Shut Up and Give Me the Mic (2 page)
Read Shut Up and Give Me the Mic Online
Authors: Dee Snider
Tags: #Dee Snider, #Musicians, #Music, #Twisted Sisters, #Heavy Metal, #Biography & Autobiography, #Retail
Chapter 14: I’m Just a Sweet Transvestite
Chapter 15: You’re Gonna Burn in Hell
Chapter 16: O Come, All Ye Faithful
Chapter 17: I’m Snider Than you Are
Chapter 18: Bang the Drum Slowly
Chapter 21: Drums, Drums, Drums, Drums!
Chapter 22: Lemmy Kilmister: Fairy Godmother
Chapter 24: I Can’t Believe they Threw a Shite
Chapter 25: Man-O-Wimp and the New Flower Children
Chapter 26: It’s Only Rock ’N’ Roll . . . But They Like It
Chapter 28: Welcome to the Real World
Chapter 29: Welcome to the Promised Land
Chapter 30: That’s a Horse of a Different Color
Chapter 31: The Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla
Chapter 33: Twenty Pounds of Shite in a Five-Pound Sack
Chapter 35: What the Hell Did He Just Say?
Chapter 36: Why Does the Rain Smell Like Pee?
Chapter 37: Have Some Cheese, Ratt!
Chapter 38: How the Hell Did I Get Both Platform Shoes in My Mouth?
Chapter 39: “These Times They are A-Changin’”
Chapter 40: A Rock Star Is Born
Chapter 41: “Click Click Boom!”
Chapter 42: “Mr. Dee Snider . . . the Twisted Sister”
Chapter 43: What Do You Mean “Nobody Showed Up?”
Chapter 44: And Then the Other Shoe Dropped
Chapter 45: “We All Fall Down”
Chapter 46: How Do You Say “Holy Shit!” in Russian?
Chapter 47: “Putting the ’Desperate‘ in Desperado”
Chapter 48: “Whadaya Mean you Didn’t Listen to the Record?”
Chapter 49: Pissin’ Against the Wind
Forewarned
S
ex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll.
People never seem to get tired of hearing about it. I guess that’s the great promise (or failure) of rock ’n’ roll. Not for me, but for most people. If that’s the only thing you’re interested in, this ain’t the book for you.
Anger, violence, love, and rock ’n’ roll is more like it.
If the only things that float your boat are journals from drug-addled, ex-junkie, sex-addicted rockers, forget it. Those books are bullshit anyway. Have you ever known a junkie? They can’t remember what they did thirty minutes ago, let alone thirty years ago. They kept a journal? And you believe them? Real heroin addicts can’t hold their own dicks; forget about a pen or pencil. And who isn’t addicted to sex? What a scam.
I’m the guy that gave it all to beat the odds, left everything he had on the stage each night, didn’t screw around on his woman, took care of his kids, and was sober enough to remember it all and write about it . . .
himself.
The only things clouding my memory are the years and a storyteller’s natural tendency to embellish for the better enjoyment of the reader. But no lies.
This is a true story of childish dreams, great struggle, Job-like perseverance, ascension to dazzling heights, megalomaniacal obsession, and a mind-numbing, brutal fall from grace. It’s also about an undying love and dedication between a man and a woman that—
though sorely tried—withstood it all. It’s
Rocky I, II, III, IV
, and the first half of
V
all rolled into one.
From the vantage point of reinvention and reclamation of my former status, it’s almost hard to believe I was ever that far down.
Almost.
The physical and emotional scars of my life-wreck remind me just how truly catastrophic my epic failure was . . . and how I never want to do that again. Hell, if a video of my fall were available on YouTube, it would have like a billion hits. My story should inspire and be a cautionary tale at the same time. I hope.
Though I am best known for being the front man for the seminal eighties hair band Twisted Sister, since my return to grace I have done movies, television, radio, and Broadway, been the national spokesperson for a major charitable organization, and even had a town named after me. No mean feat for a
two
-hit wonder (sorry to disagree with you, VH1) who had been written off as dead and buried by 1987. I know some people out there are
still
scratching their heads at my even being around. And writing a book? Ha! Trust me, I’m self-aware. I’m not sitting here all puffed up on my “amazing” achievements. I don’t put much importance in what I’ve done, but hopefully something is to be learned from
how
I did it or didn’t do it. And I do know there are
three sides
to every story. That’s right, three. Yours, theirs . . . and the truth.
This story is mine.
The one thing that has surprised and confused me though is my unlikely transformation into a “beloved public figure.” How did the unpopular kid who grew up to be the angry young man, who became the eighties poster boy for the evils of rock ’n’ roll, arrested for profanity and assault, and boycotted by parents and religious groups, become the likable mensch he is today? Alice Cooper—a man who has experienced this same strange phenomenon—says that people just got used to us. “If you stay around long enough, you become a part of Americana,” he once told me. “People just expect us to be there.” Kind of like Norm from
Cheers
, I guess. (Everyone in the bar yells, “Dee!”) Any way you explain it, after years of rejection, final acceptance, then wholesale abandonment, it did take a bit of getting used to. But I have.
PrologueI
t’s raining. Great. Way to make a bad situation even worse. It’s 1993 and as I sit inside my beat-up, over-135,000-mile 1984 Toyota minivan (anything but “rock star”), I read the flyers one last time:
HAIR & MAKEUP FOR WEDDINGS. CALL SUZETTE
, then our phone number. Simple, to the point, and a way for Suzette to make a hundred bucks for a couple of hours’ work on a weekend. Nothing like pimping out your wife’s talents.
Loser.
I pull the hood of my sweatshirt tightly over my head, not just to protect me better from the rain, but to keep people from recognizing me. Almost ten years after my heyday, and even with a hat and glasses on, people are still coming up to me every day and saying “Hey, aren’t you . . . ?”
Damn this face!
I remember working with Billy Joel and him saying, “Being rich and famous is tough; being poor and famous must
really
suck.” He was right.
Think Billy’s putting flyers on cars tonight?
But that was a decade ago, and I was sitting on top of the world with my band Twisted Sister. We were chart toppers, worldwide media darlings, with a multiplatinum-selling album and international tours. I was the poster boy for heavy metal. I had nice cars, boats, and an expensive house in an upscale neighborhood. We had a housekeeper and a nanny, landscapers, maintenance men, and
accountants who paid my bills. I had charge accounts in every store, bodyguards, and first-class everything.
Now it was the ’90s, and I had lost it all. Everything. Except for the truly most important things in life—my wife and kids . . . and I had to provide for them.
Enough stalling, it’s time to get it over with. Spring weddings mean late-winter wedding expos at local catering halls. I step out of the minivan into the night and the bone-chilling rain. Slipping into the secured parking area, I begin to put flyers on windshields. I move fast, not because it’s cold or to finish the job quickly . . . I just don’t want anybody to see me.
Along the way I run into another guy putting flyers on cars . . .
and he offers me a job!
He’s impressed how fast I work. If only he knew.
Suddenly, I’m spotted by a security guard and I run. Not because of what he will do—throw me off the property?—but because I’m afraid he’ll recognize me and say, “Hey, you’re Dee Snider. What happened to you?”
As I run, I think for the millionth time,
How the hell did I come to this?
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