Shut Up and Give Me the Mic

by Dee Snider

  Suddenly someone in the crowd shouted, “Fag!”

  I strode (all two steps) to the front of the postage-stamp-size stage and glared threateningly at the crowd. “Who said that?!” I shouted into the mic. No response. Coward!5 The heckler properly dealt with, we launched into our next song and rocked on.

  I was still living at home, and the next day when I got up and saw my parents, they asked me, “What happened?” Confused and still groggy from a late night, I said, “What do you mean, ‘what happened’?” They told me how they waited outside, watching hundreds of kids pack into the club. When my band finally went on, they heard our first song, but when it was over, they didn’t hear any response. “Where did everybody go?”

  We opened for the Good Rats a number of times after that, each time winning over their audience a bit more. The night came (again at the 1890’s Club) when we blew them off the stage, and that was the last time we shared the bill with them. Eventually, they wrote and recorded a song about Twisted Sister called “Don’t Hate the Ones Who Bring You Rock ’n’ Roll,” which is still in their set to this day. Yes, the Good Rats (with only the original lead singer) are still playing the local club scene, and, no, the money is not what it used to be. Not even close.

  8

  oh, suzy q . . .

  Are you familiar with the butterfly effect? Not the movie, but the idea that it is based on. Basically, the butterfly effect, according to Google Answers, is “the observation that an event as seemingly insignificant as the flapping of a butterfly’s wings might create a minuscule disturbance that, in the chaotic motion of the atmosphere, may eventually become sufficiently amplified to change the large-scale atmospheric motion, possibly even leading to a huge storm in a distant place.”

  On April 16, 1976, my life, my band, and ultimately millions of people all over the world were changed forever. I met my future wife, Suzette. Does that sound overly dramatic? Self-important? Pathetic? Pussy whipped?1 It’s not. Meeting Suzette changed my life dramatically. As a result, my band (on multiple visual levels) and the music I eventually wrote were greatly affected. Twisted Sister’s music and live performances have entertained, moved, and even inspired people, all over the world, for over three decades. That’s the butterfly effect defined.

  Twisted was booked to open for a local popular group called the Bonnie Parker Band at Hammerheads in Wantagh, Long Island. Bonnie Parker was an amazing, cool female (hey, you never know, as ambiguity was part of the scene) singer/bass-player who kicked ass and outrocked then-amazing, cool female singer/bass player Suzi Quatro. Suzi Quatro was a huge rock star in Europe, and soon became known in the States as Leather Tuscadero on the seventies hit television show Happy Days. But therein lay the problem. There already was a Suzy Quatro. The world didn’t need a “better one.” (It barely needed one.)

  LESS THAN TWO MONTHS into the new and improved Twisted Sister (now with drummer #3), we still had virtually no following and were anxious to perform for Bonnie’s audience. Wearing my infamous short-shorts and I’M DEE, BLOW ME T-shirt (well, it was infamous to me), I took the stage that night for our first set . . . unaware that my life would never be the same. As usual, virtually nobody was there to see us. Ours being the opening set of the night, Bonnie Parker’s crowd had yet to roll in. I was looking out at fourteen or fifteen people tops, scattered around the room. As we rocked the first song, I looked down at the front of the stage and was bowled over. Staring back at me, her eyes sparkling, her hair golden, her skin tan (remarkable for April), and her smile lighting up the room, was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She was bopping and clapping along with the music and smiling at me! And every guy knows what (we think) that means . . . she wants me. Some guy was looming protectively behind her, but that wasn’t stopping her from giving me the timeless international sign of interest.

  I tried to be cool and not stare back too much, but I had to assess the situation. Working my way from top to bottom, I ran through my “guy checklist.” The face and hair had already passed muster. Boobs . . . holy crap, they were huge! Waist . . . narrow; ass . . . small and tight; legs—she was wearing jeans—long and thin. What a body! Beautiful, petite, and with big tits. This was my dream girl!

