Shut Up and Give Me the Mic

by Dee Snider

  The song tested well at radio (audience opinion when asked to listen to a song) and the video was a fairly welcome departure from our usual fare at MTV, but “The Price” didn’t break through the way we all hoped it would. I don’t know if the missed radio mix had anything to do with its failure as a single, but I’m sure that didn’t help. We expected it to push the album to the next sales level (triple platinum) as yet another hit single off the record. Instead, it was the “event horizon” that signaled it was time to wrap things up and move on to our next album.

  WHILE WORKING ON THE “The Price” video with Marty Callner, he imparted to me some bad news. Less than four years after the birth of MTV, they had decided to reduce the amount of heavy metal videos they were airing. After using the genre to help launch their network, they were dropping metal the way a shuttle launch releases its booster rocket. You got us where we need to go . . . see ya!

  I was blown away by the shortsightedness of this corporate decision; I expected more from Music Television. The heavy metal audience was incredibly loyal. Why cut them completely loose when MTV could have their cake and eat it, too? I had Marty propose to the powers that be for headbangers get their own show to tune in to. Metalhead fans will dutifully tune in once a week, at ungodly hours, to hear a weekly radio show dedicated to their music on the radio; why not do the same thing on television?

  MTV soon came back with their answer: if Dee will host it, we will do a metal show. One other caveat. A young MTV producer named Liz Nealon had been proposing the same idea to them. They wanted me to work with her on the show. I didn’t have to be asked twice. Here was an opportunity to keep metal alive on MTV, promote the music genre I loved (and still do), and graduate to a new medium as show host. Liz Nealon and I met, connected creatively, and Heavy Metal Mania was born. The monthly show eventually became weekly, but I left after working for free for eighteen months because MTV wasn’t willing to pay me a dime for my effort. They said it was great promotion for me. By then I was completely over-exposed and the most recognizable face in heavy metal. Fuck great promotion! Show me the money!

  The show Liz Nealon and I created, and that I worked for a year and a half without pay to establish, eventually mutated into the now legendary Headbangers Ball. You’re welcome.

  THE STAY HUNGRY TOUR would end both auspiciously and suspiciously. Let me explain.

  While Maiden played a series of headline shows at Radio City Music Hall and went off to do the first Rock in Rio event, Twisted Sister used the time to take a run at some other countries besides the United States and Canada. Though we would never make it to Europe on that record (other than the pre-album-release dates in England, Holland, and Germany), we did go to Australia, New Zealand, and Japan for a handful of shows. Five, to be exact.

  En route to Twisted’s first show in Japan, I stopped in Los Angeles with my bodyguard, Vic, to be a presenter on the Grammy Awards. I saw it as an opportunity to further bring the music I loved to the masses. I wasn’t nominated or even performing on the show, but back then there was no heavy metal category. The genre was completely ignored by NARAS (National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences). No one from the metal community had ever even been asked to attend. I viewed my appearance as a breakthrough and a major inroad for metal.

  I am an original headbanger and I have always had a passion for heavy metal. From the earliest days I believed it was worthy of a much wider audience. It deserved more radio time, television time, press coverage, and general respect and appreciation by the masses. I wanted metal to be the world’s music. I wanted to hear it on movie sound tracks, on commercials, and as Muzak on elevators and in banks. I felt it should be heard and played everywhere, and that was a part of my life’s mission. Sure I wanted to be a rock star, but I wanted to use my influence to bring heavy metal to the mainstream. Why shouldn’t the marching band play heavy metal songs at halftime?

  To that end, I accepted every offer I got from the mainstream media. In analogy, I viewed these appearances as the unpopular kid in high school making it with the homecoming queen. I was with her and shouting to all my fellow outcasts, “Look who I’m with! Ha-ha!” The outcasts were having the last laugh. Unfortunately, the metal community did not view it the same way I did. The core metal fan saw my efforts as selling out. They didn’t want to share their heroes, especially with the mainstream. If only I’d realized this sooner.

