Shut Up and Give Me the Mic

Forewarned

Sex, 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.

Prologue

i just kept hoping i’d wake up

It’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?

1

i’m gonna be a beatle

Did you see ’em last night?! Did you see ’em?!"

Russell Neiderman, the kid I despised most in our neighborhood, was brimming with uncharacteristic, nonconfrontational excitement. It was 8:00 a.m. Monday morning, and all the kids waiting at the bus stop in Freeport, Long Island, were abuzz.

Did I see who? I responded, confused by the neighborhood bully’s unusual enthusiasm.

The Beatles!

On February 9, 1964, four guys from Liverpool, England, lit up the country with their groundbreaking appearance on the original Must See TV, The Ed Sullivan Show. More than 70 million people tuned in to see the show that Sunday night, but I was apparently the only person who didn’t see it. Why? Because my father had banned television in our house. Earlier that year, my father proclaimed (conveniently after our television had broken) that we had all become obsessed with TV and were going to get back to basics: reading, playing board games, building models, etc.

On the upside, I was introduced to comic books and learned to build balsa planes from scratch. On the downside . . . while rock ’n’ roll history was being made, I was building a fucking puzzle!

At the bus stop, I was more than a little confused by the fuss. The Whatles? I asked.

"The Beatles, Neiderman emphatically corrected me. They’re a rock ’n’ roll group. Everyone was screaming!"

That was all I needed to hear.

BORN ON MARCH 15, 1955, in Astoria, Queens, New York (Not Austria! Astoria), I was the oldest of six children and the firstborn grandchild on my mother’s side of the family. From the day of my birth, and for a little more than a year afterward, I was the golden child. The center of attention and adoration, I could not have been more doted upon by my mother, father, grandparents, aunts and uncles . . . until the deluge began. My mother (and her siblings) started dropping babies as if it were a contest. My mom delivered six babies in eight years. I was not only quickly shoved aside for my more adorable and needy brothers and sister, but more and more expected to fend for myself.

At times, growing up in the Snider household was like living in a madhouse—especially when my father wasn’t around. I clearly remember one rainy day, looking at my mother holding a crying baby in each arm (Mark and Doug), my devilish, five-year-old brother, Frank, chasing my screaming, four-year-old brother, Matt, around her in circles, and my seven-year-old sister, Sue, complaining loudly about something. My mom looked as if she were about to lose her mind. That woman has earned every twitch and neurosis she has!

I went from being the center of attention to being the oldest before I was even aware of what had happened, but I still had a desperate need to be the epicenter. So when, at the ripe old age of almost nine, I heard the words Everyone was screaming spill from Russell Neiderman’s ofttimes foul mouth, I knew what I had to do. I announced to everyone at the bus stop, who I’m sure didn’t even listen, I’m going to be a Beatle. My die had been cast and I didn’t even have the slightest idea what a Beatle actually was!

I quickly found out the Beatles were a really cool-looking rock band who sang incredible songs. I couldn’t be an actual Beatle, but I could be in my own rock band and hopefully cause that same hysteria. I didn’t care about any of the trappings of rock stardom other than the chance for me to once again be the golden child, the center of the universe. I was that desperate for attention. As it turned out, rock ’n’ roll stardom would be the only way I would get it.

My road to becoming a rich, famous rock ’n’ roll star was long and arduous. The childish ideas I had on what it took, compounded by my natural procrastinating tendencies, didn’t have me actually sinking my teeth into the real process of becoming a star until I was fifteen or sixteen. My elementary-school wannabe rock star buddies and I figured we would literally be discovered by some music impresario, à la Sonny Fox,¹ then whisked away to record an album and be on TV. We didn’t play instruments, rehearse, have original songs, or anything! We were friggin’ idiots.

Along the way I did take some baby steps. I formed a number of bands in third and fourth grade, built solely around a kid I went to school with named Scott, who not only played guitar, but had an electric one and an amp. Our band was initially called Snider’s Spiders, playing off the Beatles’ bug thing and that my last name rhymes with spider. Great, right? It also foreshadowed the spotlight hog I was to become.

The name lasted all of a day or so, before the other guys in the band got hip and started wondering why their names weren’t being used.

Because your name didn’t rhyme with anything cool, Conway!

