Shut Up and Give Me the Mic (14 page)

I had been close with an Italian family named DiBenadetto in Baldwin. Anthony “Nino” DiBenadetto was the drum roadie for Harlequin and the drummer in my band Heathen. I had known his brother Sal, a local rock photographer, from high school. I loved the passion of the DiBenadetto family, the closeness, the support . . . and the food. There was no place like the DiBenadettos’ for a starving musician. There was always something delicious to eat and a great vibe. Best of all, I always felt like a part of the family. But that’s the Italian way.

I promised myself I would find a beautiful Italian girl and bring the Italian-family energy and traditions into my life through “application,” if you get my double entendre. Suzette’s last name turned out to be Gargiulo. It doesn’t get much more Italian than that. Bada bing, bada boom!

I drove Suzette home from the club after our show that night in the band equipment van and kissed her for the first time, sealing the deal . . .
or at least I thought
.

After seeing Suzette at the club that night, the whole age issue completely went away, for me at least. The reason fifteen-year-old girls were raising families in ancient Rome was because they looked like Suzette! Nothing was going to stop me from making her mine. A week later, we planned to go on our first official date.

WHILE AT THE TIME
I could see nothing wrong with twenty-one-year-old me dating fifteen-year-old Suzette, as I sit here writing, with a fifteen-year-old daughter . . . I see everything wrong with it! Sure, Suzette and I have had a pretty legendary love affair, done great things together, raised an amazing family, and stayed together through the best and worst of times, but if some twenty-one-year-old dude who looks like me thinks he’s going to roll up to my front door to pick up my hot, fifteen-year-old daughter, he’s going to meet the guy on the cover of Twisted Sister’s
Stay Hungry
album cover, full-on. It ain’t happening! Fortunately for me, Suzette’s family gave me a chance . . . sort of.

Our date night finally came and I headed over to Suzette’s house to pick her up, dressed to the nines before going there, I had done something I’d done for no other girl: I got my hair trimmed. I must have been in love!

Finding Suzette’s house again wasn’t a problem. Since dropping her off after the club, I had driven to her house, unbeknownst to her, a few times to commit its location to memory and in hopes of just getting a glimpse of her outside. I know that sounds insane and stalkerish. It is. But when I say meeting Suzette was life-changing, I mean it. I was absolutely obsessed.

I arrived that Sunday evening and strode up to the front door in my rock ’n’ roll finest: six-inch, “chocolate-layered” with pink stripe, stack-heeled platform shoes; a short, tight blue-denim-and-black-velvet jacket; and baby-blue, bell-bottom jeans so tight you could tell I was circumcised. What was I thinking!?

Suzette answered the door, blushing profusely (I had no clue she was embarrassed by me), and brought me in to meet her family.

In many Italian families, Sunday is “Sauce Sunday,” meaning a pot of meat sauce is made (an all-day process) and the entire family
gets together for dinner. Suzette brought me into the formal dining room to meet the adults. Suzette’s mom, her mom’s goombah boyfriend, Tony (Suzette’s parents were divorced), her aunt Ruthie, her aunt Annie, and neighbor Betty were all there having coffee and Italian pastries. I could hear
The Godfather
theme playing (in my mind). Introductions were made, then Suzette brought me into the kitchen to meet her two younger wild animals—I mean, brothers—Vinny and Billy, and younger sister, Roseanne. Several older and younger cousins were there as well, along with a couple of Suzette’s friends, all part of the weekly Sauce Sunday gathering. I was introduced, small talk and joking ensued . . . then I was asked to return to the dining room. No problem. I had always done great with parents.

For some reason Suzette opted to stay with her cousins, so I went in on my own. I sat down at the table and shared pleasantries with Suzette’s beautiful mom, Jeanette,
²
the aunts, neighbor, and Suzette’s mom’s boyfriend. The weather, movies, food, and more were discussed at length, until I realized that one by one all the women were stepping out of the room, leaving me alone with Big Tony the Goombah! Midsentence, he cuts me off.

“What do you want with a fifteen-year-old girl?” he growled.

