by Dee Snider
When the police arrived, we were both arrested. As we sat there, waiting to be taken in, I asked him why he came after me in the first place. He replied, “You cut me off.” Cut him off? I didn’t even know I cut him off! Then he added, “You’re lucky I didn’t get one of my guns.” The dude had a full gun rack in his pickup.
Our vehicles were impounded, we were taken in and booked. Him for harassment—a misdemeanor—and me for assault with a deadly weapon! The scumbag had tried to kill me and Suzette with his truck, and because I had defended myself and caused him minor bodily harm, I was charged with a felony! To make matters worse, he was released on his own recognizance, and because it was too late in the day for me to be arraigned, I had to spend the night in jail. You know, it’s bad enough when your actions bring you down and cause you pain and suffering, but when they hurt innocent people, especially people you care about, it’s just fucked-up. My stupidity, my road rage, had endangered the girl I loved, and now she was on her own, dealing with the consequences of my actions.
Its being a typical late-summer day, we left the apartment without jackets. While we were at the police station, a cold front came in and it started raining. Wearing only a bloodstained white T-shirt (which became transparent when it got wet), seventeen-year-old Suzette was let out of the police station, into the cold, in a bad part of the city. She didn’t have a clue where she was in relation to our apartment and had to find her way home with only a couple of dollars in her pocket to get her there. This was the seventies; there were no cell phones or ATM cards. To this day I feel like a complete piece of shit for endangering her and putting her through that. I’m so sorry, Suzette.
MEANWHILE, BACK IN JAIL, by the time I was moved from the station holding tank to the jail for the night, I had missed the evening meal. Since I couldn’t be arraigned until the next day, they didn’t even bother to give me my phone call. Besides Suzette, nobody knew where I was, and she even didn’t know they had moved me.
They hold you in group cells filled with all kinds of criminals. There’s no separation by the severity of your crime of arrest. Luckily my “felony assault” trumped the hands a lot of my other cellmates were holding and sounded more badass than it actually was, so no one messed with me.
The jail cells were anything but luxurious. They had a common toilet in the middle of the room, and metal “benches” with no bedding of any kind to sit or lie on. I was cold, hungry, scared, and confused. How did I wind up here? I had let my anger get the best of me, got carried away with road rage, and met my match. Now I was up on felony charges, punishable by years in jail! Trust me, no matter how you convince yourself that you’ve got no criminal past (except for some arrests for driving with a suspended license) and there’s no way they would ever actually imprison you, your mind still messes with you. As you sit in your cell through the night, waiting to face the judge, you are shitting in your pants. I wondered how the hell I had got to this point, examining my whole existence.
In the middle of the night, the jail guards came and took us out of our cell, legs chained us together, and loaded us into a paddy wagon with no windows. I had no idea where they were taking me. How would Suzette or anybody else know where I was? The reality of how, if the authorities want to “misplace” you, they can do it that easily set in, and it was terrifying.
As morning finally came, we were moved for a fourth time and brought for arraignment. My cellmates and I hadn’t been offered so much as a drink of water the entire night. When I got before the judge, my attacker was there as well (bet he had a nice night’s sleep at his house). I heard the court lawyers saying something about my having no priors, and since prosecution was unlikely, my attacker agreed to drop charges against me if I would drop the charges against him. What? Even though I was completely justified in what I had done to him, and that piece of shit started the whole damn thing, I jumped at the chance to get the hell out of there and get my life back. Hallelujah!
When I was released and finally found out where the hell I was, I got to a pay phone and called Eddie Ojeda, who lived the closest. When he arrived, Eddie told me I had the unique look people who had just been in jail have. Ignoring that Eddie had picked up enough people from jail that he would know that we share “a look,” I asked him what the look was.
“A mix of shock, disbelief, and humiliation,” Eddie replied.
That about covered it.
