Shut Up and Give Me the Mic (67 page)

They induced labor (gave my wife drugs) so Suzette would be fully dilated for the birth. The minute they took Suzette out of the room to prep her for delivery, I got on a phone to my manager.

Calling him every kind of muthafucker, I unleashed all my frustration, fear, and anger on him. I irrationally blamed him for our baby’s prematurity, believing that Suzette’s Herculean effort while pregnant to prepare the house for sale had caused this. If he hadn’t kept telling me not to sell the house (when I would have been available to help), this would never have happened. God help him if something was wrong with our baby!

Our third son, Cody Blue Snider, was born on December 7, 1989. Weighing only four pounds seven ounces, and looking like a scrawny chicken, he was otherwise totally healthy. Still, he was premature and would have to be monitored in the neonatal unit until he fattened up a bit and they were sure he was all right. Even healthy premature babies face potential problems. For example, Cody stopped breathing one night. Why? Because that’s what premature babies sometimes do. They aren’t developed enough to
remember
to breathe all the time.

Luckily, today’s NICUs monitor babies for things like that and have alarms that go off so nurses can gently nudge the baby to get him or her breathing again. Freakin’ scary, right? You bet it is. Fortunately, Cody experienced no further health issues and put on enough weight for us to take him home for the holidays. What a joyous Christmas gift!

REGRETTABLY CODY WOULD NOT
be our last scare with premature birth. In 1996 Suzette would get pregnant for a fourth time, this time with our daughter, Cheyenne, and after only a few months of pregnancy, began to dilate and was in danger of miscarrying.

To prevent further cervical dilation and the baby’s descending into the birth canal, Suzette was admitted to Schneider Children’s Hospital, where she was committed to bed rest on a
decline,
and a variety of medications (some potentially lethal), for as long as she and they could keep the baby from being born. The hope was to build our daughter’s birth weight and accelerate her physical development so she would survive.

When Cheyenne Jean Snider was finally born on Halloween night 1996 (I was in the delivery room wearing a Leatherface mask, of course), Suzette was thirty-three weeks pregnant and Cheyenne’s birth weight was five pounds eight ounces. For a premature baby, she was a heavyweight. Like her brother before her, she had to spend time in the neonatal unit for observation.

While we were lucky not to have any of the major health issues of premature birth befall us, as you sit day after day in the NICU, you can’t help but notice all the babies and families around you who are less fortunate. Some babies are born weighing less than a can of soda! Many preemies and their families have to endure a lifetime of health issues and hardships.

A few years later, I would discover (actually they found me) that the March of Dimes research and efforts helps those less fortunate families dealing with premature births and birth defects. Through being a grand marshal, chairing my own ride, and eventually becoming a national spokesperson for their Bikers for Babies Ride initiatives, I found a way to give back and show my appreciation for how lucky my family had been with our two preemies.

48

W
e finally finished recording and mixing Desperado’s
Ace
album by the end of that winter, then started the long process of readying the record for release. With my personal finances continuing to worsen, things seemed to take even longer and go that much slower. It was hell.

I found it positively painful to watch MTV. Hair metal was a massive force to be reckoned with at that time, and to have to witness bands that had opened for Twisted Sister on tour or, even worse, watched us in the clubs (hello, Bon Jovi and Poison) taking the spotlight was killing me. Twisted Sister—the band who had created the “hair metal” genre, helped to bring it to the mainstream, and whose videos changed the medium completely—had been utterly forgotten by MTV. Even my show
Heavy Metal Mania
had been changed to
Headbangers Ball
and was being hosted by someone I
knew
was being paid. Not much I’m sure, but I know Riki Rachtman got something!

In the spring, Suzette and I finally sold our house. While its value had doubled by the late eighties, the housing market was quickly softening in the winter of 1989/90 (perfect timing, eh?). But finally, the day of Cody’s baptism and party, a couple came to see the place and were taken by the magic of a beautiful spring day and the family love pouring from us all at that important event. Though the
market value of our home had dropped considerably from its peak, we still made a nice profit, solving our financial problems for the time being.

The plan was to buy a new house in Florida, near where the majority of Suzette’s family lived. With my career and current “international” band, I no longer needed to live in New York as in my days with Twisted Sister. With the impending absences sure to result from my readying a major record release and hitting the road again in a big way to establish a brand-new band, it made all the sense in the world to move to Florida, where Suzette and our children would have the support of her loving family.

While I dealt with pre-record-release issues in New York, Suzette headed down to Florida and homed in on the perfect house. It was amazing how much further our money went down there. As the summer began, the date for our big move and my album release approached. Everything was finally falling back into place.

There’s that word again . . .
falling.