  She was still smiling at me. Something had to be wrong. Not because she was smiling, but because she was smiling so openly. A girl this beautiful should be acting a little more coy. She . . . must be underage! That had to be it. She wasn’t experienced enough at “club etiquette” to put on a front. Since the drinking age at that time was eighteen, I figured that this incredibly hot and beautiful girl had to be seventeen. I had to meet her.

  From day one with Twisted Sister I was determined to act and be treated like a star. I always knew I was going to make it, but now I was in the band that I would make it with, so all the silliness, stupidity, procrastination, and dillydallying of “Danny Snider” had to end. I revamped my entire personality when I joined Twisted Sister. I was determined to be the person I always wanted to be. Dee Snider was a rock star, and I would damn well act like one.

  To that end, the band would show up to the club early to load in and for sound check. This would make sure the band always sounded its best (Peacock never sound-checked), and I would be in the club well before doors opened and the audience came in. Real rock stars aren’t seen coming in the front door and walking through the crowd, like a normal person. You see them onstage and that’s it. To that end, in between sets I would never leave the dressing room and walk around the club. Ever. Even though not a person in the place gave a shit about me, I was determined to carry myself as if I mattered. If I didn’t think I mattered, how could I ever expect anyone else to think so? Hell, the band placed (stolen) police barricades in front of the stage that said KEEP BACK because what’s the first thing people do when they see a sign like that? Get as close as they can. Self-Fulfilling Prophecy 101.

  The dressing rooms in these shitholes left more than a little to be desired. I would spend hours every night sitting alone (the rest of the band was having a great time hanging out in the club) in a glorified closet or bathroom before the first show, in between sets, all during the last set that I didn’t perform, and after the show until the club closed. Only then would I slip out of the club and into the early morning to head home. I was a star . . . people just hadn’t realized it yet.

  I mention this to let you in on my mind-set, and so you’ll understand just how significant it was that I left the dressing room after the set and came out to find this amazing girl.

  I slipped out of the dressing room, still hanging in the shadows at the side of the stage, not wanting to totally blow my rock-star cool. I spotted her by the front of the stage, standing with her girlfriend and the guy I saw behind her, waiting for my band to come back on. Oh, she was totally into me.

  I caught her eye and casually waved her over; she immediately came, abandoning the guy she was with. I was so in! She looked even hotter close up. I had to have her.

  “Hey, how ya doin’?” I said, my Lawng Guyland accent raging.

  Her response was completely abstract: “I’m a good girl.”

  Confused, I pressed on. “Sure. Are you with that guy?” Guy code. I didn’t want to be one of those assholes who hit on girls with a date.

  The insanely hot girl looked back at the guy I was pointing to and, horrified, said, “Ewww. No way!” She was abandoning her date for me! This was a lock.

  “Cool,” I responded coolly. “What’s your name?”

  The next two syllables she uttered sealed the deal. “Suzette.”

  Wow. The most beautiful name for the most beautiful girl. It was like a song. Suzette.

  It was time to stun her with my worldliness and perception. “You’re not eighteen, are you?” I asked knowingly.

  “No.” Suzette was a little embarrassed to have been called on her charade.

  “How old are you?” I pressed. It was almost a rhetorical question.

  “How old do you think I am?” she sai
d coyly.

  Were we really going to play this silly little game? Fine. “Seventeen.” It wasn’t a guess.

  “Fifteen,” Suzette corrected.

  I nearly swallowed my tongue. “Fifteen?” I repeated, hoping I had somehow misheard.

  “Yes. Fifteen.”

  Holy crap! Now what? I was head over heels for this girl, and she clearly felt the same way about me. But before I could go any further with this line of thought, Suzette interrupted me.

  “How old are you?”

  “How old do you think I am?” Two can play at this game.

  “Late twenties, early thirties,” she responded matter-of-factly.

  Late twenties, early thirties?! “I just turned twenty-one!” I protested.

  “No way. Let me see your driver’s license.”

  With that, I ran downstairs to the dressing room, got my license, and headed back upstairs. I’d show her.

