Shut Up and Give Me the Mic

by Dee Snider

  As the creative and driving force behind the band—and the front man—I was the band member interviewers wanted to talk to, and I didn’t want anyone else misrepresenting me. Since I created and cowrote the videos, and wrote every song, who better to answer questions? To top it off, I didn’t feel any of the other guys gave particularly good interviews, and one of them was trying to sabotage me and the band. What would you have done?

  While the vast majority of interviews were done on the phone or in the city the band was in, from time to time I would actually travel to other countries on press and promotional tours. The first ever of these was to Europe. I was flown over to hit a number of Western European countries in September of ’84, and in each country I found Twisted Sister had an even greater success story. Everywhere I went, the band had finally broken though the wall of indifference we had faced for so long. Our Stay Hungry record and its subsequent videos were making major inroads, not only in the metal world but in the pop world as well. No greater than in Sweden.

  I arrived in Sweden to discover our record had blown up. Sales were through the roof and interest in the band had skyrocketed. Oddly, “We’re Not Gonna Take It” didn’t get the initial reaction there that it got in the rest of the world, but when “I Wanna Rock” came out, the entire country lit up. As much as I abhorred hearing this, it was even a hit in the dance clubs!

  Picked up at the airport by a limousine, I was brought to the premier five-star hotel in Stockholm and given the presidential suite. My two-day promotional stay was filled with first-class everything, and dazzling accolades and adoration for me, my band, and our amazing record. It was incredible! I was signing albums for the children of the king and queen!

  After a dreamlike two days, on Friday of that week, I departed to do a couple of days of press in the UK. I left a beautiful, sunny, spotlessly clean Sweden (it really is like an IKEA over there) to arrive in a cool, dreary, wet, second-hand shop London. I started doing press the minute I arrived by cab at my two-star, run-down, depressing hotel.

  As positive and excited as all the other countries’ interviews had been, the ones in Great Britain were the exact opposite. Interview after interview was about the failing of Twisted Sister’s new record to live up to expectations, and “How does it feel now that the band’s success is over?” England was the only country in the world where this was the case, and that was only because of that asshole Rubber Dick’s being too cheap to pay for stamps!

  When my first day of interviews in the UK finally ended, I was informed I had the weekend to myself, until the torture would start again on Monday. Everybody wanted to talk to the musical flop of 1984. I sat in my horrible little room, in my horrible little chair, feeling horribly depressed and horribly looking at the misery of two long days off alone, when an idea came to me. I had my manager contact Twisted’s record company in Sweden and ask them if they could use me over there for a couple more days of promotion. They jumped at the chance to have the front man for the biggest new band in their country back!

  Before I had even unpacked my suitcase in London, I was on a plane—in first class, of course—jetting back to Stockholm, where I was picked up by limo and reinstated in my presidential suite. I spent the weekend being wined, dined, and celebrated as the greatest thing since the smorgasbord. Whew!

  DEE LIFE LESSON

  You don’t need to be king of the world, just king of your world.

  Swedish krona can buy things, too, you know.

  39

  “these times they are a-changin’”

  Ireturned home in September to a new level of celebrity. Stay Hungry had gone platinum, “I Wanna Rock” was a hit, I was making a lot of money, and I now had a full-time bodyguard. While I always expected Twisted Sister to make it, I thought we would be one of those bands that traveled from town to town, blowing audiences away, causing them to run out and buy our records. I never thought we would have traditional Billboard-chart hit records. That said, it did make sense. My biggest influences were all bands who had sold millions of albums and had hit records. Why shouldn’t the product of those influences do the same?

  Before Twisted Sister headed back out on the road, there was the little matter of my wife’s and son’s birthdays.

  DEE LIFE LESSON

  You can be away the entire year, but if you make it home for the special days (birthdays, anniversaries, Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc.), your family will be cooler about your being away.

  DEE LIFE LESSON

  You can be home all year round, but if you miss those same five or six important days . . . you’re screwed.

