For a self-proclaimed ”dirtbag” from Long Island, N.Y., where he launched his musical career playing the local rock club circuit in makeup and women`s lingerie, Dee Snider hasn`t done too badly.
Last year, Snider`s rock band, Twisted Sister, sold more than 3 million albums worldwide, establishing itself as one of the most colorful contenders for rock`s heavy-metal crown; the group`s 1986 tour, which includes a stop Jan. 29 at the Pavilion, will find them playing to as many as 2 million fans in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Japan. Their new album, ”Come Out and Play,” is hovering near the million mark.
But Snider`s biggest triumph to date has nothing to do with gold and platinum record awards, or the knowledge that the band`s 1984 breakthrough single, ”We`re Not Gonna Take It,” still ranks as something of an adolescent-rebellion anthem–or even the fact that his parents now admit that their son was probably right when he refused to take their well-meaning advice about becoming an insurance salesman. No, the proudest moment of Snider`s life occurred Sept. 19, 1985, when the singer defended the honor of rock and roll in a Senate committee hearing on ”objectionable” rock lyrics.
”They (the Senators and members of the Parents Music Resource Center, who spearheaded the recent push for a record-ratings system) thought that I was going to be a total idiot,” recalls Snider gleefully. ”They look at rockers as idiots, and they figured that they would take one of the most visual heavy metal artists and make a fool out of him. They didn`t realize that I spoke English fluently. They didn`t realize that I knew what I was doing. When they asked me to appear at the hearing, I said, yeah, sure, and then I spent two weeks studying the issues.
”I knew that when I walked in with my long hair and my jeans, they were going to laugh, and they did,” continues Snider, whose helter-skelter ringlets lend an outrageous touch to his already distinctive appearance. ”I even had my speech, which I had worked two weeks on, folded up into eighths and shoved in the back pocket of my jeans like a kid coming in with his homework. You got your homework, Johnny? Right here, teacher! And I pulled it out and it was all creased and smudged. I really was setting them up for the kill–and then I opened my mouth.
”Here, I`ll read you the first part of my speech,” says the singer, calling the other day from a stop along the Twisted Sister tour route. ”I just happen to have it right here. I was cleaning out my suitcase a little while ago and I found it. Here`s the first paragraph:
” `Good morning. My name is Dee Snider. I have been asked to come here to present my views on ”The Subject of the Content of Certain Sound Recordings and Suggestions that Recording Packages Be Labeled to Provide a Warning to Prospective Purchasers That Sexually Explicit or Other Potentially Offensive Content.”
”Before I get into that, I would like to tell the committee a little about myself. I`m 30 years old, I`m married, and I have a 3-year-old son. I was born and raised a Christian, and I still adhere to those principles. Believe it or not, I do not smoke, I do not drink, and I do not do drugs. I do play in and write the songs for a rock and roll band named Twisted Sister that is classified as heavy metal, and I pride myself on writing songs that are consistent with my above-mentioned beliefs.`
”When I finished that paragraph, their jaws dropped,” recalls Snider with relish. ”They weren`t expecting me to be a parent. They didn`t think that I would be straight, or a Christian. They didn`t think that I would be able to form a full sentence. I set them up, and then I had my fun. I went into that hearing a dirtbag on somebody else`s court, and I walked out proud. To tell you the truth, it was one of the proudest moments of my life.”
The committee members might have been further surprised to learn a few more facts about Snider. Despite the calculatedly bizarre, sexually ambiguous image he projects onstage with Twisted Sister, he considers himself to be
”more conservative, probably, than a lot of people, right up there with Rocky and Rambo.”
For another, his domestic life is mundane to the max. A man who finds parties and club-hopping ”kind of boring,” he prefers to spend his time off the road with his wife and child at home in suburban Long Island. His major vice in recent years had been Marvel comic books, which he collected until the hobby became too expensive. (These days, he can afford to pursue it again.)
