While in America they will forever be known to the mainstream as the two-hit wonders behind the anthems “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and “I Wanna Rock,” veteran New York rockers Twisted Sister have proven to have more longevity, marketability and durability than most popular bands today could hope to achieve.

Although they have not put out an album of original material since their ill-fated fifth album, the 1987 release Love Is For Suckers, the group has released three CDs and four DVDs since 2005 (including live, rerecorded and rare songs), played to massive festival audiences in Europe and was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2007. The quintet has experienced a resurgence here and abroad that has surprised those in its own ranks.

So the next time you hear some smart aleck place them in the “Where Are They Now?” file, remind that person that Twisted are doing pretty damn well, thank you very much.

“I think some people do that to bust your chops a little bit,” remarked the always congenial and modest guitarist Eddie Ojeda. “‘You guys still doing anything?’ I want to say, ‘Yeah, we make more in one day than you make in a year,’ but I don’t. Some people try to be wiseasses.”


2009 is shaping up to be another strong year for Twisted Sister. They have booked five festival gigs — three in Europe and two in the U.S., including Rocklahoma in June.

They also have six Australian shows planned in September. A musical based on their Christmas album is in the works. To celebrate its 25th anniversary, their classic multiplatinum Stay Hungry album is being reissued this summer with 14 bonus demos and a hard-rocking new song entitled “30” that pokes fun at how they are still rocking out in their middle ages, albeit with a little help from pharmaceuticals.

“We started in 1973, and here we are in 2009,” declared founding member and guitarist Jay Jay French. “I had no idea that I would still be doing this. I had no idea that I would be the overseer of a worldwide brand.”

It’s funny to hear the veteran rocker use the term “brand,” but that is the reality of the music business today.

“Frankly, as we get older and tour less, what will carry on is the name and the logo, and there are so many different avenues that I am exploring at this point,” adds French.

A co-partner in management company Rebellion Entertainment with Sean Sullivan, the ever-busy French is as much a businessman as an artist. These days all the members of Twisted Sister and other music vets have to be.

“I am trying to analyze the music business and find out where it’s going,” said French. “I believe that the record is a dead issue, the CD is a dead issue, so the challenge is, how do you find a young band, develop it and make money? Music is exciting, and there’s more music out there than ever, but the record labels are over and the CD as a medium is going to be over in the next four to five years. I think the concept of having 10 songs for a record is done. It’s going to be a track world. What does that mean? How do you develop a band or an artist that way? How do you make careers? What does it take to manage a band like that?”

In his main capacity at Rebellion as manager, promoter, and marketer for Twisted Sister, French knows that the money comes in through licensing songs for film and TV (which has made them a lot of cash over the years), ring tones and other licensing opportunities. His company also manages genre-hopping New England jam band Rubblebucket, who have no label and make all their money through touring and merchandising, and producer/songwriter/musician Frederick Sargolini, whose music has been played on TV shows likes “CSI,” “Weeds” and “Entourage” and in various films and commercials. Both artists are offering lessons to French.

The guitarist alleged that Twisted Sister makes its annual income by playing around 20 shows (sometimes less) per year, thanks to some very lucrative European festival gigs during for the last few years. European fans remember the band for their whole catalog rather than a couple of songs, so fans have been coming out in droves to see them. And the group still delivers the goods.

Such financial security allows the various members the flexibility to pursue numerous outside projects.

French is currently writing and researching two books.

“One of them is my history of Twisted Sister — finally it will be written — and the other is a book on relationships, on trying to reestablish yourself after being married and divorced a couple of times,” the guitarist divulged. “While it sounds funny, it’s actually based on a lot of research and my own experience.”

Bassist Mark “The Animal” Mendoza has been hosting an Internet music radio show called “Animal Tactics Radio” on Long Island. He described it as “rock, metal, a little bit of comedy, dysfunctionalism with people on the show, guests, and topics that a normal radio show would do.” He has also produced the various Twisted projects that have come out over the last few years.

Snider has always been busy with other endeavors, whether hosting the music-radio show “House of Hair” for many years, releasing albums either solo or with other groups, or making movies, specifically the 1998 horror flick “Strangeland” (inspired by the “Horror-Teria” couplet from Stay Hungry), in which he played the evil predator Captain Howdy. Currently, the singer co-hosts “Fangoria Radio” with Debbie Rochon, intermittently records and tours with the Halloween-themed group Van Helsing’s Curse, and is currently in pre-production for a second “Strangeland” movie.

