Shut Up and Give Me the Mic

by Dee Snider

  By the way, I am very pleased to note that the United Way of America has been granted a request to use portions of our We’re Not Gonna Take It video in a program they are producing on the subject of the changing American family. They asked for it because of its “light-hearted way of talking about communicating with teenagers.”

  ACCUSATION NO. 3

  Last Tuesday a public forum regarding the lyric controversy was held in New York. Among the panelists was Ms. Gore. Trying to stem the virtual tidal wave of anti-ratings sentiment coming from the audience, Ms. Gore made the following statement: “I agree this is a small percentage of all music, thank goodness. But it is becoming more mainstream. You look at even the T-shirts that kids wear and you see Twisted Sister and a woman in handcuffs sort of spread-eagled.” This is an outright lie. Not only have we never sold a shirt of this type, we have always taken great pains to steer clear of sexism in our merchandise, records, stage show, and personal lives. Furthermore, we have always promoted the belief that rock ’n’ roll should not be sexist, but should cater to males and females equally. I feel that an accusation of this type is irresponsible, damaging to our reputation, and slanderous. I defy Ms. Gore to produce such a shirt to back up her claim. I am tired of running into kids on the street who tell me that they cannot play our records anymore because of the misinformation their parents are being fed by the PMRC on TV and in the newspapers.

  These are the only three accusations I have come across. All three are totally unfounded. Who knows what other false and irresponsible things may have been said about my band or me. There happens to be one area where I am in complete agreement with the PMRC, as well as the National PTA and probably most of the parents on this committee. That is, it is my job as a parent to monitor what my children see, hear, and read during their preteen years. The full responsibility for this falls on the shoulders of my wife and I, because there is no one else capable of making these judgments for us. Parents can thank the PMRC for reminding them that there is no substitute for parental guidance. But that is where the PMRC’s job ends.

  The beauty of literature, poetry, and music is that they leave room for the audience to put its own imagination, experiences, and dreams into the words. The examples I cited earlier showed clear evidence of Twisted Sister’s music being completely misinterpreted and unfairly judged by supposedly well-informed adults. We cannot allow this to continue. There is no authority that has the right or the necessary insight to make these judgments, not myself, not the federal government, not some recording industry committee, not the PTA, not the RIAA, and certainly not the PMRC. I would like to thank the committee for this time, and I hope my testimony will aid you in clearing up this issue.

  My speech stunned everyone. Could what I was saying possibly be true? “We’re Not Gonna Take It” wasn’t about violence? “Under the Blade” wasn’t about sadomasochism and bondage? No drugs? No alcohol? Married with a son? A Christian? Who the hell was this freak?!

  The questions from the senators followed, and thanks to all my prep work with Joe, I handled them with aplomb. My favorite—and most telling—moment was when the chairman of the committee, Senator Danforth, said to me after my speech, “Mr. Snider, let us suppose that there is music which, say, glorifies incest; not yours . . .”

  Victory!

  Then, the moment I had waited for came. It was Senator Gore’s turn at bat.

  Before he could utter a word I fired a shot across his bow: “Excuse me. Are you going to tell me you are a big fan of my music as well?”

  The entire gallery and all the senators laughed at my dig at the ass-kisser.

  Gore was furious. “No, I am not a fan of your music.” Without wasting a moment, Al went in for the kill. “Mr. Snider, what is the name of your fan club?”

  Joe and I had rehearsed this one to death. “The fan club is called the SMF Friends of Twisted Sister.”

  Senator Gore was so excited. He had me now. “And what does SMF stand for when it is spelled out?”

  Joe and I had discussed that there was no way around this question, so I took the opportunity to say the F-word, in a federal building, in front of the entire world. Pretty cool when you think about it.

  “It stands for the Sick Mutha Fucking Friends of Twisted Sister.”

  “Is this also a Christian group?” Mr. High-and-Mighty retorted.

  That really pissed me off. I hate people with a holier-than-thou attitude. Like he doesn’t curse? In the immortal words of the late Redd Foxx, “If you say you don’t curse, come outside with me and I’ll slam your hand in a car door. You’ll say shit, cocksucker, and muthafucker!”

  Controlling my anger, I said to Gore, with a hair toss heard around the world, “I do not believe profanity has anything to do with Christianity. Thank you.” Asshole.

  We went back and forth for a while, with Gore trying to defend the honor of his wife. Tipper needed to get some honor before he could defend it! When the debate came to the apparently crazy idea I had offered up of parents taking responsibility for what their kids listen to, Al and I had this little exchange:

  “Let us suppose the lyrics are not printed,” asked Senator Gore. “Then what choice does a parent have? To sit down and listen to every song on the album?”

  “Well, if they are really concerned about it, I think that they have to.”

  In utter disbelief at my suggestion, Gore responded, “Do you think it is reasonable to expect parents to do that?”

  This was too easy. “Being a parent is not a reasonable thing,” I answered, and the entire room gave a collective Whoa!

  Schooled!

