Shut Up and Give Me the Mic (40 page)

I
t came as no surprise to us that our record continued to sell at a steady pace. Now approaching 150,000 units in the United States alone—
with no record company support
—Twisted Sister’s commercial value could no longer be denied. We were becoming a force to be reckoned with.

As we headed into New York City for our big meeting with the all-powerful Oz—I mean, president of Atlantic Records—we were sure he was going to tell us the label was ready to fully get behind our
You Can’t Stop Rock ’n’ Roll
album. Every band we had shared both the top of the charts and
Top of the Pops
with in Great Britain were having major hits in the United States with their UK releases. It was our turn to shine.

We arrived at Atlantic Records to find a very different label from the one we had been so unwelcome at before. As we walked into the lobby, a placard said
WELCOME ATLANTIC RECORDS RECORDING ARTISTS TWISTED SISTER
! with the band’s picture on it. We were immediately ushered inside, toured the Twisted Sister–poster-adorned office complex and were warmly greeted by every person in the place. Everyone seemed to be a Twisted Sister fan and had a story to tell about how he or she had always championed the band. It was completely confusing. When we were finally brought in to meet the president of the label, we couldn’t believe it. Was this the same guy who had personally rejected our band multiple times,
threatened to fire Jason Flom if he mentioned our name, and fought to have Phil Carson not sign us? He was so welcoming and nice!

Once all the glad-handing was done, Mr. President got down to business. He told us that Twisted Sister were going to be huge. We’d proven ourselves in the UK and had continued to sell—on our own—in the United States. Now it was time to push the button and make things happen.

At last!
Twisted Sister and our
You Can’t Stop Rock ’n’ Roll
album were finally going to get the support and attention we deserved!

The president’s next words were career-changing on so many levels, both good and bad: “But let’s not throw good money after bad. It’s time to focus on a new record.”

What?! A
new
record? We hadn’t even scratched the surface of this album’s potential. We had two hit singles in Great Britain with
You Can’t Stop Rock ’n’ Roll
; they could be hits in America! While it was amazing to hear him say that Atlantic Records would “push the button” and make us real stars, why not maximize the financial potential of the record they’d already paid for?

I’ll tell you why.

Imagine
you
were the president of Atlantic Records. You fought tooth and nail, for years, to keep Twisted Sister off your label. You personally rejected the band, threatened people’s jobs for even mentioning their name, and had been shut down and overridden by a fellow executive, in front of your peers, over this band and this very album. Now, the band and album you did
nothing
to support and
everything
to stop had survived and were threatening to break through, leaving you as their sole naysayer. Not an enviable position to be in, was it?

By playing the “let’s not throw good money after bad” card, Mr. President had shown a change of heart and real support for the band, while shutting down the offending record. This allowed him to distance himself from the album and appear to be the giving god, shining his grace on the new Twisted Sister record . . . which he will make sure everyone knows he was very much a part of. Nice move, asshole.

If our label president had done the right thing (instead of the self-protective thing),
You Can’t Stop Rock ’n’ Roll
could have been a
platinum or multiplatinum album (instead of eventually going gold years later), putting Twisted Sister at the forefront of the new metal movement in the United States and setting a strong foundation for a much-longer, hit-filled, and illustrious career. Instead, we were set to be a
part
of the initial wave of heavy metal and hair bands, with a much shorter life expectancy.

We left the Atlantic offices that day pumped by the amazing new support we were getting from the label, but disappointed our current record would not be given the chance to shine and do what we all knew it could. Still, the holidays were coming, and 1984 held incredible promise for the band. Big Brother was gonna be rocking to Twisted Sister.

WHEN SUZETTE WAS PREGNANT
with Jesse, she would come down from time to time to see the band perform. She would tell me, when Twisted hit the stage, the baby would go crazy in her belly, kickin’ and rockin’. The heavier the song, the wilder it went. Our unborn child wanted to rock just like its dad. Now, at fifteen months of age, I had been away for almost two-thirds of Jesse’s life. I wanted him to see what his daddy did when he was away.

Upon returning home from our tours, the band took a victory lap of the Northeast to celebrate our major-label album and trouncing of the UK metal scene. The self-fulfilling prophecy had come true, and the “bad boys of rock ’n’ roll,” whom the SMFs had believed so strongly in, had made it to the next level.

One of those victory shows was on December 29, 1983, at the 2002 Roller Rink—turned concert hall for the night—in Sayville, Long Island. An all-ages show, the place was wall-to-wall with thousands of teenage kids clamoring to see a band they’d heard about from their older brothers and sisters for so long and who were putting the Long Island rock scene on the map. As Twisted Sister rocked the house of nearly two thousand, it was pandemonium. But what I was most focused on was my son Jesse Blaze, standing on the side of the stage for the first time . . . and rocking out to his dad!