Snider`s no angel, of course. On an earlier tour, he was arrested in Amarillo, Tex., for using obscene language onstage, and a quote (”Don`t try to be a great man, be a great ——-”) featured on the inner sleeve of the band`s new album might be viewed as an expression of arrested development. Still, unlike many of its heavy metal brethren, Twisted Sister steers away from songs that glorify the use of drugs or alcohol or are abusive to women.
”We refuse to write any sex songs at all,” Snider says proudly. ”I don`t have to shake my thing at people to prove that I`m a man.
”When Twisted Sister began, which for me was about 10 years ago, I was getting onstage in some pretty ridiculous outfits,” adds the singer, who cites Alice Cooper and David Bowie as two of his main show-biz influences.
”We couldn`t afford costumes, so sometimes I would wear women`s lingerie, stuff like that–anything to get a reaction–and I had to be pretty confident about my heterosexuality to do that in some of the bars we played.
”And with that confidence came the realization that the locker room mentality of a lot of rock and roll music, particularly the heavy metal stuff, is extremely alienating to 50 per cent of the audience. I started to become acutely aware of the shortcomings of heavy metal, how a lot of the subject matter, the Satanism, the drugs, the alcohol, the abuse of women, were alienating to people and I decided that I didn`t need to write songs with lyrics that alienated the audience even more.”
At the moment, one of Snider`s goals for Twisted Sister is that the quintet grow musically–traditionally a tough task for a heavy metal band, because becoming more sophisticated means the group risks losing the young fans who have followed them from the beginning.
”The (heavy metal) musical genre is self-limiting,” acknowledges Snider. ”If you cross certain lines, you may get new people to listen, but you turn off the old ones. But one of the reasons Twisted Sister has been successful is that we have musically covered the heavy metal spectrum. I`m not going to cross the line, but I want to go as close to the fence as I can and show people what we`ve got, and hope that they will judge us on a song-by- song basis.”
Snider points to ”Be Chrool to Your Scuel” (yes, that`s how it`s spelled), a rock and roll song on the ”Come Out and Play” album, as an example of his attempts to widen Twisted Sister`s musical base. Billy Joel, Clarence Clemons, ex-Stray Cats guitarist Brian Setzer and Alice Cooper are among the guest artists who help Twisted Sister ask the musical question, ”Do ABC`s and 123`s mean that much to me?”
Explains the singer, ”By gathering musicians from other bands, I was trying to show everyody that heavy metal is not a separate musical form, it`s part of rock and roll. Admittedly, it`s at one end of the spectrum, but it`s still rock and roll and there`s something there for everybody.
”With the exception of Alice, everybody was apprehensive about performing with us,” adds Snider. ”After they heard the song, though, they realized it was rock and roll. And Billy Joel told me afterwards that he was a headbanger in the beginning. He had an album out in 1970 with a heavy metal band called Atilla–the picture on the front of the album was him in a suit of armor in a meat locker. I couldn`t believe it. But heavy metal has been around for a long time, even though it`s been kind of the black sheep. And it`s going to be around for a long time to come, because it`s the kind of music that most parents hate.
”A lot of parents today were part of the Woodstock Generation and they still listen to bands like the Kinks or Fleetwood Mac, but they hated heavy metal when they were in high school and they still hate it now. But their kids want their own musical identity, so they listen to heavy metal, and that has a lot to do with its continued popularity.”
Nevertheless, Snider knows one 3-year-old kid who probably won`t grow up to be a heavy metal fan. It`s his son.
”He loves my music now, but I honestly believe that the odds are that one day he`ll turn into a damned preppie who likes easy listening rock,” says Snider resignedly. ”Why? Because he won`t want to be Dee Snider II and look and act like his father. My father was a cop and I`m a dirtbag. My son`s father is a dirtbag, so chances are he`ll want to be a cop. And he won`t be able to stand heavy metal music.”