Over the years, I always remember that night as a turning point for me. I came face-to-face with the terrifying path my life was heading down. I even wrote a song, “Burn in Hell,” years later that related my experience of self-discovery.
You can’t believe all the things I’ve done wrong in my life.
Without even trying I’ve lived on the edge of a knife.
Well, I’ve played with fire,
I don’t want to get myself burned
To thine own self be true
So, I think that it’s time for a turn
Before I burn in hell!
Oh, burn in hell!
The odd thing is, it was almost two years before I made a real change. In writing this book, I needed to assemble a timeline for reference. I found that, though my road-rage experience did put the fear of God in me, it wasn’t enough to make me get my act together. What an idiot I was.
14
i’m just a sweet transvestite
I had been aware of The Rocky Horror Show since its brief run on Broadway in 1975. From what I heard, the show was a direct link between the glitter rock scene and the fifties nostalgia that was going on at that time, but the run ended, and that was about it . . . for a while.
An ill-fated movie release followed, and again, I didn’t see it or even hear much about it.
Cut to the fall of 1977 and, living in Manhattan, we started to hear rumblings about midnight showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show movie at the Waverly Theater on Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village. When the band finally had a night off that coincided with one of these screenings, Jay Jay, Suzette, and I made our way to the theater. We joined about seven other people in attendance, for an incredible—no audience participation—musical and visual experience. Our collective lives were forever changed.
Inspiration from Rocky Horror quickly infiltrated our makeup, costumes, and music. “Sweet Transvestite,” first as our intro tape, then as an actual song, was added to our set, as was “Time Warp.” For the first time, Twisted Sister had become a trendsetter, as we shared our love for RHPS with all of our fans. The Rocky Horror Picture Show was undoubtedly an early trigger for the hair-metal craze that was to come.
Twisted Sister were so connected to RHPS’s phenomenal growth in popularity that we were asked to perform at the first ever Rocky Horror Picture Show convention, held at the Calderone Concert Hall, in Hempstead, Long Island, on February 20, 1978.1
I can still see the stunned look on the faces of Richard O’Brien (writer/Riff Raff), Patricia Quinn (Magenta), and Nell Campbell (Lil’ Nell) as they walked, unaware, into the mania that surrounded the RHPS.
Priceless.
Twisted Sister’s performance at the Rocky Horror convention led to our next major career move. We knew we were responsible for putting a lot of the asses in the seats of the theater that night. Looking to take things to the next level, we started to think, Why not host our own concert event?
ARMED WITH A BUNCH of original songs and a huge (and growing) fan base, we set out to do what no unsigned club band in our area had done before: stage a full-blown concert event. So, with our own money we rented the Calderone Concert Hall and on October 28, 1978, we went for it . . . but not without some growing pains.
The stress of managing Twisted Sister’s day-to-day affairs, playing at the clubs each night, and staging our first concert event ever took its toll on Jay Jay. So many additional issues needed to be dealt with for a show like that. Keep in mind, everything that had to be worked out and set up for that one show were the same things any national concert act would have to do for
an entire tour. It was an impressive feat for the band, but while most of the creative elements were predominantly mine, all of the business and financial elements were on Jay’s shoulders.
The night of the show, we overcompensated on every level. We had a comedian and an opening band on the bill with us, and—not having any real idea of what should or shouldn’t be in a concert set—we brought the kitchen sink. Every original song we had, plus a bunch of signature covers, were included. I remember being halfway through the show and getting a stitch in my side, the kind of thing you sometimes get while you’re running. I didn’t understand. Why was I winded? Sure the stage was larger, but I jumped around for hours each night. Aerobically, I was in incredible shape.
When we finally left the stage, we were told we had been up there for almost three hours! No wonder I got a stitch.
Our first solo theater show was an unprecedented success. It sold out well in advance and took Twisted Sister’s live show to the next level. The Calderone Concert Hall event elevated our status in the club community even more. We were now Twisted Sister the “concert attraction.” Unfortunately, the ordeal proved too much for Jay Jay, and he announced, understandably, he was stepping down as band manager. If we were going to make it to the next level, we were going to need a manager whose sole purpose was to get us to the top.
