“I am not doing a lot of interviews these days, but when they told that we had a request from Greece I said “yes” immediately, because I knew it was going to be you”, Dee Snider says. He stands up and full of pride he says: “wait, I want to show you something: this is the best gift I ever got and I always have it here in my office… not just now, that we are talking, but all the time!” at the same time he is holding the original Warriors leather vest we gave him the second time Twisted Sister played in Greece in 2006. “That’s nothing to everything that you gave us with your music all those years”, we tell him, and that’s how our chat with the legendary Dee Snider begins… (you can watch the video below) Interview: Sakis Nikas, Editing/Post Production: OneManArmy
Rockpages.gr: Dee, I wanna start the interview by asking you a few things about “Frats”. Given that the setting of the novel is in Baldwin, Long Island -a place where you grew up- any chance of Bobby (the main character) being a friend of yours?
Dee Snider: Well, it’s based on actual events. This is what I’m doing these days for creativity. I’m a writer. I write books like “Frats” about which I’ll just tell you a little bit about. And then we’ll move on to rock’n’roll.
I write. I’ve written stage plays, screenplays -I’m working on a new one now- , I’ve done written many screenplays. I’ve had things produced. So, my passion is writing, but it’s not writing music anymore. I want to be behind the scenes, behind the camera, not in front of it. So, even the book spreads while it’s it’s based on Baldwin, Long Island, where I grew up during the years I grew up with actual events that happened while I lived there. Things that I witnessed and lived through.
It’s not about me. I use a fictional character named Bobby Kovax for the stories because, all these these stories are put into one person, or one bad guy. It was actually things that happened from many different people. And I just told the story through fictitious characters.
I started writing in 1984 with the Twisted Sister videos, and then I started working on screenplays. So, it’s approaching 40 years. I’ve got really good at writing, and that’s why I felt I was ready for a novel. And it’s it’s not about rock’n’roll and it’s not about Dee Snider.
If you read English, it’s very readable. And the reviews from the readers are awesome. People say they can’t put it down. It’s a page turner… And, and that’s really all you can ask. You hope that maybe it’ll be a hit, a best seller. Maybe a movie studio will discover it and make a movie out of it, because it’s like the movie “The Outsiders”. It was a book originally. It’s like very much like The Outsiders. That was about gang violence, greaser style, gang violence. This is ‘70s suburban gang violence.
One of the many things that I created and working on, -I forgot because it’s still being developed-, is a children’s animated series called “Monsters Rock”. I was approached because they were like, “you’re a dad”. I said, “yeah, and a granddad!”. “We want to come up with a cool show for kids, one that parents won’t want to kill themselves when they’re watching it with them, or it’s playing in the background. Do you have any ideas?” I said, “I have ideas. Plenty of ideas”. And one of the first things I said is, “you guys have talked to create a production company. Beyond me, why you hire the people who failed in the music industry to write the music for children’s shows? The Wiggles couldn’t make it as a rock band, so let’s get them to write children’s songs. Everybody wants to be a rock star; and what do they do afterwards?”
I said, “hire people who wrote hit rock songs to write songs for kids, and parents won’t hear it so much”. So I co-created this show and I’m writing all the music for it. So, you may be hearing some original twisted Dee Snider music. But, what I’ve done is… You know, everybody loves AC/DC… AC/ DC transcends everything. AC/DC’s groove, AC/DC’s vibe. So, I’m writing songs for the show and they’re AC/DC songs, but with words for kids. So, people are hearing the songs and they’re just flipping out because this is great… “It doesn’t make me want to kill myself”!
Rockpages.gr: I have read your autobiography and I gotta say that it’s one of the best ones out there with quite possibly the most powerful opening chapter! Let’s go back to 1993. Picture this: I am in Greece, I have bought a year before the debut album by Widowmaker and I truly believed that all was well in the Dee Snider universe. So, it was a shock for me to read that you were completely broke back then. Was it the absolute rock bottom for you back then?
Dee Snider: Early 1991-92 I was broke. When Widowmaker started I was broke trying to come back. I made a lot of money with twisted Sister in the ‘80s. I can’t blame managers, I can’t blame accountants, I can’t blame drugs, I can’t blame alcohol. It was all spent like a rock star baby. You don’t think it’ll ever end.
