept was to have the band—sans makeup—in a run-down tenement, gathered around an “electrical-cable spool” for a table, with a large bone, stripped clean of meat, on a plate in the middle. Around the “hungry” band would be, superimposed, pictures of us in full stage regalia, holding bottles of champagne and living the high life, representing our dreams of rock stardom. It was a brilliant idea, and I told Mark so.

  Since this was Mendoza’s vision—and I was always being accused of controlling everything—I suggested he run with it. We had a budget for the cover art and an enthusiastic photographer—a young gun from New Jersey named Mark Weiss—so the cover was Mendoza’s baby. Mendoza accepted the task willingly, and I was overjoyed to finally share the creative responsibility with someone who had a good idea. Finally, something I didn’t have to do.

  When the day of the cover-photo session arrived, Suzette—our intrepid hair, makeup, and wardrobe person—and I headed into New York City for an 11:00 a.m. start, and a long day of picture taking. Along with the cover photos, we were scheduled to take a wide range of shots both with makeup and without so we would have a variety of pictures, for various uses during the coming months. Both the label and our management knew their long-range plans for the band, and it behooved us to have a stockpile of photographs. It wouldn’t be easy to book photo sessions once the band hit the road.

  When we arrived at the photo studio, we were blown away to see Mark’s vision brought to life. They had actually built a run-down apartment room in the studio, just like Mendoza described. It looked great.

  That day, for the first time, we all put on Suzette’s new costumes together. They, too, were amazing. She had taken our tattered style to the next level, giving everybody in the band his own great look. For me, gone was any remnant of my past “sweet transvestite.” I was now—to quote one reviewer—“Raggedy Ann on acid,” fully embracing my hulking, inner monster. The use of football shoulder pads added mass to both me and my already voluminous hair (now reaching down to my chest, with the addition of two long, black streaks (a first). I loved it!

  Now seems as good a time as any to talk about my legendary mane—it pretty much put the hair in hair band.

  First off, that was really my hair. Of all the misconceptions about me and the band, people’s thinking I wore a wig (even a fright wig!), had hair extensions, and/or used cans of hair spray to make it as big as it was, are at the top of the list . . . and drive me nuts! Other people used extensions and hair spray to make their hair look like mine, but my hair was the real fucking deal.

  Being of Eastern European descent my hair had a natural curl and buoyancy, which gave it said volume. It was mousy brown by nature. But when Suzette started bleaching it blond for me around 1980, it was the final, missing piece to my unique “theatrical” look (though some say I was a real-life “Quay Lude” from the Tubes’ “White Punks on Dope”).

  BACK TO THE PHOTO shoot.

  My new boots hadn’t yet arrived, so I was forced to wear my old pink boots (as seen on the cover) from the You Can’t Stop Rock ’n’ Roll tour. Bummer. The one thigh-high, one low, asymmetrical boots were the finishing touch to my new outfit when they finally arrived.

  When we all got onto the set, dressed and ready to shoot, we had a terrible realization . . . the room was too small! We couldn’t see how “the Marks” would fit photos of both the band gathered around the table—as now seen on the back cover of the Stay Hungry album—with the band “living the high life” superimposed behind us! Bear in mind, this was 1984; amazing computerized tools such as Photoshop didn’t exist. Trying our best to make it work, the band flattened—unnaturally, especially for a band “living the high life”—against the walls of “the apartment.” It made us all look way too stiff.

  The photos of the “starving” band, gathered tightly around the table, were taken next. All we could do was hope for the best.

  Before we finally left the photo session—at 9:00 a.m. the next morning!—we had put that room Mendoza and Weiss had built to good use, doing all kinds of pictures—both group and individual—with makeup and costumes and without. We also did shots on a number of different backgrounds, everything done to achieve the goal of stockpiling photos for the weeks and months ahead.

  I’m not exactly sure what Mark Mendoza’s rationale for his actions were—sabotaging the photo session, or just an overt hatred for taking photos (though now that I think about it, I can’t remember his ever causing problems during photo sessions before that)—but he screwed up shot after shot after shot. Whether it was deliberately not following the directions of Mark Weiss—usually saying “Fuck you,” “Shut the fuck up,” “I’m gonna kick your ass,” or the like—or giving the middle finger, pretending to pick his nose, or other such behaviors, Mark made it impossible to use a wide range of the group photos. Mendoza’s “parrot,” A.J., joined in Mark’s “merriment,” further contributing to the growing count of unusable shots.

