Shut Up and Give Me the Mic

by Dee Snider

  Tony Pero, from Staten Island, New York, officially auditioned for Twisted Sister and impressed the hell out of us. With arms like ham hocks, this guy hit the drums harder than anyone else I had ever seen. And he could play technically, too. He could play anything!

  Tony had been a child prodigy, taking lessons from greats, like Gene Krupa. By the age of ten he’d already toured Europe playing with a big band. This son of a bitch could play! He was the perfect complement to Mendoza’s pummeling bass playing, and musically the two of them connected immediately. This was the missing piece to the Twisted Sister sound.

  But there was one problem.

  Tony Pero’s name, and physical appearance, were close to drummer #3’s. I didn’t want people to mistakenly think he was drummer #3, and I couldn’t bear to call him by the same first name. I explained my dilemma to Tony and asked if he had a middle name. He did, Jude. Thinking quickly, I asked how he felt about being called A.J. instead of Tony. Sure, we already had a Dee and a Jay Jay, but can a band ever have enough names that are initials?

  I don’t know if Tony actually had a problem with it or not, but he really wanted to join our band and agreed to the change. Twisted Sister had finally found its perfect musical match.

  NINETEEN EIGHTY-TWO TURNED OUT to be one of the most tumultuous years of my life. It started as a continuation of the career downward spiral that was 1981 and finished on the highest of highs with some crazy-ass peaks and valleys in between.

  A. J. Pero officially performed his first live show with Twisted Sister on April Fool’s Day. The difference in our sound was tangible. You could feel it as well as hear it. We had always been a sledgehammer of a band live—now we were a twenty-pound sledgehammer! The work of preparing A.J. to step in, and the subsequent break-in period as with any new player (although A.J. was amazingly prepared for rehearsals and shows), did take time and effort. I definitely feel this helped divert our attention from the reality that after six years we still did not have a deal. Keep in mind, for Jay Jay it was nine years since he joined the band. Yowza!

  That all changed when Martin Hooker of Secret Records made good on his word and negotiated a deal to sign Twisted Sister.

  Secret Records’ roster consisted then of one band, to my knowledge, neo-punks the Exploited (there may have been more, but I didn’t know of them). The Exploited made quite a bit of noise in the UK. Much like Twisted Sister, they refused to allow their favorite music form to die. Hence the name of their first album, Punks Not Dead. In truth, punk—if not completely dead—had suffered a genre-ending injury (for the time being), and most punks and skinheads were looking for a new musical home. Thanks to crossover bands such as Motörhead, heavy metal was fast becoming a haven for the working-class youth of the world.

  Martin Hooker saw what was going on and, in an attempt to create a “one-stop shop” for said youth, signed a heavy metal band, so Secret Records could serve all facets of the aggressive rock market. Smooth. Back then, Twisted Sister had genuine punk appeal.3 Our first shows in England were attended by a mishmash of metalheads, punks, and skinheads. (Having Mark “the Animal” Mendoza of the seminal punk band the Dictators in our band didn’t hurt).

  The only problem was, in signing Twisted, Secret Records had bitten off way more than it could chew. We weren’t some local minimalist punk band. Twisted Sister was a larger-than-life heavy metal monster from America, which brought with it a whole range of issues, as Martin Hooker would soon find out.

  To capitalize on the growing buzz on the band in the UK and set the stage for our album release later that year, Martin wanted to release the demo tape that had turned him on to our band in the first place, as an interim EP—a four-song album—and call it Ruff Cutts. Happy to get any product out into the marketplace, we readily agreed.

  On April 15, 1982, on the sidewalk in front of Eddie Ojeda’s apartment building in Queens, Eddie, Jay Jay, Mark, and I met and signed our contract with Secret Records. Why we weren’t invited in to Eddie’s apartment I have no idea. Next up, we needed to find a producer for our record, and Martin Hooker had an idea: Pete Way of the band UFO.

