Shut Up and Give Me the Mic (64 page)

Phil did extensive interviews with me on a wide range of teen-related subjects, from cliques in school, to masturbation, to coping with death, and I gave him my insights and opinions at length on all of them. His job was to translate the interview tapes and put them into book form along with any pertinent facts and information (such as Suicide Prevention hotline numbers or how to contact Planned Parenthood) that would be useful to my readers. I wanted the book to read as if a big brother or cool uncle were talking to you, not be overintellectualized—
like this book
—just straight talk, in terms a teen could understand.

When
Dee Snider’s Teenage Survival Guide
was released, with the exception of the
Christian Science Monitor
(which denounced
the book because it was pro-choice), everyone from
Psychology Today
to
Circus
magazine said it was the best book ever written on growing up. It was head and shoulders above everything else out there, and a godsend for teens. Every other book was written by a teacher, psychologist, doctor, parent, or minister.

Several years later, the brother of Twisted Sister’s incredible assistant manager (and future Widowmaker manager), Pam Rousakis, came back from a summer college-exchange program in the then Soviet Union.

“They’re using your book as a textbook,” he said.

“The
Teenage Survival Guide
?” I asked. It was the only book I had written, but I must have heard him wrong.

“Yes. It’s being used as a textbook.”

“In a Soviet college? No way.”

“I’m not kidding you. I couldn’t believe it either.”

Tommy was not the kind of guy to mess around with something like that, but still . . .

A few years after that, I received word my book was being released in installments in the only Soviet teen magazine. Was that even possible?! In the mideighties the only Soviet television channel had held up a photo of me, with all of my makeup on, saying, “This is Daniel Dee Snider, from Baldwin, New York. He is a typical example of American decadence. You can’t tell if he is a man or a woman.” Maybe in the Soviet Union you couldn’t. I could just picture some massive, steroided-out Soviet shot-putter gazing lovingly at my photo in his gym locker: “Look at Dee Snider. Isn’t she beautiful?”

I still could not believe they were reading my book behind the Iron Curtain . . . until I met a Russian fan who brought me
all
of the issues of the Soviet teen magazine my book was in.

After the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union came apart at the seams, my agents received a call from a Russian publisher who wanted to release my book in hardcover. A deal was cut and the book was released. The original picture of me on the cover with my mass of long, blond, curly hair had been removed and replaced with a “jazzy” drawing of some “happening” teens. Not long after that, I got a call for an interview with the
Moscow Times
. They wanted to know how it felt to know that every Russian child
had to read my
Teenage Survival Guide
. My book was mandatory reading!?

To this day, I hear from people (American and Russian) who tell me how my book helped them when they were growing up and changed their lives. Copies, if you can find them, can go for hundreds of dollars. Go figure. My own kids have read the book on their own and say it is great but gives them a bit too much information about their dad. Nobody needs to know about the first time their father masturbated. Back then, I just tried to be as honest and as frank as I could be with my readers. Now with four kids and grandchildren, I don’t know if I could still be that honest about my teen years, but I’m glad I was.

WITH MY MUSICAL CAREER
in a tailspin, having quit
Heavy Metal Mania
because I was overexposed (and MTV didn’t want to pay me), and with my marriage crashing and burning, somehow both my management and record companies convinced me to make the next bad move in my career: turn my solo album into a Twisted Sister record.

I don’t remember how they convinced me, but in the depths of a deepening functional depression, I was becoming less and less sure of myself. Not even a year after Twisted Sister’s and my fall from grace, we went back into the studio and started to work on a new album, this time with legendary Ratt producer Beau Hill. Guaranteed by Atlantic Records’ president that the label was going to get totally behind Twisted’s new album and reestablish the band, Hill signed on to a sinking ship.