  I particularly felt bad for Eddie and Jay Jay, who—like me—fully committed and posed for every picture, trying to look the best they could. What ultimately happened with the group photos was no fault of theirs, yet they suffered the consequences.

  After an insanely long day and night of shooting, we were finally ready to wrap. Mark Weiss was a real taskmaster, always calling for “just one more roll” (thirty-six pictures—remember, there was no digital photography back then) on every setup we did after already shooting several rolls of film. As we all dragged our exhausted asses to the dressing rooms to at last take off our makeup and costumes, Weiss says to me, “Dee, I’ve got one roll of film left. How about taking one last roll of solo shots of you in ‘the room’?”

  I’d come this far . . . why the hell not?

  Now, the large bone you see on the Stay Hungry album cover is not a prop bone. It’s a real cow’s femur Mark Weiss had gotten from a butcher, days before the shoot . . . and neglected to refrigerate. The thing smelled like death. The stench was so bad, no one could bear to be within a few feet of it!

  As I prepared to pose for the final roll of pictures, I looked at the gnarly, fetid thing on the table and said, “What the fuck? I can always burn my glovelette later.” I scooped the bone up and began frantically posing with it. I was really feeling the horror of being desperate, hungry, and trapped in a terrible world of hopelessness. Thirty-six quick clicks later, I was finished for the day.

  THE FOLLOWING WEEK AFTER all the rolls of film had been developed, the real tragedy of our twenty-two-hour photo session became clear. Mark Mendoza’s cover concept wasn’t achievable. Not only was the room too small to accommodate both the non-makeup “starving artist” shot and the “living the high life” with makeup and costumes shot, but Mendoza and Weiss had hung a drop lightbulb for effect over the “bone table” and it blocked the face of whichever band member was positioned behind it. The cover idea was undoable.

  Now, in the eleventh hour, we needed to come up with a suitable picture that would work for the cover. The no-makeup photos were out, as were all the pictures, with makeup, of the band pressed up against the walls of the run-down apartment; they just looked too unnatural.

  Next, we looked at all the other group photos and—surprise, surprise—they were unusable for a variety of reasons, and Mark and A.J.’s clowning around in so many of them killed a lot of potentially good shots. Now what?

  The only individual-band-member photograph that can represent a band is one of the front man. That’s just the way it is. When people see a shot of the singer, they connect it with the band. The same does not hold true for an individual photo of other band member. There are exceptions with some bands once they
are established (Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, the Rolling Stones, and the like), but certainly not when a band is just starting out. And when you have an outrageous, enigmatic front man who embodies the name and image of the band—such as moi—you don’t need anyone else. Did I mention egomaniacal?

  As the record label, our management, and I went over every photo for a possible replacement shot for the failed cover, we all kept coming back to virtually the last shot taken, on that last roll of film, at the end of that long day of shooting. A photo of me, crouched in the corner of the room, like a trapped animal, holding the bloody bone out in front of me and screaming. The shot was the definition of Stay Hungry and it became the album cover . . . exposed dental work and all.

  The shot of the band in street clothes (nice Capezios, Eddie) around the table with the bone on it became the back cover, but the lasting image that would come to represent the band all over the world was a picture of yours truly. The band couldn’t have been happier. Yeah, sure.

  This album cover was probably the biggest slight of all to the band, and the thing that truly set things on a downward spiral between us on a personal level. While I had always known that when we finally broke through I would be the one everyone focused on, I believe the band was fooled by the attention each of us had received during our years in the club scene. Playing night after night, two, three, or even four shows, the audience had time to get to know and love each member of Twisted Sister. Before we had albums out and toured, it was definitely more of a “John, Paul, George, and Ringo” vibe with our fans. Once a group got out of the clubs and on tour, with only thirty to ninety minutes to get to know a band, the one time of the year they came around, all the attention would be on the front man or the most outrageous member of the band or the creative force. All of those were me. Twisted Sister was way more of an Alice Cooper than a Kiss.