by Dee Snider
When I told everybody I had found an apartment exactly where I wanted it, without a real estate agent, on my first try, nobody could believe it. Apartment finding in Manhattan is long and arduous. Things like that just didn’t happen. They did if you were meant to be with the woman of your dreams.
Two weeks later I moved in. Suzette lasted two days in her dorm, then, unbeknownst to her father or my parents, she moved in with me. We’ve lived together ever since.
12
leaps and bounds
Having made it to the top of the cover-band bar scene, Twisted Sister had become big money earners. Top local bands lived like rock stars, and now Twisted Sister was making the money to live like them, too. Cars, houses, and more beckoned as we raked it in during the summer of 1977. To our credit, we realized something the other bands clearly didn’t. Being and living like a rock star in the tristate area was not the goal. It was not what we all dreamed about. It felt a lot like it, but it wasn’t. Not even close.
The guys in Twisted got together and discussed the temptation of just taking the money and living it up. Or we could take minimal salaries and invest in ourselves. Being a top bar band wasn’t forever. Having platinum and gold albums hanging on your walls was. So with a vote of four to one, we resolved that after the summer we would cut our salaries by more than half and use the extra money for the things that would help make us real rock stars. Truth be told, I never saw myself as playing in clubs and bars. In my mind, every bar was a concert hall, every club an arena. I didn’t know it then, but they call that positive visualization: to mentally see things as you want them to be, not as they are.
I said four out of five band members voted in favor of cutting our salaries for the greater good. The holdout was Eddie Ojeda. Eddie claimed he couldn’t survive on the minimal money the rest of us were taking. He was married, he needed more. Well, if memory serves, his wife had a really good job, I was living with my girlfriend, and we all were struggling. Eddie wouldn’t do it, so he took more money than the rest of us. He paid the band back once we made it, but who needed the money then? So, without Eddie’s full support, we invested in ourselves and in our future. Crew members were hired, new lights and sound were purchased. Whatever we needed for the betterment of the band, the money we didn’t take for ourselves was used for. Then the final piece was put into place.
After seeing the effect Suzette’s costuming was having for me, the band hired her, put her on salary and had Suzette continuously designing and making new stage clothes for all of us. From that point on, throughout the history of the band, Suzette has been responsible (or to blame) for the look of Twisted Sister. She eventually guided us to the more “tattered” look the band came to be known for. Suzette knew (well before I did) that I was no pretty boy and I needed to play to my strengths, namely my “badassness.” Suzette used to say “You don’t wear makeup, you wear war paint.” She was right. There was nothin’ pretty about me. But I’m getting way ahead of myself. First I tried to be pretty.
ODDLY, THE MORE FEMININE I got visually, the more aggressive and hostile I got as a person. I don’t think there was a direct correlation between the two, but I’ll let a psychiatrist figure that one out. This was around the time that the catchphrase “Look like women, talk like men, and play like muthafuckers” started to be used to describe the band. They should have added “And they’ll kick your fucking ass if you don’t like it!”
I remember, early on, a gay magazine from New York City sent a writer out to see and interview the new “tranny band” out in the burbs. He showed up at some biker bar we were playing, watched our first set, then came backstage and said, “You guys aren’t gay!” Standing there in my high heels and tied-up woman’s shorty top, I responded, “Of course not. What made you think we were?” I guess I was sending a mixed message.
An air of violence always seemed to surround our gigs. Part of it was due to the environment inherent to a club show. The shows were in bars, late at night, alcohol (and drugs) were prevalent, and the places were overcrowded with a predominantly teenage, angst-filled audience, ready to mix it up. Add to that a high-energy band such as Twisted Sister, with an incendiary front man (me) stirring the pot, and you definitely had a recipe for potential disaster. I don’t think I looked for trouble as much as launched preemptive strikes, but either way, violence often ensued. With so many moments of violence, or near violence, in those days, it’s hard to know which to share. The time I had a straight razor held to my throat in a club parking lot? The time I inadvertently “called out” three Hells Angels? How about the time a motorcycle gang descended on one of the clubs Twisted Sister was playing to get our bodyguards and I had to hold a “war council” in our dressing room?
