It’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock ‘n roll.

In Jay Jay French’s case, ten years.

Dee Snider? From the time he joined it took six plus years to get a deal, and then the record company went bankrupt.

I don’t care about Twisted Sister, I occasionally get e-mail from Jay Jay French, who doesn’t like “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” but watch a documentary on the band? It’d be a seventy five minute lovefest with no perspective, fuggedaboutit.

But I kept getting e-mail about it. That it was on Netflix, and I had to see it, to the point I fired it up, that’s how everything works in this world, now, more than ever, it’s word of mouth. And if you’re on the selling side…you’re knocking on every door, you’re in stasis, not getting ahead, and then the right person crosses paths and…

It begins.

So I’m waiting for Jason Flom. A great storyteller, I heard Jason tell the tale at a UJA function, about singing the act, jumpstarting his career.

Atlantic didn’t care. Doug Morris told him to stop mentioning the band or he’d be fired.

But Jason never appeared!

I’m watching the flick, I can see it’s longer than two hours, do I really want to make the commitment? And it’s getting boring, they’re going into such minutiae, but I’m gonna wait for Jason…

And then it becomes a joke.

THEY DON’T GET SIGNED UNTIL THE LAST FIFTEEN MINUTES!

It begins…

In 1972. When your only options were the movies or a band. That’s it, There wasn’t a soul alive who hadn’t been to a club to hear a band. Manny’s and Sam Ash were kept alive by the wannabes, never mind the local shop in the middle of nowhere.

But Jay Jay, et al, were in New York. Where the Manhattan clubs were small and didn’t pay.

So they went to the island, as in Long, as in put down even more than New Jersey if you live on the east coast. And yes, the band ended up playing in NJ too!

Jay Jay went to see the Dolls and they sucked. They did! It was a hype, a scene, Jay Jay thought he could do better than that.

And there begins our adventure.

Some go to college. Some become professionals.

And everybody else scrounges for a living.

Rock and roll is played without a net. Those who survive…give them props, they’ve been through the war, endured unheralded battles that kill most comers. But still, getting everybody else to care? Damn near impossible.

They’re selling 2,000 tickets. 3,000. Today, labels would be all over them, because today you prove your worth on the road and if you can put butts in the seats, everybody’s interested. But back then it was all about recordings, did you have talent, could you write hit songs?

Twisted Sister was a performance band. Their goal was to destroy all others. They had to be the best, they had to conquer.

And the fans testify.

The fans will crack you up. With their dems and dose. These are New Yorkers, the rank and file. We hear so much about the richies that we forget the average outnumber them. Twisted Sister was a band for the average.

They played almost every night. They got laid, Jay Jay and Dee didn’t drink, but the others did. They assaulted the audience, they needed to win.

But victory, the big time, always eluded their grasp.

They ruled the tri-state area, but beyond that…crickets. And it didn’t pay to expand into new territories, they were making too much back home.

And it’s so AMATEURISH! Outfits handmade. Posters and other tchotchkes done by those on hand. When you’ve got nothing, you lead with little, and you try to advance along the way.

In the professional world… You earn your degree and lord it over the rest of us.

I earned the degree.

But I was bitten by rock and roll.

It was nothing like today. Music is everywhere, but then it was a religion, the only thing that spoke to our generation. Sell out? The corporations wanted nothing to do with us, the Fortune 500 weren’t lining up, they were staying away. And then the music built and built and took over the world.

And then it cratered, like everything too big for its britches.

Twisted Sister lost its record deal, half a decade after signing with Atlantic, cast into the dustbin, the professionals needing something new.

But the fans never forget. This music changed our lives.

Everyone interested in making it in music must watch this documentary. Because this is how it really is. The struggle, the dead ends, the loss of optimism, the jadedness as you soldier on. Only now do we think you can do it without paying your dues. And sure, the machine props up nobodies, but then those nobodies are replaced by other nobodies. Those who last… Worked hard at it. This was their only option. They could never give up. Twisted Sister persevered when no one cared, when they were losing audience because they were no longer the new thing.

After realizing the band wasn’t gonna be signed until the end of the flick, when Flom finally showed up, it dawned on me that what I’d watched, however down the rabbit hole at times, was the journey of every successful act. It’s boring, there are tons of details. So many blind alleys until you hit the big time and everybody pays attention.

I couldn’t turn “We Are F***ing Twisted Sister” off.

And you won’t be able to either.

Because in it you’ll recognize yourself, your passion, your belief.

That’s you.

And that’s me.

I wanna rock.

And as much as I waver, as much as I tell myself it’s not the same and I’ve got to get out…

I watch something like this and I realize there’s no choice.

I’m a lifer.

All Songs +1: The Beatles Are Live And Sounding Better Than Ever

What kind of crazy fucked up world do we live in where a fifty year old recording of a defunct band trumps the work of the modern masters?

