Shut Up and Give Me the Mic (54 page)

Marty and I decided we should go not only with a performance video but with a stripped-down Twisted Sister as well. “The Price” was a heartfelt song (remember its inspiration?) and the makeup and costumes sort of trivialized its true meaning. The idea was to shoot the song with Twisted in street clothes during a sound check, then show the band performing, full-on, in concert later in the song.
The video was filmed at the War Memorial Coliseum in Rochester, New York, during a couple of days’ break from our tour with Iron Maiden.

Stay Hungry
producer Tom Werman was a great believer in the “radio mix” as key to the success of a single. The thought behind this was that most people experience a new song
on the radio
for the first time. Unlike more deliberate music listening, blasted on your car or home stereo, radio listening is usually at a lower volume and in the background. When listeners hear something that catches their ear, they reach for the volume knob and turn it up for a better listen. That is the real way many people discovered new music.

While songs were usually mixed in the studio at higher volumes through monster—or at least home-size—stereo speakers (this of course predates the iPod), this kind of mixing can be misleading for what the song will actually sound like on the radio. Some record producers
only
mix for the radio. Case in point, Todd Rundgren. He produced the entire Meat Loaf
Bat Out Of Hell
record so that it sounded good on a radio. I’m sure he figures
anything
sounds good when you crank the volume.

To his credit (did I actually just say that?), Tom Werman liked to do a separate “radio mix” for released singles, working on small speakers at low volume to create a mix that would “pop” when listened to in the background. Tom wanted the song to catch your ear even if you weren’t focused on it. He even had a car-radio speaker he would plug in and test the mix on, then he would take a tape out to a car with a normal stereo system in it and listen to it again there.

In an effort to get “The Price” out quickly, Atlantic Records never notified Werman of its imminent release, and Tom didn’t get to do his special mix as he did for “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and “I Wanna Rock.”

The song tested well at radio (audience opinion when
asked
to listen to a song) and the video was a fairly welcome departure from our usual fare at MTV, but “The Price” didn’t break through the way we all hoped it would. I don’t know if the missed radio mix had anything to do with its failure as a single, but I’m sure that didn’t help. We expected it to push the album to the next sales level (triple platinum) as yet another hit single off the record. Instead, it was
the “event horizon” that signaled it was time to wrap things up and move on to our next album.

WHILE WORKING ON THE
“The Price” video with Marty Callner, he imparted to me some bad news. Less than four years after the birth of MTV, they had decided to reduce the amount of heavy metal videos they were airing. After using the genre to help launch their network, they were dropping metal the way a shuttle launch releases its booster rocket. You got us where we need to go . . .
see ya!

I was blown away by the shortsightedness of this corporate decision; I expected more from Music Television. The heavy metal audience was incredibly loyal. Why cut them completely loose when MTV could have their cake and eat it, too? I had Marty propose to the powers that be for headbangers get their own show to tune in to. Metalhead fans will dutifully tune in once a week, at ungodly hours, to hear a weekly radio show dedicated to their music on the radio; why not do the same thing on television?

MTV soon came back with their answer: if Dee will host it, we will do a metal show. One other caveat. A young MTV producer named Liz Nealon had been proposing the same idea to them. They wanted me to work with her on the show. I didn’t have to be asked twice. Here was an opportunity to keep metal alive on MTV, promote the music genre I loved (and still do), and graduate to a new medium as show host. Liz Nealon and I met, connected creatively, and
Heavy Metal Mania
was born. The monthly show eventually became weekly, but I left after working for free for eighteen months because MTV wasn’t willing to pay me a dime for my effort. They said it was great promotion for me. By then I was completely over-exposed and the most recognizable face in heavy metal. Fuck great promotion!
Show me the money!

The show Liz Nealon and I created, and that I worked for a year and a half without pay to establish, eventually mutated into the now legendary
Headbangers Ball
. You’re welcome.