I couldn’t tell him what I really wanted (what
any guy
would want). “Well, you see, Suzette is mature for her age and I’m immature for mine, and, like, we kind of meet in the mid—”

“Cut the shit!” he barked. I did, and he continued, “If you lay one hand on her, this
family
will hunt you down to the four corners of the earth and put you in the bottom of a lake. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”

I remember thinking,
Snider, you have really gotten yourself into it now.
But I was too head over heels for Suzette to let even that put me off. Just about then it did dawn on me that baby-blue jeans might not have been the best choice. The fast-spreading, dark blue spot where I had wet myself was starting to show. I was scared, but I still answered, “Yes, sir.” My lot was cast. There was no turning back.

With that, the ladies of Suzette’s family all came back into the room as if they’d been hovering outside.

“Did you have a nice talk?” one of them inquired.

“Yes,” replied the goombah. “We understand each other now.”

And we did.

Suzette had no idea about what was said to me that night. She was mortified when she found out, but it did explain the arm’s-length distance I kept from her on our entire, uncomfortable first date . . . and for many dates after. I did not want a pair of cement platform shoes, but even the threat of them couldn’t keep me away.

9

O
ver the next few months, the new and improved Twisted Sister started to come together. I say
started
because I feel that we were constantly mutating and developing. We always had the master plan in place, but we were forever modifying, refining, and adjusting.

The tristate club scene was just a necessary means to an end. Given the choice of having day jobs and working on our music careers at night in some rehearsal studio, we opted to make our living as a cover band, develop our performing and playing chops as we did, and focus on our original music on our two days off each week. At least the first two parts of that plan worked smoothly.

Our CTA booking agent, Kevin Brenner, started calling us the Demolition Squad because no matter whom he booked us to open up for, we ultimately would dominate, steal their crowd, and blow them away. Soon no bands wanted us to open for them. We didn’t fight fair. From day one, Twisted Sister believed in winning at any cost, and we were not ashamed to use every cheap trick in the book. While other bands focused on musical virtuosity, we gave the drunk, stoned, desperate-for-a-good-time, young rock audience exactly what they wanted every night . . . a riotous party.

I remember the night the truth of live performing fully hit me. We had been working our asses off for weeks, and screaming my lungs out every night in smoke-filled clubs had finally caught up with me. We were playing a club in East Quogue, Long Island, called the
Mad, Mad Hatter on a Saturday night. Saturdays were always the best night of the week to play, and the place was crowded. We hit the stage and I started to sing our opening song, only to find that I had a five-note range (instead of my usual twenty-four-to-thirty-two-note range). I couldn’t sing!

I turned to Jay Jay with a “What the hell am I gonna do?” look on my face. It was the first song of the night! I had at least thirty more to go! Jay Jay shrugged; he didn’t have the answer. I couldn’t just stop and say, “Hey, folks, I can’t sing tonight, sorry.” So I did the only thing I could think of . . . I went fucking nuts! Up until that night I had always been a mover, but now I took it to a whole new level,
and the audience loved it!
They didn’t care that I couldn’t sing for shit, as long as I could rock, and that I did!

DEE LIFE LESSON

The show always comes first; accuracy and quality a distant second. You can always play and sound good on your records.

I guess this is a lesson Led Zep had already learned.

Meanwhile, things had gone from bad to worse for Suzette and me. By worse I mean I was more obsessed than ever. She was pretty much all I could think about. Every spare moment I had was spent on the phone with her or going to see her. I listened to songs like “She’s the One” by Bruce Springsteen and “I Wish I Was Your Mother” by Mott the Hoople over and over because they reminded me of her. When she came to shows to see me, I couldn’t stop looking at her. I would make her sit near the stage just so I could keep an eye on her; I was sure somebody else was going to come along and take her away. I was a jealous maniac.

And speaking of coming to shows, Suzette was now coming with me to virtually every gig, five nights a week. She was fifteen and still in high school!

If you are wondering how her parents let this happen, so am I. I’ve given a lot of thought to it. Putting the cosmic “we were meant
to be together” (which we were) shit aside, I showed up at a transitional time in the Gargiulo household. Suzette’s parents were divorced; her dad lived a couple of hours away. He came by faithfully every weekend to take his kids out and give them the weekly child-support check, but he never came in the house (at that time the divorced couple weren’t getting along) and didn’t want to know what was going on there. Each week he and the kids would go to dinner and a movie, and then he’d take them home.