The extent of our band experience was hanging out in Scott’s room, singing Beatles songs, and acting cool while he played guitar. Hey, we were nine.

Occasionally, a bunch of us would get together and put on lip-synch shows for the neighborhood kids. We’d don our Sunday church clothes (contrary to popular belief, I’m not Jewish), put on readily available Beatles wigs (they were all the rage), use tennis rackets for guitars and overturned garbage cans for drums, stand atop a picnic table, and mouth Beatles songs played on a portable record player.

We were good, too. We’d charge two cents per kid (it was the sixties) to watch us do our thing. I remember one show we made twenty-eight cents! That means fourteen neighborhood kids paid to see us. Not too shabby. I guess even then I could rock!

IN 1965, FACED WITH the choice of putting an extension on our house to better fit our growing family or moving, my family opted for the latter, primarily because my parents hated the Neiderman family as much as I hated Russell. For the record, we weren’t the only ones. When the Neidermans finally moved out of the neighborhood years later, the entire block threw a going-away party . . . and didn’t invite the Neidermans. Oh, snap!

The Snider family made the big move to the next town over, Baldwin, Long Island. A definite step up for us, but still very much middle/lower-middle-class suburbia . . . and we didn’t really do much to class the place up. Besides that eight of us were bursting out of a four-bedroom house, my father had a unique view on suburban living.

An insurance salesman/state trooper, Dad once pulled over a guy illegally towing a car on the parkway and did him the favor of not giving him a ticket. Instead, he took the junker off the guy’s hands, promptly towed it to our house (illegally), and put it in the backyard for the kids to play on. The neighbors must have loved us (Look, honey, we can see the Sniders’ junk car from our screen room).

In my old elementary school, Bayview Avenue, I was a fairly cool, fairly popular, and fairly smart kid. Fairly. Unbeknownst to me, the Freeport school district was easy, and I effortlessly achieved good grades. When I was in fourth grade, my parents received a letter from the school stating, grade-wise, I was in the top 10 percent. My mom and dad were so proud, they took me to IHOP (a Snider-family favorite, then and now) for dinner without my brothers and sister (center of attention! center of attention!), then bought me the thing I wanted more than anything else in the world . . . a pair of Beatle boots. The shoes the Beatles wore had pointed toes with a Cuban heel (a style of shoe I still wear to this day). They were a bit pricey and tough, but I had earned them with my effortlessly achieved good grades.

My having those boots totally elevated my cool status. When I combined them with a black turtleneck shirt, relatively tight pants, and my faux-silver ID bracelet, I was really stylin’. What a tool.

Our move up to Baldwin was a rude awakening for me, yet another baby step toward the dysfunctional rocker I was to become. You see, being cool and popular as a kid works directly against the drive and motivation you need to become a rock star. You can’t be out partying, dating, and having a great time after school and on weekends. You need to be locked in your room, miserable and working on your craft.

The very first day of fifth grade in my new school, I fixed that.

I was dressed to impress. My mom always got us some new clothes for the start of the school year, and I was wearing the best I had. Resplendent in dark green pants, green button-down shirt (what was I, a leprechaun?) with a black turtleneck dickey underneath, and my Beatle boots, I was ready to take Shubert Elementary School by storm.

DEE LIFE LESSON

Never walk into a completely new environment as if you own the place. Take the time to get to know the lay of the land before you throw your weight around.

I walked into Mrs. Saltzman’s class with all the cool and attitude a new kid could muster. I knew I was really making points with my classmates, especially when I got in the face of this big, dumb guy who thought he was tough. Things quickly escalated, and the stage was set for a classic, after-school showdown: 3:00 p.m. at the flagpole!

For the rest of the day, I was the talk of the school. I was the cool (crazy?) new kid who had the guts to call out Hammy.

Unbeknownst to me, Robert Hammy Hemburger (what a horrible name) was the toughest kid in the school. Besides having kicked the asses of all comers over the years, his claim to fame was that when he was only eight years old, he picked up a cast-iron manhole cover to gain sewer access to retrieve a lost ball. This is the kid physical equivalent of a grown man lifting a car! Unfortunately for Hammy, he crushed the tips of all his fingers while putting the manhole cover back in place. His fingers eventually healed, but they—and his fingernails—seemed to have a pronounced smooshed look to them.