  I’m not saying I never missed a special occasion, but I always made a concerted effort to make it home and celebrate with the family if I could. Jesse was turning two that year, so we had a birthday party for him with friends and family at our little house in Babylon, Long Island (the one the guy pissed on). Even though we didn’t spend much time there anymore, it was still our home. In the past two years I had been away for fourteen months. Still more than half of Jesse’s life! Every time I would come home from the road, I’d be stunned by the changes in him. I had missed so many milestones. The first time I saw him scurry up a flight of stairs, I nearly had a heart attack. He’d been doing it effortlessly for weeks, but I didn’t know that—I wasn’t around.

  Jesse’s greatest connection to me as a father was seeing me on television. Suzette would have MTV on all day (back when it really was music television), listening to the music in the background, and when one of my songs would start to play, she and Jesse would rush in to “see Daddy.” Suzette told me how he’d get so excited to see me as she screamed, “It’s Daddy! It’s Daddy!” Hearing that would make me smile but break my heart just a bit. I guess that’s “the price you gotta pay.” There’s that damn song again.

  During these hectic times, Suzette stayed home and took care of Jesse, or they headed down to Florida and lived with her family. We finally had the money for my wife and son to visit me on the road, but it was the last place Suzette wanted to be. All I did was hide in my hotel room, on the bus, or in my dressing room. I would never go out, not even for a meal. I traveled the world and never saw a thing. Part of this was because I wanted to experience world travel for the “first time” with Suzette. I just didn’t feel right going out and having a great time without my wife and son.

  The other part of my reclusive behavior? I was completely hung up on being recognized and hounded by fans. Funny, isn’t that what I wanted all along?

  Not that I was all that much more fun and adventurous when I was home. I never wanted to leave the house. For three or four years we hardly ever went out (except for local shopping). No movies, no amusement parks, no vacations . . . nothing. I remember the one time, during the heyday, Suzette convinced me to go to a movie. . . .

  We went to one of the only single (non-multiplex) movie houses left at that time on Long Island, figuring there would be less people to potentially recognize me. While Suzette got the tickets, I hid in the car, waiting for the line to die down and the houselights to go off so I could sneak in unnoticed. On Suzette’s cue I rushed into the theater looking like the Unabomber, wearing sunglasses, a hood pulled up over my hair and head and hiding my face (not too suspicious). Suzette and I slipped into the dark theater and sat down . . . just in time for the We’re Not Gonna Take It video to start playing on the big screen. Are you fucking kidding me!? A rock video was being shown before the feature!? That speaks to the popularity of the band and the video, but it was the last time we went to the movies for a long time.

  Living with this celebrity wasn’t easy.

  I’m sure this doesn’t sound like a big deal to you. It probably even sounds cool. A good friend of mine, Cooch, once said if he was me, he would announce that he was Dee Snider everywhere he went. Yeah, that’s what I thought before I became a celebrity, too. Cooch just couldn’t understand my reluctance to be recognized. I can’t either. I think it was a combination of wan
ting to be able to devote myself totally to my family when I was with them, along with my need to always be “the rock star” for my fans. I didn’t want to disappoint them. Does that make any sense at all? I think another part was that I just liked being so famous I had to hide. For what it’s worth, I handle celebrity a lot better now.

  AFTER THE DIO TOUR, we hit the road with Y&T. A couple of memorable things happened to me during our run. Both were on the West Coast, one bad and one good. Bad first.

  Y&T opened for Twisted Sister on all of the shows, except in Northern California, where they headlined. Like Twisted, Y&T had been around for quite a while and had a huge home following. It only made sense that we open for them at those shows. At one Bay Area show, some piece-of-shit Y&T fan (no reflection on the band—they are great guys) started throwing large metal bolts at us, with force. I’m talking three-inch-long, three-quarter-inch-diameter pieces of steel thrown like a baseball pitch. These things were positively lethal and damaged everything they hit. As usual, due to the lights in our eyes, we could not see them coming until the last second.

