Shut Up and Give Me the Mic (50 page)

When Marty brought him into the room to meet the band, I was blown away; he couldn’t have been more perfect, but I knew what being featured in this video would do to him. Dax Callner, who
played the son in the first video, told me that the recognition he got from being in the video was insane. And not all of it was positive. Some people weren’t satisfied with just saying hi or asking for a photo or an autograph. Some kids in school were cruel, and others insisted on reenacting the video, word for word. Not quite what young Dax had expected when he accepted the part.

Where Neidermeyer had just yelled at the son in the
WNGTI
video, I knew the script for
I Wanna Rock
called for him to be a bit more insulting. Borrowing a line from
Animal House,
“I’ve got a good mind to slap your fat face!” I wanted to be sure the kid knew what he was in for. Not surprisingly, he was totally into it. Imagine you were some kid showing up with thousands of others for a chance to be an extra in a rock video for one of the most popular bands in the world, and you’re pulled out of the pack to star in it. Then you’re rushed back to meet Twisted Sister, in full regalia, and they ask you if you are okay with what they need you to do. What would
you
have said?

Mark Metcalf showed up to the set a little worse for wear, having been out late the night before with his Left Coast, LA friends. Mark was no longer the easygoing, great guy he had been on the first video shoot. After my experience with him on the
I Wanna Rock
video shoot, I would often tell people that the Neidermeyer persona was the
real
Mark Metcalf, and being a nice guy was just a character Mark played.
²

By midmorning, Metcalf was more than a little irritated. Maybe it was the heat, his lack of sleep, or some other X factor. Maybe it was a combination of all three. Mark was in a foul mood and his performance was lacking during the scene where he yells at the Fat Kid. After a few failed takes, Marty Callner started getting a bit firmer with Metcalf directorially, pushing him to give more. Mark was less than pleased. I can’t tell you their exact exchange of words or nuance of phrase, but with the entire classroom full of extras, band, cast, and crew bearing witness, it went something like this. After considerable chiding from Marty to Mark to work harder . . .

Metcalf (to Marty): “Or what? You don’t look so tough.”

A hushed silence fell over the room.

Marty: “You wanna step outside and find out?”

Marty Callner is on the shorter side, but built like a wrestler. Mark Metcalf is tall, and very lean. Sort of like Tolkien’s Gimli the dwarf versus Legolas the elf. All eyes were on the two potential combatants as they glared at each other. Marty calmly waited while Metcalf’s face got redder and redder, as he mentally explored his options . . . then he turned away from Marty without a word. He (wisely) backed down. Gimli would have snapped Legolas like a twig.

Without waiting even a second, Marty Callner yelled, “Action!” and Mark Metcalf launched into the now legendary, spit-flying “I’ve got a good mind to slap your fat face!” tirade you all know and love.
It was incredible!
While the rest of the long, event-filled day rolled on (Metcalf’s stunt double was launched into the ceiling and knocked unconscious; the massive crowd of teenagers hanging out in the heat all day were so hot and hungry, the world’s biggest McDonald’s order was placed; my face melted off several times; etc.), the band and I passed the time with actor Stephen Furst, aka Flounder from
Animal House
.

I had used my growing influence to hire Stephen to be in the video for a surprise ending (“Oh, boy, is this great!”). Ostensibly he was there only for us to connect even more with my favorite comedy, but the band took great joy in having him repeat every one of his classic lines from the film (“Brother D.D.! Brother Bluto!” “The Negroes stole our dates,” etc.). Stephen seemed happy to oblige, but in retrospect I’m wondering if he was too afraid to tell the six-and-a-half-foot-tall (seven feet tall with hair) creatures in the crazy makeup and costumes no. Either way, it was a blast.

MTV and their audience’s response to the video was huge. Immediately put in heavy rotation (where it stayed for a long time),
I Wanna Rock
was a major worldwide video hit, and its popularity spilled over to radio as well. Like the
WNGTI
video, it had struck a chord and spoke loudly and clearly for an entire generation of rockers.

IF YOU WILL ALLOW
me to get even more self-indulgent than I already am, I’ve been dying to mention something since the day
I Wanna Rock
was released.

In the story line of the video, once the fat kid turns into Twisted Sister, Neidermeyer spends the rest of the video, à la Wile E. Coyote, trying to kill the band. In one of his many ill-fated attempts he tries to blow the band up while they are performing in the auditorium. To this end, Neidermeyer wires dynamite to a plunger, then crawls military-style toward the band—with the dynamite in his teeth—to plant the explosives. Straight out of a Road Runner cartoon, a butterfly lands on the dynamite plunger handle, causing it to depress and blow up Neidermeyer.

