Shut Up and Give Me the Mic

by Dee Snider

  On the upside, writing all of those songs and working together for many months allowed Bernie and me to focus our vision for what the band should be. It went from an extension of my Me and the Boys concept with keyboard and saxophone, to a power trio with vocals, à la Led Zeppelin.

  The Desperado band was finally fleshed out with a young English bass player Bernie had worked with named Marc Russel, and former Iron Maiden basher Clive Burr on the drums.

  I had always been a fan of Clive Burr’s creative playing style. Say what you will about his replacement in Maiden, Nicko McBrain (a great guy and a great drummer), but Clive Burr helped define the Iron Maiden sound that has been the template for everything they’ve done since. Those first three albums he played on are still the core of Iron Maiden’s legacy. They owe Clive a lot and, to their credit, do show their appreciation. Clive has become ill in recent years, stricken with multiple sclerosis, and Iron Maiden have been incredibly supportive and generous. They are a good bunch of guys.

  With still no record deal in hand, and floating an entire band’s weekly salaries, I headed to the UK to rehearse, demo songs, do a photo session (true to our name, the band had taken to dressing like Wild West outlaws, complete with spurs), and whatever else needed to be done with the new band toward the end of 1988. During the two-month stay, Desperado would perform what would turn out to be its only show ever, at a club in Birmingham under the pseudonym The Clinky Bits, referring to all the “jingling” our spurs and jewelry did.

  With my new band musically tight and ready to rock, I returned home for the holidays, waited for the Elektra deal to be locked in, and the contracts drawn up. This took months and months. It was maddening. All the while, my financial situation—which had been cleared up less than a year earlier—was quickly eroding.

  By the time the deal was done and signed, it was too late. I’d been supporting first Bernie Tormé, then the rest of Desperado, and all the ancillary expenses (housing, equipment, plane flights, per diems, etc.) since the end of 1987. As we prepared to head into the studio to record, almost two years later, I was already back in debt. The huge advance and budget from Elektra for the first album wasn’t enough to save me.

  On top of everything else, Suzette and I had an unplanned, wonderful surprise: she was pregnant with our third child.

  Just before preproduction was to start on the new album, I finally made a decision I should have made long before. We had to sell our house and downscale. I say I made the decision because I tried to keep the severity of our economic troubles from Suzette, partly because I didn’t want her to worry, but mostly because I didn’t want to hear her tell me the obvious: we needed to do something drastic to fix it.

  In my defense, I thought about selling the house (which had doubled in value since we had bought it) a number of times, but my manager kept persuading me to hang on to it. “Real estate is gold,” he would say, and it was. But he was thinking in terms of how he, an average guy, would handle things: hang on to your home at all costs and cut back on every other aspect of your spending. I couldn’t do that . . . I was a rock ’n’ roll star. I had a public image to keep. Seriously. Perception is reality, and if people still perceive you as a rock star, you are one. If the public sees you as a broken-down valise, that’s what you are. Plus, I had no doubt, as soon as I got the Desperado record out, everything would be fixed, I would be back on the top of the charts, and all of my monetary problems would be solved.

  As I headed up to Woodstock with the band and our producer, Peter Coleman, in October, to begin recording, even though I had come to terms with the need to sell our house, in my heart of hearts I was sure that it wouldn’t be necessary. Suzette, on the other hand, now knew full well the seriousness of our situation and set to work preparing the house to be sold. Being the dollar-conscious woman she is, Suzette wouldn’t spend more money we didn’t have to hire people to do the work. Five and a half months pregnant, she did everything herself, no matter how big the job.

  FOR SOME SCHEDULING REASON, we had a couple of days off in the beginning of December. Suzette had been killing herself preparing our house to be sold. I was constantly telling her to take it easy, I would hire people to do these strenuous jobs, but Suzette’s not one for waiting. She continued to work and push way too hard. Suzette was on a mission to get the house ready for sale right after the winter holidays. Each month that passed we were falling deeper into a financial hole. Just before I came home that week, I called to find out she had literally been on all fours, scrubbing the kitchen floors. She was more than seven months pregnant!