One in which most acts play to track in search of perfection and have lived their entire life in the spotlight, one in which talent is secondary to image and you fake it to make it.

Imagine being able to sing to qualify.

I constantly get e-mail from lame singers pointing me to their lyrics, and when I tell them the vocal is substandard and the words don’t carry the track, they point me to Bob Dylan…and I respond yes, Dylan had a less than perfect voice, but he was THE BEST LYRICIST OF ALL TIME!

And Dylan was famous for being one and done, doing very few takes, he wanted to catch the essence and then move on. Comping vocals back in ’65? Give me a break. Not only was live about energy, but recordings too, it was about capturing the magic, evidencing humanity.

I’m shocked how good this live version of “A Hard Day’s Night” is. My modern cynicism tells me it was overdubbed, fixed in the studio after the fact, like most live albums, but then I remember John Lennon’s been gone for decades and George has departed this mortal coil too.

But they left us this magical cut, a window into what once was, that will drop your jaw.

It was the rehearsal, all those gigs in Hamburg, all that work when no one was paying attention, experimenting, honing their chops. Whereas today everybody’s playing in plain sight, putting videos up on YouTube before puberty, believing they deserve attention, wondering why they haven’t already gone to the top of the chart.

“Meet The Beatles” blew it up in America. “The Beatles’ Second Album” came shortly thereafter. Diehard fans went back and bought the VeeJay LP, “Introducing The Beatles,” and by the summer of ’64, we were all on the same page, Beatlemania reigned, and “A Hard Day’s Night” was released.

First came the album. A truncated version on United Artists in the States. There were too many instrumental interludes. But the Beatle originals, they were devastating. Even sans the magical “Things We Said Today” and the outright tear of “Any Time At All” which were included in the UK LP but were absent from the American iteration.

And it all started with the title track, “A Hard Day’s Night.”

There was that opening chord…

All baby boomers hear it and immediately think of the movie, the four lads running down the street, the excitement, that bubbling adrenaline, which overtakes your body and excites you, drowning out all intellectualism, you’re running on feeling.

And you couldn’t get enough of that, so you went to see the act live. Assuming you could get a ticket.

But this was when PA’s were laughable, before we expected you to be able to play, never mind sing. Remember CSNY’s vocals in the “Woodstock” movie? Our expectations were lowered in person, although we were thrilled to be there.

And then we find the progenitor, before Peter Grant flipped the remuneration, before Showco and the Clair Brothers built infrastructure, blowing the roof off a joint that had no roof to begin with!

There’s that CHORD! There’s no way they should be able to recreate that live. And then John starts to sing…LIKE HE BELIEVES IT! He’s not punching the clock, he’s trying to CONVINCE YOU! Reveling in his expertise, knowing he’s blowing minds. And the harmonies… Really? How can they do this?

And then we have Paul’s soulful middle eight, whew!

And then the band is locked into it once again. Just four guys, no support, yet it’s enough.

Greatness is always enough.

George is not missing notes in the break, Ringo is propulsively keeping it all on track, a band without a solid drummer is no band at all.

It’s like being jetted back in a time machine to an era with no cell phones, no social media, when if you weren’t at the show you completely missed it. Talk about FOMO? It was much worse back then.

And the girls are screaming, the band throws in bits of improvisation, and you’re listening believing you missed something, something incredible.

And then you remember you were there, when Beatlemania took the country by storm, when optimism ruled, when the youth stole the country from the establishment and ran with it.

And it was all powered by music.

And the Beatles were there first.

P.S. If you haven’t already, pick up Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” and read the section on the Beatles, wherein the writer posits the Fab Four played more gigs before they were famous than most bands today play in their entire career. There’s your 10,000 hour rule right there. You become world class by putting your time in via hard practice, winning over audiences who don’t care. That’s what the Beatles had to do, play endlessly, converting those who didn’t care. That’s your job.

CREATIVE TRUMPS FINANCIAL

Tom Freston is one of the best managers of all time. Not only did he oversee the spectacular growth at MTV Networks, he left his charges alone, they made the decisions, he was the cheerleader, the advisor, but they were empowered. MTV ruled the music business, its programmer was the most powerful person in the industry, threw off boatloads of cash and was the cultural denominator for not only the nation, but the world. Furthermore, Freston was ahead of his viewers. Despite watchers clamoring for more clips, Tom said MTV was never gonna air videos 24/7 anymore, since they’d become an on demand item on the web, which they most certainly have, wait for a video on cable while it’s available on demand on YouTube? And in a world where there’s almost never a second act, where Walter Yetnikoff and Tommy Mottola and Donnie Ienner lose their jobs and disappear, Freston has been the enabler of Vice, which is not only cool, but burgeoning, about to take over youth news by being edgy and accurate, delivering what you really want to see, as opposed to providing bland talking heads no one believes in. If Freston was still CEO, Viacom would not be in this snit, he would have pivoted, he would have changed, because in media he not busy being born is busy dying. This is the guy who thought MySpace was overpriced and passed and lost his job because he didn’t get on the bandwagon and didn’t lie about corporate projections. Then a manager, Philippe Dauman, came in and the whole thing went to pot, as Dauman was overpaid in the process. We’ve seen this movie many times before. Doug Morris was forced out at Warner and then built Universal. Few bands survive the loss of their front man. Don’t focus on the bottom line, focus on the TALENT!

