Shut Up and Give Me the Mic (63 page)

Twisted Sister’s final show of the
COAP
tour was on June 2, 1986, with Motörhead, in Bologna, Italy. It would be the last time the “real” Twisted Sister played together for fourteen years. Sure, Jay Jay French loves to tout the fact that there have been three singers, four guitar players, two bass players, and seven drummers (and four corpulent porpoises) in Twisted Sister since its inception—
and that he is the only original member!
—but that’s just his attempt to minimize the importance of any other member of the band and maximize his significance. It’s all bullshit.

Only
five
members of Twisted Sister will ever matter: Dee Snider,
Eddie “Fingers” Ojeda, Mark “the Animal” Mendoza, A. J. Pero . . . and Jay Jay French. Not one fan gives a shit about the other eleven former members—other than for band historical purposes—and out of the five who count, only one is being paid to write about his life . . . and it ain’t Jay Jay. I’m just sayin’ . . .

As we flew home from Europe, it signaled the official end of the entire
Come Out and Play
initiative. To the band (other than me), the album and everything that went with it would come to symbolize the culmination of everything that went wrong with Twisted Sister and be the focus of our fall from dizzying heights. Despite the album’s being our second-biggest-selling and second-best-known record in North America and being successful throughout Europe and most of the rest of the world, to this day we play little if any music from
COAP
live, and “Leader of the Pack” is absolutely never mentioned. It is that ugly and painful a memory to my band members.

As in denial as I was about the seriousness of the situation, deep down inside I knew
the real pain was only beginning.

THE MAGNITUDE OF MY
failure took a while to set in. Even the news that the album’s CD—a new medium in 1985—was officially the first in history to be “cut out”
¹
(clearly one more bit of retribution from Atlantic Records) didn’t openly shake me. The same ego that had got me to the top and into this mess would not allow me to accept or believe just how huge a fall Twisted Sister had taken. We were Twisted “fucking” Sister, for God’s sake!

On the surface, I was still convinced this was just a mere setback that could and would be fixed, but subconsciously I began to come apart. I knew that
I
had blown it, and I took the full responsibility for the band’s failure. I know I just went through at length all the things and people who were working against us/me, but I blamed
myself for
allowing
those things to happen. I should have known better.
It was all my fault.

With the acceptance of responsibility came shame. I was embarrassed by my failings and disgusted with myself. And if
I
couldn’t stand me, whom could I possibly expect to? As I emotionally began to break down, I pushed away everyone around me.
Why would they want anything to do with me?
I thought. So before any of them could abandon me, I saved them the trouble and began to get rid of them. I remember Alice Cooper wanted me to “return the favor” and sing on his new record. I didn’t return his calls because I couldn’t believe he
really
wanted me on his album. He had to be asking me out of obligation.

My band, my friends, my family—one by one I pushed them away for things they did to me, but in reality I was pushing them away before they had a chance to reject me. I knew I had to be an embarrassment to them all.

The saddest and most catastrophic thing I did was to slowly alienate the one person who had always been there for me: Suzette, my wife—and as a result my young son, Jesse, as well. Over the years, I had grown more and more insufferable. I was (and guess I still am) a textbook narcissist and had grown to believe the sun rose and set around me. Starting in the clubs and bars, and building steadily with the rise of Twisted Sister, I acted as if I knew it all, and my needs and concerns came before all others. The one thing I had going for me, that got Suzette to give me a chance, was that she thought I was a nice guy. Over the years I chipped away at that niceness and became anything but. And that was when things were going well.

When things came apart, rather than pull together with the one person who had been unfailingly supportive of me for my entire career, I built a wall between us and drove her away.
Why would Suzette want to be with a loser like me?
As my career spiraled downward, I became convinced it would be better for Suzette—and Jesse—if I went on alone.

I truly believe Suzette and I are one of the great love stories of our generation. We were destined to be together, and clearly our lives joined for reasons known . . . and not yet known (who knows what our children or children’s children will achieve?). Now at more
than thirty-five years together, I am more convinced of that than ever. Yet I nearly threw it all away—including my son and the subsequent birth of our other three children—because I was too proud to accept, or admit, I needed help. And Suzette was the one person who had been helping me all along.

I BECAME CONVINCED THAT
everything would be set right with the release of my next record. But what should that record be? Since Twisted Sister had become more of a mainstream act and the metal community had essentially turned its back on us, I believed my next move should be an even more mainstream album. And I was sure my next release should be a solo album. I didn’t have any intentions of quitting Twisted Sister, I just thought taking a break from the band and doing my own record was the smart move to make. It would give Twisted a break publicly and—I believed—allow us to mount a comeback in a couple of years after the dust settled.

