Shut Up and Give Me the Mic (3 page)

D
id you see ’em last night?! Did you see ’em?!”

Russell Neiderman, the kid I despised most in our neighborhood, was brimming with uncharacteristic, nonconfrontational excitement. It was 8:00 a.m. Monday morning, and all the kids waiting at the bus stop in Freeport, Long Island, were abuzz.

“Did I see who?” I responded, confused by the neighborhood bully’s unusual enthusiasm.

“The Beatles!”

On February 9, 1964, four guys from Liverpool, England, lit up the country with their groundbreaking appearance on the original “Must See TV,”
The Ed Sullivan Show
. More than 70 million people tuned in to see the show that Sunday night, but I was apparently the only person who didn’t see it. Why? Because my father had banned television in our house. Earlier that year, my father proclaimed (conveniently after our television had broken) that we had all become obsessed with TV and were going to get back to basics: reading, playing board games, building models, etc.

On the upside, I was introduced to comic books and learned to build balsa planes from scratch. On the downside . . .
while rock ’n’ roll history was being made, I was building a fucking puzzle!

At the bus stop, I was more than a little confused by the fuss.
“The Whatles?”
I asked.

“The
Beat
les,” Neiderman emphatically corrected me. “They’re a rock ’n’ roll group. Everyone was screaming!”

That was all I needed to hear.

BORN ON MARCH 15
, 1955, in Astoria, Queens, New York (Not Austria!
Astoria
), I was the oldest of six children and the firstborn grandchild on my mother’s side of the family. From the day of my birth, and for a little more than a year afterward, I was the golden child. The center of attention and adoration, I could not have been more doted upon by my mother, father, grandparents, aunts and uncles . . . until the deluge began. My mother (and her siblings) started dropping babies as if it were a contest. My mom delivered six babies in eight years. I was not only quickly shoved aside for my more adorable and needy brothers and sister, but more and more expected to fend for myself.

At times, growing up in the Snider household was like living in a madhouse—especially when my father wasn’t around. I clearly remember one rainy day, looking at my mother holding a crying baby in each arm (Mark and Doug), my devilish, five-year-old brother, Frank, chasing my screaming, four-year-old brother, Matt, around her in circles, and my seven-year-old sister, Sue, complaining loudly about
something
. My mom looked as if she were about to lose her mind. That woman has earned every twitch and neurosis she has!

I went from being the center of attention to being “the oldest” before I was even aware of what had happened, but I still had a desperate need to be the epicenter. So when, at the ripe old age of almost nine, I heard the words “Everyone was screaming” spill from Russell Neiderman’s ofttimes foul mouth, I knew what I had to do. I announced to everyone at the bus stop, who I’m sure didn’t even listen, “I’m going to be a Beatle.” My die had been cast and I didn’t even have the slightest idea what a Beatle actually was!

I quickly found out the Beatles were a really cool-looking rock band who sang incredible songs. I couldn’t be an actual Beatle, but I could be in my own rock band and hopefully cause that same hysteria. I didn’t care about any of the trappings of rock stardom other
than the chance for me to once again be the golden child, the center of the universe. I was that desperate for attention. As it turned out, rock ’n’ roll stardom would be the only way I would get it.

My road to becoming a “rich, famous rock ’n’ roll star” was long and arduous. The childish ideas I had on what it took, compounded by my natural procrastinating tendencies, didn’t have me actually sinking my teeth into the real process of becoming a star until I was fifteen or sixteen. My elementary-school wannabe rock star buddies and I figured we would literally be discovered by some music impresario, à la Sonny Fox,
¹
then whisked away to record an album and be on TV. We didn’t play instruments, rehearse, have original songs, or anything! We were friggin’ idiots.

Along the way I did take some “baby steps.” I formed a number of “bands” in third and fourth grade, built solely around a kid I went to school with named Scott, who not only played guitar, but had an electric one and an amp. Our band was initially called Snider’s Spiders, playing off the Beatles’ “bug thing” and that my last name rhymes with
spider
. Great, right? It also foreshadowed the “spotlight hog” I was to become.

The name lasted all of a day or so, before the other guys in the “band” got hip and started wondering why
their
names weren’t being used.

Because your name didn’t rhyme with anything cool, Conway!

The extent of our band experience was hanging out in Scott’s room, singing Beatles songs, and acting cool while he played guitar. Hey, we were nine.

Occasionally, a bunch of us would get together and put on lip-synch shows for the neighborhood kids. We’d don our Sunday church clothes (contrary to popular belief, I’m not Jewish), put on readily available Beatles wigs (they were all the rage), use tennis rackets for guitars and overturned garbage cans for drums, stand atop a picnic table, and mouth Beatles songs played on a portable record player.

We were good, too. We’d charge two cents per kid (it was the sixties) to watch us do our thing. I remember one show we made
twenty-eight cents! That means fourteen neighborhood kids
paid
to see us. Not too shabby. I guess even then I could rock!

