Shut Up and Give Me the Mic (57 page)

The recording went pretty smoothly. Dieter Dierks was great to work with, and his engineer, Eddie Delana, was a great guy, too. The Record Plant did treat Twisted like gods, and their studios were filled with other giants of metal such as Judas Priest. Dieter brought the guys from Dokken in to do backing vocals on some of the tracks, and Alice Cooper and Clarence Clemons stopped by to do their parts on “Be Chrool to Your Scuel.” It was very rock ’n’ roll.

The one fly in the ointment on this record came not from the band, studio, producer, or other musicians, but from an actor. A second-rate, B-movie actor.

Another of my all-time favorite movies is
The Warriors
. This legendary, Walter Hill–directed gang movie is flat-out one of the coolest
pictures of its type. The title of our fourth album came from the song I had written called “Come Out and Play,” which was derived from a memorable moment in
The Warriors
when the bad guy, Luther, repeatedly taunts the Warriors with the chant “Warriors, come out to play.” I decided that I wanted our album to start with that chant, slightly modified (“Twisted Sister, come out and play!”), and I wanted to hire the actor who played Luther, David Patrick Kelly, to do it.

When I spoke with David and told him of my plan, he
passed
on the offer, saying with an attitude, “I don’t want to reprise the same character.” Was he fucking kidding?! Since doing
The Warriors
he had been in three other movies,
Dreamscape
,
48 Hours
, and
Commando
, and portrayed essentially the same sniveling scumbag in each one. In
48 Hours
he was even called Luther! It’s virtually the only part he’s ever played.

The minute I hung up with
the thespian
, Joe Gerber and I worked out how to do it on our own. Joe clinked the three bottles together perfectly to create the rhythm, I did a fairly spot-on impression of David Patrick Kelly’s sniveling voice, and it didn’t cost us a penny
.

THE COME OUT AND PLAY
album, while filled with great songs (if I do say so myself), and while Dieter Dierks had great input on the arrangements, the sound suffered greatly from his overproduction and overprocessing of the sounds.
Sorry, Dieter.
You are a great, talented guy and I love you dearly, but ultimately, you weren’t the right guy for the job.

One would think that adding more and more layers of music and technology to each track would make the record sound bigger. It has the opposite effect. It makes the songs sound smaller. I’m not saying the blame for the failings of
COAP
falls onto Dieter’s shoulders—it doesn’t—but the sound of that record, and how it came across on radio, certainly did not help. While the plan was to make Twisted Sister’s
Come Out and Play the
album of the 1985 holiday season (all part of my megalomaniacal masterstroke!), due to the delay in locking in a producer there was no way we would make the mid-October release date. This meant we would not be
able to lock in prime display space, promos, ad buys, etc., for our record. Undeterred (could anything stop me?), I relentlessly drove my team on toward a less than optimal release in late November. But I’m getting way ahead of myself.

Before we’d even finished recording the record, an unusual request came into Twisted Sister’s management office. Little did I know, I was about to become an advocate in the national spotlight.

42

I
n May of ’85, Senator Al Gore’s wife, Tipper, got a wild hair up her ass after realizing the words to Prince’s “Darling Nikki” were about masturbation. Along with three other “Washington wives,” she formed an organization called the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC).

The PMRC’s mission was to educate parents about “alarming trends” in popular music. They claimed that rock music encouraged/glorified violence, drug use, suicide, criminal activity, etc., and sought the censoring and/or rating of music. I remember thinking, who would possibly listen to the inane prattling of Washington busybodies with way too much spare time on their hands? A lot of people did.

This was the Reagan Era, and ultraconservatives were in control. That the PMRC and their coming witch trials—I mean, Senate
hearings
—were predominantly Democratic initiatives speaks volumes about the political and societal mentality of the day. The same environment that had fostered the Decade of Decadence was now trying to put an end to it.

As spring turned to summer, and the voice of the PMRC got louder and louder, I was still virtually unaware and completely unaffected by what was going on. I had bigger fish to fry. When my management office got the call for me to come to Washington and testify on September 19, at the (illegal, as you will soon discover)
Senate hearings on record labeling, I had to do some research to find out what was going on. Once I realized what was happening, I didn’t hesitate to accept the invitation. I saw it as the metaphorical equivalent of carrying the flag into battle. I was sure the entire rock ’n’ roll community would follow.

I had been asked to speak because not only was “We’re Not Gonna Take It” on the PMRC’s notorious Filthy 15, a list of the songs they found most objectionable, but at that time, thanks to my rampant overexposure, I was
the
most recognizable face in heavy metal. Who better to invite? I’m sure that looking at my photos and videos, and listening to my music, they were certain I would be the perfect heavy metal fool to make a very public example of.

Joe Gerber—a former Ivy leaguer and a very smart guy—and I went into immediate lockdown. With only a couple of weeks until the hearings, I needed to become educated on the subject at hand and well-informed about the PMRC, the senators I would be speaking in front of, and all of their cohorts. Joe gathered the research (this was the eighties—you couldn’t just click a button) and even attended a PMRC rally/speech to find out everything he could about the enemy. He reported back to me daily and fed me the information he had gathered, which I absorbed like a sponge.

