Shut Up and Give Me the Mic

by Dee Snider

  Before hanging up, Phil said these fateful words to me: “‘I Am (I’m Me)’ [one of the songs on the tape] is a hit. We are going to the top of the charts with that one!”

  And we did.

  IN THE WEEKS BEFORE we left to record, I tried to savor my home life as much as I could. I knew I would be gone for a few months, and during that time, due to my finances, I would have virtually no contact with my wife and son. Bringing them with me wasn’t an option, and phone calls home at that time were prohibitively expensive. I often think how much easier it would have been on Suzette and me with today’s technology. Face-to-face Internet calls are ridiculously inexpensive and an incredibly satisfying way of staying connected. But this was the early eighties, not the 2000s, and seeing and hearing from each other while I was away just wasn’t possible.

  One afternoon before I left, Suzette told me she was going to run out to the supermarket. Three-month-old Jesse was asleep, so with me there to keep an ear out for him, she was going to pick up something for dinner. When Suzette left, I realized that I had a few moments to myself. This would be a good time to write some new songs.

  What I’m about to tell you is not ego talking, just the truth about how blessed I am when it comes to writing and creating. My mind is fertile and always ready for creativity. For me it’s just a matter of being able to focus and capture the ideas so I don’t forget them. Because of this, I have trained myself to literally turn off my creativity, and turn it back on when I need it. This is an incredible gift.

  I grabbed my list of song titles (remember, I work off those), got my recorder, turned on my “mental faucet,” and sang song ideas to tape for the next forty-five minutes. By the time Suzette had come home from shopping, I had basically created all of the songs (except for “The Price”) that would become Twisted Sister’s Stay Hungry album. I had even finished—after writing the hook three years earlier—“We’re Not Gonna Take It.” ‘I Wanna Rock,” “Burn in Hell,” “Stay Hungry,” “S.M.F.”—all of our best-known Twisted Sister songs—spilled out of me while my son slept and my wife was out getting groceries. I knew I had some good stuff, too.

  With our formal record contracts still being negotiated (not that there was much negotiating), the band and I boarded an Air India flight7 bound for Great Britain to record our next album. With me, I had the makings of the album—after the one we were about to make—that would change our lives forever.

  27

  the price

  Recording at Jimmy Page’s Sol Studio, in Cookham, Berkshire, England, was like a rock ’n’ roll fairy tale. Originally built by Elton John’s producer, Gus Dudgeon, in the late seventies, Gus was forced to sell it due to rampant overspending on the project, poor accounting, and a temporary crash in the music industry postdisco. Jimmy Page literally helicoptered in, took a look, and bought it for a fraction of its actual value.

  Built on the site of an old river mill, the recording studio is on one side of the river, and it is connected by a covered bridge to the living quarters on the other side. With beamed, vaulted ceilings, French doors, and picture windows looking out at the river and open meadows, the band house is like something from a storybook.

  The studio was nothing short of amazing as well. Custom mahogany cabinetry, split-wood, matched-panel doors, and brass abounded. The console room had a working fireplace, and both it and the recording room had large picture windows looking out over the landscape. One of the worst things about recording (for me) is that there are never windows in studios, and thus you lose contact with the real world. Windows are virtually impossible to soundproof, but Gus spared absolutely no expense (which is part of the reason he lost the studio) to create two-foot-thick walls and ceilings with special sound-deadening qualities that allowed for these unique portals. I remember recording a vocal one day when snow started to fall, as horses ran free across the field. I’m telling you this so you’ll understand just how magical the recording environment and experience was while we made the You Can’t Stop Rock ’n’ Roll album.

  Removed from our friends, families, and other distractions, we focused completely on the work at hand and bonded as a band as never before.

  We worked all day, had an in-house cook and housekeeper, hung out, watched movies, and laughed. Each morning, Jay Jay and I would go for long jogs to stay in shape or hit the gym at the local recreation hall nearby. Through it all, I continued to work on the songs for our next album.