The school day finally ended, and I strode out to the flagpole in my Irish pride outfit (no, I’m not Irish) to set this moron straight and cement my reputation in my new school. I cemented a reputation all right. Hammy literally picked me up and threw me against a brick wall. I’m sure some other things happened between my striding and being thrown, but for the life of me I can’t remember. I probably had a minor concussion.

The entire school was there to witness it (as is the case anytime the toughest guy in the school fights someone, especially an unknown new kid), and the only thing I earned that day was my reputation as the moron who called out Hammy.

Shortly after that, Hammy decided my last name, Snider, rhymed with snot(?!), and that became his nickname for me: Snots. Nobody else called me that, but since I wasn’t prepared to get back in the ring with Hammy, Snots I remained. Having him call me Snots for all of fifth and sixth grade, and occasionally when he ran into me over the years until he dropped out of school, didn’t do wonders for my coolness factor or popularity.

But ponder this: If I had beat Hammy that day, I would have become popular. If I had been popular, my road to becoming a rock ’n’ roll star would have been cut short.

DEE LIFE LESSON

Popularity = attention.

Attention = socializing.

Socializing = the end of motivation.

It’s a fact: popularity kills creativity and drive. Why sit in your room working on your craft if you can be out getting laid? Show me truly great-looking entertainers and I guarantee that for some reason they weren’t popular and partying and were, instead, holed up in their bedrooms and practicing their craft.

My favorite example of this is the time I met an eighties Canadian pop/rock sensation on The Howard Stern Show. I used to spend a lot of time in the mid to late eighties hanging out on Howard’s show, and this guy came in one morning to promote his new record. He had striking, James Dean good looks, so, during an extended commercial break, I asked him what had happened in his youth that kept him from using his handsomeness to hang out, party, and get laid. His face dropped and he looked at me as if I had psychic powers.

How did you know? the heartthrob asked, truly unnerved by my query. I quickly explained my theory to him, and he spilled his guts.

When he was just six years old, dead in the middle of a brutal winter, he was invited to the birthday party of a girl in his class; all of his classmates were invited.

He was excited about going, especially because his mom had bought the girl a cool gift: a live, baby painted turtle, completely set up in a bowl with gravel, a rock, and a fake plastic palm tree. Though illegal to sell in many places now, back in the sixties this was pretty much the ultimate gift you could get a kid. His mom wrapped the bowl—turtle safely ensconced inside—and dropped him off at the party. When he entered the house, the little girl’s mom took the gift and put it with the others, on top of the radiator.

The party was going great, and when it finally came time for the birthday girl to open her gifts, all of her classmates gathered around to ooh and aah. His classmate finally got to his unopened gift, and he pushed through the crowd to the front, proudly exclaiming, That one’s from me! That one’s from me!

The excitement in the room was palpable as the little girl excitedly tore off the wrapping paper, revealing the turtle bowl . . . with a dead baby turtle hanging out of its shell inside. The blazing-hot radiator had cooked the poor thing alive.

Well, the birthday girl screamed, children cried, and from that moment on, he was known to all as Turtle Boy. He grew up an outcast and the brunt of jokes, and no matter how handsome he got, no matter how talented he was or what he did, he was always just a loser to the kids in his town. So, he sat in his room alone and . . . you know the rest. Lack of popularity = creative development and ambition.

Meanwhile, back at my personal humiliating, life-defining moment, my popularity was crushed like Hammy’s fingers, and I sank further into my dreamworld of becoming a rich, famous rock ’n’ roll star.

Funny how things work out.

2

this boy can sing!

With the options of being the tough kid, the cool kid, or the popular kid removed from my class-hierarchy choices, I opted for another position . . . class clown. Mildly disruptive and at times entertaining, this job gave me some needed attention (albeit often negative), and the girls kind of liked it. Plus, it beat the hell out of being a nothing.

To add insult to my new school injury, the Baldwin school district was at that time one of the top-rated school districts in the country. My effortless A’s in Freeport turned into effortless C’s in Baldwin. My parents were less than pleased. One of the few ways I could get special attention from them had dried up. I had to struggle to get decent grades pretty much the rest of my time in school. It wasn’t that I wasn’t smart, I just didn’t want to apply myself (as just about every one of my report cards stated).

