Shut Up and Give Me the Mic (13 page)

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A
re you familiar with the butterfly effect? Not the movie, but the idea that it is based on. Basically, the butterfly effect, according to Google Answers, is “the observation that an event as seemingly insignificant as the flapping of a butterfly’s wings might create a minuscule disturbance that, in the chaotic motion of the atmosphere, may eventually become sufficiently amplified to change the large-scale atmospheric motion, possibly even leading to a huge storm in a distant place.”

On April 16, 1976, my life, my band, and ultimately millions of people all over the world were changed forever. I met my future wife, Suzette. Does that sound overly dramatic? Self-important? Pathetic? Pussy whipped?
¹
It’s not. Meeting Suzette changed my life dramatically. As a result, my band (on multiple visual levels) and the music I eventually wrote were greatly affected. Twisted Sister’s music and live performances have entertained, moved, and even inspired people, all over the world, for over three decades. That’s the butterfly effect defined.

Twisted was booked to open for a local popular group called the Bonnie Parker Band at Hammerheads in Wantagh, Long Island. Bonnie Parker was an amazing, cool female (hey, you never know, as ambiguity was part of the scene) singer/bass-player who kicked
ass and outrocked then-amazing, cool female singer/bass player Suzi Quatro. Suzi Quatro was a huge rock star in Europe, and soon became known in the States as Leather Tuscadero on the seventies hit television show
Happy Days.
But therein lay the problem. There already was a Suzy Quatro. The world didn’t need a “better one.” (It barely needed one.)

LESS THAN TWO MONTHS
into the new and improved Twisted Sister (now with drummer #3), we still had virtually no following and were anxious to perform for Bonnie’s audience. Wearing my infamous short-shorts and
I’M DEE, BLOW ME
T-shirt (well, it was infamous to me), I took the stage that night for our first set . . . unaware that my life would never be the same. As usual, virtually nobody was there to see us. Ours being the opening set of the night, Bonnie Parker’s crowd had yet to roll in. I was looking out at fourteen or fifteen people tops, scattered around the room. As we rocked the first song, I looked down at the front of the stage and was bowled over. Staring back at me, her eyes sparkling, her hair golden, her skin tan (remarkable for April), and her smile lighting up the room, was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She was bopping and clapping along with the music and smiling at
me
! And every guy knows what (we think) that means . . . she wants me. Some guy was looming protectively behind her, but that wasn’t stopping her from giving me the timeless international sign of interest.

I tried to be cool and not stare back too much, but I had to assess the situation. Working my way from top to bottom, I ran through my “guy checklist.” The face and hair had already passed muster. Boobs . . .
holy crap, they were huge!
Waist . . . narrow; ass . . . small and tight; legs—she was wearing jeans—long and thin. What a body! Beautiful, petite, and with big tits. This was my dream girl!

She was still smiling at me. Something had to be wrong. Not because she was smiling, but because she was smiling so openly. A girl this beautiful should be acting a little more coy. She . . . must be underage! That had to be it. She wasn’t experienced enough at “club etiquette” to put on a front. Since the drinking age at that time was
eighteen, I figured that this incredibly hot and beautiful girl had to be seventeen. I had to meet her.

From day one with Twisted Sister I was determined to act and be treated like a star. I always knew I was going to make it, but now I was in the band that I would make it with, so all the silliness, stupidity, procrastination, and dillydallying of “Danny Snider” had to end.
I revamped my entire personality when I joined Twisted Sister.
I was determined to be the person I always wanted to be. Dee Snider was a rock star, and I would damn well act like one.

To that end, the band would show up to the club early to load in and for sound check. This would make sure the band always sounded its best (Peacock never sound-checked), and I would be in the club well before doors opened and the audience came in. Real rock stars aren’t seen coming in the front door and walking through the crowd, like a normal person. You see them onstage and that’s it. To that end, in between sets I would never leave the dressing room and walk around the club.
Ever.
Even though not a person in the place gave a shit about me, I was determined to carry myself as if I mattered. If
I
didn’t think I mattered, how could I ever expect anyone else to think so? Hell, the band placed (stolen) police barricades in front of the stage that said
KEEP BACK
because what’s the first thing people do when they see a sign like that? Get as close as they can. Self-Fulfilling Prophecy 101.

The dressing rooms in these shitholes left more than a little to be desired. I would spend hours every night sitting alone (the rest of the band was having a great time hanging out in the club) in a glorified closet or bathroom before the first show, in between sets, all during the last set that I didn’t perform, and after the show until the club closed. Only then would I slip out of the club and into the early morning to head home. I was a star . . . people just hadn’t realized it yet.

I mention this to let you in on my mind-set, and so you’ll understand just how significant it was that I left the dressing room after the set and came out to find this amazing girl.

