Shut Up and Give Me the Mic (46 page)

“Dee Snider? ThesesBrianJohnsonfrumAhseeDahysee.”

Ahsee Dahysee?
Was he even speaking English?
I could barely understand him.
¹

“We cannahafya settinenya ’otelrum onaMundeh-nightenNew-caseh,” Brian continued.

What the hell is an
’otelrum
?

“Gatha-up-ya-keeds. Ahmacomin’ tuh-gitya, me boy.” With that, Brian hung up.

He definitely said something about getting somebody’s boy. Just in case, I gathered the band and crew, and a half hour later Brian Johnson and two of his friends showed up in three Mercedes-Benz sedans to take us out on the town.
And did we appreciate it.
We went out to dinner, then to a blues club (Brian got up and sang “Route 66” in his distinctive voice), and finally went to a local pub . . . in Brian’s house. While we hung out, drinking (for those of us who drank), throwing darts, and playing pool, Brian told us the story of his rescue from oblivion.

After giving rock stardom his best shot with a band called Geordie in the seventies, Brian had lost hope of ever making it and left his rock ’n’ roll dreams behind. He started a business in his hometown, putting vinyl tops on cars. Brian is a “Geordie” (nickname for someone from Newcastle) to the core. When Bon Scott of AC/DC died in 1980, the band asked only a few people to audition for the band as his replacement. Brian Johnson was one of them. He was friends with the AC/DC boys from his Geordie band days and wrote off the audition as a “mercy tryout,” done more out of obligation to a friend than anything else.

A couple of weeks later, Brian got a call from AC/DC guitarist Malcolm Young asking him to drop by the studio. Still not thinking much of it, Brian went and paid his friends a visit. When he walked into the room, Angus Young walked straight up to him and said, “You’re never going to have to put a vinyl top on a car again.” Brian was the new singer and member of AC/DC.

The house in which we were hanging out with Brian, listening to his story, was the biggest house in town. When he was a kid, Brian used to do deliveries, driving past it and telling himself that one day, when he was a rock star, he would live in that big house. Now that’s a rock ’n’ roll dream come true!

One more thing: Phil Carson, who signed AC/DC to Atlantic Records, told me how he was hanging out at a club with the band one night before Bon Scott died. As Phil sat at a table with the rest of the band, a drunk Bon Scott rolled up, with his arm around Brian Johnson, and said, “If anything ever happens to me, this is my replacement.” Now that’s just plain eerie.

“
FOR THE WANT OF A NAIL
”

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.

For want of a shoe the horse was lost.

For want of a horse the rider was lost.

For want of a rider the battle was lost.

For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

That’s the legendary rhyme about an empire collapsing because of losing a simple—yet important—thing. Twisted Sister had a similar experience with our
Stay Hungry
album in Great Britain, except our “want” was for a postage stamp.

For the want of a stamp the postcard was lost.

For the want of a postcard the announcement was lost.

For the want of an announcement the single was lost.

For the want of a single the album was lost.

For the want of an album the country was lost.

All for the want of a postcard stamp.

The key to the successful launch of any record, movie, television show, theatrical production, book, etc., is the setup. You need your first week of release to be well attended, bought, and/or viewed, so that it will be seen as a hot, successful project. You want it at the top of the relevant sales charts, and to do that, you advertise, promote,
and hype your project in any and every way you possibly can. In the case of a new album in the UK, back in the ’80s, one of the most important ways to promote a new release is by using the artist’s mailing list. You want those die-hard fans to know about it ahead of time, so they will get out to the stores the first week and buy the record and hound radio to start playing your single. This is Record Promotion 101.

With the success of Twisted’s
You Can’t Stop Rock ’n’ Roll
album and singles in Great Britain, we had built quite a following and mailing list. Our fans were primed and ready to buy pretty much anything we put out or did. All our distributor, WEA, had to do was let them know our new record was coming.
And there’s the catch.

The new head of WEA, whom I shall refer to as Rubber Dick—a pretty close play on his actual name—was not what you would call a fan of heavy metal, or Twisted Sister for that matter. When he was asked to approve the expense of
domestic
postcard stamps to do the advance mailing to our fan base,
he passed on it for budgetary reasons!
Stamps?!

As our distributor, WEA’s sole purpose was to promote and distribute recorded product. Rubber Dick nixed the cheapest, most cost-effective, and
important
promotion they could possibly have done for our record!
That Dick!

As a result, our record was released in the UK and didn’t sell well enough initially to get us high into the charts. So we didn’t get on
Top of the Pops
or find our single on the radio. As a result, our follow-up to a successful record in Great Britain was effectively a flop.
²
Fortunately, our shows in the UK sold and went great. No thanks to that Dick.

ON JUNE 6, WE
joined forces with Metallica for five shows in Holland (3), Germany (1), and Belgium (1) with them opening. Like ourselves, Metallica were up-and-comers and out promoting their new album,
Ride the Lightning
. We had never met the guys before
(though they quickly informed us that they’d opened for Twisted Sister at a New Jersey nightclub), and they were all down-to-earth and cool (yes, even Lars). Our first show with Metallica in Holland was eye-opening. Unbeknownst to us, the Dutch were heavily into speed metal. They liked their rock hard. While Metallica’s style played perfectly to that, Twisted Sister, with its makeup and costumes and “anthemic metal” leanings, wasn’t quite as appealing. No problem. We quickly adjusted our set list to be more metallic, less anthemic, and ramped up our already high speeds to a more Netherlandish pace. Problem solved.

