Shut Up and Give Me the Mic (9 page)

Less than two years later, my prayer would be answered.

5

M
y time in Peacock ended with my first of many crash-and-burns. You’d think I would learn. Growing issues with the disgusting bass player (who shall remain nameless because he is a douche) finally peaked with a physical confrontation, and I quit. I had tolerated his hygiene, cigarette smoking, difficult personality, and naked jumping jacks. I could deal with all that (well, maybe not the jumping jacks), but the minute things turned violent, I was out. I know you’ve heard a myriad of stories of great rock bands having physical altercations among themselves (sometimes even onstage), but with what sometimes seemed like the whole world against me, the one place I would not and will not tolerate fistfights is within my band. No doubt at times you want to kill each other, but this is your art and your passion. Save that hostility for the haters.

Within weeks of leaving the band I was broke. I’ve always been terrible with money and had mismanaged what I made with the band. My rent was months overdue and I had no cash for food; I was living on peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. My parents, seeing how I had fallen flat on my independent face, “ordered” me to move back home. They knew they couldn’t actually command me, but they saw I was too proud to ask, so they
told me
I was coming back, whether I liked it or not, until I got back on my feet.
Thanks for that, Mom and Dad.

Within weeks of moving back in, I’d hit real rock bottom: my
car broke down and I couldn’t afford to get it fixed. In suburbia, not having a car is worse than not having a place to live. You can always live in your car. No money, no job, no girlfriend, in debt, living with my parents, no band
and
no car? Yeah, that’s about as low as you can go. My only choice was to set aside my dream of being a rock star and do what I had to do to get back on my feet. I swallowed what was left of my pride and got a job on the loading dock of a new department store, Korvettes, about to open.

Now, I’ve never had a problem with manual labor; I’d been working since I was twelve. My family didn’t have a lot of money, so if you wanted something, you had to earn the money to buy it, and what kid doesn’t want things? Especially when you get to junior high and high school and start wanting clothes and records and money to go out. As a result, starting with a paper route when I was twelve (and various odd jobs such as housepainting, mowing lawns, and snow shoveling), I always worked. I was a busboy, bathroom attendant, landscaper, grillman, taxi driver, garbage collector, babysitter, and more. You do what you have to do.

The job on the loading dock seemed like a fair enough way to get out of the hole I was in, but at the orientation I discovered not everyone saw the work the way I did. At the end of the job orientation, the managers opened the floor to questions. I had none. I’d work, get paid, and when I was back on my feet, I’d be gone. Not my coworkers. They wanted to know about benefits, retirement plans, workmen’s comp, maternity leave, and more. All these nineteen- and twentysomethings were talking as if they were going to be there forever.

Later, on the loading dock, I asked the guys about their long-term goals. They unanimously responded, “It’s a good company. There’s a future here. Why? You’re not looking to stay?” Without giving a thought to the consequences, I blurted, “Hell no! I’m gonna be a rock star!” Big mistake.

“Rock star.” That was my new nickname, and it wasn’t meant as a compliment. I was mercilessly goofed on for my ambition and it was used against me.

“Hey, Rock star, pick up that garbage.” “Rock star, scrape that gum off the floor.” “Hey, Rock star, one of the toilets overflowed.” If there was a humiliating job to be done, it was given to
me, always announced loudly for all to hear and prefaced with “Hey, Rock star . . .” Sometimes they would even say it over the store intercom system for everyone’s amusement. It sucked, but it didn’t discourage me. Working in that department store was just an unfortunate necessity on my journey. I knew that in time I would leave it and all those insulting assholes behind and be back on my way to stardom. Oh, and by the way . . . that department store chain eventually went bankrupt. Fuck ya! Though an interesting thing did happen one day on the loading dock. . . .

My coworkers and I had just unloaded a semitruck full of mattresses and were sitting or lying comfortably on top of a stack of them, waiting for the freight elevator to arrive. Suddenly, a junker of a car tears into the empty parking lot across the street and starts spinning out doing squealing 360s. “Hey, Rock star,” one of the losers on the dock exclaimed, “that guy looks like you!” Focusing on the driver of the car, I saw he did have a massive Afro as I did. We made eye contact and waved to each other, brothers in hair.

At that time, my frizzy brown hair was growing to monsterish dimensions. It had always been just parted in the middle, up until my joining Peacock, when drummer Seth Posner had taken me to his hairstylist to do something with my “mop.” In the late sixties, a Long Island, also-ran band called The Illusion had been known for their neatly groomed Caucasian Afros. Seth thought this was a great way to tame my mane, and it was for a while. Not being big on haircuts, my ’fro had got huge! When I was finally promoted from the loading dock to the selling floor of the housewares department, I became the top salesman of
hair dryers
. Even though I didn’t use one (other than, from time to time, my landscaper friend’s leaf blower with its 100 mph winds), customers just assumed the guy with all the hair must know, so they flocked to me for advice. Eventually, I was told I had to cut my hair or lose my job. Guess which I chose?

Years later, when Mark “the Animal” Mendoza and I finally, officially met (after months of silent acknowledgment as our wall-scraping “hair hats” barely missed each other in the clubs), he told me that he was the lunatic doing the spinouts that day in the parking lot. Animal said he saw my incredible Afro and decided to put
on a little show for a fellow “hair farmer,” with the auto-parts-store delivery car he was driving. True story.

