Shut Up and Give Me the Mic (71 page)

OVER THE NEXT ALMOST
two decades, I would do, and succeed at, a lot of different things. My long climb back to the top was filled with a lot of struggle, strife, love, and plenty more “Dee Life Lessons.” But you’ll have to wait for
Shut Up and Give Me the Mic Part 2
to read about that. (Sorry.) In a nutshell, I started out studio-managing a stable of writers for Ric Wake’s publishing company (it was hard for them to act egotistical with someone who had sold more records than they had), then moved on to worked in creative development for a toy company (thank you, Don Spector and Balzac). From there, my careers in both voice-over and radio blossomed. Besides all the commercials and documentaries I’ve voiced, in 2000 I was the voice of MSNBC (“
Hardball with Chris Matthews
. Tonight at eight on MSNBC!”). My radio career took me from a late-night metal show
on Long Island (Thanks, WRCN!) to successfully doing morning talk radio in Hartford, Connecticut (WMRQ), and Richmond, Virginia (WRXL), to evenings in Philadelphia (WMMR). As of this writing, my weekly syndicated radio show
The House of Hair
is entering its fifteenth year and can be heard on more than two hundred stations in North America.

The advent of
The House of Hair
in 1996—a show dedicated to
my
era of heavy metal—reflected a change in the musical climate. While hair metal certainly wasn’t returning, people were looking back at it fondly. The minimalist stage-production values and “life sucks and I wanna die” messages of the grunge era made some rock fans yearn for the Decade of Decadence and the middle-finger attitude of eighties rockers. Suddenly my music was no longer an embarrassment, and I had the publishing statements
²
to prove it. I eventually paid back all the money I had been advanced over the years, and I’ve never gone back in the red again. Fool me thirty-seven times, shame on me!

The nostalgic interest in eighties rock led to the reunion of Twisted Sister. Originally instigated for
Eddie Trunk’s New York Steel,
a concert event staged to help the families of the police, fire-fighters, and EMTs who lost their lives on 9/11, we have been doing sold-out shows, for massive crowds, the world over, for more than a decade.

My writing career has done pretty well, too, as I’ve sold a couple of television-show ideas and a few screenplays. The one film I wrote that’s been produced,
StrangeLand
, I also starred in. It led me to acting and television work.

I’ve done quite a bit of television (hosting, reality, and as an actor) and some other films as well, since my bottoming out in the early nineties, including
Growing Up Twisted
,
Gone Country
,
Howard Stern’s Private Parts
, and
VH1’s Warning Parental Advisory
. And somehow I’ve become one of the voices of my generation. As Alice Cooper said, I guess they just got used to me.

IN 2010, I WAS
asked to star in the hit Broadway show
Rock of Ages,
one of the 100 longest-running shows on Broadway, centering around the club scene of the Los Angeles Sunset Strip in the 1980s. Featuring the greatest music of that time—
including two of my songs!
—it shines a light on a musical era that rock ’n’ roll critics and historians look down their noses at, but audiences loved . . . and still do.

But it didn’t stop there.

As of this writing, I’m part of the 2012
Celebrity Apprentice
cast (and did well) and have recorded a star-studded album called
Dee Does Broadway
. My career is headed in a whole new direction and I’m becoming a bigger star then I ever was in the ’80s. Hell, I’ve even had my memoirs published!

IT WAS STANDING ON
the stage of the Brooks Atkinson Theatre opening night, taking my curtain call, that the full realization of how far I’d come washed over me. Suzette and my now-grown children—including my granddaughter, Logan Lane—were in the house, and the crowd was on its feet, cheering, while behind me the cast sang the refrain of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” over and over. The lyrics hit me like a ton of bricks:

“Don’t stop believin’. Hold on to that feelin’!”

In the years since that terrible night putting flyers on cars, I had fought, clawed, and struggled my way back to the top. Now I was taking my bow on Broadway? How the mighty had fallen . . .
and risen again!

Through it all, my wife and children had stood by me, but there was one word—one poem—that had also inspired me to never give up. Written by William Ernest Henley—a man who suffered from lifelong tubercular disease—it’s entitled “Invictus”:

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

Don’t ever stop believin’. . . .
Invictus!

Young and so innocent. Who could imagine what was to come?

Gettin’ an attitude by 1972. Maroon and tan clothes? Apparently, I was an “autumn.”

Performing with my high school band Dusk in 1973. Sparkle velvet pants with a pink-and-white top. My flamboyant side was starting to show!

With my sister Sue and my youngest brother Doug at my high school graduation in ’73. Check out the ’stache!

Kickin’ ass with Harlequin in the parking lot of a McDonald’s. Hell yeah!

Very early shot from 1976 B.S. (Before Suzette) with only a touch of makeup.

The night I met Suzette wearing the now legendary T-shirt. Wasn’t I the catch?