I planned on calling my side project
Me and the Boys
, and it was going to be very different from Twisted Sister. For starters, I planned on having a keyboard player and a saxophone player (my experience with Clarence Clemons had a great effect on me), and the songs I was writing were much more pop-influenced. I was listening to and studying a lot of Bryan Adams, feeling his mix of rock and pop would be the right balance for me. I even envisioned a radical image change, seeing this band as a bunch of guys you’d find hanging around the local 7-Eleven wearing ripped jeans, Converse All Stars, T-shirts, and jackets—almost an early punk look. That’s the photo I wanted for the album cover.

While I worked on the songs for the record, I continued to film episodes of
Heavy Metal Mania
for MTV, worked on my book,
Dee Snider’s Teenage Survival Guide
, and my first screenplay,
²
and spent a lot of time hanging out on
The Howard Stern Show
.

HOWARD AND I, ALONG
with Suzette and his wife, Alison, started socializing and became friends. Not only did our relationship grow, but our involvement in the show as well. I say
our
because while I was having my influence on the
Howard Stern Show
content, Suzette was helping Howard develop his image.

From the time I first met and then
heard
Howard on the radio, I couldn’t understand why he looked the way he looked. I’d say to him, “You’re a pirate on the radio; why the hell do you look like an accountant?” Howard asked how he
should
look, and Suzette and I showed him. In the beginning, I would give him some of my clothes to wear. Suzette became his stylist, taking him out shopping, picking his clothes, and cutting his hair. I convinced him to start wearing sunglasses instead of plain glasses.

“Why?” asked Howard.

“Because it will make your nose look smaller,” I said. Hey, it works for me.

In his movie
Private Parts
, by the eighties Howard already had his “brunette Dee Snider” look happening.
³
That was creative license taken by the writer of the screenplay, necessary for the story arc of the movie. In reality, Howard’s full-blown, eighties hair-metal look didn’t peak until much later. Thanks to Suzette.

A major influence I had on the
Stern Show
was the introduction of comedians to the regular show mix. My buddy Bob Goldthwait was on tour and coming to New York City to do a show. I told him about the
Stern Show
and how I thought it would be a great place for him to promote his appearance. Bobcat said he was in. When I called Howard and suggested he have Bob on, he told me he didn’t have comedians on the show because “all they do is shtick.” I told Howard a whole new school of comedians were out there, like Bobcat and Sam Kinison, who were sharp and improvisational. Howard wasn’t convinced, but agreed to give Goldthwait a try. Bobcat killed on
The Howard Stern Show
, and as a result of his repeat appearances and success, it led to Howard’s bringing on Kinison, Andrew
Dice Clay, Gilbert Gottfried, Pat Cooper, and more. Great comedians became a staple on the show (and still are) and are responsible for some of Howard’s most legendary broadcasts.

With the band unexpectedly off the road, and time on my hands, I began to appear regularly on Stern’s show and had some pretty legendary appearances myself. Howard’s show had moved back to mornings, so since I lived fairly near him, I would go to his house at 5:00 a.m., and we would limo (driven by Ronnie, his legendary driver, of course) into the city. Howard would meditate for the half-hour ride, while I sat fairly comatose—
it was five in the damn morning!
Starting at 6:00 a.m. I would sit in as a show member for the entire five-hour broadcast, then Howard and I would limo back home. Some weeks I did this multiple times. I loved the original team of Howard, Robin Quivers, Fred Norris, Jackie Martling, and Gary Dell’Abate and couldn’t get enough of just hanging out and joking around with them for hours on end. I felt like a member of the team, and I was honored to be treated like one by all who were involved. It was an incredible experience. This camaraderie was what had been missing for so many years for me in my band.

Howard Stern was the first person to recognize my value beyond singing with Twisted Sister. As my music career began to backslide and the entertainment industry backed further and further away from me, the
Stern Show
continued to have me on. One day I asked Howard why, and he said, “Dee, it doesn’t matter to me
who
you are,
it’s what you are.
I’ve had huge stars offered up to me for interviews and I have passed because they are boring on the air. You’re great on the radio. The listeners love you.”

Not only did I really need to hear something like that at a dark time, but appearing on Howard’s show eventually led to my doing voice-over work, my own radio shows, television shows, making movies, and more. Howard not only championed me with agents and producers, but by my being on the show, people started to realize I had more to offer than “We’re Not Gonna Take It.”
Thanks, Howard. I love you, man.

46

M
y first book,
Dee Snider’s Teenage Survival Guide
, wasn’t my idea. I was approached by Doubleday Publishing to write a sequel to a popular book from the fifties called
’Twixt Twelve and Twenty
by a singer named Pat Boone. Being a popular artist of the time whom—apparently—young people related to, his book on growing up was a bestseller. The editors at Doubleday saw me as a modern-day (Pat Boone?) pop figure whom kids would listen to. I’d never thought about doing a book like that, but accepted the challenge . . . and the check. Since at that time I wasn’t up to the task of writing the book myself, I was assigned a rock journalist named Philip Bashe to work with.