  I tried everything to locate and call out our cowardly assailant. About halfway through the set I took one of the bolts hard in the ribs, and that was it. I couldn’t take a chance of somebody in the band or the crew being hit in the face or the head. For the first time in the history of the band, we didn’t finish our set and left the stage. I was furious.

  Later I realized what I should have done: played with the house-lights on. We’d done it before for other, less threatening reasons. I would have been able to see who was throwing the bolts at the band—if he had the balls to throw them with the lights on—and kicked his ass. Well, my bodyguard would have kicked his ass—since I wasn’t allowed to do that anymore. To this day, it bugs the hell out of me that I allowed myself and the band to be driven off the stage by some chickenshit asshole!

  Now on to a much better memory.

  Alice Cooper is a major influence on me. Coming to truly appreciate the original Alice Cooper band and Alice’s vocal “attitude” was one of the last pieces in defining the rock singer and performer I would become (the final piece was Bon Scott and AC/DC). Looking at the way Alice and I perform, we are nothing alike. That’s because I only had photographs of the band to work off of. In the sixties and seventies there were no videos or DVDs of concerts to watch, and I never got to see the band live. I developed my stage performance the way I thought Alice Cooper would perform. Imagine my surprise when I finally saw him onstage when we toured together in 2005! Vocally I’m sort of the upper octave of Alice (as exemplified on our duet of “Be Chrool to Your Scuel”).

  In the early eighties, Alice Cooper’s career couldn’t have been more dead. He’d struggled with alcohol and drug addiction and had a series of poorly received records. Saying you were an Alice Cooper fan was not cool . . . but I didn’t care. This man and his original band had inspired and defined who I was as a recording artist and a performer, and I owed them nothing but respect and admiration. I continually told the world how I felt about Alice Cooper and his original band . . . and they appreciated it.1

  At one of the Twisted Sister shows with Y&T on the West Coast, an unusual floral arrangement was delivered to my dressing room. It consisted of dead, black roses, a small, gnarled tree branch, and an Alice Cooper comic. Along with it was a note from the man himself, thanking me for my unflagging support and telling me he was coming to one of the shows to see the band and meet me. I was blown away!

  I’d always thought that of all the rock stars I worshipped, Alice and I would get along. Something in his lyrics and general attitude—and his love of show tunes—told me we would one day become friends. And here was my hero reaching out to me!

  I don’t remember the exact date Alice came to see the band, but it was like meeting a kindred spirit. Alice is an incredibly affable guy who has been friends with some of the most legendary people in the art, film, and music worlds. Everyone feels they connect with Alice. I guess that’s part of his charm. Yet I wonder, who really is Alice Cooper’s friend? To quote Inspector Clouseau in A Shot in the Dark, “I suspect everyone . . . and I suspect no one.”

  Physically, he was a lot smaller and frailer than I thought he’d be. Not that he’s tiny. I guess everyone views his or her heroes as being larger-than-life. Besides, he came across as such a creature in photos. Monsters are supposed to be big and scary, aren’t they? This said, the most constant comment I hear when fans meet me is they didn’t think I would be so big. Which kind of contradicts my thinking. Still, getting to meet and know the man is a childhood dream come true. Not many things affect me like that.

  THE DECADE OF DECADENCE didn’t just happen on a whim. Like all things, it was the effect of a significant cause . . . the Reagan Era. When Ronald Reagan was elected president, the country took a sudden, wildly conservative turn. I now know the ultraconservative element never goes away, only lies in wait for its opportunity to pounce, but back then it felt as if it sprang out of nowhere. Add to that, thanks to Reagan’s ill-fated concept of trickle-down economics (George Bush Sr. took it on the chin for that brain fart), the economy got a steroid shot in the arm and money flowed (until the economy stopped doing the ’roids). Those were exciting times.

