Jay Jay French - Twisted Business: The Soul of Twisted Sister and the Art of Reinvention

TWISTED BUSINESS

Twisted Business
Copyright 2021 by John French

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, please contact RosettaBooks at .

First edition published 2021 by RosettaBooks

Cover design by John Cappadona and Janet Evans-Scanlon

Book design by Janet Evans-Scanlon

Photos page 1, 27, 56/57, 70/71, 73, 142 by Michael Kagan

Photo page 12 by Jeff Segall

Photo page 95 by Jon Hichborn

Under the Blade album art by Fin Costello

Stay Hungry, Come Out and Play, and Still Hungry album art by Mark Weiss

Live at Hammersmith album art by Michael Kagan

A Twisted Christmas album art by John Cappadona

All other photos courtesy of the author's personal collection

ISBN-13 (print): 978-1-9481-2283-2
ISBN-13 (ebook): 978-0-7953-5309-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Names: French, Jay Jay, 1952- author. | Farber, Steve, author.

Title: Twisted business : lessons from my life in rock n roll / John Jay

Jay French and Steve Farber.

Description: First edition. | New York : RosettaBooks, 2021. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2021027483 (print) | LCCN 2021027484 (ebook) | ISBN

9781948122832 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780795353093 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: French, Jay Jay, 1952- | GuitaristsUnited

StatesBiography. | Rock musiciansUnited StatesBiography. | Success

in business. | Twisted Sister (Musical group) | LCGFT: Autobiographies.

Classification: LCC ML419.F745 A3 2021 (print) | LCC ML419.F745 (ebook) |

DDC 782.42166092 [B]dc23

www.RosettaBooks.com

Other books by Steve Farber

The Radical Leap

The Radical Edge

Greater Than Yourself

Love Is Just Damn Good Business

And to Mom and DadEvaline French and
Louis Segall. You both set the path that
I wandered (and sometimes stumbled) down, and shined a light bright enough for me
to see my future

Introduction

I have been turned down more times than a bedsheet in a brothel, and come back more times than Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, and Michael Myers!

Jay Jay French

I was sitting in my older brother Jeffs apartment a couple of years ago. Jeff, who is a decade older than I, and I may have come from the same womb, but we grew up to live very different lives. Hes been a teacher all his adult life, and I have beenas youre about to hearin the rock and roll business. We never really talked about it much, but on this evening, for some reason, he turned to me and said, How do you do what you do?

What do you mean, how do I do what I do?

Seriously, he said. How do you do it? I dont understand your life.

Well, I play guitar, I said.

No, no. Your life, I dont understand your life.

What do you mean, you dont understand my life?

Well, lets go back for a second, he said. Youre fifteen years old, and you start dealing drugs and then you drop out of high school, and you sue the board of education for violating your constitutional rights for handing out an underground newspaper, and your drug use spirals out of control, and youre just dealing, dealing, dealing and making a lot of money. And youre dealing heroin, and you take a ton of LSD and you smoke so much pot it looks like Chernobyl in your bedroom. And just when it looks like its all falling apart, you decide to just give up drugs and start a rock band, but its not just a regular rock band, its a transvestite rock band.

So you go from being a hippie to a female impersonator, and you join a band in New Jersey, and you call yourselves Twisted Sister, and for the next ten years, you kill yourself to become a famous band. And ten years goes by, youre slugging along, and finally you get a record deal. Now youre thirty years old and your band just takes off with Were Not Gonna Take It and I Wanna Rock on MTV, and now you become one of the biggest bands in the world. And then just at the peak of everything, when everything looks great, it all falls apart. You get divorced, the bands sued for millions of dollars, you guys break up, you wind up filing for bankruptcy, and you have nothing.

And then, unbelievably, you decide to get married again, but this time you need to start all over because youre out of the music business, so you get a job as a stereo salesman, and youre selling stereo equipment. Everythings moving fine. You have a kid who seems to be doing okay, but youre selling stereos. Then out of nowhere, Sevendust, an unknown band from Atlanta, calls you, and they want you to produce their record, and youve never produced a record before, but you agree to produce this record, and you decide to manage them, and the record sells almost a million copies.

Now youre making more money than youve ever made in Twisted Sister, and you buy a weekend house in Long Island, and now your career is going on the upswing, and everything is looking absolutely amazing. And then Sevendust fires you. You get Afib and you need a heart operation, and your wife leaves you for another guy. And then everything falls completely apart again. And just when things are completely trashed, your band decides to reunite for a benefit for September 11 to raise money for the Widows and Orphans Fund for the New York City Police and Fire Departments and Emergency Services. And the band gets back together, the reaction worldwide is astonishing, and all of a sudden everybody in the world who you thought could care less about you guys because you hadnt been together in eleven years wants you back. And for the last fourteen years youve become one of the biggest bands in the world on the festival circuit, and your career has just gone on and on like this.

This, to this, to this, to this, to this, to this, he said, moving his hand up and down like an elevator.

True, I said. I was turned down more times than a bedsheet in a brothel and came back more times than Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, and Michael Myers.

I, on the other hand, was a schoolteacher, said Jeff. I wanted a trajectory that was nice and even. I figured if I could get a job as a teacher, I would have maybe a twenty- or thirty-year career. (Which he did.) And Id get a great pension, and then maybe I could get a private school gig. (Which he did, along with another great pension.)

My life has been smooth and even, but your life is like a roller coaster, Jay Jay. I have one question for you.

Whats that?

How the hell do you do it?

And I looked at him and said, Jesus Christ. I dont know. That sounds freakin awful.

But then I thought about it.

Well, you know what, Jeff? Im an entrepreneur, and entrepreneurs are born with asbestos underwear. We can take the heat. And the world needs people like you, and the world needs people like me.

How about you? Were you born with asbestos underwear, or do you need to hop online and order yourself a pair? Or are you more of the steady Jeff type? These are good questions to ask yourself as you read my story and, I hope, reflect on your own. Each of us has our own unique story to tell, to be sure. Mine is just a little more, um, out of the ordinary than most peoples. And there are lessons to be learned at every twist and turn.