Shut Up and Give Me the Mic (51 page)

I
returned home in September to a new level of celebrity.
Stay Hungry
had gone platinum, “I Wanna Rock” was a hit, I was making a lot of money, and I now had a full-time bodyguard. While I always expected Twisted Sister to make it, I thought we would be one of those bands that traveled from town to town, blowing audiences away, causing them to run out and buy our records. I never thought we would have traditional
Billboard
-chart hit records. That said, it did make sense. My biggest influences were all bands who had sold millions of albums and
had
hit records. Why shouldn’t the product of those influences do the same?

Before Twisted Sister headed back out on the road, there was the little matter of my wife’s and son’s birthdays.

DEE LIFE LESSON

You can be away the entire year, but if you make it home for the special days (birthdays, anniversaries, Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc.), your family will be cooler about your being away.

DEE LIFE LESSON

You can be home all year round, but if you miss those same five or six important days . . . you’re screwed.

I’m not saying I never missed a special occasion, but I always made a concerted effort to make it home and celebrate with the family if I could. Jesse was turning two that year, so we had a birthday party for him with friends and family at our little house in Babylon, Long Island (the one the guy pissed on). Even though we didn’t spend much time there anymore, it was still our home. In the past two years I had been away for fourteen months.
Still more than half of Jesse’s life!
Every time I would come home from the road, I’d be stunned by the changes in him. I had missed so many milestones. The first time I saw him scurry up a flight of stairs, I nearly had a heart attack. He’d been doing it effortlessly for weeks, but I didn’t know that—I wasn’t around.

Jesse’s greatest connection to me as a father was seeing me on television. Suzette would have MTV on all day (back when it really was
music television
), listening to the music in the background, and when one of my songs would start to play, she and Jesse would rush in to “see Daddy.” Suzette told me how he’d get so excited to see me as she screamed, “It’s Daddy! It’s Daddy!” Hearing that would make me smile but break my heart just a bit. I guess that’s “the price you gotta pay.” There’s that damn song again.

During these hectic times, Suzette stayed home and took care of Jesse, or they headed down to Florida and lived with her family. We finally had the money for my wife and son to visit me on the road, but it was the last place Suzette wanted to be. All I did was hide in my hotel room, on the bus, or in my dressing room. I would never go out, not even for a meal. I traveled the world and never saw a thing. Part of this was because I wanted to experience world travel for the “first time” with Suzette. I just didn’t feel right going out and having a great time without my wife and son.

The other part of my reclusive behavior? I was completely hung up on being recognized and hounded by fans. Funny, isn’t that what I wanted all along?

Not that I was all that much more fun and adventurous when I was home. I never wanted to leave the house. For three or four years we hardly ever went out (except for local shopping). No movies, no amusement parks, no vacations . . . nothing. I remember the
one time
, during the heyday, Suzette convinced me to go to a movie. . . .

We went to one of the only single (non-multiplex) movie houses left at that time on Long Island, figuring there would be less people to potentially recognize me. While Suzette got the tickets, I hid in the car, waiting for the line to die down and the houselights to go off so I could sneak in unnoticed. On Suzette’s cue I rushed into the theater looking like the Unabomber, wearing sunglasses, a hood pulled up over my hair and head and hiding my face (not too suspicious). Suzette and I slipped into the dark theater and sat down . . . just in time for the
We’re Not Gonna Take It
video to start playing on the big screen.
Are you fucking kidding me!?
A rock video was being shown before the feature!? That speaks to the popularity of the band and the video, but it was the last time we went to the movies for a long time.

Living with
this
celebrity wasn’t easy.

I’m sure this doesn’t sound like a big deal to you. It probably even sounds cool. A good friend of mine, Cooch, once said if he was me, he would announce that he was Dee Snider everywhere he went. Yeah, that’s what I thought before I became a celebrity, too. Cooch just couldn’t understand my reluctance to be recognized. I can’t either. I think it was a combination of wanting to be able to devote myself totally to my family when I was with them, along with my need to always be “the rock star” for my fans. I didn’t want to disappoint them.
Does that make any sense at all?
I think another part was that I just liked being so famous I
had
to hide. For what it’s worth, I handle celebrity a lot better now.