  Next up at bat for the Washington, DC, Senators . . . Jay Rockefeller. Oh, a dirtbag was going to mix it up with an elitist snob! The piece of crap went right for my throat: “In the vehemence with which you attacked Senator Gore’s wife, I detected a defensiveness somehow on your part, a lack of assuredness on where you stand on this.”

  Joe and I had wanted this issue to be brought up. The incestuousness of the whole PMRC/Senate hearing thing was almost too much to bear. We wanted to make a point of it, and ol’ Fancy Pants set it up perfectly.

  “First of all, I was not attacking Senator Gore’s wife,” I responded. “I was attacking a member of the PMRC.”

  “You were attacking Senator Gore’s wife by name,” Rockefeller answered.

  “Her name is Tipper Gore, is it not?” Apparently he’d forgotten. “I did not say the senator’s wife. I said Tipper Gore.”

  Game. Set. Match.

  At the end of my testimony, I exited the room and a reporter stuck a microphone in my face. “Dee, how do you feel?”

  Without even thinking I responded, “Dirty.”

  That was the truth. I was born in the fifties and grew up in the sixties and seventies. I was raised believing Washington, DC, was sort of like Oz; a beautiful, special place where great people watched out for our better interest and did great things. Sure I had lived through Watergate, the Iran-contra scandal, and the election of a B-movie actor and Joe McCarthy/House Un-American Activities Committee rat to the highest office in our country, but I still hung on to a childish belief that some good people were still working for us. Not anymore. Sitting face-to-face with those personal-agenda-driven opportunists, they beat the last bit of hope out of me.

  Don’t get me wrong. I’m not anti-American by any means. It’s just that I now know politics is a dirty, ugly, selfish business and no place for a fair, honest, decent man. People have often asked me if I would ever consider going into politics. Not a chance. I’m too honorable to survive.

  After a press conference—where I served pizza and soda—I flew back home that afternoon. It was Jesse’s third birthday and I returned feeling I had set out to do something truly positive, for an important cause, and I had kicked ass. I had represented the music I love and fought successfully against unfair negativity toward it, and looking at the big picture, I’d stood up for the precious First Amendment rights of every American. Me—
a nobody from the suburbs of Long Island.

  MY ELATION WAS SHORT-LIVED. The minute I got home and turned on the television news, I was bombarded with misrepresentations of what had happened at the hearing that day. While Frank Zappa, John Denver, and I had kicked the collective ass of the PMRC and their pussy-whipped husbands, the daily news shows and newspapers reported the outcome as at best a draw for us and at worst the rockers had their asses handed to them. They were saying we had lost the debate.

  The ABC Nightly News, in a dazzling display of yellow journalism, took Senator Gorton’s comments about Zappa’s mocking of the Washington wives and paired them with video of me sitting there as if I were being lectured by him! Then they took my statement about “We’re Not Gonna Take It”—“You will note from the lyrics before you that there is absolutely no violence of any type either sung about or implied anywhere in the song”—edited out my words “you will note from the lyrics before you that,” and put it with the scene of the father being dragged down the stairs in the WNGTI video. Misrepresentation upon misrepresentation.

  What I realized too late is that the daily reporters’ livelihoods depend on their access to and relationships with the politicians and their people in Washington, DC. They know them all on a first-name basis; they can’t afford to compromise those relationships. No way was any daily reporter from our nation’s capital going to say that some dirtbag rocker came into town and outflanked seasoned politicians in their own backyard. Sure, the monthlies reported what really happened, but remember they have a three-month lead time. The truth didn’t come out until December. By that time, the damage was done and people’s perceptions were locked. It wouldn’t be until years later that Frank, John, and I would finally get the recognition and appreciation that we deserved for our efforts.

  To add insult to injury, where I thought I was leading the heavy metal community into battle on this important issue, I discovered that nobody joined me in the fight. I was left standing alone with my dick in my hand. For the most part, the other targeted bands lay low and went silent on the issue, waiting for the whole thing to blow over. Alice Cooper told me he thought I was crazy for even defending myself. He said, laughing, if it were him, he would have told the Senate committee it was all true and thrown himself on the mercy of the court. He’s a wise man.

  Ronnie Dio publicly berated me for having the gall to speak on behalf of the heavy metal community when I repeatedly stated that I could not speak for anyone but myself.1 But the capper came when I found out that, after publicly embarrassing US officials, my phones were tapped and my mail and packages were being checked by the Feds. I had become a public enemy because I stood up for myself.

  It didn’t stop there.

  Most rock fans were completely apathetic. They didn’t understand what the big deal was. So what if there’s a warning on the records? It would help them know which records were cool! They didn’t understand that any infringement on our First Amendment rights could open the door to greater, future censorship. They didn’t see how the warning label could (and would) be used to prevent them from knowing about and even having access to those “cool records.” Stores would eventually use the warning label as a way of segregating “offensive” recordings from the others. Some wouldn’t even put records with warning labels in the racks, others wouldn’t carry “stickered” albums, and still others would use their buying power to force labels to produce edited and censored versions specifically for their chains of stores. You heard me.

  This was serious shit, and the majority of the record-buying community just didn’t get it.

