Shut Up and Give Me the Mic (17 page)

DURING OUR YEAR OF
living together, many band meetings were held. One infamous meeting was when Eddie—after months of being late, missing things, and generally being less than a part of the band—was to be dismissed and replaced by my best friend and Twisted housemate, Don Mannello. Don was a good-looking, great guitar player who would have made an amazing addition to the band.

Jay Jay, the band manager and spokesperson, was all set to fire Eddie, and then he “called an audible.” Without consulting the rest of us, Jay gave Eddie one more chance to get his shit together. We were stunned. Remarkably, Eddie—who always had a “legit” excuse for everythin
g
—got his act together quickly, and a band member he remained.

Another meeting was called to discuss the future of the band. Not in an ominous way, but in a positive “What do we do to achieve our goals?” discussion. The special guest at that meeting: Kevin Brenner, our booking agent. Kevin had worked with dozens and dozens of bands over the years, but we were the first that he could see making the jump from cover bar band to playing our own music in concert venues all over the world.

A timeline and game plan were discussed, but when the subject turned to original music, I went off. I couldn’t stand the originals we were then playing. Not only did I think they were weak, but they weren’t right for my voice, the band, and its ambition. This wasn’t the first time I’d griped about these songs, but it was probably the most intense.

Kevin Brenner looked at me. “Can you write songs?”

“Yes,” I responded confidently.

“Have you
written
any songs?”

Oops.
Brenner had me there. “Uh . . .
no
,” I mumbled.

“Then shut the hell up until you’ve got something better,” our intrepid agent barked.

Check and mate! I was red-faced. It was humiliating to be put in my place like that, but it was frustrating, too . . . because he was right. I can’t stand people who constantly tear things down with absolutely no suggestion of how to do it differently or better. I sat quietly for the rest of the meeting, and when it was over, I stormed
up to my room and slammed the door. I knew I was right about the band’s originals, and I was sure I could write songs. It was time to put up or shut up. Inspired by Bad Company’s
Burnin’ Sky
album, I wrote my first original song for the band a few days later. I presented them with “Pay the Price”
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and they liked it. We worked it up (at a club) and added it to our set.

From then on, I was constantly working on new, original songs, and I wrote them all—music, melodies, and lyrics—by myself. Feeling alienated from the band for a variety of reasons, I made it my goal to solely create all the music that would define Twisted Sister.

BY 1977, TWISTED SISTER
had solidified its position as a dominating force in the club scene on Long Island and in upstate New York and was beginning to expand its sphere of influence further into New Jersey and Connecticut. The Demolition Squad was on the move. New York City clubs (such as CBGB) were never an option because they were too small and didn’t pay well, and because our continued dedication to the no-longer “in vogue” glitter-rock movement of the early seventies made us a pariah to the “too cool for the room” city rockers.

It always blows my mind how New York music industry moguls will wander into some shithole half-empty club (downtown or uptown, take your pick), see a band playing for a handful of apathetic hipsters, and go back to work the next day proclaiming they’ve discovered the next big thing. Meanwhile, across the bridge (or through the tunnel) some band is rocking the hell out of a dangerously over-filled room of people, literally bouncing off the walls, and it goes completely unnoticed. At the height of Twisted Sister’s club days, we were performing in the suburbs to a thousand to three thousand
people
a night
(sometimes over four thousand),
five nights a week
, but we had to go to England to get noticed by the music industry! I guess if it’s not in the city, it can’t possibly have value, right?
Friggin’ record company morons.
But I’m getting way ahead of myself. When people would question Twisted Sister’s commitment to what was then considered a defunct music trend, I would respond, “If it’s that over, why are people still freaking out when I walk onstage every night?” By the time a trend reaches suburban and rural audiences, the urban “cultural centers” have moved on to something else.

I knew plenty of life was still left in the whole glam rock thing and embraced it with a passion. The wild costumes Suzette made were blowing people’s minds, though some of the guys in my own band were embarrassed by the more genitalia-revealing ones. Suzette made the pants so tight, they left nothing to the imagination. They didn’t call us cock rockers for nothin’! These outfits, combined with my penchant for insane onstage behavior and violent reactions toward hecklers, were building my and the band’s reputation as a “don’t miss” attraction.

Pretty much nightly, I’d leap off the stage into the crowd and get into a confrontation with some drunk jackass who thought I was going to let his derisions slide. Fuck that! Now they could go home and tell their friends how they got shut down by some huge “fag” in high heels, a shorty satin top, and a purple feather boa. I
loved
that outfit.