IN AUGUST, DESPERADO WAS
set to shoot the video for our first single off the new record: “There’s No Angels Here.” This single and the rest of the songs on the record were the culmination of more than two years of creative struggle, during which I had put a lot of time into achieving artistic growth. By heavily studying the singing of Paul Rodgers, I’d reworked my vocal style considerably. Digging deeper into my more blues-based musical influences such as Led Zeppelin, Humble Pie, and Bad Company, and cowriting with Bernie Tormé, had improved my songwriting as well. The
Ace
album had—and still has—some of the best songs I ever wrote, recorded, or sang.
¹
I couldn’t wait to unleash it on what I saw as a doubting public.

I was literally packing to leave for England to shoot our video when I received a devastating call from my manager, Mark Puma. Elektra Records had dropped Desperado and shelved our album.

The news hit me as if I’d been told a family member died. I collapsed in a chair and listened to an explanation of how my record—which already had a catalog number and was in the Elektra database and slated for release in just weeks—had come to an end. Brian Koppelman—the fan who had signed us—had left the label for a better offer at a new record company called Giant Records. Insulted by Brian’s move, Elektra got even with him by “shelving”
all
the projects he was working on. As if we were inanimate objects, Elektra Records shut down our careers. I couldn’t believe it.

When I asked on what legal grounds they could do this, it turned out that one little phrase—actually one
word
in our contract did us in. “
Commercially
viable recording” instead of “
technically
viable recording” made all the difference in the world.
Technically viable
means you put the record in/on the player and it plays.
Commercially viable
means the album you deliver has to be salable,
which is completely subjective.
What is
salable
is so variable, the phrase leaves it up to the personal opinion of the individual. That phraseology is deliberately put in contracts as an out for the record label. A good lawyer will catch it, dispute its place in the contract, and have it changed. Unfortunately, I did not have the best lawyer, or manager, for that matter.

I had heard a story about Elektra president Bob Krasnow—not a fan of heavy metal—trying to do the same thing to Mötley Crüe on their second album,
Shout at the Devil
. Mötley’s managers, McGhee/Thaler, stormed into Krasnow’s office and threatened to do everything in the book to Elektra Records if they didn’t release the record. Krasnow—disgusted not only to have to talk to these people, but to even have a band such as Mötley Crüe on his eclectic label—caved to their demands, promising to do nothing for the record and saying he would let it “die on the vine.” This story was told to an associate of mine as they watched Bob Krasnow—wearing a Mötley Crüe headband—standing on his chair singing “Shout at the Devil” with the Crüe at Madison Square Garden after the album had sold over 2 million copies. So much for commitment to your beliefs.

That’s how great managers handle the situation. My manager couldn’t even get Bob Krasnow to return his calls.

When I finally spoke to Krasnow (whom I had never met—another mistake of my management’s), and asked him how he could
do this, the asshole replied, “Dee, it’s nothing personal; it’s just business.”

Not personal!? It couldn’t be any more personal.

“I’m sure your group is very good,” he continued.

What?! He hadn’t even
listened
to our record?!

“Hey,” I recall him saying, “if it was up to me, I would get rid of all the heavy metal bands we already have on our label.”

The audacity of this piece of shit! Those “heavy metal bands” he was talking about getting rid of included Metallica, Mötley Crüe, and the Cult. This was 1990; Metallica’s
Black Album,
Crüe’s
Dr. Feelgood
, and the Cult’s
Sonic Temple
were selling millions upon millions of copies! Include the heavily metal-influenced Elektra band Queen, and those heavy metal bands were paying this arrogant fuck’s salary and keeping the label afloat!

For the next year, my lawyer tried to get my band and me out of the recording contract, the rights to our songs returned, and the right to license the record to another label for a fair price. Elektra Records would not let me out of the deal or allow me to rerecord the songs, and the only thing they would accept in payment for the use of the actual masters was full reimbursement of the money they’d laid out for the deal—$500,000, or $50,000 per song.

This created problems for me on so many levels. The half a million dollars Elektra spent was an exorbitant amount, pushed up by the interest of other labels, a signing bonus, and money spent developing the project. The actual album-recording cost wasn’t anywhere near that. Also, with Elektra shelving the record after spending so much money, even if other labels liked what they heard—
especially
if they liked what they heard—they wondered what was wrong with Dee Snider and Desperado that we had been dropped. The actual explanation just didn’t make sense: Elektra ate half a million dollars to get even with an A&R guy who quit?

When we did get some interest from smaller labels to put out the record, Elektra held steadfast to their demand of full reimbursement. They would rather have nothing than something. I just couldn’t understand the position they were taking. Finally, after months of struggle with the company, someone gave me the answer, off the record. They told me that Dee Snider’s career seemed dead, but he might resurrect himself. The company view was, it’s better to write
off a half-million-dollar loss than to take a chance, let the record go, and have it be a hit for another label. That would be career suicide for whoever released me.