Shut Up and Give Me the Mic (65 page)

The
LIFS
tour ended, unceremoniously, on October 10, 1987, in Minneapolis, due to lack of fan interest and disappointing album sales.

Two days later, I announced my official resignation from the band.

Sometimes the end of any relationship is brought about by a major event or moment that changes everything. Most times it’s the cumulative effect of a series of smaller issues that build to a boiling point. Sure, there is often some straw that breaks the camel’s back, but this is just another symptom, not the affiliation-ending disease.

As you have read, my band and I had problems from day one that slowly grew, multiplied, and festered. “Untreated,” what were once minor annoyances became unbearable conditions to function under. Rather than address these situations as we went along, our management (Jay Jay included) opted to put Band-Aids on wounds that festered and eventually became untreatable cancers. In all fairness, as I’ve documented, at times attempts were made to address some of these issues, but even then, people refused to speak openly. The result: the demise of a truly great rock ’n’ roll band. Twisted Sister really did kick ass.

The worst part for me is the way it ended . . .
with a whimper.
From the day I joined Twisted Sister, we had been a force to be reckoned with. We were the Demolition Squad. We were
always
the band to beat. To go out as quietly as we did was an insult to everything we had fought so hard for and achieved. Most of the public didn’t even know we had broken up . . .
but had we?

The band never officially dissolved. To the best of my knowledge, two of the remaining three partners, Mark and Jay Jay (at that point brothers-in-law, through Jay Jay’s marrying Mark’s sister, Jody), used their majority to vote Eddie out of the band, officially making the two of them Twisted Sister. After that bold move (did Eddie even know?), they proceeded . . .
t
o
do virtually nothing until I returned in 2002.
Clearly I had been holding them back.

Oh, yeah. In 1992 they released their personal statement,
Big Hits and Nasty Cuts
, which included no music from
Come Out and Play
or
Love Is for Suckers
(albums they both despised), but it did
have photos of every incarnation of the band prior to when Eddie, Mark, A.J., and I joined.
Who fucking cared!?
With the exception of Jay Jay, not one of those other Twisted Sister members played on even one song on the
Big Hits and Nasty Cuts
CD.

After more than eleven years and thousands of live shows with the band, I was on my own. Good thing I didn’t get that Twisted Sister–logo tattoo I had been considering.

ARRIVING HOME AFTER THE
demise of Twisted Sister, I was filled with a wide range of emotions. My home has always been my oasis, and with things back on the right track with Suzette, I couldn’t have been happier. But leaving Twisted Sister, while a great relief after the months and years of intraband issues, was heartbreaking. I not only thought Twisted would be the band to take me to the top, but that I would be in it forever.
I loved being in Twisted Sister.
I had never seriously considered starting over.

Then there were my finances. I’d been terrible with money my whole life, always living on my next paycheck (and sometimes more) before I’d even done the work for it. I could not remember a time where I didn’t owe somebody or some company money. No matter how much money I made, I was always using money I didn’t yet have. I was painfully irresponsible.

Up until the
Come Out and Play
record, I was getting away with it. Things were always getting better, so there was no problem getting advances (no-interest money on future earnings), Even after
Come Out and Play
(which sold about a million copies worldwide), I wasn’t completely down for the count. Dee Snider was considered a wild card. There was always a chance I might resurrect myself.

But after the absolute lack of interest in
Love Is for Suckers
, my proverbial goose was cooked. Not only had I run out of avenues to get legitimate advances (as opposed to actual loans or loan sharks), but Winterland, the merchandise company that had advanced Twisted Sister a million dollars, had been waiting in the wings to pounce.

We still owed Winterland almost all of that groundbreaking advance, and once the
LIFS
tour was canceled and I left the band,
their lawyers put me on notice. They wanted their money and they wanted it
all
from me. Each band member had signed the contract with them
personally
, not as a corporation or a band, making us each responsible for the full debt if we defaulted. Since I was the one with the most money and assets, they wanted the entire amount repaid by yours truly. No pressure.

My people explained to their people that I was more than willing to pay back one-fifth of the total amount due, as I was only one of five members in the band. If they insisted that I pay the entire million-dollar debt, I would file for bankruptcy and they would get nothing. To this Winterland responded, they wanted it
all
from me, and they didn’t care if I went bankrupt and they got nothing . . .
they wanted to make an example of Twisted Sister.
Nice bunch of guys, huh?

With that hanging over my head, I headed into what would turn out to be my ultimate demise and my longest period of inactivity. Of course, I had no idea of this at the time. Like any long, dark tunnel, I optimistically thought it had to end soon.
I was wrong.

47

I
n rock ’n’ roll, the lead singer/lead guitarist pairing is iconic: Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. In just about every great rock band with a lead singer, there has been that guitar-hero “foil,” onstage and in photos, beside him, defining the band and providing the fans with a musical equal to the front man’s bombast. Not in Twisted Sister.