Early in my sixth-grade year, auditions were held for a solo in the glee club. I had always sung in music class, but so did everyone else. This was the first time I had to audition for something. Like all the others, I went down to sing for the glee club conductor, Mrs. Sarullo, who was also my teacher. A dark, mothering Italian woman, Mrs. Sarullo was easy to like and knew how to handle her class. She was a lot of fun, but nobody’s fool. She nicknamed me Hood because of my pointy shoes and obvious desire to look like a dirtbag. It was a hell of a lot better than Snots.

I walked into the cafe-gym-itorium for my audition, Beatle boots clacking loudly on the floor. Mrs. Sarullo sat at the piano, awaiting her next victim. I don’t remember if I was nervous or not (I probably was. Who isn’t?), and I don’t remember what song I sang. All I remember is Mrs. Sarullo stopped the song halfway through and exclaimed, This boy can sing like a bird! I can? Hood, you’ve got a beautiful voice!

And just like that, my life was changed.

I not only got the glee club solo, but Mrs. Sarullo smiled her big, toothy smile down upon me, and I was the center of attention . . . in choir. Which is where I remained for all my school years. It was the one place where people thought I was special. Add to that, I now knew I brought something to any rock band: I was a singer!

CLICK. (Sound of a tumbler in a combination lock falling in place.)

Each year the school had a Spring Concert, and of course the sixth-grade glee club’s was the featured performance. The plan was for the choir to sing first, then I would enter for my solo on cue. The glee club headed down to the stage and I had a bit of time to kill. I made my way to the side of the stage for my entrance. When I heard my cue, I walked out onto the stage to unusually wild applause and cheering. I was blown away! I hadn’t even sung yet.

It turned out I was late, and the choir had for several minutes been repeating my musical cue over and over, waiting for me. Be that as it may, the audience reaction when I walked out on the stage changed me forever. This was what I wanted. This is what I needed. I had to experience that rush of audience reaction again and I wouldn’t stop until I did.

WHEN I MOVED TO seventh grade the following year, Mrs. Sarullo—for reasons unbeknownst to me—moved up to the junior high school as well. Unfortunately, due to scheduling conflicts, and a lack of room in the class, I was unable to get into Concert Choir, a daily class for singers. Bummer.

A few days into the school year, I ran into Mrs. Sarullo in the hall and she asked me how choir was going. While she handled both general education and glee club as a teacher in elementary school, as a junior-high-school teacher she was solely relegated to teaching social studies. I told my choral fairy godmother I wasn’t in the choir, and she became enraged. We’ll see about that! she said as she stormed off down the hall.

The next day I got a note from the office saying my schedule had been changed and I was now in Concert Choir. As I said before, there I remained until the end of my school days. There I was special. There I was somebody. I don’t have fond memories of school—no glory days for me—but I loved singing in choir. It was my only solace. Thank you for that, Dolores Sarullo, wherever you are. Thank you for recognizing and championing my talent. Thank you for making me feel special when I needed to feel special. I couldn’t have done it without you. You were a great teacher.

AS I REFLECT ON these pivotal moments in my life, the realization sets in that relatively few life experiences make us who we are, define us as individuals, and set the course by which our lives will be guided. It’s terrifying. Not that I wasn’t aware of this before, but setting it down in words makes me painfully aware of the arbitrariness of it all and how the slightest change in any of these events could have had me careening down some other path, in a completely different direction. Then again, I can’t help but feel when you want something badly and life events occur that continually push you toward your goal . . . exactly how arbitrary were they? Was it fate? Is a higher power guiding us? Are we subconsciously causing our own experiences, thus guiding ourselves? Take the CPO debacle, for example.

When I was in sixth grade, a fashion trend swept my school: CPOs. Standing for chief petty officer, they were shirtlike light jackets that absolutely everybody was wearing. They came in navy blue or maroon and I desperately wanted to get one. I had to fit in.

Now, fashionable and clothes were mutually exclusive words in the Snider household. With eight mouths to feed, clothe, and take care of, my dad was working two, sometimes three jobs to make ends meet. Thanks for that, Dad. We always had three meals a day, though we didn’t have meat on the table every night (and when we did, organ meats such as liver, kidney, and tongue were not uncommon; yikes!) . . . and we didn’t have fashionable clothes. It was not unusual for my family to shop at the Salvation Army. There’s no shame in that, but for a young boy desperately trying to fit in, it wasn’t really cutting it.

