Shut Up and Give Me the Mic (44 page)

As the record label, our management, and I went over every photo for a possible replacement shot for the failed cover, we all kept coming back to virtually the last shot taken, on that last roll of film, at the end of that long day of shooting. A photo of me, crouched in the corner of the room, like a trapped animal, holding the bloody bone out in front of me and screaming. The shot was the definition of
Stay Hungry
and it became the album cover . . . exposed dental work and all.

The shot of the band in street clothes (nice Capezios, Eddie) around the table with the bone on it became the back cover, but the lasting image that would come to represent the band all over the world was a picture of yours truly. The band couldn’t have been happier.
Yeah, sure.

This album cover was probably the biggest slight of all to the band, and the thing that truly set things on a downward spiral between us on a personal level. While I had always known that when we finally broke through I would be the one everyone focused on, I believe the band was fooled by the attention each of us had received during our years in the club scene. Playing night after night, two, three, or even four shows, the audience had time to get to know and love
each
member of Twisted Sister. Before we had albums out and toured, it was definitely more of a “John, Paul, George, and
Ringo” vibe with our fans. Once a group got out of the clubs and on tour, with only thirty to ninety minutes to get to know a band, the one time of the year they came around, all the attention would be on the front man or the most outrageous member of the band or the creative force. All of those were me. Twisted Sister was way more of an Alice Cooper than a Kiss.

The posters, T-shirts, magazine ads, and more resulting from the Dee-only album cover, and the additional attention it brought me, just added insult to injury and were a constant reminder to the guys of the horrible turn (for them) the band had taken. Meanwhile, I couldn’t have been happier.

BY OUR THIRD RECORD
, the idea of the TS logo being interpreted differently for each album and tour was starting to set in. I envisioned the logo out of bones for the
Stay Hungry
record and tour, but needed a mock-up to show the Atlantic Records art department. I turned to my in-house
everything
, Suzette, to do a quick sketch.

She had just woken up and was in her pajamas and robe, having her morning cup of tea. I asked her to knock out a quick representation of my vision.

Half-asleep, Suzette grabbed a pen and a sheet of paper and in literally five minutes banged out a TS bone-logo sketch. With no erasures (it was pen) and one try, it was definitely close enough for the art department to understand what I was going for. Suzette is so damn talented.

A few weeks later, I paid a visit to the record company. I stopped by to say hello to Jason Flom, and on the wall behind his desk was a TS logo sticker . . . with Suzette’s bone-logo sketch!

I asked Jason where he got it from, and he told me the art department had given it to him. I quickly headed down to the office of Bob Defrin, the label’s art director, to discover Suzette’s sketch of the bone logo—not someone’s polished interpretation of her sketch, but her actual sketch—had been used on
everything! It was on the cover of our album, for God’s sake!
Somewhere along the way, my “here’s the idea of the logo I’m looking for” had been translated to “here’s the bone logo, run with it.”

Nobody at the label or my manager’s office understood why I was so upset. They all thought the logo looked great, as did the band.

When I broke the news to Suzette, she was mortified. She is a perfectionist and would never have allowed something that important to go out that rough and unfinished.

“If I knew it was going to be the actual logo,” Suzette exclaimed, “I would have spent ten minutes on it!”

Suzette’s bone logo—as is—has been in use on records, merchandise, print ads, and more, all over the world, for more than twenty-five years. Suzette says Twisted Sister owes her money!

34

O
ne more piece was needed before we could pull the trigger and launch our
Stay Hungry
album and tour . . . a video. Though we had stuck our toe in the water with the first one, nothing could have prepared us for what was about to happen.

Ever since we had done the
You Can’t Stop Rock ’n’ Roll
video, my mind raced with thoughts about the true potential of the medium. MTV was growing at an exponential rate; making a video to go with your album and single was now expected. Believing that “We’re Not Gonna Take It” would
unquestionably
be our first single, I conceived an elaborate, story-driven video, with an actual “acted-out” opening, something I didn’t realize hadn’t been done before in this format.

My idea was for a father—like my own—to be yelling at his son to turn down his music, and the kid would transform into me and blow his father out a window. The song would kick in, and Looney Tunes–esque high jinks would ensue.

Unbeknownst to the band, an established, award-winning concert and comedy-show director, Marty Callner, was looking to make his entrance into the world of rock video. He and his partner, lawyer Mickey Shapiro, approached Atlantic Records with the idea of producing both a video and live-concert special for a “promising, up-and-coming band.” Atlantic accepted Creamcheese Productions’
proposal and offered them three new bands for consideration: INXS, Zebra . . . or Twisted Sister.

As luck would have it—or by design, on the part of the wily director—Marty Callner brought his teenage son Dax with him to check out the music of the three bands. The story goes that Dax lit up when he heard Twisted Sister, and his dad trusted his son’s instincts.