Then, you wake up one day and the band’s no longer together. The music scene has changed. The money’s run out. Nobody’s gonna lend you any more money, or advance you any more money. And things got really, really dark for me. So it’s very interesting. The book starts at like the darkest moment in my life, really, which is right around 1992 when you’re saying you discover me.
And I ask myself, over and over again: “how did I get here?” And then it goes back to the beginning and you see my whole rise. But then, it shows how everything comes apart and how I lost everything. But, don’t cry for me Greece! I’m happy, healthy, rich and famous. And, you know, I discovered all other things like voice over, radio, acting, Twisted Sister got back together and suddenly the interest in what was old was suddenly new again. So, I’ve been very blessed in my life, and I have a really good life, that allows me to say “I am retiring”. I have retired and not come back.
Many of my peers aren’t as blessed as me. They weren’t able to regroup, do other things, discover other talents, find fortune and they are forced to keep playing. Sometimes, many times it’s not as glorious as it was at their peak. They’ve gone from headlining arenas to playing a local club. And they have no other choice. They don’t have the money and it’s what they have to do. So, I’m very blessed that I don’t have to keep playing.
Rockpages.gr: By the way, will we be treated with a third solo record because the truth is that you have spoiled us with “For The Love of Metal” and “Leave A Scar”?
Dee Snider: Don’t hold your breath! I feel like I’m done. I said that after “For The Love Of Metal” and then COVID hit and I called Jamey Jasta up and he said he wanted to do another record. But right, right now I’m feeling very, very comfortable in who I am, what I am, what I’m doing. And how I’m spending my life. I’m not feeling this urge. And it helps that those last two albums “For The Love of Metal” and “Leave A Scar” and then the live record “For The Love of Metal – Live really”, I feel I put an exclamation mark on the end of my career. I think it’s thanks to Jamey Jasta, you know, encouraging me to get back to true, real metal and what I really was about. My last two records are very powerful. The performances are there, everything’s there. And as a legacy, I like seeing those albums at the end of my recording career. Because, you know, I mean I’m always very honest, even to the point where I get in trouble with other bands for being too honest.
And I also listen to people being honest about me. I’m telling you about having no money and being broke. But, the end of Twisted Sister, as much fun as it was and whatever, our last record is a “Christmas” record and it was fun. And I’m not ashamed of it. I loved it, you know? But, then I went and left Twisted Sister and I did a solo album, which was kind of someone challenged me to do, like a mainstream rock record, “We are the ones” and it’s a good record, but it wasn’t really Dee Snider. It was an attempt to do something more mainstream. So, it could have ended with those records and I would have felt that that was really not the way I’d like to go out. It’s because of “The Love Of Metal” and “Leave A Scar” that I feel good about walking away and saying, “yeah, take that! That’s Dee Snider. Remember that? I was 65 years old or whatever. That’s Dee Snider and good night”. So, those records are very important to me.
Rockpages.gr: So, “For The Love Of Metal” and “Leave A Scar” are your last recordings ever?
Dee Snider: I don’t see any going back. I just see where I am in my life and the things I’m doing and the things I want to do creatively. I’m supposed to direct my first movie. My drive is really to keep doing screenplays and novels and things like that and get off the stage, behind the camera and be a person on that side of things. I’ve been doing radio for over 30 years now, as well. I’m in my radio studio right now, so they give me satisfaction. I don’t feel like, “oh, I’m missing out”. I feel I’m being satisfied creatively. I feel very creative and I feel very productive. So I’m very excited about what Dee Snider has on the horizon moving forward. So as long as I have things like that, I really don’t think about going back to doing what I did before.
Rockpages.gr: Do you realize that by saying that you are making your fans upset and sad, knowing that they won’t see you playing live again?