Christmas was coming, and traditionally my siblings and I could expect one frivolous gift—something that we really wanted—and a bunch of other practical things we needed, such as socks and such. Party. I decided I would campaign for my one gift to be a CPO.

Because I was the oldest of six, my parents worked extrahard to keep me in the dark regarding the truth about Santa, for fear that once I knew, I would either deliberately or unintentionally spill the beans to my younger brothers and sister and ruin Christmas for everyone. The smarter and more suspicious I became, the more intense my parents’ machinations got to keep me a believer. When I noticed the wrapping paper on all the gifts was the same, they asked in disbelief, You didn’t actually think Santa wrapped every gift in the world himself, did you? What an idiot! Of course parents needed to help. When I stumbled on all the gifts under my parents’ bed, weeks before Christmas, I was mocked, You really thought St. Nick delivered all the gifts in the world in one night? I guess I’m a moron! Obviously he would have to spread his deliveries out. On and on it went, my parents capitalizing on a child’s insecurities inherent to not believing. Of course, if all else failed, they had their fail-safe: Well, children who don’t believe don’t get presents. I believe! I believe! That is, until one Sunday at church when I was twelve . . . and the news was broken to me in an awkward way.

My mother taught the sixth-grade Sunday-school class at my church. A devout Christian woman, born and raised Roman Catholic by her Swiss parents, she went to church every Sunday of her life . . . until the day she married my formerly Jewish dad. I say formerly because my baseball-playing cop father, upon being bar mitzvahed at fourteen . . . quit. Hey, they did say Today you are a man. A man can quit his faith if he wants to, right?

Proclaiming that Judaism is a belief, not a nationality (He would say, Show me ‘Jewland’ on a map!), my father became an agnostic and set his sights on gentile girls. Well, I’m not sure he actually set his sights, but he met my goy mother in high school, fell head over heels in love, and eventually proposed.

Since the Catholic Church doesn’t accept love as an excuse for blasphemy, the priests refused to marry my parents and told my mother she was no longer welcome in the Church and was going to burn in hell. (Good title for a song, don’tcha think?) So my parents had a civil ceremony and were married at town hall by a judge. For the record, they’ve been married ever since.

One Sunday, a short time after I was born, my mother missed the bus to her Catholic church (where she was still going despite their pronouncement) and literally wandered into an Episcopal church. They welcomed her with open arms, and I (and all my brothers and sister) was baptized, confirmed, and raised (and sang in the church choir) in the Episcopal Church. Thank ya, Jesus!

Now, one Sunday, in class, my mother was imparting some Christian teaching or another unto us when the subject of Santa Claus came up. Staring directly at me from the front of the room, she said, Of course you all know there is no Santa Claus. I did now!

When Christmas finally arrived, I was beyond excited. I knew that as long as you only asked for one thing (a CPO), and it wasn’t too expensive (it wasn’t), you would get your wish. Sure it was a little cold out for a light jacket, but I didn’t care. I was going to wear my CPO until the sleeves rotted off!

As was tradition, we got to open our filler gifts first, building up to our big one. Socks, chocolate, a shirt or two; whatever—it was all good. Come on, CPO!

Finally, they handed me the box. I knew by the shape, weight, and size, it was CPO go time. I tore off the wrapping paper and ripped open the box to find . . . a military-style coat. What!? No CPO?! I burst into tears (hey, I was twelve) as my mother desperately tried to explain how they looked everywhere, but the stores were all sold out. I wouldn’t even look at the coat they got me. I cried, screamed I hated the coat, and told my mom that my Christmas was ruined. To this day I can remember the hurt look on her face. She genuinely felt terrible. Sorry about that, Mom.

True to my word, I wouldn’t even look at the stupid coat she got me. When spring finally rolled around (and I’d calmed down), I needed a lighter jacket and for some reason pulled out my Christmas present and put it on. It was nothing like a CPO . . . but it was kind of cool. Military collar, gold buttons down the front . . . but, no, I hated it. Until I went to school . . .

Everyone flipped! They all wanted to know what kind of jacket it was and where I got it . . . and I was the only person who had one! (Center of attention! Center of attention!)

