by Dee Snider
I knew it was going to take everything I had to make it in music, but I also knew this about myself: if I had a safety net (going to college) . . . I would use it.
DEE LIFE LESSON
It’s too easy to allow yourself to fail when failure “isn’t that bad.” When failing means complete and total self-destruction, you work much harder to succeed.
At least that’s how it is for me. The choice for me needed to be succeed or die . . . so away the net went. Once again, being the least asshole I could, I left my friends in Harlequin (including my longtime best friend and bandmate Don Mannello), broke the news of my leaving school to my parents, and joined Peacock.
PLAYING FIVE NIGHTS A week did help me get my act together. I moved out of my house (and into my grandfather’s basement apartment in Flushing, Queens) and became a professional musician. I clearly remember riding home in the band truck (they had their own equipment truck!) before sunrise my first night with the band, hanging out the truck window, and screaming, “I love this!” Playing in a working band, being a rock ’n’ roll vampire, is all I wanted to do. And I did.
During my time with Peacock I learned a few things. The biggest being “always bring your A game.” Doing five sets a night (forty minutes on, twenty minutes off) meant starting early with a sparsely filled club and ending late with a near-empty club. The middle set was the most crowded, and the second and fourth were the build up and the build down. The guys in Peacock wore stage clothes and such, but only really put on a show for the middle sets. They adjusted their dress and performance to the number of people in the club. Weekday nights were slower, so they did less (if it was really slow, we didn’t dress or put on a show at all), while weekends were packed, so they kicked it up. What a stupid concept.
The fewer people there are, the harder you have to work. You want those people to stay, tell their friends, and come back next time to see that incredible band that kicked ass to four people! When I joined Twisted Sister (the next working band I was in), I made sure that every set, no matter how empty the place was, got 110 percent of what I had to offer. I firmly believe that that is the attitude that helped Twisted become a tristate club phenomenon and to this day one of the greatest live performing bands ever. Ask anyone who has seen us in concert.4 And, no, none of the other members of Peacock ever did anything significant with their music careers.
The other major thing I learned was more lifestyle-related. I lived in the basement apartment alone and kept traditional musician hours: go to bed at sunrise, get up in the afternoon. Well, one winter night I got back to my apartment around 4:00 a.m. It was still dark out. I was exhausted, so I hit the sack immediately. When I woke up, it was still dark out, so I checked the clock and saw it was a little after five. At first I thought, Oh, I’ve only been asleep for an hour, but I didn’t feel tired at all. Confused, I finally realized that it was after 5:00 p.m. . . . and I wasn’t even sure what day it was!
This may not seem like a big deal to you, but I was freaked. I turned on the TV and figured out that I’d been asleep for over thirteen hours. The concept boggled my mind. I sat there realizing how an entire day had gone by. People had gone to school or work and come home, the stock exchange had opened and closed, major events had been held, etc. I didn’t know if it had been sunny or cloudy because I had slept a whole day! I vowed that, even though my profession of choice was a night job, from that day on I would never sleep the day away again, and I would wake up early on my days off and get the hell out of my apartment. There was more to life than just playing in the band. (Did I just say that?) Maybe not the most stunning revelation, but it was the start of an understanding of balance that would affect my life and career.
I had a few other epiphanies while I was in Peacock. The first was with my grandfather. Moving into the basement apartment at my mom’s dad’s house served two purposes. First, it got me out of my parents’ house and closer to Peacock’s home base in Queens. I couldn’t stand living at home anymore. My life choices were a constant source of friction between my father and me, I had no privacy, and I couldn’t stand suburbia. I shared my room with my two younger brothers, Mark and Doug (then thirteen and eleven years old), with only a Peg-Board divider to section off my cell-like space and give any kind of privacy. We were living on top of one another, and when I’d blast my heavy music, my little brothers would beg for mercy.5 I guess it wasn’t easy on them either.
At times, life in the Snider household got to be so maddening, I’d get in my car, drive somewhere, park, and just sit there, blasting my music, with the heat on high (Dad kept the thermostat at home set to a chilly sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit to save money), and read comics. It felt great to have my own little space.
To make matters worse, I found suburbia to be absolutely suffocating. The congestion of Baldwin, the monotony of tract housing, and the cookie-cutter existence of everyone there drove me nuts. I knew there had to be more to life than this out there somewhere. Early in the morning, before the cacophony of sound that was suburbia kicked in, I could actually hear a waterfall somewhere in the distance. In all my years of living and wandering around my neighborhood, I had never seen one, but I could clearly hear it. Just knowing of something nearby as beautiful as a waterfall brought me joy and inner peace. I used to sit on the front porch early in the morning, drinking coffee, and just listen. It made me smile.
One morning, I was outside so content, just listening and smiling, when my dad came out. “What are you doing?”
“Listening to the waterfall.” Even he couldn’t ruin that.
Dad stopped, listened for a moment, then laughed. “That’s not a waterfall. That’s the sound of the cars on the parkway, stupid!” With that, he walked off. He had other dreams and fantasies to destroy. I was devastated.
The other reason for moving in with my grandfather was to keep him company. My grandmother had recently passed away, leaving him alone for the first time since he was a young man. My parents figured just having another person’s energy in the house would be good for him during the transition.
I really liked my grandfather, and from time to time he would cook and we’d have dinner together. One night he opened up to me and changed my life forever. Grandpa was a tool-and-die man in his day, making specialty, precision mechanical pieces for machinery. He actually made parts used on the first lunar landing. Grandpa had worked extremely hard his whole life and provided well for his family, but he told me how he had allowed himself to be taken advantage of by his fellow workers, often doing their work without getting the credit, accolades, and advancement. Frank Schenker (my grandfather) was a great guy and a good worker, but he was a sucker and a pushover. His next words to me fell hard on a nineteen-year-old whose life lay ahead of him, like so many blank pages waiting to be written. “Danny, don’t be wishy-washy like I was,” my eightysomething-year-old grandfather warned. “Don’t let people walk all over you.” I understood what my grandfather was saying to me. Thank you for that advice, Grandpa. I never did.
The life lessons were mounting during my less than one-year stint in Peacock. But the biggest—about relationships—I came to on my own.
Being single in a working rock band meant there was no shortage of girls. It doesn’t matter if you are in a good band or bad, unknown or famous, rich or poor (of course the better and more famous the band, and the more money you have, the hotter the girls you will get), there will always be girls out there who want to be with guys in bands. It’s without a doubt the most common reason you will hear for guys joining bands in the first place: to meet chicks. A different club every night meant a different girl every night, and while that certainly has its appeal, for me something was lacking.
One miserable winter day, I had a bad cold and was alone in my apartment. It was rainy and I was staring out of the little basement window at the grayness outside, the cold radiating through the glass. I felt terrible and badly wanted someone to be with, but what “rock chick” would want to hang with a sick rocker w
ith a runny nose, a fever, and a cough? And what rock chick would I want to be with when I felt like this? At the ripe old age of nineteen, I clearly remember thinking to myself, Will I ever meet someone who will be with me all the time? I already knew that the traditional rock-star life would not be for me.
Less than two years later, my prayer would be answered.
5
crash and burn #1
My 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.