  I was heading back up to Woodstock the afternoon of December 7, but first I went with Suzette to her ob-gyn appointment for her routine monthly checkup on her pregnancy. Suzette lay on the table, her feet in the dehumanizing stirrups, and her longtime gynecologist, Dr. Deborah Zitner, began her examination.

  Suddenly the doctor’s face went white. “You need to get to the hospital immediately.”

  We were stunned by this pronouncement, the full reality of what this could mean not even beginning to hit us.

  “Okay,” I replied calmly, “we’ll just stop off at our house and pick up Suzette’s things.” We lived only fifteen minutes from the doctor’s office.

  Still white as a sheet, Dr. Zitner said, “No. Don’t stop off for anything. You’ve got to go directly to Schneider Children’s Hospital. They have specialists that can help you. You’re going to have this baby today.”

  Completely confused, and now more than a little freaked out, we got in our car and headed to SCH instead of our local hospital, which was down the block. We were familiar with the hospital. It was almost an hour away. Jesse had been born at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, and Schneider Children’s Hospital was their specialized wing for premature births and babies with birth issues. Having to go there was not a good thing.

  When we arrived at the hospital, they were expecting us and rushed Suzette into a room. A doctor came in shortly after and proceeded to scare the living shit out of both of us.

  He explained that not only was Suzette partially dilated (meaning the beginning process of childbirth had begun), but the placenta (the sac holding our unborn child) had broken loose and descended down the birth canal. Normally, after a forty-week, full-term (fully developed) pregnancy, the mother-to-be’s water breaks (the placenta breaks), and the baby descends through the birth canal, free of the sac. Our baby was still in the sac, not full-term, and already beginning to exit my wife’s vagina. That’s why Dr. Zitner was so unnerved. She saw the baby, in the placenta, beginning to birth in her office!

  As if that weren’t already enough, in a now standard practice for doctors to protect themselves from any potential malpractice litigation, our obstetrician (he actually was a cool guy) told us the litany of things that might possibly be wrong with our about-to-be-prematurely-born baby . . . including death.

  One of the great things about a normal, full-term pregnancy is that by the time a woman gets to that last month of carrying her child, she is so tired of it, and all its indignities (shortness of breath, low-back pain, swollen feet, heartburn, headaches, sweats, frequent urination, difficulty sleeping . . . do I need to keep going?), she is more than ready to go through whatever it takes to give birth. Hell, give her a scalpel and she’ll take the baby out herself. Obviously I’m grossly exaggerating, but it’s to make a point. Mentally, emotionally, and physically, by the end, most women are ready to give birth.

  Unfortunately, at under thirty-three weeks into her pregnancy—a full seven and a half weeks early—Suzette was not nearly at that point. Given that, along with the panicked look on Dr. Zitner’s face and the grocery list of nightmarish things that could be wrong presented by our new doctor, she was—understandably—freaked-out. I wasn’t having the baby and I was freaking. We would not know the health or condition of our child until it was delivered, and that was positively terrifying. We were completely blindsided by this premature birth.

  They induced l
abor (gave my wife drugs) so Suzette would be fully dilated for the birth. The minute they took Suzette out of the room to prep her for delivery, I got on a phone to my manager.

  Calling him every kind of muthafucker, I unleashed all my frustration, fear, and anger on him. I irrationally blamed him for our baby’s prematurity, believing that Suzette’s Herculean effort while pregnant to prepare the house for sale had caused this. If he hadn’t kept telling me not to sell the house (when I would have been available to help), this would never have happened. God help him if something was wrong with our baby!

  Our third son, Cody Blue Snider, was born on December 7, 1989. Weighing only four pounds seven ounces, and looking like a scrawny chicken, he was otherwise totally healthy. Still, he was premature and would have to be monitored in the neonatal unit until he fattened up a bit and they were sure he was all right. Even healthy premature babies face potential problems. For example, Cody stopped breathing one night. Why? Because that’s what premature babies sometimes do. They aren’t developed enough to remember to breathe all the time.

