Shut Up and Give Me the Mic (29 page)

In the short time I got to hang with Fast Eddie, I shared with him my thoughts on how the press were manipulating the feud between him and Motörhead’s singer/bass player Lemmy Kilmister. I told him how his relationship with Motörhead was like a marriage. They had some amazing years together, and even though they didn’t get along now, it couldn’t change the time they shared and what they had achieved.

What a pushy ass I was! Who was I to lecture him on anything? I would find out for myself, in just a few short years, how difficult it was to keep a positive attitude about your band members after you broke up. Did I mention I was an ass?

The track turned out great, and Fast Eddie became a friend of the band’s for life. We would see him again soon enough, but not before we met the remaining members of Motörhead in a way-more-intense environment.

WHILE WE WORKED TO
finish our first album, the
Ruff Cutts
EP was being readied for release in early August. It would contain two Eddie Kramer–produced tracks, “Under the Blade” and “Leader of the Pack,” and two self-produced songs from our last demo: our longtime show opener, “What You Don’t Know (Sure Can Hurt You),”
³
and “Shoot ’Em Down.” But before either of these records would hit the stores, Twisted Sister was offered an opportunity that would become one of the pivotal moments—
if not thee pivotal moment
—of our career.

Motörhead was returning to the UK after their worldwide
Iron Fist
tour and headlining a heavy metal festival at the football stadium in Wrexham, North Wales. Their manager, Doug Smith, had been helping our manager with Twisted Sister’s logistics in the UK and offered us a slot on the bill. Not just any slot, but the “special guest” slot . . .
third on an eight-band bill.
Twisted Sister readily accepted our first chance to perform for a British audience, after months of hype in the local rock press.

Our guardian angel, Pete Way, couldn’t come with us to the show, so he called one of his mates who was going to be there. Pete told him that we were a great bunch of guys and he should watch out for us. That mate? The original pirate of rock ’n’ roll—headliner Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead.

When we arrived at the stadium, the true reality of what we were undertaking began to set in. On a bill filled with bands with records in the stores, Twisted Sister had none. Nobody in this country had even heard one of our songs or even seen us perform, for that matter. Add to that, makeup-wearing bands were not only nonexistent but completely unacceptable to English metal fans. Any band that showed even a hint of glam had been brutalized by the notoriously hostile British metal fans. The Canadian metal band Anvil had been given the nickname Canvil after they were bottled off the stage because lead singer/guitarist Lips wore fishnet “sleevelets.” The band
Girl (first recording band of Phil Collen from Def Leppard and Phil Lewis from L.A. Guns) were pounded mercilessly at a festival for wearing a hint of makeup. Wait until they got a load of us!

As we looked out at the gathering crowd of metalheads in the stadium, things went from bad to worse. Motörhead’s fans were some of the nastiest and ugliest-looking muthafuckers we’d ever seen, and the few female fans they had . . . well, let’s just say you’d rather have sex with one of the guys!

To top it all off, the second band on the bill, Budgie, canceled at the last minute, pushing us up to the number two slot, right before Motörhead. Then we found out we’d be going on before sundown.

Because of people’s often negative reaction to Twisted Sister’s appearance, I had written “What You Don’t Know (Sure Can Hurt You)” to open our shows. The only song I’ve ever written to fit a stage-lighting plot, the idea was for the band to be lit only in silhouette for the first third of it. This would give the audience a chance to hear us,
before they saw what we looked like.
The song had always been effective, and we’d get a strong reaction when the front lights finally came on, revealing our “unique” appearance. The key to the success of the song was that the stage and the band would start out almost totally in the dark. Twisted Sister had never performed in the daylight, and we were terrified of what might happen with Motörhead’s audience.

The band gathered in our dressing room to discuss a plan of action. We’d been warned about the potential reaction to how we looked and we were freaking out. Our first UK performance might well be our last. I don’t remember whose idea it was, but somebody suggested that we not wear our makeup and costumes for the first time in our career.
⁴
This was met with a pretty enthusiastic response from most of the jittery band members. Not me. I told the band that I was as afraid of going onstage that day as they were, but I hadn’t come this far, looking the way I did, to back down now. It had not been an easy road for us; I had been in a lot of scrapes and altercations
because of our image. If I was going to take the costumes and makeup off for fear of a negative audience reaction, I would have done it a long time ago.

While the band did wear their makeup and costumes that day, some of them wore their Twisted Sister denim vests over their stage clothes and sunglasses covering their eye makeup.
⁵
Not me.

As we stood in our dressing room nervously debating what we were going to do, Lemmy Kilmister passed our open door. I’ve always joked that Lemmy stopped and came in because he knew the smell of human excrement (from us shitting in our pants), and it was wafting out into the hall. Whatever the reason, he did come in and made an unsolicited proposition that blew us all away.
Lemmy offered to introduce the band.