  While it can’t be argued my dream wasn’t heartfelt, when heavy metal did finally make it to the masses in the early nineties, the exposure practically killed it. Metal has always been the cockroach of rock ’n’ roll, thriving and surviving on the outskirts of the mainstream while other genres came and went. That under-the-radar quality has kept it alive. Heavy metal was never meant for the masses. It is music by headbangers for headbangers, and that’s how it should always remain.

  PRESENTING AT THE 27 TH Annual Grammy Awards in February of 1985 was interesting, to say the least. The big deal that year was Prince and the Revolution and Prince’s movie Purple Rain. Everyone was abuzz because Prince had “agreed” to perform on the show. I could not have cared less.

  The afternoon of the event, I arrived with my bodyguard for the rehearsal/sound check. Everyone there was either presenting, performing, or working on the show. As I stood backstage with Ray Davies of the Kinks, Stevie Wonder, Leonard Bernstein, John Denver, and other music industry luminaries, it came time for Prince and the Revolution to do their sound check.

  At the behest of Prince, the Grammy producers had painted a large dressing room/trailer purple, and set it up backstage. This was so “his royal shortness” and his band wouldn’t have to get ready or hang out with the rest of us peons. The door to the trailer opened, and surrounded by nearly a dozen of their personal security, Prince and the Revolution were escorted to the stage. During the maybe 150-yard walk, the lead bodyguard (you may remember the dick—gray-and-black beard, like wrestler “Superstar” Billy Graham?) was barking out orders to the celebrities and crew backstage.

  “Don’t look at him! Avert your eyes! Look away! Stop staring!”

  As Prince and the Revolution passed a bunch of us (I assume they passed, none of them could be seen behind their security), the lead asshole tells Stevie Wonder to look away! Are you freakin’ kidding me?!

  That night, I presented the Best Male Pop Vocal Performance Award, with Sheila E., to no-show Phil Collins, saying as I opened the envelope, “This is the first time a dirtbag presented one of these.”

  To me that was what it was all about. Their being forced to acknowledge and recognize us (the metal community), in any capacity, was a victory. Being on national, prime-time network television—wearing jeans and a cutoff T-shirt—was a moral victory for both me and heavy metal.

  I left the theater immediately following my presentation. The producers wanted me to sit in the audience, but I felt it was way too tame and legit for a heavy metal rock star such as myself. I headed back to the hotel and got ready to catch my flight to Japan to rejoin the band. I had more important things to do than hang out with music industry elitists and party.

  Not until four years later was heavy metal officially recognized by NARAS (albeit with an initial snubbing of Metallica, when the award went to Jethro Tull), but I’d like to think I helped open that door.

  TOWARD THE END OF 1984, I was contacted by the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The last wish of Robert, a sixteen-year-old boy dying of leukemia, was to meet me. I couldn’t believe it. Of all the things someone might make his last wish, I was stunned I would be it. I readily agreed to meet him under the condition this would not be a publicity stunt and Robert and I would just spend some time together alone. I wasn’t going there to meet anybody else.

  My visit was to be a surprise, but the day before I was to arrive at the hospital, I received a call. Sadly, the kid wasn’t going to make it until I got there, so in hopes of lifting his spirits and getting him to hold on for a few more precious hours, they told him Dee Snider was coming to see
him. He stayed alive just so he could meet me.

  When Joe, Vic, and I arrived at the hospital, I first met Robert’s family and caregivers, and they informed me that what I was going to experience might be difficult. Because of the advanced stage of Robert’s disease, a once strapping young boy now weighed less than sixty-five pounds. As a result of chemo and radiation treatments Robert had no hair and could no longer speak. He was, however, relatively alert and could hear me. I steeled myself and went inside to meet my most dedicated fan.

  Robert was as sick as they warned me, but I could see his recognition of me in his eyes. I sat with him for a couple of hours talking about everything and anything, except his illness or his bleak future. I spoke only about positive, uplifting things, always in future terms and of “when you get better.” I shared with him personal stories, spoke of bodybuilding regimens and weight-gain supplements that would help him put on the pounds and regain his strength when he got out of the hospital. I even told him of the possibility of his working with the Twisted Sister road crew in the future.