Dee Snider: I love you guys, I love you… I love you people who want me to keep going, I get it. But, if we really analyze why you want me to keep going it’s because you have great memories of great shows and great music. And that’s why you want me to keep going. But, look at the bands that are out there and still going. How many of them have disappointed you when you see them? And they are running tapes now, and they’re not as good as they used to be… They don’t live up to the memory. And in fairness to them, they’re in their sixties, they’re in their seventies. How could they possibly be as good as they were in the twenties and thirties? But that’s our memories. I’m working against memories of really intense, aggressive live performances, which is what I think I did best. I’m a frontman for a band.
One of my greatest compliments was Lemmy Kilmister, who saw the Beatles at the Cavern Club and the Stones at the Marquee Club. He roadied for Jimi Hendrix… He’s seen it all. And he said… he didn’t say it with this voice (imitating Lemmy’s voice), “you know Dee, you’re one of the best three frontmen I’ve ever seen, and the best at talking to a crowd”. No one better than Dee Snider talking to a crowd. That meant the world to me because I do consider that to be what I’m really good at. But, I have a style that’s very aggressive and very intense, and if I can’t keep that level of intensity up, I don’t want to see smiles on the faces of the audience. I never want to see disappointment. And I hear the stories… Just go on social media. You hear the comments about -I’m not going to name bands- who are still out there who’ve been farewell touring forever, or reuniting after they said goodbye. And people are posting terrible YouTube videos of these people, of heroes, and write horrible things about them and showing how they’re falling apart, their weakness. I don’t want to disappoint you guys, and I don’t want to be subjected to that either. I don’t want having myself memorialized because my best days have not been memorialized. There was no gazillion social media cameras in the world back in 1980s where people could capture this: Snider, in his prime in his twenties. So there’s a lot of great stuff from my fifties and sixties, you know. But but he said, I know that I can’t keep doing it at that level, and I don’t want to see those postings on there, like “Dee isn’t what he used to be”.
Rockpages.gr: I understand what you said that you don’t want people to see you as an aging rock star on stage but you are in great shape and after all so many of your idols like Alice Cooper for example is still kicking ass on stage…
Dee Snider: Is he really kicking ass? Now, people this isn’t a criticism about Alice. Please! Every time I do one of these interviews the next day I get Google alerts… There’s a radio personality named Eddie Trunk, a heavy metal radio personality in America and I have spoken about this at length and his observation was this: “in fairness to you Dee, you really did paint yourself in a corner”. He said, where Alice Cooper’s stage persona was always the creepy kind of guy. He sort of slinks and walks around the stage. It works as well now, in his seventies, as it worked in his twenties and thirties. You, Dee Snider, you were always shot out of a cannon. You, Dee Snider, set a bar up here of thrashing and rocking. So, you created this expectation that I understand you’re concerned about living up to.
So, Alice is still amazing, but his persona was never like mine. But, here’s a funny thing. Alice Cooper is one of my biggest inspirations. There was no videos back then. You only saw them live. I never got to see Alice Cooper live, so all I had was photographs and I would see these pictures of Alice and I was like, “that’s going to be me”. And then I figure, okay, what is he doing here? (Ed, he is talking about seeing Alice Cooper on different places on stage) So he must… (he pretends he is running) I didn’t figure out how he got to that point. He was on the microphone now, sitting on the stage making a face. He’s got a shirt in his mouth, okay, how do I get there? So I said, he must have been running around jumping up seven stories up from the ground.
When I finally saw Alice Cooper, in the 2000s, I watched him and said: ‘He’s nothing like I thought he would be!” I thought I was imitating Alice Cooper… I’m nothing like Alice Cooper, which is probably a good thing.
Rockpages.gr: If “Love Is For Suckers” was released today, would you think it would have a more positive feedback?
Dee Snider: “Love Is For Suckers” was supposed to be a Dee Snider solo record. I had a project I was putting together, it was called Me And The Boys and was there’s a song on the record called “Me And The Boys”. So, the management and the record label pressured us to make this record a Twisted record. They forced us back into the studio when emotionally we were not ready to work with each other again. We needed a break. AJ Pero was doing a side project called Cities and he was -unbeknownst to me- he was given the choice of either staying with Cities, or quitting Cities and being a Twisted Sister. For me, he could have done both. I don’t see why he couldn’t do a side project. But anyway, I don’t know. It was the management. Somebody told him that, so he quit. So, now AJ is not there and it’s my music which I wrote for a solo album, not for Twisted Sister and Twisted Sister who are not getting along and are forced back in the studio. We’re not even in the same room together most of the time. Nobody’s hanging out. There’s no camaraderie, there’s no friendship.