The night before our first show, I was offered the opportunity to promote Twisted’s new record on a hugely popular live Dutch radio broadcast. I was taken, along with Joe Gerber—via the band Vandenberg’s custom, converted ambulance—to the club from where the show was aired.

Expecting a real metal club, I was stunned to walk into a disco, playing dance music, filled with Johnny Bravos and Janie Bravettes.

The radio station broadcasting the show assured me the audience loved heavy metal and told me what they wanted me to do. They had heard about my onstage “rants” and wanted me to “do one” on the air. I explained to them that my banter was more inspired than planned, and that I had never just “done one” cold. They kept pushing, so I said I would give it a shot. I told the host to bring me onstage (dressed in my street clothes), then engage me in a conversation about heavy metal; I would see if I could muster a full-blown rant. “No problem,” the host said in his funny Dutch accent, and headed out to make my introduction.

The music stopped and the host introduced me. I entered with microphone in hand, to a tepid response. The minute I got out there . . . the host walked off the stage without another word. The crowd stared blankly at me, and I stared back in silence. The national radio broadcast was transmitting “dead air.” There are radio stations that actually have alarms that go off when there is dead air. This was not a good thing.

My mind racing, I started to rant. About what, I’m not sure, but I was going on about something for a few minutes—with zero audience response—when some guy in the audience yelled, “You look
like a pregnant goldfish!” and the crowd laughed. I had no idea what that meant, but the people in the club did, and it clearly wasn’t a good thing. I jumped off the stage—microphone still in hand—and charged the asshole who said it.

Well, I’m livid, shoving this guy and muthafucking him—into the microphone of course, always the professional—for all I’m worth, until security pulls us apart and drags me off. Joe Gerber, who, of course, had come to my assistance, says to me, “Oh, well, I guess that’s the end of radio airplay in Holland.”

But when I walked into the back room where the radio station people and record company reps were, to face the music . . .
I got a standing ovation!
They loved it! As far as the Dutch were concerned, that was great radio. Go figure.

OUR THIRD SHOW IN
Holland with Metallica, we pulled into town to find every poster and ad promoting the show had a tiny
TWISTED SISTER
at the top and a huge
WITH METALLICA,
and their “troll” logo, taking up 90 percent of the page. Clearly, they were the draw.

Twisted Sister were never ones to headline a show for the sake of headlining, so we sent Joe Gerber to tell James Hetfield and the boys that they could close that night.

A few minutes later, Joe came back to the dressing room with a confused look on his face. “They said no. They couldn’t understand why you would want to give up the headlining slot. They think you guys are up to something.” That shows you the mentality of the average band.
No one
gives up the headline spot, even if the audience isn’t there to see them. Egos.

I went into Metallica’s dressing room and explained there was no trick—we weren’t up to anything. They were the draw; they should close the show. Once assured, Metallica agreed to the billing swap.

The upside to this was I finally got to see Metallica perform. Due to my two-hour prep time for shows, I was always in the back getting ready while many great bands went on before us. After our set that night, I quickly got changed and went stage-side with Mark
Mendoza to watch this young band who were getting so many accolades from the metal press and fans. Toward the end of their powerful set, I turned to Animal and said, “These guys have got a lot of heart, but they’re never gonna go anywhere.”

So much for what I know!

MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE
States, we were getting reports that our first single was being very well received. Before the
We’re Not Gonna Take It
(
WNGTI
) video even started to air on MTV, 145 radio stations nationally were playing the song. I stress that because of the accepted belief that our video
made
the song a hit. While the video undoubtedly
enhanced
the single—and by
enhanced
I mean “super-charged the shit out of it”—“We’re Not Gonna Take It” was killing at rock radio from the day it was released. Video or no video, Twisted Sister was set to explode in 1984.

The
WNGTI
video is generally regarded as groundbreaking and game-changing; it altered the face of the medium. In virtually any list of all-time greatest rock videos,
WNGTI always
makes it. For better or for worse, it is one of the main things Twisted Sister is remembered for. No one was more surprised than us. This said, the reception the
WNGTI
clip received at MTV is a whole other story.

The video, as delivered to MTV in its original form, had a two-minute-and-fifty-one-second prologue—an acted lead-in, without music. This was unheard of in 1984 . . .
and MTV hated it!
I was told that Music Television cofounder/originator and senior executive vice-president Les Garland was horrified by our effort and said, “That’s not a rock video! That’s
method acting
!” Needless to say,
WNGTI
was not a “Buzz Clip.” Despite its massive success, and the audience’s obvious mania for it, the
WNGTI
video was never aired more than in
medium
rotation.

A few months later, when a now hugely popular Twisted Sister delivered the
WNGTI
video
sequel
, “I Wanna Rock” (which also had a prologue), Les Garland was quoted as saying, “Now
this
is a rock video!” It was immediately put into heavy rotation. Egos.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

After finishing our run of dates in Europe and the UK, we finally headed back home. I couldn’t wait to reunite with my wife and son, and
Stay Hungry
was blowing up in the States.