by Dee Snider
The audience was more than a little confused, and as the remaining band members slowly realized Phil and I were no longer onstage (what was in those cigarettes they were smoking!?), they stopped playing and, one by one, walked off. What a debacle.
Backstage, we stood in stunned silence, too overwhelmed by the harsh reality that had just hit us. And then it got even worse. The door to the backstage area opened and in walked my father. Unbeknownst to me, after years of listening to me prattle on about my bands and music, he had decided to come, unannounced, and check out my first show. I looked at him, he looked at me, he shook his head in disappointment and disgust, then walked out without saying a word. To this day, that show has never been mentioned or discussed.
I could not have been more humiliated or embarrassed. That experience scarred and changed me for life. I vowed to never, ever perform again unless I was completely and thoroughly rehearsed and ready. Only in recent years have I even considered getting up and “jamming” with another band. I had fucked up big-time. My bluff had been called and I had no one to blame but myself. I now knew that if I wanted to be a rock star, it would take hard work and perseverance. Nobody was going to hand me fame and fortune.
FROM THAT POINT ON, all of my many bands rehearsed, a lot. Along the way I discovered a new axiom:
DEE LIFE LESSON
A band is only as good as its weakest link.
How? When I realized I could get into a lot better bands if I just sang rather than insisting on playing sucky guitar as well. While being able to play a little guitar has over the years served me well (I would always translate my vocally composed Twisted Sister songs to guitar and show them to the band), the time had come to free myself and become the wild-man performer I knew I was meant to be. Hell, one of the reasons I sucked on guitar was because I moved around too much to play well, but I looked good doing it!
My father fought my pursuing a career in music more than ever. After what he had witnessed, why wouldn’t he? He couldn’t have been more disappointed in the path his oldest son was taking. Once I had given up playing baseball completely and started growing my hair out (after an ugly, forced-haircut incident in the beginning of tenth grade), my dad pretty much gave up on me. He barely talked to or even acknowledged me for years. Things didn’t get better until my younger brother Mark showed an intense interest in baseball and my father could once again focus his fatherly pride and support on something he understood.
In fairness to my dad, he was raised during the Great Depression, a time when dreams were shattered, not achieved. He was raised to believe that the only way you get anything in life is by fighting and clawing every inch of the way, and that dreams don’t come true. Well, he was right about the first part. Add that to rock ’n’ roll being alien entertainment to his generation, and I can understand his resistance. I don’t think my father was truly proud of me until only recently, when I did my run on Broadway in 2010. A Broadway star was a concept he could understand. My going after a pipe dream of a career in rock ’n’ roll was, from his point of view, watching his child heading for massive disappointment and self-destruction. Man, was he wrong!
The man did pretty much everything he could to stop and discourage me. Though outward displays of rebellion were met with swift, forceful punishment, he could not stop the growing fire inside me. I remember one time my father banned me from rehearsing with my then band, The Quivering Thigh. So I took up jogging. Each night, dressed in running clothes, I would leave the house, jog several miles to rehearsal, rehearse with the band for a bit, then jog home. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
By my junior year in high school, I was playing dances and parties occasionally, while most of my buddies in Armadillo had moved on to a new band, Harvest, and were already out playing clubs at night—even though they weren’t even old enough to drink. Harvest’s lead guitarist extraordinaire, Doug Steigerwald, was a longtime friend, altar boy at my church, and a true inspiration to me. I was always in awe of him. Both having S last names, we sat next to each other each morning in homeroom. One day he was recovering from a late night of rocking and I was blathering on (as usual) about my band, his band, rock music, and anything else that remotely related to our common passion. Finally Doug, who was on the quiet side, said, almost as a revelation to himself, “You’re really serious about making it, aren’t you?”
“Yeah!” I responded in disbelief. I’d been annoying him about it for years. He was just realizing this? Doug’s next, Yoda-like words to me affected me like few others. I’ve reflected on them, followed them, and repeated them often over the last four decades. “Don’t let anybody stop you from moving toward your dream. Not family, not friends, not girlfriends . . . nobody. The minute you let anyone stop you from moving forward, you are finished. Try not to be shitty about it, but whatever you do, do not let anyone stop you.”