I loved the response I was getting from being different from everyone else. I loved the notice it brought me and the admiration, too. From that day on I did everything I could to look different and be different. Like a junkie, I had to have that reaction as much as possible and whenever I could. It didn’t even have to be positive, I just had to be noticed. I had to be an individual.

To this day I tell my mother it’s all her fault. If she’d only got me the jacket that everyone else had, the one I asked for, things would be completely different. I wouldn’t be so dead set on being different.

Course set for rock stardom? Aye, aye, Captain!

3

no, no, a hundred times no

Over the next few years, I continued to play in bands, which consisted of me and a couple of guys talking a lot about what our band was going to do (and drawing the various band names on our notebooks) and practicing little. In elementary school my band-mates were Rich Squillacioti (a constant until around my senior year in high school) on drums and David Lepiscopo on guitar. We never had a bass player (nobody wanted to do that), and at first I don’t think we even had a microphone for me to sing in. But we were still a band and talked a great game. I remember one day we piled all of our equipment into a shopping cart and pushed it around the neighborhood to show off. We were going to be huge!

One constant in my life was the full-length mirror in my bedroom. Every day, the moment I got home from school, I would go to my room (actually my and one or two of my brothers’ room), lock the door, put on music, and lip-synch intensely in front of that mirror for the imaginary audience on the other side. I would rock out until I was either dripping with sweat or my parents screamed for me to turn down the damn music/let your brothers in their room. Now, I’m known for being a great stage performer—it’s probably the thing I do best. People always ask me how I got so good, and I answer, By jumping around in front of my bedroom mirror. Oh, sure, all my years of live performing helped, but performing in the mirror gave me the confidence to get out there in the first place, knowing how what I was doing looked to the audience. I still can’t resist making faces or throwing shapes in any available mirror. For years it was my only audience.

Musically, in late 1965, ’66, and ’67 everybody was into the Beatles, Stones, and the whole British Invasion/British Invasion Impersonation thing going on. But in the summer of 1965 and the fall of 1966, two new television shows, featuring definitively American bands, hit the airwaves. Where the Action Is and The Monkees introduced two pop/rock bands to the masses, Paul Revere and the Raiders and the Monkees, respectively.¹ These two bands not only had tremendous appeal to young people, but we got to watch their antics daily or weekly, further fueling my, and many other kids’, desire to be a rock star.

While the majority of kids in my school and house were Monkees fans, I was drawn to the subtle danger of singer Mark Lindsay from Paul Revere and the Raiders. I know, I know, danger and the Raiders may seem, to those of you aware of those happy rock bands, to be a bit of an oxymoron,² but unlike the Monkees, whose every song was pure pop pablum, Paul Revere and the Raiders songs were innuendo-filled. Hits such as Hungry and Kicks were barely veiled songs about sex, drugs, and alcohol. Mark Lindsay’s slight rasp along with the generally heavier tone of the band’s music are recognized precursors to what would become hard rock . . . and eventually heavy metal. I am an original headbanger and I credit Paul Revere and the Raiders for starting me down that path. Thank you, boys!

My father didn’t want to know about my passion for rock ’n’ roll. His dream as a kid was to be a professional baseball player (no, I’m not related to Duke Snider), a dream that he could never pursue or realize. He was convinced that his oldest son was a natural and wanted me to be the ballplayer he couldn’t be. Now, I liked playing baseball, but not as much as I wanted to rock. I think my dad saw my love of rock ’n’ roll as a potential threat to his plans for me.

To my mother’s credit, she was positive and encouraging about my silly obsession. Herself an artist and singer in various choirs, she saw the value of anything creative and paid for me out of her own hard-earned money (she taught seniors art classes) to take group guitar lessons the summer of seventh grade. We didn’t have a lot of money, and it went directly against the wishes of my perpetually angry dad (personified by Mark Metcalf in the Twisted Sister videos), so this was a big deal. Every morning for a few weeks my mother drove me to the lessons and I learned to play basic guitar. Thank you for that, Mom. Armed with my newfound ability to play some basic chords and an acoustic guitar, I felt I was finally on my way.