  My whole time there, Robert lay silent and still, a pale skeleton of a boy, but his eyes never left me. After a couple of hours, I could see he was exhausted from the effort, so I told him we’d hang together when he got better and left the poor sick kid forever.

  Outside the room, his family’s outpouring of gratitude was touching. I had given their son and brother his dying wish, and they were forever in my debt. I left the hospital amazed that what I did mattered so much to some people, and I was glad I’d brought some kind of joy to the final hours of a young man whose life was simply too short. I felt a deep sense of appreciation for how lucky I was and said a silent prayer for the future health of my son. I could not imagine the anguish Robert’s parents must have been going through.

  IN MARCH OF 1985, Twisted Sister and Iron Maiden played an outdoor show in Tempe, Arizona. I was backstage getting ready when Vic came into my dressing room, a look of shock on his face.

  “He’s here, boss. He’s here,” my bodyguard said in disbelief. Vic always called me boss.

  “Who’s here?” Someone was always “here” in those days, but Vic was being a little vaguer than usual.

  “The kid. The sick kid.”

  I stopped putting on my makeup and turned to Vic. “Robert? The kid from Make-A-Wish?”

  Vic nodded.

  Robert was still alive? “What’s he doing here?”

  “Partying,” Vic answered, surprised by the word coming out of his own mouth.

  And he was. After my departure from the hospital, Robert’s disease went into remission and he started a full recovery. Less than six months later, he was out of the hospital, back to “fighting weight” and then some (thanks to my weight-gain and training tips), and working construction! Robert was backstage at a Twisted Sister/Iron Maiden show and making up for the time he lost out on partying when he was sick. It was incredible. Oh, yeah . . . and he wanted to know when he could start working and touring with the band.

  I called his mother a few days later to ask what had happened—not that I wasn’t absolutely overjoyed. She told me that while Robert had gone into remission, the doctors had told her not to get her hopes up. In time the disease would take hold again and the end would come. In the meantime, she was incredibly happy to have her son back even for a while and so thankful for my help. I assured her that I had done nothing and expressed my joy for her family and Robert’s happiness. It was simply amazing.

  Decades later I would be contacted by Robert again. He is not only still alive (now in his forties), but married and with children of his own. The leukemia never returned.

  A while after my hospital visit, I received a letter from the Make-A-Wish Foundation thanking me for my participation and explaining that wishes are only granted to terminally ill children. It was the first time any recipient had survived.

  Do I think I’m special? Sure . . . but not in that way. I simply think positive thought and energy is an incredible thing that has been proven to have life-changing effects. It’s that same type of PMA that propelled Twisted Sister’s success. Unfortunately, in the band’s case my will and drive would one day not be enough.

  41

  “click click boom!”

  Our return to heavy metal mecca (LA) with Iron Maiden could not have been more triumphant. With now almost 2.5 million records sold in the United States alone (close to 5 million worldwide) in less than a year’s time, Twisted Sister had gone from up-and-comers to heavyweight contenders. The Iron Maiden/Twisted Sister tour package was the hottest ticket in town, and every metalhead came to bear witness. But deep inside I sensed something wasn’t quite right. I couldn’t put my finger on it—and I wouldn’t dare put my finger on it if I could—but the night of our first of five Los Angeles–area sold-out performances, I got the feeling Twisted Sister had overstayed its welcome.

  The audience was responding, but it almost seemed as if they were afraid not to. That wasn’t the reaction I was going for. I would later find out that was the case at many Twisted shows. Some people in attendance shouted and cheered out of fear they would either be targeted by me from the stage (no one was safe from my all-seeing eyes) or get their asses kicked by rabid Sister fans. Either way . . . not my goal.

  The voice of a single metalhead from that night rings in my ears to this day. As Twisted Sister walked off after our set, I heard a male voice in the seats to the side of the backstage shout down to Blackie Lawless from W.A.S.P., who had been watching our show from the wings, “Twisted Sister sucks! W.A.S.P. rules!”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Blackie turn to fully accept the accolades of this fan and, with that, silently agree with the fan’s assessment. Yes, Twisted Sister does suck, he implied.