So, if the record company and management allowed that to be what it was supposed to be, I believe the band would have stayed together. I believe AJ would have done Cities, I would have done Me And The Boys, and then a couple of years would have gone by, we would have been fresh, we would be OK, we would have come back in the studio and we would have kept recording Twisted Sister music. We would have continued on. But, because they forced that record to be a Twisted Sister record, it ultimately failed the band. I left the band, we didn’t finish the tour. Everything was wrong. It was the wrong time. Everything was wrong for that record.
Rockpages.gr: How important was the role of MTV and how much did a producer’s input affect the shaping of an album back in the day?
Dee Snider: MTV was an afterthought. It grew up “Stay Hungry”. Writing that record in around ’82 -I always wrote ahead-… So, when we were recording “Under the Blade”, I was sitting in the van writing the music, the song Ideas for “You Can’t Stop Rock and Roll”. In the downtime of “You Can’t Stop Rock and Roll” recordings I was working on the music that would become “Stay Hungry”. That fell off the rails.
As another contributor to the demise of Twisted Sister… because when we brought Tom Werman in to produce, Mark Mendoza, whose job was to stay in the studio with the producer and make sure the record was right, he refused. He did not want Tom to be the producer and he refused to be in the studio. So, instead of me working on the next record at a time when we were still struggling, “Stay Hungry” had not had success yet, I had to go into the studio and with Tom Warman and baby sit the record, and I wasn’t able to write, and I would have written a very different record at that time.
So, when I finally came to write, “Come Out And Play”, I was rich. I was famous. I was sitting by a pool with five cars and two boats. I was not hungry. And so, that affected the record. And I love “Come Out And Play”, I never released an album I didn’t love. And I love “Love Is For Suckers”. But, at the same time, if I had written “Come Out And Play”, when I was we were recording “Stay Hungry”, it would have been a different record. But, the whole thing changed and derailed.
MTV was a thing, but it wasn’t like a big thing. And when we finished “Stay Hungry”, we were introduced to Marty Callner and the record company had done a deal with him to do a rock video and a live performance for one of their bands. And the three bands he was choosing from was in INXS, Zebra and Twisted Sister. So, he played these bands to his son, who’s in the video, that’s the kid who turns into me in the video (Ed, Dax Callner was the boy in the video for “We’re Not Gonna Take It”) and his son flipped over Twisted Sister. So he went with Twisted Sister. So, the point with MTV being, yeah, it was like, rock videos. But, you didn’t design an album for a rock video, you figured out how to do a rock video to what you already had.
Rockpages.gr: What changed in the ‘90s and caused the decline of rock music?
Dee Snider: I ultimately blame the record labels and the bands for going along with, but it’s hard to go against the record label. So, when Twisted Sister got signed to Atlantic Records, the hair metal, glam metal thing wasn’t a thing. We were just a metal band. We toured. We were an American band coming out of the NWOBHM. We’re in England, so we’re touring with Metallica, Iron Maiden. We’re touring with metal bands and nobody even thinks that’s unusual. They’re not going: “what’s Twisted Sister doing with Iron Maiden?” No, we were just that weird metal band that wore the make-up and Iron Maiden did their thing. And same with Metallica. Nobody thought twice. If you cut to the late eighties, you would never think of putting Poison on a Metallica show! You would never see a glam band out there with a metal band. But, in the early eighties, it was very normal back then.
Of course, record companies, when something starts to connect with the audience and metal, you know, with the with the Ozzfest, the metal day, the way it started to resonate… So, record companies started looking around for other bands, because they had this idea that if one band is good, 100 of the same band is even better, which isn’t the case! One band’s good, that’s it! You don’t sign bands because they look like another band, or they sound like another band. But that’s how record companies work.