I was expected to make a statement of my position on this issue to the senators. Joe and I worked tirelessly on my speech, endlessly refining it until it was the ultimate weapon of the PMRC’s destruction. We were positively diabolical! They had absolutely no idea whom they were dealing with. They really should have invited Vince Neil.

Another major part of prepping for the hearing was going over questions they were likely to ask and statements they were certain to make against me, and preparing my answers and rebuttals. Joe and I left nothing to chance. The one thing we knew I could not talk my way out of was Twisted Sister’s rampant use of the initials SMF. But did I even want to?

The week before I was to appear, a request came in from the Senate committee for a copy of my speech. What? Apparently, everyone who testifies before the Senate is required to surrender their statement, in advance, to the committee, so they can read it and prepare their rebuttal. Were they kidding me?! This was a deal breaker. I
was unwilling to show my hand, unless, of course, the senators were willing to share
their
statements with me. My manager notified the committee of my position, and they responded that it would not be necessary to see my speech in advance. They were probably all bent over in hysterics at my self-importance and chutzpah. What could a moron such as Dee Snider possibly have to say that would make any kind of difference to anything?

They were about to find out.

I ARRIVED IN WASHINGTON,
DC, with my posse the night before the hearing. Joe Gerber, my right hand, was with me, as was Vic, my bodyguard. I asked my father—a Korean war veteran and a patriot—to accompany me, thinking he would enjoy a unique opportunity to see our nation’s capital up close and personal. He jumped at the chance. My dear friend and rock-video god, Marty Callner, and his wife, Aleeza, flew in from the West Coast to support me as I did battle. Besides our great relationship, Marty felt a direct connection to what was going on. His video for “We’re Not Gonna Take It” was on constant display whenever I, Twisted Sister, or the song was highlighted. I was glad to have him on my side.

The day of the hearings, I woke up in my hotel room feeling no trepidation whatsoever. I was fearless. Priding myself on never bowing to decorum, I donned my usual rock ’n’ roll wear for the event: skintight jeans, tiger-head belt, snakeskin boots, sleeveless Twisted Sister T-shirt, and cutoff Twisted Sister denim vest. Finishing up with my tooth earring, aviator sunglasses, and a touch of mascara, I was ready to kick some PMRC ass.

Before heading out, I took the speech Joe and I had worked on so diligently and deliberately folded it up like a bad kid’s homework and jammed it into my back pocket. This was my deceptive finishing touch. They weren’t gonna know what hit ’em!

The drive to the Senate building was eye-opening. The streets were filled with protesters (for and against), spectators, and media. It was completely insane. The Senate hearing on record labeling was arguably one of the best-attended and media-covered hearings held before a Senate committee. To think that this unpopular kid from
Baldwin, Long Island, was right smack at the center of this controversy was mind-boggling. When I see footage today of me at that event, I can’t even fathom how cocksure I had to be, to walk into that hostile environment with the attitude I had. Talk about being full of yourself.

The hearing was held before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, and the truly infuriating thing about it (besides the obvious) was that it was, essentially, an illegal proceeding. The forum of a congressional hearing can only be used to address issues for possible legislation, yet in his opening remarks, the committee chair, Senator John Danforth, stressed, “The reason for this hearing is not to promote any legislation . . . but simply to provide a forum for airing the issue itself, for ventilating the issue, for bringing it out in the public domain.”
WTF?!
Could it be that the wives of committee members Albert Gore, John Danforth, and Ernest Hollings—all three women affiliates of the PMRC—had used their unfair influence and womanly ways with their husbands to create a forum for their cause that no one else could possibly have?
Oh, hell yes!

Who knows how much taxpayer money was used to finance this political circus and ultraconservative witch hunt? It’s sickening to think that our government officials can use their elected office, irresponsibly, to satisfy their attention-needing wives. And we were talking about the First Amendment! Not the Second, Third, or even Fourth . . .
the fucking First!
This wasn’t an afterthought on the part of our forefathers: “Oh, yeah, let’s put something in this Constitution thingy about free speech.” No! It was the first damn thing they thought to put down!

To add insult to injury, before the hearing was even held, the RIAA, the governing body of the recording industry, agreed to a
WARNING PARENTAL ADVISORY
sticker. I was going to Washington to fight a battle that had already been lost?! Again I say . . .
WTF?!

The hearing was exactly the media circus you might imagine. Frank Zappa, John Denver, and I were brought in to represent the musicians’ point of view. As Frank and I stood “backstage” (in some office) waiting to testify, we marveled at the insanity of the moment and wondered what side John Denver would be on. We knew it should be ours, but John was as American as mom and apple pie
and a beloved public figure. In fact he was testifying after meeting with NASA to discuss his possibly becoming the first musician in space! It doesn’t get more American than that.