SEX TRUMPS EVERYTHING

Sumner Redstone was thinking with the little head. All these execs do, and so do the athletes. The most powerful people are oftentimes the spouses and girlfriends. Sex is biology, everybody is vulnerable, the person on the pedestal is driven by the same things you and me are.

EVERYONE DIES

I don’t know whether Sumner Redstone is capable or not, but I do know he thought he’d live forever, famously said so, and really didn’t have a proper succession plan in place. Your time will be done, no matter how powerful you are today. Train your successors, who might do a better job than you. That’s right, Lucian Grainge runs Universal better than Doug Morris did. Because not only does he know the creative side, he’s aware of tech and the changing landscape and he is leveraging his power at Universal for change, like trying to bring Japan into the twenty first century in terms of music formats. Sure, Doug Morris survives at Sony, he’s a great music executive, don’t get me wrong. But Morris was replaceable and Sony is just a record company with hits, Universal is so much more.

YOU DON’T SELL THE CORPORATE JEWELS

Paramount, Dauman wanted to sell half to make the stock jump. But once you start selling that which got you to the prom that still has asset value, you’re in terminal decline. Sure, Paramount is presently moribund, but that’s fixable with a few hits. Shuffle the deck, change the systems, nothing is preventing Paramount from succeeding, it is not an institutional problem. It’d be like selling your car to make rent and then being unable to get to work. Think to the future, not the past.

STOCK PRICE IS NOT EVERYTHING

Sumner split Viacom in two, creating CBS and Viacom. Turns out that Les Moonves is not only a programming whiz, but a financial one too, he rides herd over Wall Street. But today it would be better if the two were together, and because of gross differences in stock price they may not be able to be reunited. So the loss is palpable. Never mind that Moonves would be a better manager of Viacom’s assets than Dauman. Building an enterprise is one thing, keeping it running is another. I give Sumner credit for sticking by his people, it’s just that with Dauman he picked the wrong person.

THE SECOND GENERATION IS CLUELESS

Sumner legendarily promoted from within, but the fact that Tom Dooley was given the reins shows that Shari Redstone and her handlers are clueless. This is repeating the formula. They need a creative guy, not someone who can make the trains run on time. You don’t need to calm the waters, you need a great leap forward. At least Steve Jobs gave Tim Cook responsibilities before his death, Cook was experienced. But Cook is everything that’s wrong with Apple, he can make the trains run on time but he can’t lay new track, everybody’s going where he is now, but will they in the future, of course not!

HUBRIS KNOWS NO BOUNDS

There’s a fiction that if we expose the heinous activities of the rich, they’ll be shamed into doing the right thing. But not only was Dauman one of America’s highest paid execs before the turmoil, he insisted on costing the company money to fight for his failed vision before he settled and walked away with a stratospheric payment. You and me would be embarrassed, but not this prick. Enough is never enough. And if you think this guy is gonna resurface, you’re a fan of Mickey Schulhof and Michael Fuchs.

COURT IS LEVERAGE

No one wants an extended legal fight. You just shoot your arrows and wait for a few decisions to go your way and then settle. The amazing thing is how those with a losing hand take so long to realize this, like Dauman, like Kesha. If you’re gonna fight in court, you’d better be able to win, rulings have to go your way or don’t even start. And never forget, when it comes to high profile cases, you’ll always find an attorney to take them on, lawyers like the glory too, everything’s show business today.

NOTHING IS FOREVER

Not MTV or Nickelodeon. The past is paved with enterprises that have gone under, you’ve got to constantly adjust and prepare for the future.

WE’RE GETTING OLDER EVERY DAY

MTV fired its audience, not its employees. Yup, the beloved veejays, they were all canned, they were too old, MTV had a young demo it wanted to maintain. “Rolling Stone” was the bible of the baby boomers, it’s irrelevant to their children. He who grays with his audience is destined for irrelevancy.

DISTRIBUTION RULES

On a limited cable system, Viacom was a giant. When distribution moved online, not only did Viacom miss the boat, no one goes to mtv.com, it lost its monopoly.

Lucian Grainge sent out an email to Universal executives today ending all future exclusives with Universal artists.