THE STAY HUNGRY TOUR
would end both auspiciously and suspiciously. Let me explain.

While Maiden played a series of headline shows at Radio City Music Hall and went off to do the first Rock in Rio event, Twisted Sister used the time to take a run at some other countries besides the United States and Canada. Though we would never make it to Europe on that record (other than the pre-album-release dates in England, Holland, and Germany), we did go to Australia, New Zealand, and Japan for a handful of shows. Five, to be exact.

En route to Twisted’s first show in Japan, I stopped in Los Angeles with my bodyguard, Vic, to be a presenter on the Grammy Awards. I saw it as an opportunity to further bring the music I loved to the masses. I wasn’t nominated or even performing on the show, but back then there was no heavy metal category. The genre was completely ignored by NARAS (National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences). No one from the metal community had ever even been
asked
to attend. I viewed my appearance as a breakthrough and a major inroad for metal.

I am an original headbanger and I have always had a passion for heavy metal. From the earliest days I believed it was worthy of a much wider audience. It deserved more radio time, television time, press coverage, and general respect and appreciation by the masses. I wanted metal to be the world’s music. I wanted to hear it on movie sound tracks, on commercials, and as Muzak on elevators and in banks. I felt it should be heard and played everywhere, and that was a part of my life’s mission. Sure I wanted to be a rock star, but I wanted to use my influence to bring heavy metal to the mainstream. Why shouldn’t the marching band play heavy metal songs at halftime?

To that end, I accepted every offer I got from the mainstream media. In analogy, I viewed these appearances as the unpopular kid in high school making it with the homecoming queen. I was with her and shouting to all my fellow outcasts, “Look who I’m with! Ha-ha!” The outcasts were having the last laugh. Unfortunately, the metal community did not view it the same way I did. The core metal fan saw my efforts as selling out. They didn’t want to share their heroes, especially with the mainstream. If only I’d realized this sooner.

While it can’t be argued my dream wasn’t heartfelt, when heavy metal did finally make it to the masses in the early nineties, the exposure practically killed it. Metal has always been the cockroach of rock ’n’ roll, thriving and surviving on the outskirts of the mainstream while other genres came and went. That under-the-radar quality has kept it alive. Heavy metal was never meant for the masses. It is music by headbangers for headbangers, and that’s how it should always remain.

PRESENTING AT THE 27 TH
Annual Grammy Awards in February of 1985 was interesting, to say the least. The big deal that year was Prince and the Revolution and Prince’s movie
Purple Rain
. Everyone was abuzz because Prince had “agreed” to perform on the show. I could not have cared less.

The afternoon of the event, I arrived with my bodyguard for the rehearsal/sound check. Everyone there was either presenting, performing, or working on the show. As I stood backstage with Ray Davies of the Kinks, Stevie Wonder, Leonard Bernstein, John Denver, and other music industry luminaries, it came time for Prince and the Revolution to do their sound check.

At the behest of Prince, the Grammy producers had painted a large dressing room/trailer purple, and set it up backstage. This was so “his royal shortness” and his band wouldn’t have to get ready or hang out with the rest of us peons. The door to the trailer opened, and surrounded by nearly a dozen of their personal security, Prince and the Revolution were escorted to the stage. During the maybe 150-yard walk, the lead bodyguard (you may remember the dick—gray-and-black beard, like wrestler “Superstar” Billy Graham?) was barking out orders to the celebrities and crew backstage.

“Don’t look at him! Avert your eyes! Look away! Stop staring!”

As Prince and the Revolution passed a bunch of us (I assume they passed, none of them could be seen behind their security), the lead asshole tells Stevie Wonder to
look away!
Are you freakin’ kidding me?!

That night, I presented the Best Male Pop Vocal Performance Award, with Sheila E., to no-show Phil Collins, saying as I opened
the envelope, “This is the first time a dirtbag presented one of these.”