“‘Strangeland: Disciple’ is the official title, and it looks like it will finally go into production this year, which is great,” exclaimed Snider. “It has been a nightmare, 10 years with legal battles and everything.”

He is referring to the now-defunct production company The Shooting Gallery, which released the original film (and “Sling Blade”) and then went into bankruptcy.

“The government seized all their property, so for literally eight years I’ve had lawyers going in and fighting [for me],” says Snider. “Every time the government tried to just dissolve everything, they said, ‘You can’t do that, that belongs to Dee Snider.’ Then they would try to dissolve it again six months later. They finally turned the stuff over to me. It was pretty ugly.”

The silver screen has not only beckoned Snider, but Ojeda and drummer A.J. Pero as well.

“I’m probably going to be working on a film score for a company called Provenzano Films,” revealed Ojeda. Director Danny Provenzano “did a wiseguy movie with Frank Vincent and James Caan about five years ago called ‘This Thing Of Ours.’” The guitarist hopes to jump into film scoring and wants to produce bands.

Ojeda and Snider appeared together on an episode of the second season of the IFC TV comedy series “Z-Rock,” which will air in June. He has a cameo appearance as a tourist, and in a larger role, Snider plays himself. “He’s doing somebody a favor and driving a cab in Central Park, and he picks me up as a passenger,” said Ojeda. “I recognize him, and he tries to say it’s not him.”

Pero was lured into movies a long time ago. “Doing the Stay Hungry album was cool, but I think doing the videos was the coolest, seeing how things were done, which got me into wanting to do movies,” revealed Pero. “I play it over in my mind all the time. I remember getting on the set of ‘We’re Not Gonna Get’ at six in the morning, and there were five kids who looked liked Dee when he was young, five kids who looked like Mark Mendoza when he was young, and picking out which one looked exactly like us. It was pretty cool meeting people and seeing how things were done, and that’s what really got me into wanting to do movies.”

The lifelong drummer took acting lessons for five years around that time, and right now he is preparing to act in his third movie, an original, self-penned baseball story called “Three Strikes” that he is having scripted by a production company.

His first film appearance was a small role as a Russian mob boss in the film “Priceless,” which should be arriving on DVD in the near future, but a larger speaking part awaited him in the recent short film “Red Right Wrong,” a gangster story that he said will be screened at the Tribeca and Sundance Film Festivals. Pero added that he has three TV show pitches that are being looked at by NBC. He also co-hosts an Internet radio show called “Celebrity Spotlight Radio,” which he said is being considered for syndication by NBC and CBS.

There is even a little music in Pero’s non-Twisted life with his harder, modern-sounding metal solo project Circle Of Thorns, which has a CD in the works.


An interesting observation: The Circle Of Thorns music available on MySpace has a beefier sound that always eluded Twisted Sister in the studio, partially because of producer trepidation to pump up the bass back in the ’80s. None of the Twisted albums ever captured their live intensity.

“Mark and I were described a thousand times as being a freight train coming through your living room,” proclaimed Pero. “When you hear us you know it’s me and him playing. You can close your eyes and hear a thousand drummers and a thousand bass players, but you hear Mark and I playing and you know it’s us.”

“Don’t get me started on that,” moaned Mendoza, who has since amassed numerous producing credits, including Atlanta nü-metallers Sevendust, whom French once managed.

“People wimp out on bass even [more] than on drums,” continues Mendoza. “I could give you a whole dissertation about how nearly every producer or engineer that I’ve seen doesn’t have a clue how to record bass and has half a clue on how to record drums. When it comes to producing bass guitar, there’s what I call ‘engineer’s bass.’ Every engineer and producer in the world, even up until now, wants you to play a Fender Precision bass with the volume and tone control all the way up and play with a pick. Why? Because it’s the easiest thing to do. When it comes to experimentation and trying to get another sound and play a different way, they don’t want to spend time on that. When I started working with engineers who wanted to do it that way, I said, ‘You’re fired. Get out of here.’ That’s what they’re used to, and they don’t think they have to spend time to go further than that.”

The band as a whole was dissatisfied with the Tom Werman-produced Stay Hungry — and both sides argue their case in the liner notes for the forthcoming reissue — and in 2005 they re-recorded the album as Still Hungry. While this new version featured the original concept for the album art and allowed the playing to be flashier, heavier and more intense, it sold a fraction of what the original did.

