TWISTED SISTER: LOCAL HEROES IN WARPAINT MAKE GOOD

TWISTED SISTER: LOCAL HEROES IN WARPAINT MAKE GOOD

by

Toby Goldstein

Out in the endless flatlands of Long Island's Suffolk County, where the trafficclogged main streets are lined with every necessity for fast-food living and drive-in convenience, there used to be a rock 'n' roll joint called Hammerheads. About four years ago, the club was at its peak, with Friday night boppers curling around its hangar-like exterior, waiting patiently in the freezing cold, I.D.'s clutched in hand—to see Twisted Sister. Oh, excuse me. I mean TWISTED! FUCKING! SISTER! You couldn't really imagine this group in anything than capital letters. They were loud! were mean! They were ug-lee! And, defiance of rock's swiftly moving trends had already made Kiss's gimmick wear Twisted Sister wore makeup.

These five big, hairy guys came onto the of Hammerheads and a million other joints encircling New York City with satin costumes and five o'clock stubswathed in hookers' garish painted lips, and eyelids. Pummelling their auwith a nonstop battery of cover verup me tury. bassist Mark the Animal Mendoza was a former Dictator; lead guitarist Jay Jay French played in a pre-Kiss incarnation called Wicked Lester and knew the Simmons/Stanley alliance from the Year One. Though lead singer Dee Snider was several years younger than some of his bandmates and thus relatively new to the game, he made up for it with an image just slightly less forbidding than Frankenstein's monster. Towering and muscular, Snider let his bleached blond curls cascade down his back. When he sang, he accused with every breath.

And in between songs, there was "the rap." Snider would bellow insults at the crowd, demanding a response and not going into the next song until he was satisfied with the result. He made them scream, over and over, "I am a BAD MUTHA-FUCKA!" When you were convinced deafness was merely one last step away, Snider made the crowd yell even louder. Since this was 1979 we're recalling, the band created a musical interlude to match the headlines. It went something like, "I hate the Ayahtollah, 'cause the Ayahtollah really sucks!..." And the audience sang along, obediently as little toddlers around the nursery school piano. Yeah, Twisted Sister was a bunch of swell guys—but underneath the paint and the aggro they had dreams of going far beyond the financial security and fan loyalty of the TriState circuit. Impossible dreams, I would have thought. But ya never know.

As the dreaded synthesizers started moving into music, clubs in Long Island and New Jersey began switching over to recorded new wave and shutting their doors to the local (and more expensive) HM cover groups. Lots of places closed and lots of bands left the music business. By this time, even though they'd released a couple of independent singles and had, remarkably, sold out the 3,000 seat Palladium in Manhattan, Twisted Sister largely spent their days piling up rejection slips for their demo tapes of band originals.

"We'd given up on the U.S. and getting signed to a deal," recalls Dee Snider, as the group prepared for a homecoming date at the Ritz. "We had gone up four times so far and were getting ready for the fifth attempt." Reasons for rejection? Says Jay Jay—a nonstop talker whose rock memories include sneaking into Beatle hotel rooms—"Every reason. 'You're a local phenomenon, a state phenomenon, a regional phenomenon, an East Coast phenomenon. You're too heavy metal, you're not heavy metal enough. You're too commercial, you're not commercial enough. Your image is ridiculous, it'll never sell in Dubuque.' Well, when we played Dubuque, it was a hit! So FUCK YOU, we knew we could sell in Dubuque.

"They hated this and that. It made us, after awhile, question some things. So we changed a little bit." "Then the makeup thing was a huge problem," Dee points out matter of factly. "To the point where we were about to gve up wearing makeup, don't me why. Even now, we release pictures without makeup, as well as with. We did photo session without makeup—a Twisted Sister McDonald's version: have it your way. But after sifting through the pictures thought that if you lay out shots of Judas Priest, Ozzy, Quiet Riot, Loverboy, and someone who knows nothing about rock roll to connect the name to the picture, they'd find no way, because all the bands look the same. We said, we'd rather put up with the shit and have people see Twisted Sister and remember us." "In fact," Jay Jay adds, "when Phil Carson saw the band, one of the most refreshing things he said was, 'I don't want that act to change. I like it just the way it is. They know exactly what they're doing.' "

You wouldn't think that International Atlantic Records Senior Vice-President Phil Carson and a bunch of his fellow Englishmen would have turned out to be Twisted Sister's saving grace, but then again, nothing in this quintet's history has been played to ordinary rules. While many of their counterparts had given up, by last year Twisted Sister was still schlepping around the same area that had given them steady work for almost seven years. That, in itself, is a pretty significant testimony to the kind of loyalty Twisted Sister manages to incur. On one of these decidedly non-trendy oc-casions, visiting British photographer Ross Halfin saw the band, went into shock, and brought his friend, Sounds writer Pete Makowski, up to see a set in Westchester the next night. Charged with the fervor of discovery that almost every rock critic stumbles upon at least once in their career, Makowski urged the group to come to England. They stirred up so much interest that eventually the band was offered a UK/European deal by a small punk label, Secret Records, which released a moderately successful album for them.