To me
that
was what it was all about. Their being forced to acknowledge and recognize us (the metal community), in any capacity, was a victory. Being on national, prime-time network television—wearing jeans and a cutoff T-shirt—was a moral victory for both me and heavy metal.

I left the theater immediately following my presentation. The producers wanted me to sit in the audience, but I felt it was way too tame and legit for a heavy metal rock star such as myself. I headed back to the hotel and got ready to catch my flight to Japan to rejoin the band. I had more important things to do than hang out with music industry elitists and party.

Not until four years later was heavy metal officially recognized by NARAS (albeit with an initial snubbing of Metallica, when the award went to Jethro Tull), but I’d like to think I helped open that door.

TOWARD THE END OF
1984, I was contacted by the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The last wish of Robert, a sixteen-year-old boy dying of leukemia, was to meet me. I couldn’t believe it. Of all the things someone might make his last wish, I was stunned I would be it. I readily agreed to meet him under the condition this would not be a publicity stunt and Robert and I would just spend some time together alone. I wasn’t going there to meet anybody else.

My visit was to be a surprise, but the day before I was to arrive at the hospital, I received a call. Sadly, the kid wasn’t going to make it until I got there, so in hopes of lifting his spirits and getting him to hold on for a few more precious hours, they told him Dee Snider was coming to see him. He stayed alive just so he could meet me.

When Joe, Vic, and I arrived at the hospital, I first met Robert’s family and caregivers, and they informed me that what I was going to experience might be difficult. Because of the advanced stage of Robert’s disease, a once strapping young boy now weighed less than sixty-five pounds. As a result of chemo and radiation treatments Robert had no hair and could no longer speak. He was, however,
relatively alert and could hear me. I steeled myself and went inside to meet my most dedicated fan.

Robert was as sick as they warned me, but I could see his recognition of me in his eyes. I sat with him for a couple of hours talking about everything and anything,
except
his illness or his bleak future. I spoke only about positive, uplifting things, always in future terms and of “
when
you get better.” I shared with him personal stories, spoke of bodybuilding regimens and weight-gain supplements that would help him put on the pounds and regain his strength when he got out of the hospital. I even told him of the possibility of his working with the Twisted Sister road crew in the future.

My whole time there, Robert lay silent and still, a pale skeleton of a boy, but his eyes never left me. After a couple of hours, I could see he was exhausted from the effort, so I told him we’d hang together when he got better and left the poor sick kid forever.

Outside the room, his family’s outpouring of gratitude was touching. I had given their son and brother his dying wish, and they were forever in my debt. I left the hospital amazed that what I did mattered so much to some people, and I was glad I’d brought some kind of joy to the final hours of a young man whose life was simply too short. I felt a deep sense of appreciation for how lucky I was and said a silent prayer for the future health of my son. I could not imagine the anguish Robert’s parents must have been going through.

IN MARCH OF
1985, Twisted Sister and Iron Maiden played an outdoor show in Tempe, Arizona. I was backstage getting ready when Vic came into my dressing room, a look of shock on his face.

“He’s here, boss.
He’s here,
” my bodyguard said in disbelief. Vic always called me boss.

“Who’s here?” Someone was always “here” in those days, but Vic was being a little vaguer than usual.

“The kid. The sick kid.”

I stopped putting on my makeup and turned to Vic. “Robert? The kid from Make-A-Wish?”

Vic nodded.

Robert was still alive?
“What’s he doing here?”

“Partying,” Vic answered, surprised by the word coming out of his own mouth.

And he was. After my departure from the hospital, Robert’s disease went into remission and he started a full recovery. Less than six months later, he was out of the hospital, back to “fighting weight”
and then some
(thanks to my weight-gain and training tips), and working construction! Robert was backstage at a Twisted Sister/Iron Maiden show and making up for the time he lost out on partying when he was sick. It was incredible. Oh, yeah . . . and he wanted to know when he could start working and touring with the band.