In November of 1977, an incident occurred that I’d like to say was the violence surrounding me coming to a head . . . but I can’t. It was really the start of a whole new level.
We were in the middle of our second or third set of the night, at a club called Speaks,1 in Island Park, Long Island. Speaks was one of the premier places to play, and Twisted Sister was one of its biggest bands. Almost fifteen hundred people were packed into the place, but we weren’t having the best of nights. We were plagued with feedback problems from the sound system (the ultimate mellow harsher), but sometimes the crowd—for whatever reason—just isn’t that into it. I tried every party trick I could think of, but we just couldn’t get the audience to their usual level of insanity.
Suddenly, midsong, a bottle goes sailing past my head.
There is nothing lower than throwing something at performers on a stage. Deep into whatever they are doing for the audience, with bright lights in their eyes, they are completely vulnerable and incapable of seeing anything coming. Many entertainers have been seriously injured by things thrown at them while onstage. The people who throw things are the biggest cowards and pussies out there. It’s like being a sniper. Your targets have no possible means of defending themselves or even a fighting chance of avoiding being hit. Their health and well-being is solely dependent on your inaccuracy. You pieces of shit.
The bottle narrowly missed my head. With the lights in my eyes, I couldn’t see who threw it, but I knew the direction it came from. I stopped singing and walked to the front edge of the stage.
“Who fuckin’ threw that!” I yelled in the microphone as the band continued to play. My band were experienced in how to handle my confrontations. They would just vamp on the chord progression until I finished my tirade or made my way back to the stage. True professionals.
While no one was owning up to hurling the projectile, fans were pointing to a specific area from where it came. I focused my verbal attack and laid into my attacker, whoever he or she was.
“If you have half of one ball—not the balls, not one ball; half of one ball, a semicircle—you’ll show yourself and come up on this stage and face me!” I was hoping it was a guy—I wasn’t sure what I’d do if it was a woman. The audience always enjoyed my tirades, and even though I was as mad as I had ever been, I still tried to be entertaining. A semicircle?!
Still there was no reaction, but my peeps were continuing to point in a specific area. I pressed on, “You’re a pussy. Your father’s a pussy.” I went for the throat: “Your mother’s a pussy.” Technically accurate, but nobody likes when you talk shit about their mother.
With that, a guy directly where everybody was pointing, maybe fifteen or twenty feet back in the packed house, raises his middle fingers in the air and starts yelling, “Fuck you!”
I was incensed. In all the years I’d had things thrown at me, I had never actually found my attacker, and there he was!
“You! It was you?!” I screamed over our massive loudspeaker system. “Come up here, you piece of shit! Come up here and face me like a fuckin’ man!”
The asshole just stood his ground, cursing and pumping his middle fingers.
I’m not a fighter per se, and I’m definitely not the toughest guy in the world. Besides, no matter who yo
u are, there’s always someone tougher out there . . . and then there are guns. With that in mind, every time I’ve jumped off a stage after someone in the crowd, I’ve always assessed my options. If I get in trouble, who will have my back?
On this night, I noticed a couple of particularly large biker fans in this guy’s immediate area. With my backup firmly in place, I took action. If only I had planned that a little better.
Fueled by the frustration of an unresponsive crowd, finding my attacker for the first time and his lack of cooperation, I decided to do something that seemed completely plausible in my mind. Rather than climb off the stage or run off the side and take a chance of losing this asshole in the crowd, I would simply dive into the sea of fans below me, they would catch me, and I’d get the son of a bitch. This bad idea was hatched faster than it took you to just read it, and I launched myself from the stage.
To quote Eddie Ojeda, “All of a sudden, I see a pair of red, high-heeled boots sailing past the side of my head.”
I definitely got some air.
