Shut Up and Give Me the Mic (20 page)

Well, I’ve played with fire,

I don’t want to get myself burned

To thine own self be true

So, I think that it’s time for a turn

Before I burn in hell!

Oh, burn in hell!

The odd thing is, it was almost two years before I made a real change. In writing this book, I needed to assemble a timeline for reference. I found that, though my road-rage experience did put the fear of God in me, it wasn’t enough to make me get my act together. What an idiot I was.

14

I
had been aware of
The Rocky Horror Show
since its brief run on Broadway in 1975. From what I heard, the show was a direct link between the glitter rock scene and the fifties nostalgia that was going on at that time, but the run ended, and that was about it . . . for a while.

An ill-fated movie release followed, and again, I didn’t see it or even hear much about it.

Cut to the fall of 1977 and, living in Manhattan, we started to hear rumblings about midnight showings of
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
movie at the Waverly Theater on Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village. When the band finally had a night off that coincided with one of these screenings, Jay Jay, Suzette, and I made our way to the theater. We joined about seven other people in attendance, for an incredible—no audience participation—musical and visual experience. Our collective lives were forever changed.

Inspiration from
Rocky Horror
quickly infiltrated our makeup, costumes, and music. “Sweet Transvestite,” first as our intro tape, then as an actual song, was added to our set, as was “Time Warp.” For the first time, Twisted Sister had become a trendsetter, as we shared our love for
RHPS
with all of our fans.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
was undoubtedly an early trigger for the hair-metal craze that was to come.

Twisted Sister were so connected to
RHPS’s
phenomenal growth
in popularity that we were asked to perform at the first ever
Rocky Horror Picture Show
convention, held at the Calderone Concert Hall, in Hempstead, Long Island, on February 20, 1978.
¹

I can still see the stunned look on the faces of Richard O’Brien (writer/Riff Raff), Patricia Quinn (Magenta), and Nell Campbell (Lil’ Nell) as they walked, unaware, into the mania that surrounded the
RHPS
.

Priceless.

Twisted Sister’s performance at the
Rocky Horror
convention led to our next major career move. We knew we were responsible for putting a lot of the asses in the seats of the theater that night. Looking to take things to the next level, we started to think,
Why not host our own concert event?

ARMED WITH A BUNCH
of original songs and a huge (and growing) fan base, we set out to do what no unsigned club band in our area had done before: stage a full-blown concert event. So, with our own money we rented the Calderone Concert Hall and on October 28, 1978, we went for it . . . but not without some growing pains.

The stress of managing Twisted Sister’s day-to-day affairs, playing at the clubs each night, and staging our first concert event ever took its toll on Jay Jay. So many additional issues needed to be dealt with for a show like that. Keep in mind, everything that had to be worked out and set up for that one show were the same things any national concert act would have to do
for an entire tour.
It was an impressive feat for the band, but while most of the creative elements were predominantly mine,
all
of the business and financial elements were on Jay’s shoulders.

The night of the show, we overcompensated on every level. We had a comedian and an opening band on the bill with us, and—not having any real idea of what should or shouldn’t be in a concert set—we brought the kitchen sink. Every original song we had, plus a bunch of signature covers, were included. I remember being halfway
through the show and getting a stitch in my side, the kind of thing you sometimes get while you’re running. I didn’t understand. Why was I winded? Sure the stage was larger, but I jumped around for hours each night. Aerobically, I was in incredible shape.

When we finally left the stage, we were told we had been up there for almost three hours! No wonder I got a stitch.

Our first solo theater show was an unprecedented success. It sold out well in advance and took Twisted Sister’s live show to the next level. The Calderone Concert Hall event elevated our status in the club community even more. We were now Twisted Sister the “concert attraction.” Unfortunately, the ordeal proved too much for Jay Jay, and he announced, understandably, he was stepping down as band manager. If we were going to make it to the next level, we were going to need a manager whose sole purpose was to get us to the top.

As luck would have it, Mark Puma, the promoter of our Calderone show, was looking to get into band management. He was more than a little impressed by this local band who—completely under their own steam—booked, promoted, and sold out the theater, then blew the roof off the place. Start-up manager Mark Puma had found his start-up band.

Hindsight being twenty-twenty, I can now see the folly of this union. Having a manager who was learning how to manage while he managed us was not the best career move we could have made. But we were impressed by his being a major Northeast concert promoter (we had gone to tons of his shows) and his office and staff. Mark Puma seemed the perfect fit, so we signed with him.

15

T
he end of 1978 brought about another major change for our band. Bass player Kenny Neill, a founding member of the band, decided to leave. Kenny’s dedication to his sobriety and his being a close “friend of Bill W’s” (Alcoholics Anonymous) were making him more and more religious. Sometime during the year, Kenny had officially become born-again and he was starting to have doubts about being a devout Christian
and
in Twisted Sister.

In the fall of that year, several members of Kenny’s congregation came down to a Twisted Sister show at Zaffy’s in New Jersey to give him the answer to his question. They filed into the room, looking very much like a jury, and sat stone-faced as we did what we did, the way only we did it. After the show, they gave Kenny their verdict. They felt that the devil was working through some of my original songs and through Jay Jay’s onstage banter. I’m sure my unwillingness to turn the other cheek didn’t help either. Oddly, there was no mention of our cross-dressing or makeup. How Christian of them. Kenny told us then and there that he would be leaving the band as soon as we could find a suitable replacement.

Kenny Neill is a great guy, and we totally appreciated and respected what he was going through, so other than expressing our regrets at his leaving, we accepted his decision as something he just had to do.

Interestingly enough, I was quietly going through my own Christian self-doubt around that time. I was born and raised a Christian and attended an Episcopal church every Sunday—and sang in the choir—until I was about nineteen. Did I lose my faith at nineteen? No. I joined a working rock band (Peacock) and didn’t get home from the clubs and bars until about six o’clock on Sunday morning. I wasn’t
that
committed to going to church.

I met two of my best friends, twin brothers Willy and David Hauser, in church. They were my partners in crime through a lot of my formative years. Having lost their father at a very young age, they became successful—albeit cutthroat—businessmen. By seventeen they had built up the largest landscaping business in New York State; by nineteen they had bought a large nursery (their second). Helpful and supportive (often giving me much-needed work) throughout my young life, Willy and David were great friends. Somewhere around the latter part of the seventies, the brothers Hauser were born-again. Being the go-getters that they were, they attacked their newly rediscovered Christianity as if their lives depended on it. They aggressively tried to save pretty much everyone who they felt needed saving, to the point of destroying the successful business they had worked so hard to build. I mean, if you’re coming in to buy some lawn seed, and a huge sign over the door says
ARMAGEDDON IS COMING!
(which it did), you might just say “Oh, the hell with it” (pun intended), and skip your purchase. Not good for business.

The Hauser brothers worked on me relentlessly, trying to save my rock ’n’ roll soul. They were really good salesmen, and though I wasn’t fully buying their whole “end is near” rhetoric (the Rapture was originally supposed to happen in 1984), they did plant a seed of doubt in me. What if they were right and I wasn’t one of the chosen and saved? The possibility of being stuck in a postapocalyptic world began to haunt me. What if I was hours away from Suzette at some club when the end came? Since I always wore five-inch, stack-heeled boots in those days—not the best shoes for hiking and negotiating the ruined world that the prophecies foretold—I started to carry a pair of running shoes in my stage-clothes bag just in case the twins were right. I was prepared to run back to wherever Suzette might be when the end came.