  To be fair, I did look as if I were in my late twenties, early thirties. I’ve always looked that age. Even when I snuck into a bar at fourteen years old with a bunch of my “older” sixteen-year-old friends, they were all ejected for being underage, while the crotchety old bartender asked me what I wanted to drink! (“What’ll ya have, sir?”) I had never been proofed in my life!

  When I got back, she was still patiently waiting for me. While I was sure she still wanted me, the age thing and her asking to see my ID had shaken me a little. (That and the “I’m a good girl.” What did she mean by that?)

  I handed the very underage beauty my license.

  Suzette scrutinized it, too thoroughly.

  “See,” I said proudly, “I just turned twenty-one.”

  Suzette wasn’t buying it. “You probably just have this so you can meet young girls.”

  Was she freakin’ kidding me!? Undeterred, I asked her for her phone number. Suzette gave it to me. Further proof she was into me! Just how little, I would eventually find out.

  THE NEXT COUPLE OF weeks were a blur of Twisted Sister gigs, punctuated with thinking about and phone calls to Suzette. I was obsessed with this too-young girl, and the playful calls and her next visit only made things worse.

  To this day, Suzette plays innocent on all accounts of the signals she was sending me. As I would eventually discover, she really had no interest in me at all, which made me want her even more. And that “I’m a good girl” comment? The object of my desire was a total virgin, having only even been kissed by a couple of guys. I was in completely uncharted waters! But she did give me her phone number, and we talked endlessly on the phone. I invited her to come to another local show to see me, and she said yes.

  If I had been smitten by Suzette’s effervescent glow the first time, the way she looked when she rolled into the club that night delivered the knockout punch. I was devastated by her womanly beauty.

  I will readily admit that (like most guys) I am painfully shallow. I won’t even try to pretend I saw in Suzette some “inner blah-blah-blah-blah.” My attraction was purely physical; my Perfect Woman Qualifications Checklist was pathetically devoid of substance. That said, the way things turned out, I believe a lot more was “at work” in our ultimate pairing. I’m not a spiritual guy, but the way we came together and how well we fit has got to be more than a coincidence. A professional astrologer did our charts the first year we were going out and told us she had never seen two more compatible people. I’m not a big believer in that stuff, but thirty-five years later . . . I’m just sayin’. But back to my shallowness and Suzette’s missent signals . . .

  Suzette arrives at the club—a slimy biker bar, if you must know—wearing a black, low-cut, knee-length, clinging evening dress with a pair of high heels. Oh my God! On my dream-girl checklist only one box was left unmarked earlier: legs. She’d been wearing skintight, bell-bottom jeans the night I’d met her, so I couldn’t get an accurate read on what was going on below the knee. But in that dress? Check!

  One secret box was on the back of the list. It wasn’t mandatory, but it would be a big plus if my dream girl had this qualification: Italian.

  I had been close with an Italian family named DiBenadetto in Baldwin. Anthony “Nino” DiBenadetto was the drum roadie for Harlequin and the drummer in my band Heathen. I had known his brother Sal, a local rock photographer, from high school. I loved the passion of the DiBenadetto family, the closeness, the support . . . and the food. There was no place like the DiBenadettos’ for a starving musician. There was always something delicious to eat and a great vibe. Best of all, I always felt like a part of the family. But that’s the Italian way.

  I promised myself I would find a beautiful Italian girl and bring the Italian-family energy and traditions into my life through “application,” if you get my double entendre. Suzette’s last name turned out to be Gargiulo. It doesn’t get much more Italian than that. Bada bing, bada boom!

  I drove Suzette home from the club after our show that night in the band equipment van and kissed her for the first time, sealing the deal . . . or at least I thought.

  After seeing Suzette at the club that night, the whole age issue completely went away, for me at least. The reason fifteen-year-old girls were raising families in ancient Rome was because they looked like Suzette! Nothing was going to stop me from making her mine. A week later, we planned to go on our first official date.