I slipped out of the dressing room, still hanging in the shadows at the side of the stage, not wanting to totally blow my rock-star cool. I spotted her by the front of the stage, standing with her girlfriend
and the guy I saw behind her, waiting for my band to come back on. Oh, she was totally into me.

I caught her eye and casually waved her over; she immediately came, abandoning the guy she was with.
I was so in!
She looked even hotter close up. I had to have her.

“Hey, how ya doin’?” I said, my Lawng Guyland accent raging.

Her response was completely abstract: “I’m a good girl.”

Confused, I pressed on. “
Sure.
Are you with that guy?” Guy code. I didn’t want to be one of those assholes who hit on girls with a date.

The insanely hot girl looked back at the guy I was pointing to and, horrified, said, “
Ewww.
No way!” She was abandoning her date for me! This was a lock.

“Cool,” I responded coolly. “What’s your name?”

The next two syllables she uttered sealed the deal. “Suzette.”

Wow. The most beautiful name for the most beautiful girl. It was like a song.
Suzette.

It was time to stun her with my worldliness and perception. “You’re not eighteen, are you?” I asked knowingly.

“No.” Suzette was a little embarrassed to have been called on her charade.

“How old are you?” I pressed. It was almost a rhetorical question.

“How old do you think I am?” she said coyly.

Were we really going to play this silly little game?
Fine.
“Seventeen.” It wasn’t a guess.

“Fifteen,” Suzette corrected.

I nearly swallowed my tongue.
“Fifteen?”
I repeated, hoping I had somehow misheard.

“Yes. Fifteen.”

Holy crap!
Now what? I was head over heels for this girl, and she clearly felt the same way about me. But before I could go any further with this line of thought, Suzette interrupted me.

“How old are you?”

“How old do you think I am?” Two can play at this game.

“Late twenties, early thirties,” she responded matter-of-factly.

Late twenties, early thirties?!
“I just turned twenty-one!” I protested.

“No way. Let me see your driver’s license.”

With that, I ran downstairs to the dressing room, got my license, and headed back upstairs. I’d show her.

To be fair, I did look as if I were in my late twenties, early thirties. I’ve always looked that age. Even when I snuck into a bar at fourteen years old with a bunch of my “older” sixteen-year-old friends, they were all ejected for being underage, while the crotchety old bartender asked me what I wanted to drink! (“What’ll ya have, sir?”) I had never been proofed in my life!

When I got back, she was still patiently waiting for me. While I was sure she still wanted me, the age thing and her asking to see my ID had shaken me a little. (That and the “I’m a good girl.” What did she mean by that?)

I handed the very underage beauty my license.

Suzette scrutinized it, too thoroughly.

“See,” I said proudly, “I just turned twenty-one.”

Suzette wasn’t buying it. “You probably just have this so you can meet young girls.”

Was she freakin’ kidding me!? Undeterred, I asked her for her phone number. Suzette gave it to me. Further proof she was into me! Just how
little
, I would eventually find out.

THE NEXT COUPLE OF
weeks were a blur of Twisted Sister gigs, punctuated with thinking about and phone calls to Suzette. I was obsessed with this too-young girl, and the playful calls and her next visit only made things worse.

To this day, Suzette plays innocent on all accounts of the signals she was sending me. As I would eventually discover, she really had no interest in me at all, which made me want her even more. And that “I’m a good girl” comment? The object of my desire was a total virgin, having only even been kissed by a couple of guys. I was in completely uncharted waters! But she did give me her phone number, and we talked endlessly on the phone. I invited her to come to another local show to see me, and she said yes.

If I had been smitten by Suzette’s effervescent glow the first time, the way she looked when she rolled into the club that night delivered the knockout punch. I was devastated by her womanly beauty.

I will readily admit that (like most guys) I am painfully shallow. I won’t even try to pretend I saw in Suzette some “inner blah-blah-blah-blah.” My attraction was purely physical; my Perfect Woman Qualifications Checklist was pathetically devoid of substance. That said, the way things turned out, I believe a lot more was “at work” in our ultimate pairing. I’m not a spiritual guy, but the way we came together and how well we fit has got to be more than a coincidence. A professional astrologer did our charts the first year we were going out and told us she had never seen two more compatible people. I’m not a big believer in that stuff, but thirty-five years later . . . I’m just sayin’. But back to my shallowness and Suzette’s missent signals . . .

Suzette arrives at the club—a slimy biker bar, if you must know—wearing a black, low-cut, knee-length, clinging evening dress with a pair of high heels. Oh my God! On my dream-girl checklist only one box was left unmarked earlier:
legs.
She’d been wearing skintight, bell-bottom jeans the night I’d met her, so I couldn’t get an accurate read on what was going on below the knee. But in that dress?
Check!

One secret box was on the back of the list. It wasn’t mandatory, but it would be a big plus if my dream girl had this qualification: Italian.