So they started signing… you know what’s going on in Los Angeles… You know all about it. They’re signing everything with a flying V and a bouffant hairdo in a pair of spandex… So, it’s all the same pattern. So, now it’s release the credibility track, then released the power ballad. And that becomes a pattern and then it gets even more refined. It’s like, “OK, use this video director, this costume designer, this producer”. I can name the names you know them… Bruce Fairbairn and Flo Fleur and Marty Callner is one of those directors and other directors like him… Use those people and this songwriter, get Desmond Child in there. He co-wrote with so many people, Alice, Joan Jett, Bon Jovi. Get them in there, write songs and you’re guaranteed a hit.
Then it’s like, “listen, let’s not waste time with the credibility track. Let’s go right for the power ballad!” Then it’s like, “you know what? Even better than the power ballad? Unplugged. Let’s take away their electric instruments and have them sit down on stools and play acoustic”. Well, what’s left? What’s metal about that? What’s what’s bad-ass about that? What’s “f*** you” about that? Nothing! Nothing! And people are like “What? Why do we even care anymore?” And then all of a sudden, hip hop comes out. A lot of the young metal audiences found hip hop, because it still had that “f*** you” attitude. You know, they went to there. Then the new wave, the next wave in 2000s of the new metal bands came along. But, the industry killed the music. It killed the metal, killed the ‘80s metal. It just watered down, washed it down and just turned it into nothing… Nothing! They asked Twisted Sister togo unplugged. I said, “we will unplug when Paul Simon, or Tracy Chapman puts on a Gibson Les Paul plugs into a Marshall stack, turns it up to ten and plays one of their songs metal. When they ride the damn lightning, that’s when I unplug! That killed everything ultimately, unplug.
Rockpages.gr: Last but certainly not least, if you had the chance of putting into a time capsule just ONE of your songs, the one that really captures the essence, the personality of Dee Snider which one would that be?
Dee Snider: It’s already in there… It’s already in there, whether I like it or not, “We’re Not Gonna Take It”. It’s transcended the band. It’s transcended the genre, It’s transcended the era. It’s a folk song now. Everybody knows it all over the world. They sing it. There is no place you can go wherever you sing “we’re not gonna take it” and they’re not going to respond “no, we ain’t going to take it”. So, that is an incredible honor to have a song that has a life ongoing, continuing. It’ll have a life long after I’m gone. And it really, pretty much there isn’t a day where I don’t sort of realize that the words “we’re not gonna take it” was really “I’m not gonna to take it”, and that I don’t have that attitude about everything I do I’m very… except with my wife, you know, the wife you got to take it! But, I’m very defiant and I’m very in-your-face and I’m very much that guy. Recently, when I said something on social media and the trans community tried to cancel me… I’m not gonna take it! I get on Facebook and I go right back at them. I push back hard and they backed the fork down, because they were wrong.
When, they were censoring music back in the eighties, who went to Washington and spoke? Who stood up? Who said, we’re not going to take it? I did! So it’s really just sort of been a theme, I guess. And I guess it’s probably the embodiment of those words. It was so genuine in the song and in my delivery that that’s part of the reason why it resonated with people that this guy’s not kidding. And we shouldn’t be kidding either. We got to stand up, we got to mean it. And you know what? It’s designed for everybody to put their own situation into it. Sometimes, I’m very happy with people who are singing my song. Other times I’m not so happy, when it’s right wing fascists singing my song. I can’t really choose. I designed it that way. I’m sad that some people don’t see the decency that’s in the words, too. It’s the righteousness. It’s not we’re not going to take it and we want to hurt other people. It says we’re going to take it and we’re going to fight for what we believe in. So yeah, it’s already been decided where I’m going to take. It is in the time capsule and a whole bunch of time capsules.
Rockpages.gr: So, since we won’t be seeing you playing live and touring, we wish we’d see you in Greece…
Dee Snider: Greece, is one of our go to places. And I’m telling you, I’m not telling your readers anything they don’t know, but we have learned that Greece is a land of many islands and many places and many flavors. And just because you visit one, doesn’t mean you’ve seen it all. Each time we go, we visit another island, we visit another section, another area, and it’s like discovering another country. It’s that beautiful, it’s that amazing. So you’ll see me, I’ll be walking around wearing my Warriors vest. Look for me!