  UFO was a favorite band of Mark and mine, and Pete Way—the bass player and one of UFO’s songwriters—was legendary. Pete had recently done a nice job of producing the album The Wild Ones for the UK Oi!4 band the Cockney Rejects. We were recording a low-budget indie record album. Pete Way’s price was right and he brought quite a bit of credibility with him, as well. He and UFO were full-fledged legends in the UK and Europe. Having Pete produce us was like getting a pope’s blessing. Now we just had to meet with him to seal the deal.

  As luck would have it, UFO was currently on tour in the States. Pete Way was interested in working with the band and agreed to fly in to catch one of our New York–area shows.

  To say Pete traveled light would be an understatement. He stepped off the plane, a drink in one hand, wearing only a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, with sneakers, and that’s it. No carry-on, no luggage—I’m not sure he even had a wallet. (This was the early eighties, when all you needed to fly was a valid ticket.) Pete was brought straight to the club to see the band. He was (and still is) an extremely likable guy, whom I can only describe as a rock ’n’ roll version of Dudley Moore’s “Arthur,” but without the money. Not that Pete was poor; he just never seemed to have any actual money on him and was always looking to cash a dog-eared check he carried around that his wife had given him.

  Pete and the band immediately clicked and a partnership was formed. Pete Way would be our producer, and we were ready to rock.

  22

  lemmy kilmister: fairy godmother

  In June of 1982, Twisted Sister played its farewell tristate-area show at the North Stage Theater in Glen Cove, Long Island. Fueled by the fire of knowing we were finally making good on our promise of heavy metal glory, and with our loyal fans giving us a hell of a send-off, we gave one of the greatest live performances of our careers.1 Three days later, we were on a jet to England.

  I reluctantly left a very pregnant Suzette. Six months into her term, my petite wife had been overstuffed by her mother and grandmother (“You’re eating for two now”) and looked about to burst. There was never a question of if I should go; Suzette never uttered a word of negativity or protest. It was just understood. This was what we both had been working for for so long, and it was finally coming together. Besides, I would be back in August, in plenty of time for the birth of our first child, who was due in September.

  Leaving A. J. Pero—temporarily—behind to marry his first wife, Joanne (he joined us a few days later), after six and a half years of waiting (eight-plus for Jay Jay), we finally headed off to England to take a giant step in our musical careers. Twisted Sister was recording its first album!

  We were booked to record at Kitchenham Farm studios, in Ashburnham, England, where Def Leppard had just taken a year to record Pyromania and Paul McCartney had finished his latest record. This place was the real deal! Our agreement with Secret Records was that they would provide the studio, housing, and meals. The studio and hotel were in the English countryside, which was absolutely beautiful in July. Our hotel was this amazing old place, originally built by William the Conqueror in the Middle Ages. We’re talkin’ the eleventh century! In the States, we call things that are seventy-five or a hundred years old “antiques.” In Europe, that’s considered “relatively new.” We couldn’t have been more blown away. The studio, on the other hand, was a different kind of surprise.

  Kitchenham Farm itself was pretty cool, but we weren’t recording there. I can’t remember if it was purely a budgetary thing or if it was thought to be “more metal” (that was probably our justification for the budget issues), but it was decided we would record our basic tracks and guitar overdubs in a local barn, using a mobile recording unit. Amps and drums were set up, bales of hay were used as sound baffles, and the recording truck was parked right outside the emptied barn, in the middle of a working farm. Things were going well until the fir
st time we asked our engineer to play something back in the mobile unit. The condescending, arrogant asshole (that was how he acted to us) refused to turn up the volume. Apparently he had tinnitus or something like that and couldn’t listen to playback loudly, and by loudly I mean anything greater than normal speaking volume. Was he freakin’ kidding!? We were a damn heavy metal band for God’s sake! We were loud by definition!

  Needless to say, my reaction to this guy’s “condition” didn’t endear the band to him, or the rest of the people working at the studio. Screaming at a guy with tinnitus tends to be counterproductive. Talk about your ugly Americans.

  AS A RECORDING ENVIRONMENT, the barn did the trick. We were able to get some kind of sound out of “the room,” but the local residents seemed none too pleased with us. And by local residents I mean farm animals. I remember being outside looking at a cow while Mark “the Animal” Mendoza was getting ready to test his equipment. The minute he started playing his bass (blisteringly loud, of course), the cow started uncontrollably shitting. That poor bovine didn’t know what hit her. Maybe it was commentary on Mark’s playing?