  Click.

  That was the sound of a tumbler to the combination lock of Twisted Sister’s demise falling into place. Something in the tone of the asshole’s voice, Blackie Lawless’s silent acknowledgment, and the measured insanity of the sold-out crowd that night told me this was more than one idiot’s opinion. This was a growing feeling in the metal community. I said nothing to anybody about this—I denied this momentary lapse in positivity even to myself—and went back to my dressing room. Swallowing the bitter, glimmer-of-a-dark-future pill, until now I never said anything to anyone about it again. But subconsciously I knew.

  THE SECOND DAY OF our run with Iron Maiden at LA’s Long Beach Arena was my thirtieth birthday. While the road to the top had been long and arduous, success was finally mine. You would think it would make the celebration of such a significant birthday that much sweeter. That’s what I thought. I had fame, fortune, an incredible wife, and a son. I had achieved my life’s goal and I was performing at a sold-out arena show. I was ready for the thirtieth birthday of all thirtieth birthdays. But it wasn’t to be.

  I hate to admit I had an issue with turning thirty, but I can’t deny I had an unprecedented breakdown (for me) that night.

  Leading up to the date, I had no trepidations whatsoever: I couldn’t have been in a better place at that point in my life. Since that infamous day, I’ve had a fortieth and a fiftieth birthday, and I’ve taken them both in stride. My fortieth birthday party was held at a kids’ indoor playground, I had Suzette carve the number 40 into the shaved hair on the side of my head, and I wore an adult diaper on the outside of my pants the entire night. No—I didn’t need it! My fiftieth birthday was televised (maybe some of you saw it?), and I celebrated that milestone for almost two weeks, taking my entire family to Universal Studios, then Suzette and I went away for a romantic week in the British Virgin Islands. I’ve already got big plans for my sixtieth birthday. I don’t shy away from the decade markers of my life. I embrace and celebrate them. (Ignoring them isn’t going to make them go away.) But not my thirtieth. Something came over me that night that I just can’t explain . . . or maybe I can.

  Because of my realization the night before, I was angry and upset when I hit the arena stage and gave one
of my stronger performances (anger has always brought out the best/worst in me). I remember smashing my microphone stand repeatedly onstage and screaming with rage (not into the mic) as the raw emotion I was feeling but couldn’t explain overcame me. The audience response was particularly great that night.

  After the show, Suzette had planned a backstage party for me, but I was having none of it. Feeling on the verge of tears (I’m telling you, it virtually never happens!), I wouldn’t come out of my dressing room, and I wouldn’t let anybody in besides Suzette and Jesse.

  In a fairly famous episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Mary throws a surprise party for her boss, Lou Grant, and he flips out when he arrives at Mary’s apartment and finds out about it. Lou doesn’t want a party and won’t let any of the guests enter. One by one, Mary tries to sell Lou on the people waiting out in the hall. “You like Murray. Why don’t we just let Murray in?” “It’s just Ted. You know Ted. What do you say we let Ted in?” And so on and so forth. Well, that’s pretty much what happened to Suzette. As I sat hugging my son like a security blanket, she tried to convince me to let into the room various people who wanted to see me.

  “It’s Marty. You like Marty. Why don’t you just say hi to Marty?”

  I was far less cooperative than Lou Grant. Eventually, Suzette told everybody the party was off and put away the cake. I was not in the mood to see anyone or celebrate. We had a custom cake the next day (made with a hand-“painted” picture of me, long before it was commonplace to put photos on cakes), but it wasn’t the same. I had ruined my thirtieth birthday and everyone around me was walking on eggshells.

  Accepting that I may just have had a problem with turning thirty like so many others, I do have another theory for my reaction that night. Remember that click moment I told you about? I think the true weight of what I knew in my heart to be true about the future for the band and me had got to me on a deeper level. I would never have suggested this then, and I know I couldn’t explain my behavior at the time, but looking back now, I’m convinced the reality of what I subconsciously knew was happening had shaken me to my core. Somehow I knew I had blown it.