  WHILE AT THE TIME I could see nothing wrong with twenty-one-year-old me dating fifteen-year-old Suzette, as I sit here writing, with a fifteen-year-old daughter . . . I see everything wrong with it! Sure, Suzette and I have had a pretty legendary love affair, done great things together, raised an amazing family, and stayed together through the best and worst of times, but if some twenty-one-year-old dude who looks like me thinks he’s going to roll up to my front door to pick up my hot, fifteen-year-old daughter, he’s going to meet the guy on the cover of Twisted Sister’s Stay Hungry album cover, full-on. It ain’t happening! Fortunately for me, Suzette’s family gave me a chance . . . sort of.

  Our date night finally came and I headed over to Suzette’s house to pick her up, dressed to the nines before going there, I had done something I’d done for no other girl: I got my hair trimmed. I must have been in love!

  Finding Suzette’s house again wasn’t a problem. Since dropping her off after the club, I had driven to her house, unbeknownst to her, a few times to commit its location to memory and in hopes of just getting a glimpse of her outside. I know that sounds insane and stalkerish. It is. But when I say meeting Suzette was life-changing, I mean it. I was absolutely obsessed.

  I arrived that Sunday evening and strode up to the front door in my rock ’n’ roll finest: six-inch, “chocolate-layered” with pink stripe, stack-heeled platform shoes; a short, tight blue-denim-and-black-velvet jacket; and baby-blue, bell-bottom jeans so tight you could tell I was circumcised. What was I thinking!?

  Suzette answered the door, blushing profusely (I had no clue she was embarrassed by me), and brought me in to meet her family.

  In many Italian families, Sunday is “Sauce Sunday,” meaning a pot of meat sauce is made (an all-day process) and the entire family gets together for dinner. Suzette brought me into the formal dining room to meet the adults. Suzette’s mom, her mom’s goombah boyfriend, Tony (Suzette’s parents were divorced), her aunt Ruthie, her aunt Annie, and neighbor Betty were all there having coffee and Italian pastries. I could hear The Godfather theme playing (in my mind). Introductions were made, then Suzette brought me into the kitchen to meet her two younger wild animals—I mean, brothers—Vinny and Billy, and younger sister, Roseanne. Several older and younger cousins were there as well, along with a couple of Suzette’s friends, all part of the weekly Sauce Sunday gathering. I was introduced, small talk and joking ensued . . . then I was asked to return to the dining room. No problem. I had always done great with parents.

  For some reason Suzette opted to stay with her cousins, so I went in on my own. I sat down at the table and shared pleasantries with Suzette’s beautiful m
om, Jeanette,2 the aunts, neighbor, and Suzette’s mom’s boyfriend. The weather, movies, food, and more were discussed at length, until I realized that one by one all the women were stepping out of the room, leaving me alone with Big Tony the Goombah! Midsentence, he cuts me off.

  “What do you want with a fifteen-year-old girl?” he growled.

  I couldn’t tell him what I really wanted (what any guy would want). “Well, you see, Suzette is mature for her age and I’m immature for mine, and, like, we kind of meet in the mid—”

  “Cut the shit!” he barked. I did, and he continued, “If you lay one hand on her, this family will hunt you down to the four corners of the earth and put you in the bottom of a lake. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”

  I remember thinking, Snider, you have really gotten yourself into it now. But I was too head over heels for Suzette to let even that put me off. Just about then it did dawn on me that baby-blue jeans might not have been the best choice. The fast-spreading, dark blue spot where I had wet myself was starting to show. I was scared, but I still answered, “Yes, sir.” My lot was cast. There was no turning back.

  With that, the ladies of Suzette’s family all came back into the room as if they’d been hovering outside.

  “Did you have a nice talk?” one of them inquired.

  “Yes,” replied the goombah. “We understand each other now.”

  And we did.

  Suzette had no idea about what was said to me that night. She was mortified when she found out, but it did explain the arm’s-length distance I kept from her on our entire, uncomfortable first date . . . and for many dates after. I did not want a pair of cement platform shoes, but even the threat of them couldn’t keep me away.