As luck would have it, Mark Puma, the promoter of our Calderone show, was looking to get into band management. He was more than a little impressed by this local band who—completely under their own steam—booked, promoted, and sold out the theater, then blew the roof off the place. Start-up manager Mark Puma had found his start-up band.
Hindsight being twenty-twenty, I can now see the folly of this union. Having a manager who was learning how to manage while he managed us was not the best career move we could have made. But we were impressed by his being a major Northeast concert promoter (we had gone to tons of his shows) and his office and staff. Mark Puma seemed the perfect fit, so we signed with him.
15
you’re gonna burn in hell
The end of 1978 brought about another major change for our band. Bass player Kenny Neill, a founding member of the band, decided to leave. Kenny’s dedication to his sobriety and his being a close “friend of Bill W’s” (Alcoholics Anonymous) were making him more and more religious. Sometime during the year, Kenny had officially become born-again and he was starting to have doubts about being a devout Christian and in Twisted Sister.
In the fall of that year, several members of Kenny’s congregation came down to a Twisted Sister show at Zaffy’s in New Jersey to give him the answer to his question. They filed into the room, looking very much like a jury, and sat stone-faced as we did what we did, the way only we did it. After the show, they gave Kenny their verdict. They felt that the devil was working through some of my original songs and through Jay Jay’s onstage banter. I’m sure my unwillingness to turn the other cheek didn’t help either. Oddly, there was no mention of our cross-dressing or makeup. How Christian of them. Kenny told us then and there that he would be leaving the band as soon as we could find a suitable replacement.
Kenny Neill is a great guy, and we totally appreciated and respected what he was going through, so other than expressing our regrets at his leaving, we accepted his decision as something he just had to do.
Interestingly enough, I was quietly going through my own Christian self-doubt around that time. I was born and raised a Christian and attended an Episcopal church every Sunday—and sang in the choir—until I was about nineteen. Did I lose my faith at nineteen? No. I joined a working rock band (Peacock) and didn’t get home from the clubs and bars until about six o’clock on Sunday morning. I wasn’t that committed to going to church.
I met two of my best friends, twin brothers Willy and David Hauser, in church. They were my partners in crime through a lot of my formative years. Having lost their father at a very young age, they became successful—albeit cutthroat—businessmen. By seventeen they had built up the largest landscaping business in New York State; by nineteen they had bought a large nursery (their second). Helpful and supportive (often giving me much-needed work) throughout my young life, Willy and David were great friends. Somewhere around the latter part of the seventies, the brothers Hauser were born-again. Being the go-getters that they were, they attacked their newly rediscovered Christianity as if their lives depended on it. They aggressively tried to save pretty much everyone who they felt needed saving, to the point of destroying the successful business they had worked so hard to build. I mean, if you’re coming in to buy some lawn seed, and a huge sign over the door says ARMAGEDDON IS COMING! (which it did), you might just say “Oh, the hell with it” (pun intended), and skip your purchase. Not good for business.
The Hauser brothers worked on me relentlessly, trying to save my rock ’n’ roll soul. They were really good salesmen, and though I wasn’t fully buying their whole “end is near” rhetoric (the Rapture was originally supposed to happen in 1984), they did plant a seed of doubt in me. What if they were right and I wasn’t one of the chosen and saved? The possibility of being stuck in a postapocalyptic world began to haunt me. What if I was hours away from Suzette at some club when the end came? Since I always wore five-inch, stack-heeled boots in those days—not the best shoes for hiking and negotiating the ruined world that the prophecies foretold—I started to carry a pair of running shoes in my stage-clothes bag just in case the twins were right. I was prepared to run back to wherever Suzette might be when the end came.