  Luckily, today’s NICUs monitor babies for things like that and have alarms that go off so nurses can gently nudge the baby to get him or her breathing again. Freakin’ scary, right? You bet it is. Fortunately, Cody experienced no further health issues and put on enough weight for us to take him home for the holidays. What a joyous Christmas gift!

  REGRETTABLY CODY WOULD NOT be our last scare with premature birth. In 1996 Suzette would get pregnant for a fourth time, this time with our daughter, Cheyenne, and after only a few months of pregnancy, began to dilate and was in danger of miscarrying.

  To prevent further cervical dilation and the baby’s descending into the birth canal, Suzette was admitted to Schneider Children’s Hospital, where she was committed to bed rest on a decline, and a variety of medications (some potentially lethal), for as long as she and they could keep the baby from being born. The hope was to build our daughter’s birth weight and accelerate her physical development so she would survive.

  When Cheyenne Jean Snider was finally born on Halloween night 1996 (I was in the delivery room wearing a Leatherface mask, of course), Suzette was thirty-three weeks pregnant and Cheyenne’s birth weight was five pounds eight ounces. For a premature baby, she was a heavyweight. Like her brother before her, she had to spend time in the neonatal unit for observation.

  While we were lucky not to have any of the major health issues of premature birth befall us, as you sit day after day in the NICU, you can’t help but notice all the babies and families around you who are less fortunate. Some babies are born weighing less than a can of soda! Many preemies and their families have to endure a lifetime of health issues and hardships.

  A few years later, I would discover (actually they found me) that the March of Dimes research and efforts helps those less fortunate families dealing with premature births and birth defects. Through being a grand marshal, chairing my own ride, and eventually becoming a national spokesperson for their Bikers for Babies Ride initiatives, I found a way to give back and show my appreciation for how lucky my family had been with our two preemies.

  48

  “whadaya mean you didn’t listen to the record?”

  We finally finished recording and mixing Desperado’s Ace album by the end of that winter, then started the long process of readying the record for release. With my personal finances continuing to worsen, things seemed to take even longer and go that much slower. It was hell.

  I found it positively painful to watch MTV. Hair metal was a massive force to be reckoned with at that time, and to have to witness bands that had opened for Twisted Sister on tour or, even worse, watched us in the clubs (hello, Bon Jovi and Poison) taking the spotlight was killing me. Twisted Sister—the band who had created the “hair metal” genre, helped to bring it to the mainstream, and whose videos changed the medium completely—had been utterly forgotten by MTV. Even my show Heavy Metal Mania had been changed to Headbangers Ball and was being hosted by someone I knew was being paid. Not much I’m sure, but I know Riki Rachtman got something!

  In the spring, Suzette and I finally sold our house. While its value had doubled by the late eighties, the housing market was quickly softening in the winter of 1989/90 (perfect timing, eh?). But finally, the day of Cody’s baptism and party, a couple came to see the place and were taken by the magic of a beautiful spring day and the family love pouring from us all at that important event. Though the market value of our home had dropped considerably from its peak, we still made a nice profit, solving our financial problems for the time being.

  The plan was to buy a new house in Florida, near where the majority of Suzette’s family lived. With my career and current “international” band, I no longer needed to live in New York as in my days with Twisted Sister. With the impending absences sure to result from my readying a major record release and hitting the road again in a big way to establish a brand-new band, it made all the sense in the world to move to Florida, where Suzette and our children would have the support of her loving family.

  While I dealt with pre-record-release issues in New York, Suzette headed down to Florida and homed in on the perfect house. It was amazing how much further our money went down there. As the summer began, the date for our big move and my album release approached. Everything was finally falling back into place.

  There’s that word again . . . falling.

  IN AUGUST, DESPERADO WAS set to shoot the video for our first single off the new record: “There’s No Angels Here.” This single and the rest of the songs on the record were the culmination of more than two years of creative struggle, during which I had put a lot of time into achieving artistic growth. By heavily studying the singing of Paul Rodgers, I’d reworked my vocal style considerably. Digging deeper into my more blues-based musical influences such as Led Zeppelin, Humble Pie, and Bad Company, and cowriting with Bernie Tormé, had improved my songwriting as well. The Ace album had—and still has—some of the best songs I ever wrote, recorded, or sang.1 I couldn’t wait to unleash it on what I saw as a doubting public.

