Shut Up and Give Me the Mic (34 page)

Unbelievable!
What Phil said was absolutely true, but for a record executive to not only state this truth, but to act on it as well, was unheard of. Young, upstart A&R
⁵
guys and girls might go with their gut like that, but never high-level record executives. They’ve got way too much to lose. Once a record man or woman gets that
corner office with the big salary, objectivity is lost and the willingness to take chances is over.

Phil Carson was the last of a long-gone breed of record man who knows what he knows and doesn’t allow others to alter his opinion or make him start second-guessing his decisions. Phil had signed AC/DC off a 16 mm film of the band performing “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ’n’ Roll),” shown to him on a self-contained projector, with a little screen, at two o’clock in the morning. After seeing the film, Phil said he’d sign the band, and had their representative wake Angus Young up in Australia so he could tell him. Phil Carson trusts his instincts and that’s what it took to finally get Twisted Sister signed. Someone self-assured and powerful enough to go back to the office, be unaffected by naysayers, and have the clout to get what he wants done.

When Phil told the international executive board of his intentions to sign Twisted Sister, he ran head-on into the president of Atlantic Records’ strenuous objection. You remember him, the one who rejected us multiple times (including overriding ATCO Records’ decision to sign us) and threatened to fire Jason Flom if he ever mentioned our name again.
That guy.
Phil had to put his entire reputation on the line to get us signed to Atlantic Records internationally. Phil Carson’s signing record within the company was legendary, and he got his way. I owe you my life, Phil Carson.
⁶

Before hanging up, Phil said these fateful words to me: “‘I Am (I’m Me)’ [one of the songs on the tape] is a hit. We are going to the top of the charts with that one!”

And we did.

IN THE WEEKS BEFORE
we left to record, I tried to savor my home life as much as I could. I knew I would be gone for a few months, and during that time, due to my finances, I would have virtually no contact with my wife and son. Bringing them with me wasn’t an option,
and phone calls home at that time were prohibitively expensive. I often think how much easier it would have been on Suzette and me with today’s technology. Face-to-face Internet calls are ridiculously inexpensive and an incredibly satisfying way of staying connected. But this was the early eighties, not the 2000s, and seeing and hearing from each other while I was away just wasn’t possible.

One afternoon before I left, Suzette told me she was going to run out to the supermarket. Three-month-old Jesse was asleep, so with me there to keep an ear out for him, she was going to pick up something for dinner. When Suzette left, I realized that I had a few moments to myself. This would be a good time to write some new songs.

What I’m about to tell you is not ego talking, just the truth about how blessed I am when it comes to writing and creating. My mind is fertile and
always
ready for creativity. For me it’s just a matter of being able to focus and capture the ideas so I don’t forget them. Because of this, I have trained myself to literally turn off my creativity, and turn it back on when I need it. This is an incredible gift.

I grabbed my list of song titles (remember, I work off those), got my recorder, turned on my “mental faucet,” and sang song ideas to tape for the next forty-five minutes. By the time Suzette had come home from shopping, I had basically created all of the songs (except for “The Price”) that would become Twisted Sister’s
Stay Hungry
album. I had even finished—after writing the hook three years earlier—“We’re Not Gonna Take It.” ‘I Wanna Rock,” “Burn in Hell,” “Stay Hungry,” “S.M.F.”—all of our best-known Twisted Sister songs—spilled out of me while my son slept and my wife was out getting groceries. I knew I had some good stuff, too.

With our formal record contracts still being negotiated (not that there was much negotiating), the band and I boarded an Air India flight
⁷
bound for Great Britain to record our next album. With me, I had the makings of the album—after the one we were about to make—that would change our lives forever.

27

R
ecording at Jimmy Page’s Sol Studio, in Cookham, Berkshire, England, was like a rock ’n’ roll fairy tale. Originally built by Elton John’s producer, Gus Dudgeon, in the late seventies, Gus was forced to sell it due to rampant overspending on the project, poor accounting, and a temporary crash in the music industry postdisco. Jimmy Page literally helicoptered in, took a look, and bought it for a fraction of its actual value.

Built on the site of an old river mill, the recording studio is on one side of the river, and it is connected by a covered bridge to the living quarters on the other side. With beamed, vaulted ceilings, French doors, and picture windows looking out at the river and open meadows, the band house is like something from a storybook.

The studio was nothing short of amazing as well. Custom mahogany cabinetry, split-wood, matched-panel doors, and brass abounded. The console room had a working fireplace, and both it and the recording room had large picture windows looking out over the landscape. One of the worst things about recording (for me) is that there are never windows in studios, and thus you lose contact with the real world. Windows are virtually impossible to soundproof, but Gus spared absolutely no expense (which is part of the reason he lost the studio) to create two-foot-thick walls and ceilings with special sound-deadening qualities that allowed for these
unique portals. I remember recording a vocal one day when snow started to fall, as horses ran free across the field. I’m telling you this so you’ll understand just how magical the recording environment and experience was while we made the
You Can’t Stop Rock ’n’ Roll
album.