Twisted Sister had two solid guitar players, but neither connected with the audience in that way. Eddie Ojeda is a great guitar player, but I think he lacks the flashiness to command the audience’s true adoration. When I first joined Twisted Sister, I thought Jay Jay French would be that guy, and initially the audience connected with him. The Twin Towers of Rock ’n’ Roll they used to call us.

The ’60s and ’70s guitar virtuosos stood flat-footed with their guitars up around their necks. The showmen ran around the stage, their guitars practically dragging on the floor, playing “dog doody” guitar riffs that wowed the crowd but were technically vacuous. Snake-oil salesmen. Of course there are exceptions, but for the most part this held true; you were either/or. Jay Jay was the latter, and people used to be impressed by his onstage antics (much to Eddie Ojeda’s chagrin).

Then Eddie Van Halen changed everything.

The day Eddie Van Halen hit the scene, the game changed. He showed the audience, and a world of aspiring guitar players,
you could have it all: be flashy and active onstage, technically stunning . . . and have a damn good time doing both. By the time Randy Rhoads showed up two years later, the fate of the old-school, all-flash/no-substance guitar player was sealed: nobody was buying their snake oil anymore.

So Twisted Sister climbed the road to international fame and fortune with that one important piece to the puzzle missing.
We didn’t have a guitar god.

While I’m pointing fingers, I need to direct one at myself. I wasn’t willing to recognize this back then, but in all those legendary guitar/vocal duos, the front man provided one other thing besides a distinctive voice and performing ability:
sex appeal.
Every one of those legendary front men had the girls/women falling over themselves to get at them. Each and every one of them are what is known in the trade as cock rockers.
I am anything but.
I’ve never had much female appeal. If anything, I scared the girls away. Sure, some find my scary antics and attitude appealing, but not the masses. So, even if I’d had a Jimmy Page or Eddie Van Halen by my side in Twisted Sister, I didn’t bring what was needed to the party. I’m quite the snake-oil salesman myself.

However, as I headed into my post–Twisted Sister world, I believed I could make the transition to cock rocker and knew the cornerstone of my new band had to be the singer/guitar-player duo. I needed to have substance as well as flash. I had to find my guitar god. I had achieved fame and fortune and become a rock star, but I wanted to be recognized as one of the greats. It pissed me off to be dismissed as a flash in the pan and a one-hit wonder. The musical and performing style of my choosing had bitten me in the ass and limited the rock audience’s respect and appreciation for me. A large part of the rock world viewed me as “lucky.”
Lucky?!
Struggling for eight and a half years, playing thousands of live shows, and being rejected by every record label—some multiple times—until you finally make it is not luck. Stupidity maybe, but definitely not luck. I had to do it again to prove my detractors wrong. My success was no accident: I had set out to do something, and against all odds I achieved it. Doing it again—and better than the first time—would shut all of their fucking mouths!

Part of my physical-training regimen was a regular five-mile run in a nearby nature preserve. On those runs—always with anger in my heart, my great motivator—I would listen to both new bands (Guns N’ Roses’
Appetite for Destruction
not only did it for me, but gave me some of my best running times—7.6-minute miles!) and tapes of potential guitarists for my new project.

One day I was listening to a new band out of England called Mammoth and stumbled upon the perfect guitar player, assuming it was
one
guitar player and he would leave his band. Upon further investigation, I discovered that the guys in the band had brought in an Irish guitar player named Bernie Tormé to record the tracks. I knew about Bernie from both his egocentric solo efforts (Bernie Tormé’s Electric Gypsies—he saw himself as the white Jimi Hendrix) and his stunning, yet short, run with Ozzy Osbourne, after Randy Rhoads’s death.

Bernie received the call to take over for Randy shortly after Randy died. Apparently Bernie was one of the few guitar players
not
insensitive enough to ask for the gig while Randy’s body was still warm. One guitarist I know, who shall remain nameless, actually woke Ozzy up in his hotel room hours after Randy Rhoads had died to ask for the gig. Ozzy wasn’t pleased. Bernie Tormé not only had to learn all the songs, but to play the “hammer-on” style (tapping the strings on the fret board with your picking hand) Randy was known for. In two weeks Bernie was onstage at Madison Square Garden, shredding. Amazing. Ozzy asked Bernie to join the band permanently, and—“in the biggest mistake of my career” (Bernie’s words)—he said no. Bernie was just out of Gillan (Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan’s post-Purple band. Bernie was the guitarist in the band before Janick Gers) and riding high in Europe. He had a pretty major offer for a solo project (that whole “white Hendrix” thing) and was sure he would be a bigger star without Ozzy. Oops.