  But for every action there is an equal (or sometimes stronger) reaction, and the more conservative mainstream America got, the more flagrantly the youth wanted to disregard it. It was a perfect storm. Never was there a form of music more steeped in wretched excess, over-the-top behavior, and hedonism than what became known as hair metal. It was just what the rock ’n’ roll doctor ordered. To once again paraphrase the movie Animal House, Reagan Era conservatism called for a really stupid gesture on somebody’s part . . . and eighties rockers were just the guys and girls to do it!

  People often ask me what I think of current trends in music, and for the past twenty-five years or so I’ve said the same thing: “Not enough middle finger.” Since my heyday, I’ve liked a lot of contemporary heavy music. I even liked grunge—the hair-metal slayer—but in the 1990s and 2000s—and even still today—there’s just too much whining and complaining about how life sucks, and not enough middle finger. B in the D (back in the day) we didn’t complain about stuff, we railed against it, and if we couldn’t do anything about it, we shook our “junk” in its face. That was the youth attitude of the time, and eighties metal bands exemplified that fuck-you state of mind. We weren’t gonna take it! (See how that works?)

  Though woefully misunderstood, Twisted Sister was the visual and musical embodiment of what the kids wanted and everything conservative America feared—in-your-face, outrageous, rebellious behavior. We were a threat to every value they stood for . . . or so they thought.

  BY THE FALL OF 1984, a change had happened to Twisted Sister’s following that we weren’t yet fully aware of. We had gone from being the scourge of society—a true underground phenomenon—to “pop rock stars” seemingly overnight. Thanks to the wild success of our videos and the catchiness of our singles, our audience had expanded and attracted mainstream rock fans and a lot of younger kids. The range of a typical Twisted Sister audience now went from hard-core high-school- and college-age metal fans to their younger brothers and sisters, some of who didn’t even like heavy metal. Houston . . . we have a problem.

  Speaking of Houston, Twisted Sister was on the road again in the South and Southwest, and the turnouts were huge. We were a bona fide sensation. While our audience may have been broadening, as a band we had not changed one iota. With our heads down and still putting our shoulders into it, we were giving our fans the same anger-fueled, profanity-laced live show we’d been giving since our days in the biker bars of Long Island. We were anything but mainstream.

  Twisted Sister’s October 6 concert, at the Civic Center Arena in Amarillo, Texas, was like any other. An aggressive, obscenity-filled, headbanging frenzy for a packed house of rabid SMFs . . . and moms and dads escorting their teenage and preteen children. Uh-oh. Toward t
he end of the show, I got into a confrontation with some hater in the crowd and verbally went off on him in typical Dee Snider style. Nothing out of the ordinary for a Twisted Sister show. The phalanx of Amarillo police waiting for me when I got off the stage, however . . . that was different.

  Apparently, one of the parents in the audience, escorting her fourteen-year-old daughter to the show (commendable), had filed charges against me for my obscene language, and I was being arrested. When my tour manager inquired what exactly I had said that upset her, he was informed that the phrase “suck my muthafuckin’ dick” had pushed her over the top. I had said it to that guy who was harassing me.

  To put this in perspective, I open every show with “If you’re ready to kick some ass, we are Twisted fuckin’ Sister!” This woman sat through over an hour of profanity that would have given Richard Pryor, in his prime, a run for his money, then she decided to press charges? Nice parenting, Mom.

  The Amarillo police were kind enough—and wise enough—to allow me to change out of my stage costume and makeup before taking me downtown. They didn’t want a scene. I got a bit of verbal harassment from them while I changed, but they stopped once I told them my father was a cop. Once I was in my “street clothes,” they slipped me out of the building hoping none of our fans would notice. For the most part they didn’t. At the precinct, I was booked on charges of “profane and abusive language,” fingerprinted, photographed (can I get a few of those in wallet size?), and released on $75 bail. Seventy-five dollars! What the hell kind of bail was that!? I’m a bad man!2

  My arrest made news all over the world. But it wasn’t until we got to the next venue that the seriousness of what had happened the night before hit us.