I sat there dumbfounded by Doug’s profound statement, the words etching into my psyche. A couple of years later I would watch my dear friend Rich Squillacioti literally cry when we replaced him in our band because he just wasn’t good enough to take us to the next level. If I’d allowed our friendship to prevent what was right for my career and the band, that would have been the end of me, too.
To this day, I don’t know what was going on in Doug’s life to have him make such a pronouncement, but it must have been heavy. A few years later, Doug would abandon his dreams of rock stardom and join the US Air Force after being seriously ripped off and lied to by some music-industry asshole. Doug loved music, but like many, he couldn’t take the ugliness of the business. They call it the music business for a reason.
Armed with this newfound knowledge, I headed off into the unknown, knowing where I was going, but not how I was going to get there.
4
to be or not to be
While music was a constant in my life, my place, in the complex system of cliques and social circles in high school, was anything but constant. I was always struggling to fit in with some crowd. I wanted to be accepted. Since I wanted to look like a badass, and I had a connection through my nicotine-stained friend Timmy Smith, at first I tried to hang with the troublemakers. We called them dirtbags or greasers. While I liked their vibe, I just couldn’t get into picking on people for the hell of it (a prerequisite), and my solid C average was off-putting to the other guys. Report-card day would come, and we’d all stand around comparing grades. “I got three F’s and two D’s,” one lowlife would brag. “Oh, yeah, I got four F’s and one attendance failure,” another piece of shit would boast. “What did you get, Snider?” “Straight C’s,” I would mumble, hoping they wouldn’t notice. “Whoa . . . get a load of the big brain on Snider!” I just didn’t fit.
Needless to say, my 2.0 grade point average and lack of interest in Mathletes and Chess Club wasn’t making any inroads for me with the intellectuals in school either. I did have an A average in gym, but I had to work every day after school (no weekly allowances in the Snider household), so I couldn’t go out for after-school sports and I didn’t think the world was shaped like a football. That meant being a jock was out. You would think, since I was in bands, that hanging with the “freaks” (rockers, stoners, artsy kids) would have been a natural fit, but it wasn’t. I didn’t drink or get high. They just looked at me as if I were weird.
That I didn’t drink or party was a deal breaker with a lot of the cliques. Partyers just aren’t comfortable with people who are sober. They don’t trust them. So, when I wasn’t at school, working, or rehearsing with my bands, I pretty much kept to myself or hung with my few outcast buddies.
Why don’t I party? Ah, the million-dollar question. Well, I don’t drink because I had a bad experience when I was fourteen. I got so smashed I couldn’t get off the floor and swore that if the good Lord above ever let me walk again, I would never touch demon alcohol. I kept that promise until a few years ago, after reading so many good things about the health value of having a glass of red wine with dinner (Jesus drank win
e). You should have seen the faces of my family and friends the first time they saw me pick up a glass. They thought it was a sign of the Apocalypse!
As for drugs, I’ve always known I have an obsessive personality, and if I started doing drugs, I wouldn’t be able to control myself. Besides, I’ve never really had a problem “letting myself go.” I was always a crazy kid, and at first the people I knew who partied would say “Snider, we want to see what you’re like high.” Then after spending a bit more time with me, they would say “On second thought, we don’t.”
Am I anti-drugs-and-alcohol? Not really. I’m just anti-asshole. If you can party and remain who you are or become a looser, more fun version of who you are, God bless you. But if when you party, you become some shape-shifting, obnoxious asshole who doesn’t know when to quit . . . you, I can live without.