During the show, our eyes locked, and Jesse, with a look of determination, started to head out onto the stage to join his old man. I
blanched, realizing that the band were deep into performing and oblivious of Jesse’s potentially dangerous action. Luckily, he only got a couple of steps before Suzette grabbed him by the shoulder and reeled him in. I was amazed. My little more than one-year-old son understood what his dad was doing and wanted to do it with me. How cool was that?

NOT SURPRISINGLY, ATLANTIC RECORDS
felt time was of the essence. They wanted to capitalize on the energy and goodwill Twisted Sister had already created before it went cold. Nothing releasing a couple of singles and videos off the
You Can’t Stop Rock ’n’ Roll
album wouldn’t have fixed.
Oh, all right, I’ll let it go.

The first thing we needed to do was choose a producer. Our choice and his availability would decide the recording schedule, and everything else would roll out from there.

The band was asked to submit a list of producers we would like to work with, and we did. Martin Birch (Iron Maiden), Max Norman (Ozzy Osbourne), Dieter Dierks (Scorpions), Mack (Billy Squier), and more were all submitted for approval. Nowhere on our list, or even considered or thought of
in any capacity
, was the response from Atlantic Records. “How about Tom Werman?”
Who?

Tom Werman was a former record company A&R man turned record producer out of sheer necessity. Having signed Ted Nugent, Cheap Trick, and Molly Hatchet, he subsequently “produced” their records and had been credited for taking bands that were rough around the edges and making them commercially viable.

Now, the term
producer
is very general, covering any person responsible for overseeing and delivering a record. Some producers are hands-on engineer types, who actually push the buttons on the board and technically help get the sounds, while others are musicians who contribute to the writing and construction of songs. Still others are truly old-school (remember, the recording process started out with some microphones in a room and the band playing live to tape) and just listen. Tom Werman is the latter. To quote the man himself: “I don’t write, I don’t create, I don’t touch the board. I’ll just tell you if I like it or not.” He said it, I didn’t.

Werman had just finished the
Shout at the Devil
record with Mötley Crüe, and it was looking as if it was going to be huge. Noting Tom Werman’s work with the Crüe and the other bands he had “cleaned up” in the past, Atlantic thought Tom was the perfect choice.

We listened to the
Shout at the Devil
record and were unimpressed. The guitars and drums sounded pretty good, but overall it was not the sound we were looking for. Not heavy enough. Still, the label wanted Tom to hear us, and for the band to meet him, so Werman was flown in from LA to one of Twisted Sister’s “Northeast victory-lap shows,” in Washington, DC.

Arriving late, Werman came in midshow and saw Twisted do what it always did—destroy a packed house. After the show, we met and had a chance to chat. Tom seemed nice enough. Upon explaining his A&R background to me, and how he came to be a producer, I decided to ask Tom a simple question. If he were still an A&R guy, would he have signed Twisted Sister?

Werman answered me simply and directly, “No.”

While I appreciated his honesty, this clearly was not the producer for our band. We didn’t care for his work, and he didn’t care for the band. Done and done.

A few days later, Mark Puma and I took another meeting with our label president to discuss the issue of Tom Werman and the choice for producer in general. During the discussion, I explained the kind of producer the band was looking for and why Tom Werman just wasn’t the guy for us. El Presidente pressed hard for Werman, and I countered, explaining how we needed to make a true heavy record for our fans. We went back and forth on the issue for a few minutes, until exasperated, our label head exclaimed, “Exactly how many fans do you suppose you have?”

Thrown by the question and his intensity, I replied, “I don’t know, 200 thousand.”

“What do you want, those 200 thousand fans, or the 800,000 others that will make your next record platinum?”

Just like that, I was shut down. I didn’t have a response. I wanted a platinum album. Of course, I now know the correct answer was “both.” There’s no reason a band can’t have both their core audience and the mainstream rock fans. (Just ask Metallica.) But I was
intimidated by our label president’s intensity and the pressure of the whole situation. This was our shot.

So it was decided that Tom Werman would be producing Twisted Sister’s next album.
That was the beginning of the end.
I know it seems crazy to say that when our biggest album and greatest success hadn’t yet even happened, but I firmly believe the decision to hire Tom Werman was the start of a butterfly effect that eventually destroyed the band.

31

B
y this point in Twisted Sister’s career, Suzette and I were a creative machine, always working way ahead, in anticipation of the band’s next move. As I finished writing the material for Twisted Sister’s next record, Suzette was already coming up with ideas for the band’s next look.

The “tattered look” of the
You Can’t Stop Rock ’n’ Roll
tour had gone down well (and inspired many other bands) and taken a major step closer to the ultimate look for Twisted. I always had a lot of rules as to what was and wasn’t acceptable for Twisted Sister costumes. Suzette would often come up with new ideas that I would reject out of hand, but slowly I would come around to her wisdom (much the same process that got me to wear more makeup).