  I was literally packing to leave for England to shoot our video when I received a devastating call from my manager, Mark Puma. Elektra Records had dropped Desperado and shelved our album.

  The news hit me as if I’d been told a family member died. I collapsed in a chair and listened to an explanation of how my record—which already had a catalog number and was in the Elektra database and slated for release in just weeks—had come to an end. Brian Koppelman—the fan who had signed us—had left the label for a better offer at a new record company called Giant Records. Insulted by Brian’s move, Elektra got even with him by “shelving” all the projects he was working on. As if we were inanimate objects, Elektra Records shut down our careers. I couldn’t believe it.

  When I asked on what legal grounds they could do this, it turned out that one little phrase—actually one word in our contract did us in. “Commercially viable recording” instead of “technically viable recording” made all the difference in the world. Technically viable means you put the record in/on the player and it plays. Commercially viable means the album you deliver has to be salable, which is completely subjective. What is salable is so variable, the phrase leaves it up to the personal opinion of the individual. That phraseology is deliberately put in contracts as an out for the record label. A good lawyer will catch it, dispute its place in the contract, and have it changed. Unfortunately, I did not have the best lawyer, or manager, for that matter.

  I had heard a story about Elektra president Bob Krasnow—not a fan of heavy metal—trying to do the same thing to Mötley Crüe on their second album, Shout at the Devil. Mötley’s managers, McGhee/Thaler, stormed into Krasnow’s office and threatened to do everything in the book to Elektra Records if they didn’t release the record. Krasnow—disgusted not only to have to talk to these people, but to even have a band such as Mötley Crüe on his eclectic label—caved to their demands, promising to do nothin
g for the record and saying he would let it “die on the vine.” This story was told to an associate of mine as they watched Bob Krasnow—wearing a Mötley Crüe headband—standing on his chair singing “Shout at the Devil” with the Crüe at Madison Square Garden after the album had sold over 2 million copies. So much for commitment to your beliefs.

  That’s how great managers handle the situation. My manager couldn’t even get Bob Krasnow to return his calls.

  When I finally spoke to Krasnow (whom I had never met—another mistake of my management’s), and asked him how he could do this, the asshole replied, “Dee, it’s nothing personal; it’s just business.”

  Not personal!? It couldn’t be any more personal.

  “I’m sure your group is very good,” he continued.

  What?! He hadn’t even listened to our record?!

  “Hey,” I recall him saying, “if it was up to me, I would get rid of all the heavy metal bands we already have on our label.”

  The audacity of this piece of shit! Those “heavy metal bands” he was talking about getting rid of included Metallica, Mötley Crüe, and the Cult. This was 1990; Metallica’s Black Album, Crüe’s Dr. Feelgood, and the Cult’s Sonic Temple were selling millions upon millions of copies! Include the heavily metal-influenced Elektra band Queen, and those heavy metal bands were paying this arrogant fuck’s salary and keeping the label afloat!

  For the next year, my lawyer tried to get my band and me out of the recording contract, the rights to our songs returned, and the right to license the record to another label for a fair price. Elektra Records would not let me out of the deal or allow me to rerecord the songs, and the only thing they would accept in payment for the use of the actual masters was full reimbursement of the money they’d laid out for the deal—$500,000, or $50,000 per song.

  This created problems for me on so many levels. The half a million dollars Elektra spent was an exorbitant amount, pushed up by the interest of other labels, a signing bonus, and money spent developing the project. The actual album-recording cost wasn’t anywhere near that. Also, with Elektra shelving the record after spending so much money, even if other labels liked what they heard—especially if they liked what they heard—they wondered what was wrong with Dee Snider and Desperado that we had been dropped. The actual explanation just didn’t make sense: Elektra ate half a million dollars to get even with an A&R guy who quit?