During the band’s relative hiatus of several months, A. J. Pero had quit Twisted Sister to do a solo album with a band called Cities. While I always knew he was unhappy about “playing like a monkey” (read: simple, straight drumbeats) as he called it, I could never understand why he quit. Twisted Sister wasn’t doing anything at that time, why not just do the Cities record as a side project? We were getting weekly salaries the entire time we were on break, he could have collected his check while working on the Cities album, which paid nothing.

Years later, when I finally got to ask him that question, A.J.
explained to me that when he told Jay Jay he wanted to do a side project, Jay Jay told him he couldn’t stay in Twisted Sister and play with Cities; he would have to make a choice. With things in Twisted Sister being so uncertain, and A.J. wanting to play and show people his range as a drummer (believe me when I tell you, A. J. Pero can play absolutely
any style
), he resigned. Twisted Sister’s next drummer, Joe Franco, is an incredible journeyman drummer (he wrote
the
book on double bass drumming, the standard in the industry, used at the Berklee College of Music) and a longtime friend to us all. He had been in the band the Good Rats during our club days, but had moved on to work with a ton of other recording bands, including Canada’s Chilliwack and Atlantic recording artist Fiona, Beau Hill’s then love.
¹
He was a perfect fit.

Love Is for Suckers
musically reflects the more commercial direction I wanted to take my solo record in, while lyrically reflecting my dour mental state. I was mad at the world and saw no future in my relationship with Suzette. By the time we started recording the album in New York City, I was ensconced in a hotel and never went home.

In a last-ditch effort to save our marriage, Suzette and I agreed to see a counselor. With over ten years in the relationship and an amazing son together, a lot was riding on a potential divorce. The minute the therapist started talking to me, it became woefully apparent where—or should I say,
with whom
—the problem lay.

Surprise, surprise! I was the one with the total career crash-and-burn. Instead of clinging to my relationship with my always-supportive wife and partner, I was lashing out at her, along with everybody else in my world. The doctor said I needed to spend time working with him one-on-one before he could address any problems Suzette and I were having as a couple. I accepted his diagnosis, but I told him no way was I starting down a lifetime path of weekly therapy sessions so I could slowly sort things out. I arranged to see him every day for two or three hours straight, until we figured it out, and sure enough, the doctor and I made it through the muck and
mire of a lifetime of personal issues.
²
By the end of recording in the spring of 1987, Suzette and I were back together and on our way to being stronger than ever . . . and she was pregnant shortly thereafter. Too bad I can’t say the same thing about Twisted Sister. Being back together and stronger . . .
not pregnant.

THE MISGUIDED RECORDING OF
Love Is for Suckers
as a Twisted Sister album did absolutely nothing to improve my situation with the band. It only made things worse. Maybe the whole group should have gone into therapy.

While the album was technically a Twisted Sister record, I didn’t do anything differently recording it than if it were my solo album. I made a more commercial-sounding record, brought in outside musicians for various parts, and used what I wanted from the Twisted Sister arsenal of talent. I’m not saying it was all as simple as that—I still had to play all sorts of games politically—but ultimately that was the result.

To make it even less of a Twisted Sister record than it already was, I/we decided to take off our war-paint makeup and tone down our costumes to fit in with every other hair band out there at that time. Brilliant! The band that had essentially created the hair metal genre was abandoning their look to fit in with the bands that came after them. Idiot. I was even doing photo sessions in pastel colors and acid-washed jeans, wearing Converse All Stars. How not Twisted Sister was that!?

Love Is for Suckers
, while a great record with hit potential, was
not
a Twisted Sister album. Sure, there are definitely some “twisted” moments (“Wake Up the Sleeping Giant” for one), but with the songwriter of Twisted Sister (me) writing the songs after only writing Twisted songs before that, and Twisted Sister playing the songs, the TS sound and attitude was going to come through somehow.