Jay Jay also remembers Twisted Sister's fate hanging in the balance after Secret abruptly folded. "They couldn't stand the strain of flying the band over. So we had no label. The tour got pulled, the money got pulled, and we're sitting around going crazy. And we had gone through so much that we said, something's gotta happen here because God is not gonna take us this far and then go, that's it, guys." Meanwhile, the notoriously short-tempered British public was beginning to feel that Twisted Sister's absence indicated a lack of caring. Warned by their new friends at Sounds that the band was in danger of losing England as well as America if they didn't come back, Twisted Sister's members borrowed $22,000 from family, friends, and some supportive local club owners. They arrived in London, booked for one television show and three nights at the heavy metal stronghold, the Marquee Club.

"And this is the answer to all the bad luck that ever happened to us in our life," bubbles French. As they waited to record their spot on TV, manager Mark Puma—a Long Island concert promoter for many years— ran into Phil Carson with Foreigner's Mick Jones, also there for the show. Puma knew Carson from the Englishman's humble beginnings as a Led Zeppelin road manager. When Puma mentioned that he was working with a band called Twisted Sister, transplanted New Yorker Jones immediately shouted, "They play them in New York the time!" And when a multi-platinum seller makes a recommendation, anyone with set of ears listens.

After viewing a tape of the TV show, somewhat numb Carson decided that didn't know whether Twisted Sister were good, but he knew that they would sell. "The next day, we got calls from three other labels...Phil Carson came the next night to the Marquee and witnessed the set. He said, 'I want to sign them; I don't want to meet them!': Among the band's amusement over the situation is the fact that American Atlantic turned down Twisted Sister—often. And here they were, a new English signing. Well, hardy-har-har, say all concerned, noting that Carson's enthusiasm, for some strange reason, has now caught on in the local office.

TURN TO PAGE 59

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 43

As part of the deal, Twisted Sister's Atlantic debut, You Can't Stop Rock 'N'Roll was recorded in England, at an isolated manorlike studio owned by Jimmy Page. Though they never actually met Page during their six-week stint in the place, a few of Twisted Sister's British fans decided that they had to see him in the flesh. "They just sat outside his house and waited and waited," Snider remembers. "Finally, two or three hours later, Page came to the gate—tee-shirted with his pants held up by a rope. They said he was very nice, a little spaced. They were taking pictures of him—he didn't mind. At one point, his pants fell down and there they were, taking pictures with his shorts hanging out! Jimmy Page, rich rock 'n' roll star,

trying to pull his pants up!' Snider and French are laughing so loud by now they've practically drowned out their opening act, Queensryche, who are doing a sound check. "We thanked him on the album," Dee hastens to add, "because he gave us a very good deal. To get us this deal, Phil Carson needed a budget that was low, low, low."

The consensus in England seems to be that, at least sound-wise, Twisted Sister more closely fits the style of homegrown HM bands, rather than what they call the "washed down" Americans. And it's true that the group's unbelievable frenzy on "Knife In The Back" or the anthemic "We're Gonna Make It" are closer cousins to the likes of Whitesnake, Saxon and Motorhead, all of whom Twisted Sister toured with in England and Europe, before commencing their firstever American tour this fall.

"Up until a few months ago," says Jay Jay, "you'd ask where Twisted Sister was playing, and it'd be New York, New Jersey, Connecticut—and England. That was our market. Now we've played at least half the U.S., and Europe."

Obtaining the major-label signing they'd often dreamed about was mostly—but not completely wonderful. For one thing, when Twisted Sister played the club circuit, their expenses were low and salaries relatively high. Now, it's just the reverse. Says French, sounding like the nice Jewish boy from Manhattan he is, "My father goes, 'So big shot, you're on MTV, you play the Ritz, you're going to Europe. So when am I getting a house in Scarsdale?' I go over there and say, listen, dad, can you loan me some money for a Sabrett's hotdog? He doesn't understand the vagaries of this business." The group believes that many of their Long Island counterparts, unable to give up the security of a regular income, sacrificed their dreams of the big time. At least in the beginning, it's impossible to have both.

Also, at the beginning, not seeing one's family for long stretches is a difficult adjustment. "It's one thing to be 21 or 22, but we're not," says Snider. "I'm 28, married with a baby. So you talk to my wife in terms of the pressure. The drive is still there, the desire is still there, the wanting to be successful is still there. It's just that nagging thing in the back of your brain. My kid is 13 months old and I've seen him four months. When you call your wife and she says, 'The baby said Da-Da today—to a stuffed frog,' that's the mental pressure. But when you're doing it so many years, it gets to the point of obsession."

And there is the farflung network of Twisted Sister devotees to compensate. Any rock fan who spent time in the Tri-State area during the 1970s instantly knows of these wild and crazy guys. Their getting national recognition is a real life "Rocky" validation for any kid who ever spent lonely hours whacking away at the guitar, bass or drums. "We played Red Rocks in Colorado," recalls Dee, "and there was a sign, 'Zappy's loves Twisted Sister'—that's a club in New Jersey! I'm seeing people come up who are obviously not into the scene anymore, but who saw us four years ago and had to see us on tour. My biggest kick was in Las Vegas, when I walked up to a confectionary stand and the woman behind the counter recognized me. It turns out that her husband played drums on the Long Island circuit and she said, 'I can't believe it! Wait until my husband hears about this, he'll go back into the business. He used to get so disillusioned, but once he knows...'

"There are fans who measure their growth by how many times they've seen Twisted Sister," laughs Jay Jay. "They're gonna be here tonight. They've got rings around their arms, like trees." And when Twisted Sister bounded onto the stage of "the Pits, I mean the Ritz" later that night, the chaos confirmed every chunk of their self-made mythology. %