I’ve never been a fighter, but I cannot and will not allow some asshole in the audience (or on the street, for that matter) to dictate what I can or cannot wear or do. Audiences have a mob mentality. If you allow one or two to get away with saying or throwing shit at you, others will get brave, and soon you have a major problem on your hands.

ONE NIGHT, AT A
club in New Jersey, I was talking to the club owner, and he made a reference to “my boss.”

“My boss?” I said. “Who’s my boss?”

“Jay Jay,” the club owner responded matter-of-factly, as if he was surprised I even had to ask.

Jay Jay!? My boss?!
I was incensed! Did people think that was the case? Jay Jay was still the “bandleader,” essentially running the show. He was the consummate carnival huckster, regaling the crowd each night (with my help) between songs with lame, Borscht-Belt humor. To be fair, the audience loved it. The idea that his substance-less bullshit was overshadowing my talent (I was pretty damn full of myself) was flipping me out.

As I drove home that night, I fumed. Talent does
not
necessarily win out in the end. Bullshit beats talent. Then what beats bullshit? I turned this question over and over in my mind, looking at it from every angle, until it hit me.

DEE LIFE LESSON

Bullshit beats talent . . . talent + bullshit beats bullshit!

I knew just what I had to do. To dominate, I had to take Jay Jay’s shtick, improve upon it, and add it to the singing and performing I was already delivering each night. And I did just that.

As the months rolled by, I continued to write more and more songs and refine my look and my act. The other band members didn’t work as hard on their look, so by late ’77, people were starting to take the singularity of the name
Twisted Sister
to mean me. I was the “twisted sister.” I think the others in the band may have had their own epiphany at that point.

BY AUGUST OF THAT
year, the failed experiment that was the band house ended, and we all went our separate ways. Jay Jay and drummer #3 got a place together, and Eddie, who had secretly married his fiancée, Clara, found a place with her. Having graduated high school after her junior year, Suzette was accepted to her school of choice, the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, a hell of an
achievement for a sixteen-year-old girl. Suzette was going to live in the dormitory at the school. This was a problem.

As I said earlier, New York City could be a scary place for suburbanites. Though I certainly had become more worldly over the eighteen months I had been with Twisted Sister, NYC was still a largely alien place to me. Now I was faced with an even bigger issue: the love of my life was moving there.

Suzette was now officially “in love” with me, though I can’t be certain that the Stockholm syndrome didn’t play some kind of part in it. We’d been together almost a year and a half, and our commitment to each other was pretty much a lock (not to say that our romance was easy). Suzette’s choices had been either to go to school in Paris or New York. Due to the seriousness of our relationship, she chose the latter, but, understandably, was not going to commute. When my high school girlfriend had gone off to college, I’d experienced the growing apart that happens when a couple are away from each other for extended periods.

I wasn’t about to let that happen with Suzette. She was to start college the first week in September, so I hopped on a train in the middle of August and headed for the Big Apple to find myself an apartment.

Like a complete idiot, dressed in the nicest clothes I had (a long-sleeved, colorful, man-tailored shirt, high-waisted, bell-bottom slacks, and platform shoes), I made my way to Penn Station, then took the subway,
five blocks
, to FIT. Clearly I had no concept of distance in NYC. I exited the subway station on a steamy mid-August afternoon, dripping with sweat, and stood on Seventh Avenue in front of the school. I looked around, and directly across the street was a lone apartment building: Kheel Tower. I waited for the walk signal (rube!), then crossed the street to check it out.

The building superintendent told me an apartment was available and showed me a killer one-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath duplex, with a balcony, on the twenty-third floor, overlooking the school (and, as it turned out, right next door to the dean of FIT). The rent was a bit pricey, but I figured with a couple of roommates I could make it work.

At a pay phone outside I called my old pal Don Mannello and my former drummer, turned aspiring actor, Rich Squillacioti. They
said they were in, so I told the super I would take the place, got back on the train, and headed home. The whole of this apartment hunting took less than an hour.

When I told everybody I had found an apartment exactly where I wanted it, without a real estate agent, on my first try, nobody could believe it. Apartment finding in Manhattan is long and arduous. Things like that just didn’t happen. They did if you were meant to be with the woman of your dreams.

Two weeks later I moved in. Suzette lasted two days in her dorm, then, unbeknownst to her father or my parents, she moved in with me. We’ve lived together ever since.

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