  Why didn’t I use the great (or so I thought) new songs for the album we were currently working on? Simply, they weren’t ready to be presented to the band or record company. Since I didn’t really play an instrument, I needed to show the band my ideas slowly on guitar (I couldn’t possibly sing as I played), then we would rehearse and demo-record them. Finally, I would sing the melodies onto the recordings so the whole idea could be understood. It was a process. Plus, I just felt the new ideas I had weren’t meant to be on the current record, for whatever reason. If they were, I would have come up with them before. Timing is everything, and if I had finished “We’re Not Gonna Take It” in 1979, it would have never become the song it did. It was meant to be recorded in 1984.

  While the recording process and hang time with the band was amazing, the heartache of being away from my wife and son was brutal. I wrote a letter to Suzette religiously, every day and waited for the occasional letter from home with precious photos of my son. Jesse was growing up without me (the growth a baby experiences the first year is exponential), and all I had to savor the first time he sat up, the first time he watched TV, the first time he said “Da-da” (to a stuffed frog!) were these photos.

  Suzette was having a hell of a time on her own. At just twenty-two years old, she had to take care of the baby and our apartment. Her family now lived in Florida, too far away to help out, and my family weren’t supportive at all. After the first month or so, she gave our two dogs up for adoption, closed up shop and went to Florida to stay with her mother—a much better situation.

  As the months rolled on, I became more and more homesick. One day, the studio phone rang and it was Jay Jay’s sister-in-law Ricky. We spoke for a minute and she asked me how things were going. I told her that the recording experience was amazing, but I was missing my wife and son. To this, Ricky responded, “Well, Dee, I guess that’s the price you have to pay.” Her words hit me hard. I gave Jay Jay the phone, grabbed my handheld recorder, went into the bathroom (a place I’ve always gone for privacy), and wrote “The Price.” It would become one of our biggest songs.

  REGRETTABLY, WE NEVER SAW Jimmy Page. He was a pretty legendary recluse, living nearby, in a high-security, gated mansion once owned by Michael Caine. Jimmy didn’t drive and only went out at night. On a number of days, we’d come into the studio to find things had been moved around and other evidence that Jimmy had been there during the night. It was a little creepy.

  Jimmy Page’s well-known affinity for the occult had us overanalyzing everything in the building, trying to find evidence of his mystical hand. Though we never found anything out of the ordinary, we did discover one amazing thing. One day, while we’re in the studio, Mark Mendoza rushes in—a look of awe on his face—and says to me, “You have got to see this!” Without asking what it was, I followed him to the upstairs offices of the studio. Mark takes me to an unlocked closet, opens the door, and turns on the light. Inside were shelves filled with large master tape boxes. This was nothing unusual for a recording studio; they all have closets like this.

  “Take a look at the labels,” Mark says.

  As I read the labels on each of the reels, I was stunned to discover that every one was a different, legendary Led Zeppelin song. In this unlocked closet, in an unlocked building, in the lazy little town of Cookham, were the original recordings of some of the best-known, biggest-selling, greatest songs in the history of rock ’n’ roll! You name it, it was there. From “Whole Lotta Love” to “Immigrant Song” to “Kashmir” to “Stairway to Heaven,” every single Led Zeppelin
song ever recorded was there on the shelves. For us as Led Zeppelin fans (and who isn’t?), it was like finding the Holy Grail . . . in a bathroom.

  For the record, we didn’t take any of them. We definitely touched a lot of the boxes, but we left them in the closet.

  LIKE TWISTED SISTER, PHIL Carson was a man on a mission. His grand plan for us, while we were in the UK, involved a lot more than recording an album. Phil wanted to set the stage for the release of the You Can’t Stop Rock ’n’ Roll LP by first putting out a single: the “There’s hits on this tape!” track “I Am (I’m Me).” To ensure it a high chart position, Atlantic planned on releasing three different versions: a seven-inch two-song single, a twelve-inch four-song single, and a picture disc, with different additional tracks on each one. The idea was for fans to want all of the songs and their various formats, tripling the single sales and pushing it farther up the charts. Great plan, now we just needed something for the flip sides on the variants. We couldn’t use the tracks from the actual album.