I’m sure the magnitude of this gesture is not being fully appreciated by most of you. Motörhead were the headliner. Traditionally, the top dogs don’t even make their presence known to the bands backstage, let alone let the audience see them before their own set. It kills the suspense. Fans wait ravenously all day for their heroes to finally come forth, in that mind-blowing first moment of the concert. For the front man to walk out onstage, without an introduction, before his or her show is unheard of.
Let alone to help out an unknown band that the artist has no affiliation with!
To this day, I am still not sure why Lemmy showed us this kindness. It’s probably just the way he is wired and one of the reasons he is so beloved. He may be a pirate, but he’s a benevolent pirate.

When it was finally time for our set, we solemnly walked the
long
stadium hallway leading to the stage, heading to our doom. The end of our intro tape (AC/DC’s “It’s a Long Way to the Top [If You Wanna Rock ’n’ Roll]”) played, and the band walked out onto the stage. The instant the British fans saw us, they began to react hostilely. Before we had played our first note, arms throughout the crowd were cocked to throw bottles, cans, and more at us . . .
then Lemmy Kilmister walked onstage.
The crowd was shocked to see him and froze midthrow. Lemmy’s voice is notoriously unintelligible
to untrained—especially, not British—ears, but his fans heard exactly what he said.

“These are some friends of mine from America.
Give ’em a listen
.”

That was all it took. A dozen hoarse words from a U.K. rock god and Twisted Sister was given some blessed breathing room to prove our worth. We launched into a blistering set of what we did best, but with one caveat. Over the years, I’d slowly been losing the more campy elements of my live performances. The more I discovered my inner badass—and realized that
pretty boy
were two words that would never be used to describe me—the Frank-N-Furter trappings of the early Twisted Sister years had gradually disappeared. On that day, during that performance, in front of that crowd, the last vestiges of camp went completely out the window, and I fully released my true inner monster . . .
and I never looked back.
The ovation from the Motörhead stadium crowd was staggering, and when we finally left the stage, we knew the Demolition Squad had done it again.

Ten minutes
after our set was over, we were sitting in our dressing room, cooling down, feeling good about what we had done, laughing and making a lot of noise. At first, I thought I heard thunder. Oh, shit! Was it going to rain? But the thunder was rhythmic . . . and there were voices. Joe Gerber told everyone to quiet down, and it all became clear.

“Twisted! [STOMP-STOMP!] Sister! [STOMP-STOMP!] Twisted! [STOMP-STOMP!] Sister! [STOMP-STOMP!] Twisted! [STOMP-STOMP!] Sister! [STOMP-STOMP!]”

We could hear the crowd still chanting for more!
This was the greatest ovation of our careers!
What I’m about to tell you next is a violation of trust, but I won’t mention the person’s name, and I think thirty years is the statute of limitations on something like this. Someone from the Motörhead camp came to me and said they overheard Lemmy saying “This is the first time I’ve ever been afraid to go on after a band.” I couldn’t believe it.
No way.
This was Motör-head.
Impossible.
The door to our dressing room opened and in walked Lemmy. He came straight up to me and said, “I introduced your band . . .
now you introduce mine
.” Holy shit! Me introduce Motörhead at
their
headline stadium show?!

And that’s just what I did. I walked out onto the stage, and the crowd went absolutely mad. Twisted Sister had won over their little,
black heavy-metal hearts. I introduced Motörhead, then went to the side of the stage and headbanged to every song along with all the other fans. Halfway through their set, Lemmy turns, points to me, and says, “This one’s for him. It’s called ‘America.’ ” For me?! The crowd cheered and Motörhead roared into the song.

A day that had started out as a nightmare had turned into an incredible dream. After six and a half years, five guys from the New York area—led by a rube from Long Island—had arrived. I will always be grateful and have nothing but love for Lemmy Kilmister and the kindness he showed my band and me that day. If he had not done what he did, there could have been a very different outcome, and our career might have ended before it began.

23

F
lying high after our slam-dunk performance at Wrexham, we headed back to London to mix our album at Whitehouse Studios and take photos for the album cover.

Originally, the record was going to be called
You Can’t Stop Rock ’n’ Roll
(after our song of the same name), but Secret Records’ president, Martin Hooker, had a change of heart. For some reason, at that time, songs and album titles with the words
rock ’n’ roll
in them were out of vogue in the UK. Hooker was fearful that Twisted Sister’s first record would be rejected before it even got out of the gate. With that kind of overly cautious approach, I’m surprised he didn’t ask us to change our name. As that time, it was oft noted by rock critics that bands whose name began with the letter “T” (Tank, Terraplane, Tygers of Pan Tang) were doomed to fail. Be that as it may, “You Can’t Stop Rock ’n’ Roll” was removed from the track list, and
Under the Blade
chosen as our new album title. Why? Because it was one of our most sound-defining songs, a fan favorite . . . and fucking metal!

The idea for the cover art came from the photographer (I think). When we arrived at the studio, a backdrop, with a swinging axe painted on it, was already hanging for us to throw shapes in front of. The guys posed intensely and I did my (new) thing for the camera. Fresh off my performing revelation at the Motörhead festival, I
now knew exactly what my audience wanted and I gave it to them. I was a full-on rock ’n’ roll monster.