TWISTED SISTER: SNIDER AS USUAL

TWISTED SISTER: SNIDER AS USUAL

FEATURES

Laura Fissinger

They have a new album out, their fourth, Come Out And Play. They’re on an 11 month world tour. So of course Twisted Sister talks to the press. Then again, Dee Snider doesn’t need reasons or excuses to talk; one imagines the man talks in his sleep. At any rate, he ranks as one of the all-time greatest interviews in rock. This time, with a few handy subject headings to break things up a little, we just let Dee go. Last time we looked, he was still going.

SEAN PENN, TAKE NOTE

“I get along great with interviewers. They don’t seem to want much, just to talk and be honest. Seems to me that interviewers hate people who bullshit ’em, or don’t talk. You know, like one of those—‘So how’s the show?’ (Pokerfaced). ‘Big.’ The reporter thinks, ‘That asshole, he made me feel stupid, so I’ll write things.’ So I talk too much, so they can’t get mad.”

JERRY FALWELL, TAKE NOTE

‘‘Hey, I really dig that button (points to one hanging in his open briefcase, that reads: ‘‘Jerry Falwell, suck my dick.)”.

I think it would be especially entertaining if a woman wore it, don’t you?

(laughing) “Oh, I think so. (deep voice) ‘And I don’t even have one. But I’m willing to grow one if he would.’”

WE DO HAIR, AND NAILS, BUT NOT WINDOWS

(Speaking to tape recorder) “Don’t mind me, I’m just putting my nail polish on—I hate to waste time. Are you ready for this shade?—it’s hot pink and they call it ‘L.A. Pink’—hey girls, dig it!”

Before we get serious, I must ask you a stupid question—can I touch your hair?

(Bending over, flinging hair in reporter’s lap) “See? It’s connected to my head. Everybody wants to touch my hair. It’s a lot like Santa Claus—when you get on his lap, you wanna pull his beard and see if it’s real. But I don’t let anybody down, see, like some Santa Clauses, where you pull the beard and it comes off and your hero screwed up! This is the real McCoy. I’m a real rock ’n’ roll hero.”

CHILD ABUSE, SWEDISH STYLE

“How come we never met before?”

No one ever assigned wimpy ole me to Dee Snider.

“Hey, you pronounced my name right! Some people say ‘Schnieder’—drives me out of my fuckin’ mind.”

Nobody gets “Fissinger” right either. “Hey, that’s almost as bad as ‘Yngwie’! (laughs) Hey, OK gang, how much did Yngwie Malmsteen’s parents hate him? When he was born, they go ‘aw, I don’t want this kid!’ ‘Yeah, me neither, let’s name him Yngwie, we’ll fuck him up!! Let’s give him a name spelled nothing like how it’s pronounced so nobody knows how to say it!!”’(uproarious laughter).

NEW CONCEPTS IN ROCK TOURING (OR A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND DECIBELS)

“Yeah, we have a big new set for this tour. We call it Twisted Sister’s New York Street Party Across America,’ because we’re a street band, the LP has a street theme, and the set looks like a New York street. We’ve approached the stage design as a Broadway-show type thing. After you see it you may think it doesn’t have a lot of things, but there’s a lot of things it does have. Seems to me that rock ’n’ roll bands keep escalating—it’s gotten to be like rows and rows of lights and the pyrotechnics and the ramps and the platforms. But it’s also gotten to such a level that the only way you can possibly put more lights up there or more explosions or more ramps is to remove the audience and put ramps and explosions and lights where the audience would be sitting!! Yeah, (laughs), and then send pictures to the crowd outside the building.”

ts I’m a real rock ’n’ roll hero.” —Dee Snider

THEN AGAIN, SOMETIMES A THOUSAND WORDS AREN’T WORTH TOO MUCH

What do you think is the biggest misconception about you in the press?

“Rock press doesn’t have that many misconceptions—they really seem to have honed in on what Twisted Sister is all about, more and more all the time. Of course, some rock critics will tear us apart musically, you know, not appreciating that we play this way became we want to play this way. They say (booming voice) ‘Basic, anthemic, primitive rock.’ Well, that’s what we’re trying to write! Brilliant observation on their part. In reviewing ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It,’ one critic wrote just one sentence: ‘What, from whom?’ Ha, ha, ha. But those misunderstandings are getting fewer. Those people are really understanding what we’re offering, finally. Which is fun, basic enjoyable entertainment. We avoid a lot of the classic rock ’n’ roll topics in our songs—well, I guess rebellion is a classic—but we don’t do a lot of the stupid ones like abuse of women, drinking, drugs, or Satan worship.

TIPPER GORE, PLEASE CALL WILEY COYOTE

I was just amazed when the videos for “I Wanna Rock” and ‘‘We’re Not Gonna Take It” came out, and people actually thought they were violent and evil. Weren’t you just amazed??

(Rolls his eyes and groans) “I was stunned by that reaction. I had no idea it would happen. I conceived of both those videos, I co-wrote them with the director, Marty Callner, who’s a good friend of mine. And when I thought of the ideas it was like ‘Oh, man, people are gonna be hysterical over these!!’ See, ’cause I’m a big Warner Brothers cartoon fan—that’s where the videos got their start. Me and Marty would sit there watching cartoons and going, like, “Hey, hey look\ Sylvester’s wife is draggin’ him down the stairs by his hair, let’s use that, ha ha ha!’ You know the part of ‘I Wanna Rock’ where there’s a grenade and the pin gets thrown? That bit was right out of Wiley Coyote!—he threw the pin, then stuck his fingers in his ear holding the grenade, and then noticed, but he couldn’t get it off his hands. We said—“Hey, let’s use it, people are gonna roll in the aisles!’ I realize the videos depict a certain rebelliousness, but hey! We deliberately tried to create a father and a teacher that were so mean and so obnoxious that everyone would get it. They talk about our violent videos—and for how long was Donald Duck one of the rudest, most obnoxious characters in the world? He curses his brains out!! Maybe it’s a different language—maybe it’s duck talk, but he’s saying ‘eat shit, you motherfucker!’ Hey, Walt Disney knew humor!”

LEADER OF THE POT

“When I meet people I admire, I’m always just honest and straight out, and they always appreciate it. I always appreciate it when somene comes up to me and says honestly what they feel. I like that much better than when people pretend they don’t know who you are— (laughs). ‘Oh, Dee Something-or-other? Yeah, you’re with that Twisted something.’ And the guy’s got blond hair and tooth earrings and you say ‘Who are you kidding?? You probably have a picture of i me in your bathroom.’”

COME OUT AND PLAY,

THEN GO HOME AND THINK “I talk about things like nuclear war or corporate ethics in songs like ‘Kill Or Be Killed’ and people say ‘you’re political.’ I say I deal with the politics of the individual. I try to get people to stop looking at the other guy, worrying about what he’s got and what he thinks.

“Look to yourself. Find yourself. It goes all the way from the individual to the U.S. looking at Russia. We spend more on defense than we do on feeding our own people! If I can get people to change their ideas here, maybe they’ll carry those new ideas into their lives, their work, their politics. That’s what I’m trying to do—fix things on a personal level, and then hopefully it’ll go on from there. A positive influence is not such a bad rock ’n’ roll thing to be. Alice Cooper helped me. I’m trying to follow suit. I needed some help. (Laughs) I still need help.”

“You probably have a picture of me in your bathroom.” —Dee Snider