That effect was achieved (now it would be via CGI) by exposing a live butterfly to liquid nitrogen, freezing it instantly. It was then placed on the handle of the plunger, with the idea that the warmth of the day would quickly defrost it. Then the butterfly would fly away. Running the film in reverse would give the illusion of its landing on the handle and causing it to depress. In theory.

Sadly, the nitrogen exposure instantly
killed
the poor creatures. To achieve what we needed for the shot, we decided to take one of the dead butterflies, attach it to a piece of clear filament (a long, wirelike stick) that would barely read on camera, put a touch of stickum on the plunger handle to hold the ex-butterfly in place, then lift it off the handle when the camera rolled. When the footage was run in reverse, it would achieve the same effect we were looking for. Great idea.
In theory.

The first take, a little too much stickum was used, and when they tugged gently on the filament to get the butterfly to “take off,” it tore the wings and abdomen off, leaving the head and upper body still sticking to the handle. Subsequent takes worked better, but the footage of the poor dead butterfly being torn in two had Marty Callner and me crying from laughing so hard during editing. I know, we’re fucked-up. We decided to put in a quick shot of the “butterfly atrocity”—complete with a tearing sound—as the body came apart. Marty and I were sure that this would have rock fans in stitches.

To this day, not one person has ever mentioned that moment in
I Wanna Rock
! Not once. Not even a “That was fucked-up,
dude!” For the life of me, I cannot figure out why that is. It’s as plain as day!

ONE OF THE OTHER
things I did for the band was promotion. I did all the press, everywhere in the world. It wasn’t that the band didn’t want to do press—
I didn’t want them to do it.
I know, that seems messed up. Read on.

As the creative and driving force behind the band—and the front man—I was the band member interviewers wanted to talk to, and I didn’t want anyone else misrepresenting me. Since I created and cowrote the videos, and wrote every song, who better to answer questions? To top it off, I didn’t feel any of the other guys gave particularly good interviews, and one of them was trying to sabotage me and the band. What would you have done?

While the vast majority of interviews were done on the phone or in the city the band was in, from time to time I would actually travel to other countries on press and promotional tours. The first ever of these was to Europe. I was flown over to hit a number of Western European countries in September of ’84, and in each country I found Twisted Sister had an even greater success story. Everywhere I went, the band had finally broken though the wall of indifference we had faced for so long. Our
Stay Hungry
record and its subsequent videos were making major inroads, not only in the metal world but in the pop world as well. No greater than in Sweden.

I arrived in Sweden to discover our record had blown up. Sales were through the roof and interest in the band had skyrocketed. Oddly, “We’re Not Gonna Take It” didn’t get the initial reaction there that it got in the rest of the world, but when “I Wanna Rock” came out, the entire country lit up. As much as I abhorred hearing this, it was even a hit in the dance clubs!

Picked up at the airport by a limousine, I was brought to the premier five-star hotel in Stockholm and given the presidential suite. My two-day promotional stay was filled with first-class everything, and dazzling accolades and adoration for me, my band, and our amazing record.
It was incredible!
I was signing albums for the children of the king and queen!

After a dreamlike two days, on Friday of that week, I departed to do a couple of days of press in the UK. I left a beautiful, sunny, spotlessly clean Sweden (it really is like an IKEA over there) to arrive in a cool, dreary, wet, second-hand shop London. I started doing press the minute I arrived by cab at my two-star, run-down, depressing hotel.

As positive and excited as all the other countries’ interviews had been, the ones in Great Britain were the exact opposite. Interview after interview was about the failing of Twisted Sister’s new record to live up to expectations, and “How does it feel now that the band’s success is over?” England was the only country in the world where this was the case, and that was only because of that asshole Rubber Dick’s being too cheap to pay for stamps!

When my first day of interviews in the UK finally ended, I was informed I had the weekend to myself, until the torture would start again on Monday. Everybody wanted to talk to the musical flop of 1984. I sat in my horrible little room, in my horrible little chair, feeling horribly depressed and horribly looking at the misery of two long days off alone, when an idea came to me. I had my manager contact Twisted’s record company in Sweden and ask them if they could use me over there for a couple more days of promotion. They jumped at the chance to have the front man for the biggest new band in their country back!

Before I had even unpacked my suitcase in London, I was on a plane—in first class, of course—jetting back to Stockholm, where I was picked up by limo and reinstated in my presidential suite. I spent the weekend being wined, dined, and celebrated as the greatest thing since the smorgasbord.
Whew!

DEE LIFE LESSON

You don’t need to be king of the world, just king of
your
world.

Swedish krona can buy things, too, you know.

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