I didn’t account for a few things on that fateful night. The first being human nature.
DEE LIFE LESSON
When people see 180 pounds of six-foot-six-inch (in heels) silver lamé and leather (another killer outfit), made up like the Zuni Fetish Doll from Karen Black’s Trilogy of Terror, coming down on them from ten feet above . . . they get the hell out of the way!
The club was so packed that night you couldn’t fit another body in the place, but as I descended, somehow the audience parted like the Red Sea. For the life of me, I don’t know where those people went. I hit the ground hard, and as I picked myself up from the floor, I came face-to-face with my attacker, standing in a full-blown Karate Kid crane pose, ready to strike. I quickly looked for my backup—the big biker fans—and they were right there . . . clearing an area for the fight to take place.
“Give ’em room! Give ’em room!” Thanks, guys. Did I mention the band was still playing? In all the years of my scrapping with people in the audience, it should be noted that not once have any of my band members come to my aid. Roadies, yes. Band, no. I don’t know if they were afraid, confused, or just thought it was my problem, but night after night I would be in the shit alone. Except for my faithful backup, our soundman, Charlie “the Sixth Sister” Barreca! I love you for that, Charlie.
One of the things I had learned in my years of barroom confrontations was “When in doubt . . . football!” To remove myself from striking range of this Bruce Lee wannabe, I charged the bastard, grabbed him around the waist, and began to drive him backward through the crowd. (Impressive, in spike heels!) As I pushed him back, my man Charlie came up from behind and grabbed him. Within seconds, every bouncer in the place was on top of the guy and he was being dragged out of the club.
As I limped through the crowd, back to the stage, and climbed up—already I could feel something was seriously wrong with my leg—the formerly placid club erupted. That’s what it took to get a reaction out of them?! The crowd continued to roar as a girl in the front row signaled me to bend down so she could tell me something. I leaned in to hear what she had to say.
“Was that staged?”
D’oh!
The next day I could barely walk. I had bruised my thighbone in the fall, and my leg had swelled up like a watermelon. I staggered through a handful of songs that night, then had to leave the stage; I was in too much pain. We wound up canceling the next three nights because of my injury.
Upon my return, Jay Jay informed me that the band had decided to hire bodyguards. “You can’t be doing security for us.”
Ya think?
13
that “just jailed” look
During the spring of 1978 I made my move. I asked seventeen-year-old Suzette to marry me.
I was tired of being at clubs and introducing the girl of my dreams, the girl I intended to spend the rest of my life with, as “my girlfriend.” Every guy in every band introduces every girl he’s been with—for even five minutes in a bathroom stall—as his “girlfriend.” Complete with quotation marks. It pissed me off that there was no distinction between Suzette and some groupie.
I plotted to pop the question for some time. Jay Jay’s dad, Lou, was a jewelry salesman and his girlfriend, Josephine, worked in Manhattan’s Diamond District on Forty-Seventh Street. She hooked me up with a good deal on an engagement ring. I put it on layaway and paid the ring off over the next several weeks. When I picked up the ring, I just couldn’t wait. The minute I got back to the apartment, I asked Suzette to be my wife. She cried (I think with joy) and said yes. We both knew that we weren’t ready to set a date or anything and wouldn’t be for some time. Our engagement represented to the world our commitment to each other and our intentions to be together forever.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, Suzette’s dad, Vinny, had discovered that Suzette was not living at the dorms. Suzette’s a-hole roommate was more than happy to share this information when he called looking for Suzette. Bitch. (“Suzette’s not here. She’s been living with her boyfriend.”) Her dad was livid (understandably). Not only was his seventeen-year-old daughter living with a now twenty-three-year-old musician, but Vinny was paying for a dorm room that wasn’t being used. They’re not cheap.
It should be noted that Suzette’s dad had once been a working musician himself. The leader and drummer of the Vinny Garron Orchestra in his youth, my wife’s dad tore it up. He gave up his ambitions when he got married and “had to do the right thing,” which is a big deal in the Italian-American community. Besides “knowing” what musicians were like, I can’t help but think that there was a certain amount of jealousy. I was pursuing my dream and he had given his up.