The album was released in August, and—prepare yourself—
Atlantic Records didn’t pull out all the stops! What a shocker. The label did go through all the motions of a record release. We shot a typical hair-metal video for our single “Hot Love” with former Billy Joel and the Hassles/Attila drummer turned video maker Jon Small (best known for his video work with Billy Joel). Upon release, the video was immediately put into “nonexistent rotation” on MTV. Sure, Twisted Sister helped establish and define MTV as a network, and I cocreated and hosted what would become the hugely successful
Headbangers Ball
, but what had we done for them lately?
Pricks.

The album’s promotion was limited, as was any kind of real record-company push. To quote Beau Hill, “I went looking for the record in the stores and found one copy under a half-eaten hamburger in the stockroom.” Not quite the full-court press he’d been promised by El Presidente.

To be fair to all guilty parties involved, in the summer of ’87, Twisted Sister was still suffering from the drubbing we had taken in 1986. Not nearly enough time had passed for the dust to have settled and the metal community to be ready and open to the return of Twisted Sister. This is why I wanted to do a solo album. I believed it would have been a success—which it more than likely would
not
have been—but more important than that, it would have given the band and the fans a chance to catch our breath, regroup, and come back much stronger in, say, 1988 or ’89. I believe if we had followed my plan, Twisted Sister would not have broken up. Sure, we would have been crucified, had the flesh ripped from our still-quivering carcasses and our bones stomped to dust by grunge in the early nineties . . . but we wouldn’t have broken up!

The
Love Is for Suckers
tour didn’t last long and was depressingly disappointing. Touring with the then rising Great White and TNT, I was reminded of our first tour with the band Blackfoot, who were then at the end of their career. I looked at them as has-beens, and here we were in the same position. After the glory of the
Stay Hungry
tour and the—albeit failed—magnitude of the
Come Out and Play
world tour, traveling now from city to city, a shell of our former, powerful selves (using Stryper’s leftover stage ramps because they were cheap!), was pathetic and sad. To make matters worse, our friend and soundman, Charlie “Sixth Sister” Barreca, and the
band’s longtime road/tour/co-manager and friend, Joe Gerber, were no longer working with the band.

Joe Gerber had quit after being denied a long-promised “piece of the action.” He had always been assured by the band that his years of dedication and service would be rewarded; Joe trusted us to do the right thing. When the band finally sat down before the release of
Come Out and Play
to decide what to give him, the majority voted (not me) to give Joe an insulting bonus structure with a cap that gave him an ice cube’s chance in hell of making any real money. Joe’s then girlfriend, Stacey Sher (former Creamcheese Productions’ production assistant, now a big-time Hollywood producer), called the failure of the
COAP
album and tour “the curse of the cap.” Hurt by the band’s vote of no confidence, Joe, being the professional he is, stayed through the
COAP
tour, then left.

Our soundman, Charlie Barreca, was another story. Having been a member of Twisted Sister since Jay Jay resurrected the band in the fall of 1975, Charlie’s sound-mixing style eventually became a point of contention for some of us. He was a huge Grateful Dead fan and believed in a dry, straight-ahead live sound. Some of the band members (especially Mark Mendoza and I) wanted a more “treated” live sound (using echo and such) to make the concerts more reflect our albums. Charlie and I often went head-to-head on this, but with love. Charlie Barreca was the most dedicated and loyal friend and member of our team—
he would have done anything for the band.

With the even more polished sound of the
Love Is for Suckers
album, the band knew our live sound requirements were going to be that much greater (we even had Billy Squier’s keyboard player and longtime friend Alan St. Jon offstage on the tour, to implement some of the sound elements of the record). The band had a meeting and unanimously decided it was time to part company with Charlie. Fair enough. When the discussion turned to how we were going to let him go, I assumed he would be given the dignity of a band meeting. After all, he was a member of the band. The others didn’t see it that way. After more than a dozen years of struggle—standing shoulder to shoulder with us in the trenches—they wanted to dismiss Charlie with an
official letter from management
! I couldn’t believe it. When I told them I was going to call Charlie personally and let him know
he was being let go, my band members actually had a vote to prevent me from calling! Unbelievable.