  Phil Carson had that figured out, too. We would perform a couple of shows at the Heat Club, er, I mean, the Marquee Club and record them. The live tracks from the show would provide the unique content for the B-sides. Brilliant!

  “I Am (I’m Me)” was released on my twenty-eighth birthday, and Phil’s plan worked like a charm. All of London and the surrounding areas were plastered with giant pink-and-black posters of my screaming head, announcing the single’s release, and “I Am (I’m Me)” was soon flying out of the shops. The most popular of the extra tracks was the uncensored recording of “It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll (but I Like It).” More than one heavy metal fan was turned on to the band when they heard that track for the first time. (Right, Sebastian Bach?)

  Still finishing our album at Sol Studio, we got the word that legendary heavy metal DJ Tommy Vance would be debuting our single on his national BBC weekly radio show. We were stoked! Tommy Vance was the national voice of metal at that time, and we knew the core metal audience would all be listening.

  The night of his show, we gathered around the radio, waiting for Tommy to introduce our song to Great Britain for the first time. When it finally came time, Tommy gave the proper buildup for an anticipated release and started the record . . . at too slow a speed! Having received the twelve-inch version of the single, he had assumed that it was an LP to be played at 331/3 rpm. It was in fact intended to be played at the same speed as a seven-inch single, 45 rpm. Like most radio DJs, Tommy wasn’t actually listening to the music he played. Once a song starts, DJs (as I now know from personal experience) turn down the studio volume and busy themselves getting the next song ready, setting up commercials, talking to people in the studio, etc.

  The band and I sat, listening in agony, as our song played on at almost half speed. It was barely distinguishable as a song! This lasted for a seeming eternity until suddenly Tommy Vance stopped the record, opened his mic, and said, “Oops. That can’t be right. Sorry about that, lads. [He knew we’d be listening.] Let’s try this again.” With that, Tommy restarted our song and played it at the right speed, in its entirety.

  Years later, I ran into somebody who was listening that night. He said when “I Am (I’m Me)” first came on, he thought, This is the heaviest fucking song I have ever heard! He was disappointed when Tommy Vance corrected his mistake.

  As we hoped, “I Am (I’m Me)” jumped right into the Top 20, putting us squarely in the sights of the mega weekly music show Top of the Pops. At that point, for close to twenty years, it had been the televised show on which to get your band noticed, but—primarily because their records didn’t make it into the top of the charts—it rarely featured heavy rock bands. It was an amazing opportunity to get our name and music out there, and to jam heavy metal down the throats of the mainstream.

  Doing the show was unique. Due to union rules, you (any appearing act) were expected to go into a studio, of your choosing, and rerecord your entire track in one afternoon, under the watchful eye of some union representative. This new recording of your song would be the one you lip-synched to when you were on the show. Understand, it takes days to get just the sounds for your record, let alone to record every part and mix the damn thing. Twisted Sister is just a straight-ahead metal-rock band. Can you imagine how long it takes to record a Pink Floyd single? This said, the whole “rerecording” thing was a ruse. Toward the end of your session, the union watchdog would conveniently step out of the room, allowing the recording artist to slip in the original master. The union got its money, and the artist got to lip-synch to the original track. Freakin’ ridiculous!

  Our first of three visits to Top of the Pops stunned Great Britain, and not because of my horrendous first attempt at lip-synching.1 Despite the fact that we were on with Boy George and Culture Club, the TOTP viewers were mortified by our appearance and demeanor. Us?! Of course the metal fans loved having one of their own on the show for a change. Keep in mind, the UK had all of four television stations back then, so there wasn’t a lot to choose from. Whether you liked it or not, on Tuesday nights Top of the Pops was the show the entire country tuned in for.

  Meeting Boy George for the first time was interesting. He was the poster boy for everything headbangers loathed about insipid pop music. I had used him and his band as a target of my vitriol in my UK on stage rants, vowing to punch him in the face if I ever ran into him. Imagine my surprise when I found out Twisted Sister and Culture Club would be on Top of the Pops the same week.

