Shut Up and Give Me the Mic by Dee Snider

Author:Dee Snider [Snider, Dee]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Dee Snider, Musicians, Music, Twisted Sisters, Heavy Metal, Biography & Autobiography, Retail
ISBN: 9781451637397
Google: SE9xCtgCWY0C
Amazon: 145163739X
Barnesnoble: 145163739X
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2012-05-08T04:00:00+00:00

29

welcome to the promised land

By the summer of 1983, Twisted Sister had been fighting the good fight for glitter-rock-infused heavy metal for almost seven and a half years. Fighting for our right to rock the way we wanted to rock, at times we felt we were up against insurmountable odds. Discovering the burgeoning new wave of British heavy metal certainly gave us hope, a much-needed boost, and reason to keep believing, but it was still a struggle.

In August, the band and I drove through the heat of the night to Los Angeles, for the first time. With the sun coming up behind us, coming out of the Mojave Desert and the San Gabriel Mountains, we were at last in range to tune in the LA radio station KMET and discovered Iron Maiden’s “Flight of Icarus” playing. We could not believe it! We had heard that heavy metal was big in Los Angeles and KMET had garnered the nickname K-Metal, but we never imagined it would be like this. Metal on the radio in the morning? We had reached the promised land!

We pulled into West Hollywood to find a major metropolis that had completely embraced heavy metal. It was actually in style! Heavy music and headbangers had never experienced this before; our music was being accepted on a cultural level. Everywhere I looked, I saw evidence of this acceptance. Kids walking down the street were imitating the style of dress of their rock heroes, more often than not that of David Lee Roth of Van Halen. And the women? Metal had never been that big with the female rock audience, but they, too, had found the style and attitude in it, particularly from Pat Benatar. Pat wasn’t metal, but she definitely rocked and had attitude. The girls were totally hooking into that. But something didn’t feel quite right.

As I read the local papers, saw the billboards and marquees, and simply met the metal fans in LA, it became clear they were more into the look and attitude of heavy metal than the music. They were clearly more interested in stylized heavy-metal bands and less so in the traditional “denim and leather.” Mainstay Sunset Strip clubs such as Gazzarri’s openly advertised bands with “only the best-looking guys” to entice the local rock chicks. Where the girls go, the boys follow. Much of the LA metal scene was hollow—like the facades of Hollywood sets—mostly about style and not substance.

This is not to say there were no real metalheads or metal bands in Los Angeles. Slayer—one of heavy metal’s Big Four—were from Huntington Park, just outside LA, but I could see what was fueling the Sunset Strip scene . . . and it wasn’t the heaviness of the music.

Los Angeles was set to brand its own specific form of heavy metal, and Twisted Sister was a perfect fit for the LA metal scene at that time. We were a metal band first and foremost, but stylized with our extreme makeup and costumes. Eddie and Jay Jay certainly had female appeal, and I was just .

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