My siblings often talked of forming a family rock band like the Osmonds or the Cowsills. My sister, Sue, younger than me by a year, shared a passion for a lot of the same music³ and enjoyed listening to me sing songs or singing them with me, but to actually get any of my much younger brothers to learn an instrument was yet another rock ’n’ roll fantasy. We did however all sing in the church choir and one time performed Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming as a family for the congregation. To this day I dread when someone at a family gathering starts singing that song (usually in jest), my mother enthusiastically joins in, and we’re all forced to repeat our 1971 Sunday command performance. Once was definitely enough.

In 1968, a band called the Human Beinz released a cover of an Isley Brothers song called Nobody but Me. This two-chord, catchy little ditty, repeats the word no a hundred times during the song and nobody forty-six, making it mildly repetitive. It reached the Top 10 of the Billboard charts, and its hit status, and simple lyrical and chord structure, made it perfect fodder for two-fifths of The Snider Family singing group. I played guitar and sang lead, while the enthusiastic Sue played tambourine and shouted out the backing chants of Shing-a-ling! Skate! Boogaloo! Philly! It was the best song we had ever done and we practiced it all day long.

Just to be sure we weren’t kidding ourselves about how great it was, we performed it for all of our brothers and my mom, and they loved it. I couldn’t wait for my cynical, nonbeliever dad to get home. I was going to blow him away!

When my father finally arrived, Sue and I could not contain our excitement. We ran into the living room to greet him, armed with guitar, tambourine, and sheet music.

Daddy! Daddy! Wait’ll you hear! We learned a song! We’ve been practicing all day!

With all the genuine rock energy we could muster, Sue and I performed our song for him, no, no, noing and boogalooing our hearts out. When we finished, awaiting his highest praise for the great job we had done . . . he mocked us mercilessly.

You call that a song? It’s a joke! ‘No, no, no, no, no’? What kind of stupid song is that?!

We were devastated. To make matters worse, for weeks after, anytime one of my parents’ friends came over, my dad would tell the story of his idiot son (my younger sister was clearly duped into singing it with me) and his asinine No-No song. I was completely humiliated, but inside me was building a righteous anger. The old man had lit the pilot light to a flame that eventually evolved into the towering inferno of rage that would drive me all the way to the top.

Years later, my dad tried to take credit for my success, suggesting that his being so hard on me as a boy is what drove me on. It’s like that Johnny Cash song ‘A Boy Named Sue,’ he proclaimed. If I wasn’t so tough on you, you never would have made it.

To this stupidity I responded, How do you know I wouldn’t be happier as a well-adjusted accountant? Dick.

IN EIGHTH GRADE, THE kids in my church choir were approached to record one hundred children’s songs for a series of albums designed to provide elementary schools without a formal music program something for the children to sing along with. We were all super-excited. Not only were we going to get to record in a real recording studio, but we were going to be paid with a color television each.

Now, in 1968, color TV was still a relatively new thing. You couldn’t find a set cheaper than $350. So for giving up an afternoon a week to rehearse, and every Saturday for five months to record, we twelve- and thirteen-year-old kids would be rich! My sister and I (Sue also sang in the church choir)—still smarting from our television-less year—fantasized about lying in our own beds, watching our own color television! It was incredible.

When we finally finished the Herculean task (during which time a couple of us boys in the choir went through puberty and our voices awkwardly changed), we were informed that unbeknownst to anybody, including our parents and the church choir directors, some Japanese company had come out with a cheap, portable color television valued at $150. In the sixties Made in Japan was a sign of inferiority. Funny how things have changed, huh? For all of our hard months of work, we were offered a piece-of-crap TV or $150 in cash. My first involvement with the recording industry and I was already being taken advantage of . . . foreshadowing things to come. My sister and I both took the cash (still a chunk of change for a couple of kids), and I learned a serious life lesson.

Somewhere out there in the school closets of America, I’m sure some dusty Strawberry Wristwatch LPs still exist. That’s what our choir directors named us; it was the psychedelic era. Were they on psychedelics? That would explain our shitty deal. I wonder if anyone knows (or cares) that they are Dee Snider’s first recordings.

Oh yeah; I took my 150 bucks and with an additional $15 kicked in from my dad (thanks) bought my first, real electric guitar: a Gibson SG Special. Now I was starting to rock.

THE PINNACLE OF MY all talk, no action band experience came toward the tail end of junior high. I now had a band called Brighton Rock, consisting of myself on guitar and vocals, Rich Squillacioti on drums, Phil Knourzer on bass