Twisted Sister Y&T & Q5 Seattle Center Coliseum, spring 1985

Once an SMF, always an SMF.

That’s how Dee Snider signed an autograph for me when I finally met him in 1992. It was appropriate--perhaps even necessary--as there was hipper music being made at the time than the kind he had popularized during the previous decade. But in the crisp springtime of 1985, Dee and the rest of Twisted Sister were enjoying being Sick Muther Fuckers for the very first time.

Their commercially-explosive Stay Hungry was still selling on the strength of its cartoonish singles, and the grueling tour in support of the record was stretching well into its second year. Their Saturday afternoon show in Seattle, in fact, was the third time they’d been through town insisting every rivethead in King County purchase a copy.

I had mine. So did everyone else on the staff of Denim & Leather, the Seattle metal fanzine to which I was contributing at the time. Its publisher O.T.T. had turned me on to Twisted Sister a couple of years earlier, and I cruised down to his Northgate apartment on Friday night in my girlfriend’s ’73 Mustang Mach1 so we could get an early start on our buzzes for the show. Why Amanda ever gave me the keys to that thing to speed up and down I-5 drinking and drugging with O.T.T. was beyond me—she didn’t even like heavy metal. But it was handy, as neither O.T.T. nor myself had cars of our own, and we needed a real fast one to squeal around in once we got drunk and stoned enough.

Winding up for the show early Saturday afternoon, I discovered two caps of MDA in the change pocket of my leather jacket. I had no idea where they had come from. The concept of “spare drugs” was not a common one to us in those days. With the exception of weed, which you always purchased in bulk, there was no such thing as extra drugs. You scored what you needed (well, maybe a tiny bit more than you actually needed) for a particular event, then hit them and hit them until they were gone. Coming up the next day to face a doggie bag of what you’d tried to kill yourself with the night before was not appealing.

But a hit of mid-‘80s MDA and a sunny drive to the Twisted Fuckin’Sister show certainly was! We washed the red caps down with Moosehead and saddled up the Mach1. We were due to meet the entire staff of Denim & Leather at the fountain at 4:30 for a group photo that was to appear in the upcoming anniversary issue of the magazine.

(While we’re waiting for the drug to take, let me just make one thing perfectly clear: Twisted Sister was a great band. The unfortunate representation through the aforementioned “hits” and the gross exploitation of the band by way of the faggy music video is not worth arguing against, but none of that shit was what TS was all about. Studio records are studio records; hits are hits. The great rock and roll band excels live,

and Twisted Sister was an amazing live act. Take a listen to the B side of the I Am, I’m Me 12” recorded live at the Marquee in London in 1983. It’s fucking animal. Dig the hopped-up eleven-minute version of “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll” with Dee going out of his damn mind down on the floor. Like Rodney Dangerfield meets the Nuge in make-up, this is one of the most inspired and compelling vocal performances ever recorded. Solid rock…)

So we’re crossing the ship canal bridge, and I think O.T.T. is going out the window on me. Dude used to eat acid like popcorn, but this MDA was workin’ him over. Twisting in the passenger seat of the Mach1, he was a heap of sweats and deep breaths, darting eyes and lots of faces in the vanity mirror, but finally we got parked and smoked a bowl and by the time we reached the fountain, that real bad part of that drug was gone and it was just a lot of whoa & giggle, touching friend’s faces. It was still pretty zoomy—the Denim & Leather staff all snarling and pasty and hollering about Twisted. Eventually we escaped the group to wig on the outer rim of the fountain, soaking in its mist and trying to catch the space needle.

The show, of course, was surreal. Local doods Q5, featuring TKO originals Evan Sheeley and Rick Pierce, were great, and the Belushish Y&T drummer Leonard Haze came out from behind his kit in baseball pants to say comedy jokes. But it was Twisted Sister, all 800’ of them, who made the lasting impression this night. During the climax, amidst a show-ending medley built around “You Can’t Stop Rock ‘n’ Roll” Dee called for the houselights so he “could see all the sick muthahfuckahs.” And there, at the very top of the Coliseum, sat my old friend Skip Galvin, his back to the concrete wall of the arena. From the stage, Dee Snider screamed at Skip to get on his feet—one guy in a crowd of 12,000 caught shirking like the little imp in Horton Hears a Who. And I stood there on the floor, fist in the air, staring up at Skip, suddenly the anti-star of the evening, dilated and wondering just what were the odds?

There are probably better drugs to enjoy Twisted Sister on. And when they come around this summer on their Reunion tour (true) I’ll make use of this hard-earned knowledge.

Once an SMF, always an SMF…