The unfortunate thing is, society has created an environment where people don’t feel comfortable letting themselves go unless they’re high or have a few in them. How many times have you been somewhere and asked someone, or been asked by someone, to do something such as dance or sing and heard, or said, “Just let me have a couple of drinks.” Why? Because society dictates that it’s okay to get crazy, silly, or act foolish if you’re high. It gives you an excuse to embarrass yourself. “Oh, I was soooo wasted.” If I climb on top of a bar, pull out my dick, and piss on the floor and I’m drunk, they put me in a cab and send me home. If I do the same thing and I’m sober, they say I’m crazy and I get my ass kicked, arrested, or both. That double standard creates a dangerous environment.
I’ve been clean and sober my whole career. People see the way I dress, act, and perform and assume I’m wasted. “Dude, you must be so high,” people say to me, admiring my crazed state. When I tell them I’m stone-cold sober, they look at me as if I am insane. What a fucked-up world! If you want people to stop getting drunk and high (especially kids), you need to change the way society perceives it. Stop making it an acceptable excuse for poor behavior. Stop portraying it as cool. And stop viewing outgoing behavior when you’re not high as weird. Then you’ll see some changes.
Add my nonpartying attitude to my already confused persona and you had a complete outcast. By my junior year in high school I had tried to fit in and fell out of, or was kicked out of, every group or clique. Yes, I had my other outcast friends, but I wanted to be popular, or at least a part of some character-defining group.1
I felt as if I were fading away, becoming just a part of the background to the beautiful people living exciting lives. Then I decided I wasn’t going to take it. One day I just realized that if I didn’t resist—if I didn’t refuse to go quietly into the night—I would become just another nameless, faceless person in the world. I made a conscious decision that day that I would no longer give a shit what other people thought. I didn’t need their approval or acceptance, and I’d rather be alone and happy than just another follower in some lame-ass clique. I decided that I was going to be me, and—I know this sounds corny—that’s the day my life began.
From that day on, I was me—or at least the me I was going to become. It didn’t happen that instantly. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more I forced myself to be whom I wanted to be and not give a shit what others thought, the more of a reality it became.
About that same time, I came up with a new, personal motivation concept: PMA, or positive mental attitude. I kid you not. I believed that if I thought and acted positively, positive things would happen for me, and my positive thoughts would become reality. I still do. I now know that’s just another form of self-fulfilling prophecy, but when I was sixteen, it was more my becoming aware of the power of positive thinking. From that time on (and to this day), when people asked me how I was doing, I didn’t say “Okay,” or even “Good,” I said “Excellent!” Even when I wasn’t. This mind-set has taken me everywhere, and when things were bad, it kept me from wallowing in self-pity and negativity and focused on the promise of what lay ahead. And it kept people wondering what the hell I had going on that they didn’t know about. Besides, it sure beat the hell out of such mantras as “It’s just one of those days,” “It’s just my luck,” and “Murphy’s Law.” To hear kids reinforcing these negative thoughts in their young, fertile minds is simply maddening to me. Thinking like that sets you up for a lifetime of accepting failure. Screw that!
DEE LIFE LESSON
PMA: positive mental attitude. Life will be great because I say it will!
“PMA” became my daily mantra and a source of great amusement to my father. Whenever things weren’t working out for me, he was quick to throw PMA in my face or beat me to the positive punch and say with disdain, “I know, I know, PMA,” before I could. He never deterred me. From time to time, he still mentions PMA, but it’s more in amazement and recognition that my approach to living has paid off and I was right. Even if I hadn’t been right . . . what’s the advantage of living life with a negative attitude?
With newfound self-confidence, my mission was clear: move forward. I was living the “Doug Steigerwald success axiom.” Each band I formed or joined was a step in the direction to the top—and nobody, no thing, was going to stop me.
In my senior year of high school, I was in a band called Dusk, along with my perennial drummer, Rich Squillacioti (this is the band where I bid him farewell), and my best friend and fellow outcast, guitarist Don Mannello.2 Joined by keyboardist Mark Williamson and bass player James “Dino” Dionisio, we had the distinction of being the most popular new rock band in the school. I make that distinction because there was a fifties tribute band (the fifties were all the rage in the seventies) called The Dukes, who were also popular. More about them later.