  The songs we were recording for our first album were ones we had been playing in the clubs for years, so there was no wasted time writing, creating parts, or even discussing what we needed to do. It was pretty much just laying down what we did live. Regardless, any recording process is long and pretty boring. Like movie- and video-making, the industry mantra is “hurry up and wait.” Now, I’m sure that “partying” bands have a lot more fun, adding friends and girls and booze and drugs when recording. That wasn’t for me. I was on a mission, and I’d finally been given the keys to the kingdom.

  I already had a cassette full of song ideas for the next album, which I had worked on in the months before we left. On the seven-hour flight to England, I went through the ideas and selected the best twenty or so. Now, while the guys were in the barn getting sounds, recording tracks, or just fooling around, I sat alone in the band van—or in a spare room or in my hotel room; whatever was available to me—developing those song ideas. When I wasn’t actually working on the recording and mixing of our first record, I was writing lyrics and/or further preparing the songs for our second, so they’d be ready for the band when the time came. This is how I worked for the first three albums. We didn’t even have album one out and I was ready for number two. I was that sure and committed. Remember Tony Robbins’s “luck is preparation meeting opportunity”? I knew this instinctively. Nothing was going to stop me.

  With Mark Mendoza working by Pete Way’s side (Mark was interested in the art of recording) and the engineers assigned to our record (Craig Thomson, Will Gosling, and Dave Boscombe), we made our way through track after track, pretty much live to tape, with the exception of vocals. Those were recorded at various available studios.

  Pete Way, though his rock ’n’ roll heart was definitely in the right place, wasn’t much of a producer. His greatest value was the credibility he brought to a bunch of relatively unknown, crazy Yanks. Fans and musicians loved Pete, and to have his seal of approval opened a lot of doors for us.

  Motörhead had recently gone through an ugly “divorce” with Fast Eddie Clarke, their lead guitarist, leaving the former band members on terrible terms. As bad as the breakup had been, the media were making it ten times worse, pitting the band members against each other in the press. It was sad to see. Pete was good friends with all of the Motörhead guys and put in a call to Fast Eddie asking him if he would play some lead guitar on one of our songs, “Tear It Loose.” Fast Eddie didn’t have a clue who we were and didn’t have to. His pal Pete asked and that was good enough.2

  The legendary Fast Eddie Clarke arrived at the barn with a guitar in one hand and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7 in the other. It was only midafternoon, but Fast Eddie was ready to get his game on. The plan was for Jay Jay and Fast Eddie to exchange lead guitar licks with each other on the track. Even though Jay Jay’s hard-partying days were behind him, he stood toe to toe with Fast Eddie Clarke in that barn, trading guitar licks and hits on the bottle of Jack, one for one.

  I don’t know when I felt prouder of Jay Jay.

  In the short time I got to hang with Fast Eddie, I shared with him my thoughts on how the press were manipulating the feud between him and Motörhead’s singer/bass player Lemmy Kilmister. I told him how his relationship with Motörhead was like a marriage. They had some amazing years together, and even though they didn’t get along now, it couldn’t change the time they shared and what they had achieved.

  What a pushy ass I was! Who was I to lecture him on anything? I would find out for myself, in just a few short years, how difficult it was to keep a positive attitude about your band members after you broke up. Did I mention I was an ass?

  The track turned out great, and Fast Eddie became a friend of the band’s for life. We would see him again soon enough, but not before we met the remaining members of Motörhead in a way-more-intense environment.

  WHILE WE WORKED TO finish our first album, the Ruff Cutts EP was being readied for release in early August. It would contain two Eddie Kramer–produced tracks, “Under the Blade” and “Leader of the Pack,” and two self-produced songs from our last demo: our longtime show opener, “What You Don’t Know (Sure Can Hurt You),”3 and “Shoot ’Em Down.” But before either of these records would hit the stores, Twisted Sister was offered an opportunity that would become one of the pivotal moments—if not thee pivotal moment—of our career.