The band’s star was on a meteoric rise. We knew Kenny’s decision to leave could not have been easy for him, but the question of whom to replace Kenny with was not nearly as hard for us to make. Mark “the Animal” Mendoza, formerly of the seminal punk band the Dictators, was our bass roadie at that time and first and only choice for filling Kenny’s “platform” shoes.
As I said, Mark and my paths had crossed before, but we became friends when he came down to the clubs to see Twisted during his breaks from touring with the Dictators.
The Dictators were signed to a major label, and they toured with the likes of Kiss, Blue Öyster Cult, and lots of other coliseum attractions of the day. The Dictators were where Twisted Sister very much wanted to be. That we were Mark’s band of choice when he was home meant a lot to us.
When Mark quit the Dictators, we were coincidentally looking for a bass tech/roadie. Upon hearing of the job opening, Mark approached us and said, “If I can’t play in a band, I’d rather roadie for a band than work a day job.” Now that’s the rock ’n’ roll attitude! He was more than qualified for the job, was a friend of the band’s, and had the utmost respect for Kenny. Mark was quickly hired and was a great—albeit overqualified—addition to our crew.
After months of his working on the side of the stage watching the band and Kenny every night, Mark’s transition to being in the band was pretty seamless. While we rehearsed the music with Mark, Suzette worked miracles turning a bearded, biker Dictator into a clean-shaven Twisted Sister.
Kenny departed in December of 1978, and Mark stepped in without missing a beat. In Mark I found a peer, agewise (he is a year younger than me) and in background (he, too, had grown up in the suburbs of Long Island), and a brother in my love for heavy metal. To paraphrase How the Grinch Stole Christmas . . . “And what happened then? Well, in Twisted Sister they say, when Mark ‘the Animal’ Mendoza joined, the band’s heavy-metal heart grew ten sizes that day.”
And I loved it!
With Mark Mendoza in the band and our wagon hitched to (what we thought was) Mark Puma’s formidable “horse,” a game plan started to come together. Now we just had to focus our assault on the record companies.
DID I MENTION THAT I was becoming a monster? Oh, yeah, I was. My hostility toward the world was growing at an astronomical pace. My new friend, band bodyguard and Suzette and my roommate (NYC year three) Roger and I were pushing each other to much darker places. I had met Roger after an extremely violent gang-
like battle at a club Twisted Sister was playing, and we fed off of each other’s worst qualities (and senses of humor). What I had been holding back from a lifetime of indignities (I admit, some perceived) was surfacing with each passing day. I used the band’s growing popularity to fire off venom-filled tirades from the stage each night, toward the illusive “they.” They could be parents, teachers, adults, politicians, cops, disco assholes, stuck-up chicks, or anybody in the club who wasn’t participating, or whom I perceived to have an “attitude.” Unknowingly, I was creating a classic “us against them” scenario, with the rockers positioned as the underdogs railing against their oppressors. It worked amazingly well. I just wish I could claim to have known what I was doing. Then again, it was probably the genuineness of my hostilities that sold it to the crowd. I was a vicious, profanity-spewing nightmare with a growing hatred that was coloring my worldview. And the audience loved it! I was becoming the people’s champion (before the Rock!).
My anger was not limited to the stage. At the management office, I had the secretary keep an ever-growing list of people and organizations I was going to get even with (“Karen, put so-and-so on the list!”), and I had a saying to go with my mania: PAMF—“payback’s a muthafucker!” (a far cry from PMA, I admit). I even had T-shirts made with PAMF on them. I was nuts. Using my rage and hatred to drive me on, I sank my fangs into the task as hand: world domination.
Twisted Sister’s grand plan was to “clean up” and properly package our current demo tapes, then showcase for the entire record industry at once. How? By booking ourselves into and selling out the prestigious, three-thousand-seat New York Palladium, an unprecedented achievement by an unsigned band. We knew our rabid fans would pack the place.