  As a result of the PMRC’s bashing, my testifying, and the news media’s rampant misrepresentation of what happened that day, Twisted Sister and I became the poster band/boy for everything that was wrong with heavy metal. When parents thought of the evils of the genre, they immediately flashed on my image. Twisted Sister became the band that parents used as their line in the sand with their kids. “Okay, son, you can have the Mötley Crüe record, but not that Twisted Sister one!” “Young lady, you can go see those Iron Maidens, but forget about seeing those Twisted Sisters!” The kids knew we were one of the least offensive of the metal bands—and our popularity was flagging—so they happily “sacrificed” us for the sake of the rest of their favorite bands.

  I remember meeting a kid after one of our Come Out and Play shows, which Dokken opened, and he was absolutely gushing about how Twisted Sister was his favorite band of all time, all the while wearing a brand-new Dokken shirt he had just bought from the merchandise stand. When I asked him why he didn’t buy a Twisted Shirt, he responded, “If my parents knew I was seeing you tonight, they’d kill me!” That’s just great.

  Even MTV used us as scapegoats to pacify “concerned parents.” After the poor initial showing for the Come Out and Play record and the video for “Leader of the Pack,” they decided to ban our “zombie rock” video for “Be Chrool to Your Scuel,” complete with cameos from Bob Goldthwait, Lainie Kazan, horror master Tom Savini, and Alice Cooper. They told us that the zombie content was “too gross” for MTV and absolutely no amount of editing would fix it. What?! It was no worse than Michael Jackson’s fourteen-minute, MTV Award–winning zombie opus for “Thriller,” but ours was unairable? Like the fans, MTV discovered that they could throw concerned parents a bone with Twisted Sister that would have little effect on their viewership. Scumbags.

  Click. Click. Click.

  Before our Come Out and Play album was even finished, the videos shot, or the world tour begun, all of the pieces were falling into place for a career implosion of epic proportions . . . and we never saw it coming.

  43

  what do you mean “nobody showed up?”

  In anticipation of the coming demand for Twisted Sister product, we decided to shoot our first two videos in advance and create a Come Out and Play home-video compilation that would include the “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and “I Wanna Rock” videos, all connected by a loose story line. This was yet another thing the band would have to finance.

  Once again teaming up with Marty Callner (why would we go anywhere else?), he and I set out to make more of the kind of videos the MTV audience had come to expect from Twisted Sister: laugh-filled, entertaining rock romps.

  For the first time, Marty let me handle the writing chores completely myself. Since my amazing experiences making the first two videos (I had little to do with the “The Price” video), I had decided to become a screenplay writer. I had no idea how to do it, but that had never stopped me before. I would figure it out. Clearly I had ideas people found interesting; I just needed to learn the proper way to present them to production companies and film studios. That said, I was more than prepared to write the next Twisted Sister video masterpieces.

  “Leader of the Pack” was going to be our first single and video. I was positive this was the track that would break down any barriers left for Twisted Sister and bring us to the level of Springsteen, Prince, and Madonna. No, I’m not kidding! I believed that I/we were the band that could bring metal to the mainstream.

  It should be noted that El Presidente of Atlantic Records was one of the few people who (openly) questioned my choice of this song. In a long phone conversation in which I refused to listen to any opinion but my own, he said to me, “This track will either make Twisted Sister the biggest band in the world, or it will kill your career.”

  Click.

  I assured my confused record company president there was nothing to worry about. Twisted Sister had been playing “Leader of the Pack” since our club days; it was on our earliest release, Ruff Cutts. Our core audience was guaranteed to love it. The original, Shangri-Las version was a bona fide, number one, worldwide megahit in 1964 and had stood the test of time. Virtually everyone was familiar with the Shangri-Las original. This was the track to lead with, I insisted. Just wait until he saw the video.

  Continuing with the idea of including movie icons as video guest stars, Marty and I came upon comedi
an Bob Goldthwait. Bob had just become a breakout star with his role as Zed in Police Academy 2 and was blowing up as a stand-up comic. An offer was made through his agents and he took the role. “Bobcat” and I quickly became close friends.

  The opening scene for Leader of the Pack was shot in a storefront, Halloween night, on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood—smack-dab in the middle of the annual Halloween Parade. Like the same parade in the West Village of New York, it is dominated by the local gay community, who let it all—sometimes literally—hang out. It’s a great time.

  I remember sitting inside a commercial van on the street outside the video location hiding from the throng of celebrators, with the doors open so I could still see what was going on, when a drag queen walking by spotted me, spun around, and started singing, “You’re gonna burn in hell!” Awesome! Wait . . . what?

  The connecting footage for all four videos was shot in Los Angeles at a torn-down steel mill where the “future world” scenes from the Terminator movie had been shot. It called for the reuniting of the featured actors in all three of our “acted-out” videos and the one to come. Dax Callner (the boy who transformed into me in We’re Not Gonna Take It), Bob Goldthwait (the shopkeeper in Leader of the Pack and soon-to-be teacher in Be Chrool to Your Scuel), and the fat kid (I wish I could remember his name!) from I Wanna Rock were all reunited.