Removed from our friends, families, and other distractions, we focused completely on the work at hand and bonded as a band as never before.

We worked all day, had an in-house cook and housekeeper, hung out, watched movies, and laughed. Each morning, Jay Jay and I would go for long jogs to stay in shape or hit the gym at the local recreation hall nearby. Through it all, I continued to work on the songs for our
next
album.

Why didn’t I use the great (or so I thought) new songs for the album we were currently working on? Simply, they weren’t ready to be presented to the band or record company. Since I didn’t really play an instrument, I needed to show the band my ideas slowly on guitar (I couldn’t possibly sing as I played), then we would rehearse and demo-record them. Finally, I would sing the melodies onto the recordings so the whole idea could be understood. It was a process. Plus, I just felt the new ideas I had weren’t meant to be on the current record, for whatever reason. If they were, I would have come up with them before. Timing is everything, and if I had finished “We’re Not Gonna Take It” in 1979, it would have never become the song it did. It was meant to be recorded in 1984.

While the recording process and hang time with the band was amazing, the heartache of being away from my wife and son was brutal. I wrote a letter to Suzette religiously, every day and waited for the occasional letter from home with precious photos of my son. Jesse was growing up without me (the growth a baby experiences the first year is exponential), and all I had to savor the first time he sat up, the first time he watched TV, the first time he said “Da-da” (to a stuffed frog!) were these photos.

Suzette was having a hell of a time on her own. At just twenty-two years old, she had to take care of the baby and our apartment. Her family now lived in Florida, too far away to help out, and my family weren’t supportive at all. After the first month or so, she gave
our two dogs up for adoption, closed up shop and went to Florida to stay with her mother—a much better situation.

As the months rolled on, I became more and more homesick. One day, the studio phone rang and it was Jay Jay’s sister-in-law Ricky. We spoke for a minute and she asked me how things were going. I told her that the recording experience was amazing, but I was missing my wife and son. To this, Ricky responded, “Well, Dee, I guess that’s the price you have to pay.” Her words hit me hard. I gave Jay Jay the phone, grabbed my handheld recorder, went into the bathroom (a place I’ve always gone for privacy), and wrote “The Price.” It would become one of our biggest songs.

REGRETTABLY, WE NEVER SAW
Jimmy Page. He was a pretty legendary recluse, living nearby, in a high-security, gated mansion once owned by Michael Caine. Jimmy didn’t drive and only went out at night. On a number of days, we’d come into the studio to find things had been moved around and other evidence that Jimmy had been there during the night. It was a little creepy.

Jimmy Page’s well-known affinity for the occult had us overanalyzing everything in the building, trying to find evidence of his mystical hand. Though we never found anything out of the ordinary, we did discover one amazing thing. One day, while we’re in the studio, Mark Mendoza rushes in—a look of awe on his face—and says to me, “You have got to see this!” Without asking what it was, I followed him to the upstairs offices of the studio. Mark takes me to an unlocked closet, opens the door, and turns on the light. Inside were shelves filled with large master tape boxes. This was nothing unusual for a recording studio; they all have closets like this.

“Take a look at the labels,” Mark says.

As I read the labels on each of the reels, I was stunned to discover that every one was a
different
,
legendary Led Zeppelin song.
In this unlocked closet, in an unlocked building, in the lazy little town of Cookham, were the original recordings of some of the best-known, biggest-selling, greatest songs in the history of rock ’n’ roll! You name it, it was there. From “Whole Lotta Love” to “Immigrant
Song” to “Kashmir” to “Stairway to Heaven,”
every single Led Zeppelin song ever recorded was there on the shelves.
For us as Led Zeppelin fans (and who isn’t?), it was like finding the Holy Grail . . .
in a bathroom.

For the record, we didn’t take any of them. We definitely touched a lot of the boxes, but we left them in the closet.

LIKE TWISTED SISTER, PHIL
Carson was a man on a mission. His grand plan for us, while we were in the UK, involved a lot more than recording an album. Phil wanted to set the stage for the release of the
You Can’t Stop Rock ’n’ Roll
LP by first putting out a single: the “There’s hits on this tape!” track “I Am (I’m Me).” To ensure it a high chart position, Atlantic planned on releasing three different versions: a seven-inch two-song single, a twelve-inch four-song single, and a picture disc, with different additional tracks on each one. The idea was for fans to want all of the songs and their various formats, tripling the single sales and pushing it farther up the charts. Great plan, now we just needed something for the flip sides on the variants. We couldn’t use the tracks from the actual album.

Phil Carson had that figured out, too. We would perform a couple of shows at the Heat Club, er, I mean, the
Marquee
Club and record them. The live tracks from the show would provide the unique content for the B-sides.
Brilliant!