AFTER THE DIO TOUR
, we hit the road with Y&T. A couple of memorable things happened to me during our run. Both were on the West Coast, one bad and one good. Bad first.

Y&T opened for Twisted Sister on all of the shows, except in Northern California, where they headlined. Like Twisted, Y&T had
been around for quite a while and had a huge home following. It only made sense that we open for them at those shows. At one Bay Area show, some piece-of-shit Y&T fan (no reflection on the band—they are great guys) started throwing large metal
bolts
at us, with force. I’m talking three-inch-long, three-quarter-inch-diameter pieces of steel thrown like a baseball pitch. These things were positively
lethal
and damaged everything they hit. As usual, due to the lights in our eyes, we could not see them coming until the last second.

I tried everything to locate and call out our cowardly assailant. About halfway through the set I took one of the bolts
hard
in the ribs, and that was it. I couldn’t take a chance of somebody in the band or the crew being hit in the face or the head. For the first time in the history of the band, we didn’t finish our set and left the stage. I was furious.

Later I realized what I should have done: played with the house-lights on. We’d done it before for other, less threatening reasons. I would have been able to see who was throwing the bolts at the band—if he had the balls to throw them with the lights on—and kicked his ass. Well, my bodyguard would have kicked his ass—since I wasn’t allowed to do that anymore. To this day, it bugs the hell out of me that I allowed myself and the band to be driven off the stage by some chickenshit asshole!

Now on to a much better memory.

Alice Cooper is a
major
influence on me. Coming to truly appreciate the original Alice Cooper band and Alice’s vocal “attitude” was one of the last pieces in defining the rock singer and performer I would become (the final piece was Bon Scott and AC/DC). Looking at the way Alice and I perform, we are nothing alike. That’s because I only had photographs of the band to work off of. In the sixties and seventies there were no videos or DVDs of concerts to watch, and I never got to see the band live. I developed my stage performance the way I
thought
Alice Cooper would perform. Imagine my surprise when I finally saw him onstage when we toured together in 2005! Vocally I’m sort of the upper octave of Alice (as exemplified on our duet of “Be Chrool to Your Scuel”).

In the early eighties, Alice Cooper’s career couldn’t have been more dead. He’d struggled with alcohol and drug addiction and had
a series of poorly received records. Saying you were an Alice Cooper fan was not cool . . . but I didn’t care. This man and his original band had inspired and defined who I was as a recording artist and a performer, and I owed them nothing but respect and admiration. I continually told the world how I felt about Alice Cooper and his original band . . . and they appreciated it.
¹

At one of the Twisted Sister shows with Y&T on the West Coast, an unusual floral arrangement was delivered to my dressing room. It consisted of dead, black roses, a small, gnarled tree branch, and an Alice Cooper comic. Along with it was a note from the man himself, thanking me for my unflagging support and telling me he was coming to one of the shows to see the band and meet me. I was blown away!

I’d always thought that of all the rock stars I worshipped, Alice and I would get along. Something in his lyrics and general attitude—and his love of show tunes—told me we would one day become friends. And here was my hero reaching out to me!

I don’t remember the exact date Alice came to see the band, but it was like meeting a kindred spirit. Alice is an incredibly affable guy who has been friends with some of the most legendary people in the art, film, and music worlds. Everyone feels they connect with Alice. I guess that’s part of his charm. Yet I wonder, who really is Alice Cooper’s friend? To quote Inspector Clouseau in
A Shot in the Dark
, “I suspect everyone . . . and I suspect no one.”

Physically, he was a lot smaller and frailer than I thought he’d be. Not that he’s tiny. I guess everyone views his or her heroes as being larger-than-life. Besides, he came across as such a creature in photos. Monsters are supposed to be big and scary, aren’t they? This said, the most constant comment I hear when fans meet me is they didn’t think I would be so big. Which kind of contradicts my thinking. Still, getting to meet and know the man is a childhood dream come true. Not many things affect me like that.