  Motörhead was returning to the UK after their worldwide Iron Fist tour and headlining a heavy metal festival at the football stadium in Wrexham, North Wales. Their manager, Doug Smith, had been helping our manager with Twisted Sister’s logistics in the UK and offered us a slot on the bill. Not just any slot, but the “special guest” slot . . . third on an eight-band bill. Twisted Sister readily accepted our first chance to perform for a British audience, after months of hype in the local rock press.

  Our guardian angel, Pete Way, couldn’t come with us to the show, so he called one of his mates who was going to be there. Pete told him that we were a great bunch of guys and he should watch out for us. That mate? The original pirate of rock ’n’ roll—headliner Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead.

  When we arrived at the stadium, the true reality of what we were undertaking began to set in. On a bill filled with bands with records in the stores, Twisted Sister had none. Nobody in this country had even heard one of our songs or even seen us perform, for that matter. Add to that, makeup-wearing bands were not only nonexistent but completely unacceptable to English metal fans. Any band that showed even a hint of glam had been brutalized by the notoriously hostile British metal fans. The Canadian metal band Anvil had been given the nickname Canvil after they were bottled off the stage because lead singer/guitarist Lips wore fishnet “sleevelets.” The band Girl (first recording band of Phil Collen from Def Leppard and Phil Lewis from L.A. Guns) were pounded mercilessly at a festival for wearing a hint of makeup. Wait until they got a load of us!

  As we looked out at the gathering crowd of metalheads in the stadium, things went from bad to worse. Motörhead’s fans were some of the nastiest and ugliest-looking muthafuckers we’d ever seen, and the few female fans they had . . . well, let’s just say you’d rather have sex with one of the guys!

  To top it all off, the second band on the bill, Budgie, canceled at the last minute, pushing us up to the number two slot, right before Motörhead. Then we found out we’d be going on before sundown.

  Because of people’s often negative reaction to Twisted Sister’s appearance, I had written “What You Don’t Know (Sure Can Hurt You)” to open our shows. The only song I’ve ever written to fit a stage-lighting plot, the idea was for the band to be lit only in silhouette for the first third of it. This would give the audience a chance to hear us, before they saw what we looked like. The song had always been effective, and we’d get a strong reaction when the front lights finally came on, revealing our “unique” appear
ance. The key to the success of the song was that the stage and the band would start out almost totally in the dark. Twisted Sister had never performed in the daylight, and we were terrified of what might happen with Motörhead’s audience.

  The band gathered in our dressing room to discuss a plan of action. We’d been warned about the potential reaction to how we looked and we were freaking out. Our first UK performance might well be our last. I don’t remember whose idea it was, but somebody suggested that we not wear our makeup and costumes for the first time in our career.4 This was met with a pretty enthusiastic response from most of the jittery band members. Not me. I told the band that I was as afraid of going onstage that day as they were, but I hadn’t come this far, looking the way I did, to back down now. It had not been an easy road for us; I had been in a lot of scrapes and altercations because of our image. If I was going to take the costumes and makeup off for fear of a negative audience reaction, I would have done it a long time ago.

  While the band did wear their makeup and costumes that day, some of them wore their Twisted Sister denim vests over their stage clothes and sunglasses covering their eye makeup.5Not me.

  As we stood in our dressing room nervously debating what we were going to do, Lemmy Kilmister passed our open door. I’ve always joked that Lemmy stopped and came in because he knew the smell of human excrement (from us shitting in our pants), and it was wafting out into the hall. Whatever the reason, he did come in and made an unsolicited proposition that blew us all away. Lemmy offered to introduce the band.

  I’m sure the magnitude of this gesture is not being fully appreciated by most of you. Motörhead were the headliner. Traditionally, the top dogs don’t even make their presence known to the bands backstage, let alone let the audience see them before their own set. It kills the suspense. Fans wait ravenously all day for their heroes to finally come forth, in that mind-blowing first moment of the concert. For the front man to walk out onstage, without an introduction, before his or her show is unheard of. Let alone to help out an unknown band that the artist has no affiliation with! To this day, I am still not sure why Lemmy showed us this kindness. It’s probably just the way he is wired and one of the reasons he is so beloved. He may be a pirate, but he’s a benevolent pirate.