You and your family are still on Long Island, so you must love it.
Yes. Long Island is an amazingly diverse place. If you say you've been to Long Island, and you've only been to one town, you haven't been here. There's central Long Island, the North Shore of Long Island,the Gold Coast, etc. You go out to the North Fork of Long Island and it's farm and wine country. The South Fork has Hollywood celebrities and the Hamptons and the rich and famous. The island is so diverse and interesting.
Since I've been unable to escape, you know what? People within the island... young people especially... should realize that they are living somewhere pretty amazing, and that amazing people have come from Long island and have gone on to do really amazing things. And it's not just in the field of music...it's also the arts and sciences and more. This is where creativity breeds: in the suburbs.
What's your advice to anyone who wants to get into the music business... other than "Run"?
Really, you've just got to believe in yourself. I've got a tattoo on my arm that says, "Illegitimi non carborundum," which means, "Never let the bastards wear you down."
You've got to believe in yourself, but you've also got to be honest with yourself. Don't go smashing your head into the wall thinking that you've really got something, when in your heart of hearts, you know you really don't have what's going on.
But if you've got something to share with people, you've got to stick with it, believe in it and eventually, you will succeed.
Are you doing anything with Twisted Sister these days?
Twisted reunited several years ago for some reunion shows. Now, just like Kiss, we're like a fart in a paper bag... the smell never goes away.
In 2002, it was like, we're getting together for a couple of shows, and now... [years later]... I'm leaving for Brazil, South America. We do about 20-25 shows a year. We do almost exclusively festivals and special shows.
It's great. We're not together long enough to get on each other's nerves, so it's good to see the guys, and we laugh and then we go home and go about our lives. So we do occasional shows and I have like a week's worth of shows coming up in South America.
Do you have all the original musicians from Twisted Sister? No one's O.D.'d?
We have all five original guys, by the grace of various medications, operations and trusses and braces. We're all up there in one capacity or another.