IN 1965, FACED WITH
the choice of putting an extension on our house to better fit our growing family or moving, my family opted for the latter, primarily because my parents hated the Neiderman family as much as I hated Russell. For the record, we weren’t the only ones. When the Neidermans finally moved out of the neighborhood years later, the entire block threw a going-away party . . . and didn’t invite the Neidermans. Oh, snap!

The Snider family made the big move to the next town over, Baldwin, Long Island. A definite step up for us, but still very much middle/lower-middle-class suburbia . . . and we didn’t really do much to class the place up. Besides that eight of us were bursting out of a four-bedroom house, my father had a unique view on suburban living.

An insurance salesman/state trooper, Dad once pulled over a guy illegally towing a car on the parkway and did him the favor of not giving him a ticket. Instead, he took the junker off the guy’s hands, promptly towed it to our house (illegally), and put it in the backyard “for the kids to play on.” The neighbors must have loved us (“Look, honey, we can see the Sniders’ junk car from our screen room”).

In my old elementary school, Bayview Avenue, I was a fairly cool, fairly popular, and fairly smart kid.
Fairly.
Unbeknownst to me, the Freeport school district was easy, and I effortlessly achieved good grades. When I was in fourth grade, my parents received a letter from the school stating, grade-wise, I was in the top 10 percent. My mom and dad were so proud, they took me to IHOP (a Snider-family favorite, then and now) for dinner
without
my brothers and sister (center of attention! center of attention!), then bought me the thing I wanted more than anything else in the world . . . a pair of Beatle boots. The shoes the Beatles wore had pointed toes with a Cuban heel (a style of shoe I still wear to this day). They were a bit pricey and “tough,” but I had earned them with my effortlessly achieved good grades.

My having those boots totally elevated my cool status. When I combined them with a black turtleneck shirt, relatively tight pants, and my faux-silver ID bracelet, I was really stylin’. What a tool.

Our move “up” to Baldwin was a rude awakening for me, yet another baby step toward the dysfunctional rocker I was to become. You see, being cool and popular as a kid works directly against the drive and motivation you need to become a rock star. You can’t be out partying, dating, and having a great time after school and on weekends. You need to be locked in your room, miserable and working on your craft.

The very first day of fifth grade in my new school, I fixed that.

I was dressed to impress. My mom always got us some new clothes for the start of the school year, and I was wearing the best I had. Resplendent in dark green pants, green button-down shirt (what was I, a leprechaun?) with a black turtleneck dickey underneath, and my Beatle boots, I was ready to take Shubert Elementary School by storm.

DEE LIFE LESSON

Never walk into a completely new environment as if you own the place. Take the time to get to know the lay of the land before you throw your weight around.

I walked into Mrs. Saltzman’s class with all the cool and attitude a new kid could muster. I knew I was really making points with my classmates, especially when I got in the face of this big, dumb guy who thought he was tough. Things quickly escalated, and the stage was set for a classic, after-school showdown: 3:00 p.m. at the flagpole!

For the rest of the day, I was the talk of the school. I was the cool (crazy?) new kid who had the guts to call out “Hammy.”

Unbeknownst to me, Robert “Hammy” Hemburger (what a horrible name) was the toughest kid in the school. Besides having kicked the asses of all comers over the years, his claim to fame was that when he was only eight years old, he picked up a cast-iron manhole cover to gain sewer access to retrieve a lost ball. This is the kid
physical equivalent of a grown man lifting a car! Unfortunately for Hammy, he crushed the tips of all his fingers while putting the manhole cover back in place. His fingers eventually healed, but they—and his fingernails—seemed to have a pronounced “smooshed” look to them.

The school day finally ended, and I strode out to the flagpole in my “Irish pride” outfit (no, I’m not Irish) to set this moron straight and cement my reputation in my new school. I cemented a reputation all right. Hammy
literally
picked me up and threw me against a brick wall. I’m sure some other things happened between my striding and being thrown, but for the life of me I can’t remember. I probably had a minor concussion.

The entire school was there to witness it (as is the case anytime the toughest guy in the school fights someone, especially an unknown new kid), and the only thing I earned that day was my reputation as the moron who called out Hammy.

Shortly after that, Hammy decided my last name, Snider, rhymed with
snot
(?!), and that became his nickname for me: Snots. Nobody else called me that, but since I wasn’t prepared to get back in the ring with Hammy, Snots I remained. Having him call me Snots for all of fifth and sixth grade, and occasionally when he ran into me over the years until he dropped out of school, didn’t do wonders for my coolness factor or popularity.

But ponder this: If I had beat Hammy that day, I would have become popular. If I had been popular, my road to becoming a rock ’n’ roll star would have been cut short.

DEE LIFE LESSON