DURING MY TIME OF
recovery, I tried putting a new band together (Heathen), but it never got off the ground and eventually disbanded. Then I heard about something that lit me up: the local band Twisted Sister was performing without a lead singer.

From my last year of high school through my year of college and all during my time in Peacock, I was aware of the band. Born of the New York Dolls and the glitter rock of the early seventies, Twisted Sister—who advertised themselves as Mott the Hoople’s favorite band, until Mott got wind of it and sent them a cease-and-desist order—were popular in the tristate area (New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut). Though I’d never seen them perform, I had seen their picture in the local music papers and heard about their act: full-on makeup and bouffant hairdos, platform shoes and glam clothes, playing the best of Bowie, Mott, Lou Reed, and more glitter rock bands of that era.

Formed in 1973, the original band only lasted about eighteen months before imploding. Lead singer Michael Valentine’s partying finally got to be too much (though he did come up with the band’s amazing name one wild night), and the band fell apart. In early 1975 the band reformed with a new singer and lead guitarist, the new singer was quickly given the boot, and by the summer of 1975 guitarist Jay Jay French had taken over “singing” for the band.

When I got wind that Twisted was without a lead vocalist, I saw a real opportunity. I loved all the bands they covered and was into glitter rock (which was technically over by 1975), but had yet to get into the whole makeup thing. Hell, I had a mustache until I left Peacock! As part of my “fresh start” after I left Peacock, I decided to remove the offending “crumb catcher.” Thank God. I never grew it back.

The thing I loved most about Twisted Sister was the name.
Twisted Sister.
Man, did that conjure up some exotic imagery. I had to get in that band.

In August of 1975, they were playing a club in Wantagh, Long Island, called Bobby Mac’s. Using my landscaper friend’s backpack leaf blower, I blew my hair out to majestic proportions, put on my glitter platform shoes, and headed out to see them for the first time.

I walked into the small, filled, but not crowded club and parked myself on the dance floor. The band’s set was composed entirely of songs by Lou Reed, Mott, Bowie, Kinks, the Stones and the like, talk/sung in classic Lou Reed style by guitarist Jay Jay French (he can’t sing for shit). The band looked great and Jay Jay French exuded some real rock-star attitude, but they
definitely needed a singer.
I couldn’t wait to approach the band.

After the set, I kept an eye on the dressing-room door, waiting for them to come out. Keith Angelino, aka Keith Angel, the band’s new guitarist, exited first. A real Keith Richards/Johnny Thunders clone, he seemed approachable, so I made my move. I introduced myself, told him that I sang my ass off and rocked righteously (but not in those words), and said I would love to sing for his band. Keith reacted pretty positively, but told me I would have to speak with Jay Jay.

Keith went back into the dressing room to get him, and a few minutes later out strode Jay Jay French wearing makeup, sunglasses, platform shoes, and appropriate glitter-rock garb. I have to admit I was in awe. This was one of the guys I had seen in all those ads in the papers, which was a big deal to someone trying to get in those papers! This was
the
Jay Jay French!

Jay Jay seemed already well informed about me and why I was there and told me how the band was building all of its material around his “vocal styling” and weren’t interested in getting a new singer. Disheartened, I thanked Jay for his time. As I turned to leave, Jay Jay, in what, I would eventually learn, was his true businessman, pragmatist style, called after me, “But give me your phone number just in case.” Not seeing a reason, I gave it to him anyway.

I later found out when I finally joined the band that Keith Angel (who was no longer in the band at the time) had told Jay Jay, “This asshole Danny Snider [my name at that time] is out there and wants to sing for the band.” Jay Jay assumed that Keith knew me (he didn’t, but in hindsight he had
keen
intuition) and wrote me off before he even heard what I had to say.
Where are you now, Keith Angelino?

It would be almost half a year before I heard from Jay Jay French again.

THERE CAME A DAY
when I realized that I had not been in a band, or sung, for close to six months! This was not a good thing on so many levels, the biggest one being getting out of shape vocally.

The voice box is a muscle, and like any muscle, if you work it regularly, it grows strong, but too hard it can get sore, and you can strain or permanently damage it. But if you don’t work it out at all, it atrophies and grows weak. Not having sung for such a long time (for a singer), I knew I was ill prepared if the opportunity came along to play with a band. I needed to work my voice out.

I’m not exactly sure how I found the band—probably in the classifieds of the local rock paper or hanging on the board at some music store or rehearsal studio—but they not only needed a singer, they needed a bass player as well. Rather than wander into this band of aliens alone, I put in a quick call to my Heathen bass player, Lee Tobia. I told him I was just looking for a band to rehearse with to keep my chops together and asked if he wanted to audition with me. He was in between bands himself and needed to “work out,” too, so we went to the audition together. I don’t remember how good or bad the band was (I know I wasn’t impressed enough to say “Wait a minute, I’ve found my next band!”), but it didn’t matter, I just needed a band to rehearse with so I’d be ready when opportunity came. Years later, I would become a student of Tony Robbins’s (that’s right, the man is amazing), and he would verbalize what I instinctively knew: Luck is preparation meeting opportunity. I needed to be prepared because I knew opportunity was coming. Don’t ask me how.