Because Dino Dionisio was the toughest guy in the school (he had once thrown a guy over the roof of a car), I was able to take my newly discovered I-don’t-give-a-shit-what-you-think attitude to a new level. For the first time I explored what some would pejoratively call “fag” things such as wearing sparkles, women’s jewelry, pink clothes, and dancing around onstage. This was all a part of the popular “glitter rock” movement of the time, but for a kid in a suburban high school, to wear stuff and perform like that at a dance was pretty risqué. Thanks to Dino, I not only got away with it, but all the cool kids danced furiously to my band, cheering, requesting songs, and a lot of the hot girls looked at me for the first time as if I wasn’t a total loser. I had a steady girlfriend by then, but it was nice anyway. Oh, yeah . . . fuck you all.
I graduated from high school in 1973, on the honor roll (I finally applied myself), and headed off into my future without ever looking back. Other than for my time in the concert choir3 and maybe drama club, I had absolutely no “glory days.” I didn’t go to the prom or even buy a yearbook.
With my buddy Don Mannello (this time on bass) we formed a new band called Harlequin, but I also enrolled at the New York Institute of Technology, majoring in communications. Due to pressure from my parents and a girlfriend, I went to school as a “safety net” in case I didn’t make it in rock ’n’ roll. I figured if I couldn’t make records, I would play them, so I went to school to learn to be a disc jockey. I know . . . foreshadowing.
Harlequin was a classic, self-indulgent seventies power trio with a vocalist (me) that was very impressed with itself. Roger Peterson (guitar), Joe Moro (drums), Don, and I homed in on being loud and heavy for the sake of being loud and heavy. In my first true metal band, I was finally playing music I totally loved.
Until the early metal bands arrived, tremendous unity existed among rock fans. Just look at the bands on the bill at the original Woodstock: The Who, Richie Havens, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Mountain, Country Joe and the Fish, Jimi Hendrix, Sha Na Na, Ten Years After, Sly and the Family Stone, Santana—what a confused mishmash of genres! And the audience cheered equally for all of them.
Not me. I liked the heavy bands and hated the light ones. I was into Mountain, Cream, and Hendrix, bought the first Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath records when they were rel
eased, and purchased Grand Funk Railroad’s On Time the very day it came out. Hell, in ninth grade I was in a band that only played Black Sabbath. For me it was “Helter Skelter” not “Blackbird,” “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” not “Angie,” and I didn’t want to “mellow out,” I wanted to rock!
In 1972 I remember being at a high school party and Don Mannello and I nearly coming to blows with Phil Knourzer (yes, my ex–bass player) and his hippie friends over negative comments they made about Jimi Hendrix and Deep Purple. The Woodstock Nation was crumbling and I was swinging a heavy-metal sledgehammer!
Harlequin played out more than my other bands and rehearsed more, too. I improved my vocal and performing chops. We were locally popular, and for the first time I felt I might be in the band that would take me to the top.
Then I received the phone call from Peacock.
I DON’T REMEMBER HOW they heard of or found me, but a working cover band called Peacock approached me about singing for them. They had just canned their vocalist and needed a replacement. I went to see them perform and was less than impressed. They had the worst introduction I’d ever heard. “We’re Peacock! P as in pea; C as in cock! Those of you on the left can see the pea, those of you on the right can see the cock!” Yikes!
They were a human jukebox, playing “the rock hits and nothing but the rock hits, so help me God” adequately enough, but I was in a badass heavy-metal band with virtuoso musicians; this was definitely a step down. As I stood there watching, the memory of Doug Steigerwald’s voice rang in my ears: “The minute you stop moving forward, you are done.”
Harlequin was struggling to get into the club scene, getting only an occasional lousy booking and playing outdoor shows in county parks. Peacock was working five nights a week, every week. This was an opportunity not only to make my living playing music, but also to develop my chops and be seen. Peacock wasn’t the band, but that band might be out there watching.