  As I walked down the hallways of the TOTP studios, who should suddenly step out of a dressing room? The Boy himself, in all his glory. Before I could utter a word, Boy George says, “So where’s the slap?”

  I was totally thrown. He knew that I said I was going to hit him. “What?”

  “The slap. The makeup. Where’s your makeup?”

  Turned out, Boy George was a Twisted Sister fan and had been following us since our first album. Go figure. And therein lay the problem.

  DEE SNIDER RULE #1

  You like me, I like you.

  DEE SNIDER RULE #2

  You don’t like me . . . we got a problem.

  Clearly, Boy George fell well inside the protection of rule number one. So much for hitting him.

  TWISTED SISTER WOULD PERFORM two more times on Top of the Pops. Once more for “I Am (I’m Me)” and again for our second single, “The Kids Are Back.” We would perform on the show with other up-and-coming international stars such as the Eurythmics, Dexys Midnight Runners, Kajagoogoo, and the Thompson Twins. Why I even bother to mention them will become clear later.

  THINGS WERE GOING BETTER than expected in the UK. We had two Top 40 hits, our album was high in the charts, and Twisted Sister was on the covers of all the rock magazines and even spilling over into pop and mainstream press. Even better, it was almost time to go home, and I would return victorious. I couldn’t wait to be reunited with my wife and baby boy.

  Unfortunately, that was going to have to wait a bit longer. Twisted Sister was so hot, Phil Carson wanted us to stay in the UK another month, do a headline tour of Great Britain, and film a video for our next single, the title track from our album. MTV, then only a year and a half old, was going to be a force to be reckoned with, and Phil saw the writing on the wall. Before we headed back to the United States (where I’m sure he knew we would get little help from Atlantic Records US), he wanted us armed with this latest tool in breaking a band.

  Having been away from home for close to three months, the last thing I wanted to do was spend another month overseas. I had missed Valentine’s Day, my birthday with my family, Suzette’s and my anniversary, and I’d had all of about two phone calls home my entire time away. I was homesick! But this was the opportunity and the support from a record label the band had been looking for; there was no way I could pass it up. I broke the news to a way too understanding and supportive Suzette, and Twisted Sister hit the road in the UK.

  THROUGHOUT THE HISTORY OF rock ’n’ roll, many bands have had
“band jackets” with the band name and whatever other information they care to impart (person’s name, tour, etc.). These jackets—usually baseball-style, satin or something along those lines—conveyed the upbeat, clublike feel of a group and its surrounding organization. Twisted Sister was anything but an upbeat club. More of a hardened “band of brothers,” it was us against the world. We viewed ourselves as outlaw rockers, descending upon an unsuspecting community and leaving devastation in our wake. Because of that, we decided to have “colors” like a motorcycle club, instead of jackets.

  The band colors were black and pink, so of course those had to be the predominant colors of our back patches. The top rocker read TWISTED and the bottom rocker said SISTER. The TS logo over the pink and black rings made up the center patch.

  Twisted Sister always had a sense of humor and an appreciation for the absurdity of how we looked. Putting the “registered trademark” symbol on our logo and having a patch that said RB (rock band) instead of the traditional MC (motorcycle club) was our way of giving a little wink, while also making it clear we were not a motorcycle club. Most people got that.

  Only a handful of people (maybe two dozen in total) have ever been given a set of patches by us, and those earned them through their loyalty and dedication to the band.

  While out on the You Can’t Stop Rock ’n’ Roll UK tour, we did a show in Nottingham, home of the legendary Sherwood Forest. It was strange to arrive in a town so much a part of history. You just assume these places don’t exist, but like Sleepy Hollow, New York, Nottingham is a very real place. Who would have thought we’d run into problems with a motorcycle gang there? Then again, that is where Robin Hood’s Merry Men hung out. After our show that night, as we were getting ready to leave, Joe Gerber came into the dressing room to share a concern. A Nottingham motorcycle club had seen our Twisted Sister colors and were demanding we take them off while on their turf. Some gangs can be very territorial and view another club’s wearing colors as confrontational.2 We understood the club’s concerns, but there was one problem—we were a fucking rock band! No motorcycles, just guitars.