Vinny Garron also hated rock ’n’ roll because it “killed the business,” and rockers weren’t real musicians “because they can’t sight-read music.” Even worse . . . I was a “singah”! I couldn’t have been lower on his right-guy-for-my-daughter totem pole. Suzette’s dad told her he was sending her to Paris to finish school so he could get her away from me. When I asked Suzette to marry me, she says she said yes to kill her dad’s plan and be able to finish school in New York. Suzette claims at that time she had no intention of marrying me. Isn’t that just like a teenage girl?
While Suzette and my growing love may seem romantic, it wasn’t an easy relationship. She was a strong-willed young woman, and I was becoming a more arrogant asshole with each passing day. The more popular my band became, and the more acknowledgment I got for my talents, the more self-centered and self-absorbed I was. And I was just getting warmed up. This was 1978. I didn’t hit my stride until 1985! Can you imagine? I can see now that it was only my relationship with Suzette and her seemingly irrational tantrums that kept me grounded in any way. I was heading down a dark path and it was getting darker fast.
EACH YEAR THE BAND took a week or two of vacation after Labor Day weekend, the big finish to a long summer of rock. The riotous closing of Hammerheads happened in August, taking the violent intensity of Twisted Sister shows to a whole new level. The band was ready for a break, and I needed a vacation. Our first in 1977 was relaxing, healing, and good for the soul. The one in 1978, not so much.
ON SEPTEMBER 12, SUZETTE and I were in my car, driving out to Long Island from the city for a dentist appointment in the late afternoon. As I got off the Clearview Expressway and onto the Grand Central Parkway eastbound, some maniac in a pickup truck cut in front of me and slammed on his brakes! I slammed on mine, screeching to a halt and narrowly missing the back of his vehicle. With that, the asshole took off. Oh, no, you don’t!
Furious, I stomped on the gas and took off after the piece of shit. Swerving in and out of the building rush-hour traffic (with Suzette admonishing me the whole time), I caught up to the dick and pulled alongside. I gave him the middle finger and the nastiest “Fuck you, asshole!” I could muster. Satisfied, I took off . . . only to have this bastard pursue me!
When he pulled alongside me, he didn’
t curse or give me the finger back . . . he tried to run me off the road! I swerved away, narrowly avoiding being hit and/or hitting another car on the road. It didn’t end there. In and out of heavy traffic, he came after me, trying to ram into my vehicle. Traffic on the parkway stopped as this road-rage insanity unfolded.
Finally, the pickup truck sped ahead of me and turned sharply sideways in front of my car, nearly running me off an overpass. When my car came to a stop, this madman (remember: there’s always someone tougher than you are) jumped out of his truck and charged my vehicle. Before I could even get out of the car, he blocks my car door (good move, by the way), reaches in through my partially open window, and starts to yank me through the four-inch opening by my hair.
Now I don’t want to imply that I was brave or badass in any way. I was scared shitless. This is a cautionary tale I’m telling here. The person who was brave was my five-foot-three-inch, 110-pound fiancée. She leapt from of the passenger side of the car, ran around the back of the vehicle, and jumped on the guy’s back! With one arm wrapped around his neck choking him, she started pounding away at his head with her other hand.
What a woman!
At this point the lunatic let go of my hair with one of his hands and started trying to hit Suzette. Seeing she was in danger, I reached under my car seat and pulled out a tire iron I kept there for protection. Reaching through the window opening with my right hand (I was still being yanked out the small opening), I started swinging the tire iron at the guy the best I could. The whole scene was out of control!
Finally, some people got out of their cars and came over to break it up. Probably because it was the only way they were ever going to get home. They managed to pull my attacker off me, but he broke free. He charged the car, blood dripping down his face, and wiped a big smear of blood across my windshield.