I flew out to LA with Mark Puma and we joined Atlantic Records’ senior VP Paul Cooper at the Palm Restaurant in Beverly Hills for a meeting with Creamcheese Productions to discuss the video and concert shoots. I took to Marty Callner immediately, and he to me (I think). Though he lived and embraced the Beverly Hills lifestyle (Johnny Carson once quoted Marty, saying, “Beverly Hills is like being in high school with money”), Marty was anything but West Coast. Growing up a street-tough kid from Cincinnati, Ohio, he embodied the American dream, yet kept the “Cinci” attitude.

Before the meeting even officially started, Marty noticed my eyes grow wide at the sight of massive jumbo shrimp served as an appetizer. Having only ever had the “all you can peel-n-eat shrimp” off of a salad bar, I wasn’t prepared for these baby’s-arm-sized, already peeled—and cleaned—beauties. What a rube I was! Marty told the waiter to bring out a large bowl filled with them for me. Welcome to high school with money!

Once all the introductions and pleasantries (and behemoth shrimp) were behind us, we got down to business. Marty immediately asked if I had any thoughts for the video, and I shared my concept.
He loved it!
This is one of the things that makes Marty Callner the great (and hugely successful—just check his history on IMDB) director that he is . . . he is not threatened by good ideas from other people. Even though my video experience was practically none—and I was so wet behind the ears that big shrimp left me dumbfounded—Marty recognized, welcomed, and encouraged my creativity.

Marty told me he and I would work side by side on the project, asking only that I not undermine his authority with his crew by correcting him, or telling him to do things, in front of them. That was it. From that moment on, and throughout the project, Marty Callner
and I were attached at the hip, becoming better and better friends the longer we worked together. We’re still great friends to this day.

UNFORTUNATELY, BEFORE WE EVEN
got out of the video-production gate, I was pulling my insanely long hair out of my head over a major issue with the choice of first single. People’s preferences were all over the place! Every “country” was being heard from, including various clueless record-company types . . . and they were gravitating away from the obvious lead track.

When I got word that it looked as if the record company would go with “Burn in Hell” as the lead single, I pretty much lost my mind. Great as that song is, it would have been album suicide.

Seeing how upset I was, Marty Callner made me get in his car (the beautiful Jaguar XJ6 that Tawny Kitaen would later be seen doing splits on, in a Whitesnake video Marty directed); he said he wanted to show me something. With the windows rolled down and the air-conditioning blasting (something else I learned in Beverly Hills), on a beautiful spring day, Marty took me to a huge cemetery and stopped the car.

“You see that?” he said emphatically, pointing to the sea of gravestones. “That’s a real problem. As long as you’re aboveground, you’re okay. In the end, none of it really matters anyway. Don’t let the bullshit get to you.”

His point hit me hard.

“So what’s the matter?” Marty asked.

I told him about the record company’s stupidity over what the single should be.

“I’ll take care of it,” Marty said.

Later that same day, I received a call saying the president of Atlantic Records had pronounced that “We’re Not Gonna Take It” was to be the first single. I couldn’t believe he had finally come around!

He hadn’t.

You see, when Marty and I got back to the house, Marty sent El Presidente a telegram that read
HARD AT WORK ON VIDEO FOR
TWISTED SISTER’S “WE’RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT” STOP SEE YOU AT THE TOP OF THE CHARTS! STOP MARTY.

The minute Mr. President thought money was already being spent on a “We’re Not Gonna Take It” video, he changed his position on the choice of the single and made his new “decision.” To this day, that man claims he was the one who picked “We’re Not Gonna Take It” as our lead track. Yeah, sure you did, dude.
Thank you, Marty!

THE VIDEO MAKING THIS
time around was much more involved for a couple reasons. For one, the budget was not only
way
bigger than for our first video, but it was way bigger than
most
video budgets at that time. This was Marty Callner’s foray into the world of MTV and he wanted to make a statement. The six-figure budget we had for the shoot was a huge amount to spend, and a big budget with an ambitious concept meant a huge production and crew. And we were simultaneously setting up the
Stay Hungry
concert for filming as well, so you can see what a tremendous undertaking this was.

Marty Callner was true to his word and made me his partner every step of the way, the first step being laying out the entire story on index cards so we knew exactly what the hell we wanted to do. Together we developed the story line, pretty true to my vision, but for some reason he wanted me to knock out an elephant.
You heard me.
We both thought the scene in
Blazing Saddles
where Mongo knocks out a horse was hysterical, and it would be a laugh riot if I knocked out an elephant in my full Twisted Sister regalia. It had nothing to do with the story of a son rebelling against his father, but Marty became pretty obsessed with proving he could make it happen.

As the days went by, and the story became more and more refined, the elephant scene hung on. Just days before shooting, one of the producers pulled me to the side and begged me to convince Marty to drop the idea. It was prohibitively expensive and didn’t make any sense. I couldn’t disagree, so I spoke with Marty, and he begrudgingly removed it. Knowing Marty as I do, I’ll bet he still regrets we didn’t do it.