“It’s a very difficult thing to critique a favorite album of people,” noted Snider. “You’re talking about an album that they love, and now the person who recorded that album is slamming it. So it makes the fan say, ‘What am I, an idiot? I love this, and you’re the band, and you hate it?’ I don’t want to use the word hate by any means. I hear it and enjoy it, and it’s fine. But we wanted to be heavier, and [producer] Tom Werman’s influence was stripped down. I was into simplicity as well, to a degree. I envisioned Twisted Sister as a combination of AC/DC and Judas Priest musically, and I was into getting A.J. to keep the beat straight. My frustration was more with the intensity. [During the Stay Hungry sessions] we played Tom an Iron Maiden record and a Black Sabbath record, and he said, ‘They just have the bass turned up.’ Basically we were not doing that.”

When one listens to the raw demos that were unearthed for the Stay Hungry reissue, it’s clear that the group had a harder edge that was softened in order to make a hit album. At times it’s obvious that Werman’s approach worked, as when one hears the early, cowbell-free rendition of “We’re Not Gonna Take It” with a different arrangement and some different chords. The studio version clicks better. The groove propelling “S.M.F.” on album is better than the slightly stiffer demo, although the demo rocks harder, giving it an extra kick.

The unreleased tracks offer insight into the difference between Twisted on album and live or in demo state. “You’ve Got To Fight” is driven by a Priest-like chugging that backs up the song’s theme of being “dictator of your destiny.” The grinding, mid-tempo “Call My Name” uses the same chords as “S.M.F.” but in reverse. The more groove-oriented, upbeat “Pay The Price,” allegedly the second song Snider ever wrote, is as French quipped, “as close to Bad Company as we’re ever gonna get.” The hyperactive “Death Run” serves up speed-metal aggression with a touch of double-bass drum work.

In retrospect, despite their longtime protestations, the members of Twisted Sister appreciate the original Stay Hungry and the success it brought them, even if it does not sound the way they wanted it to.

“I’ll bet you nine out of 10 bands will tell you that they can produce a record better than the producer who produced it,” stated French. “Nine of 10 bands will tell you, no matter how successful the record was, it could have been better. That may be true, but I am enough of the rock fan to say that while I am not thrilled about the sound of the record — because my feeling was it sounded thinner, like many of the West Coast hair bands of the day — it is not strange to me that fans would still prefer it. If I think back to records that I love and had a chance to talk to the artist who made it, even if they bitched and moaned and they didn’t like the sound of it but I fell in love with it, I don’t care what they would’ve done to make another copy of it.”

“I am happy the album came out,” concurred Mendoza of Stay Hungry. “I am not happy about the production. I am not happy about the videos we made, but I am not sure if we made different videos it would’ve been any different. I didn’t want to make the cartoonish videos, but everybody talks about them today, so had we made other videos would we have made it as big or bigger?”

The question of who to cater to — whether it was fans who’d stuck with them for years or new converts — was a difficult one for Twisted Sister.

“I also believe at a certain point between Stay Hungry and Come Out And Play that we turned off a lot of our hardcore fans, although hardcore fans aren’t the ones that bought millions,” says Mendoza. “But the same people who always buy your albums after awhile thought we were not cool and cartoonish, whereas other bands were riding motorcycles, wearing black leather and having scantily clad girls around them, which was the thing of the time. We bucked that trend. I didn’t agree with it, but the band went that way, and I wasn’t sure that was the right thing to do. I figured that if we at least fit in or outdid the other bands in that era with similar ideas, we would have had more longevity. I think people were confused about our image. ‘What are these guys doing?’”


While Twisted Sister saw their mainstream fortunes wane following the release of Come Out And Play in 1985 and split up in 1987 following the tour of Love Is For Suckers, they did reunite to record the stirring anthem “Heroes Are Hard To Find” for the “Strangeland” soundtrack. They also appeared on a 2001 tribute album to themselves (Twisted Forever) by covering AC/DC and then played a benefit gig for 9/11 victims in November 2001.

Those events slowly sparked summer reunion shows in Europe in 2003 that blossomed during the following years into regular festival performances and a slew of CDs (Still Hungry, Live At The Astoria, and A Twisted Christmas) and DVDs (“The Video Years,” “Live At Wacken: The Reunion,” “A Twisted Christmas Live,” and the DVD packaged with the “Live At The Astoria” CD).

One wonders if the band foresaw that they would return, particularly with such success, and even do a Christmas album. “I never would have imagined that 10 years ago, but here we are,” said Ojeda.

“When it was over [in 1987] I wrote it off,” confessed Mendoza. “It was done. Unfortunately, because of that attitude, I got rid of a lot of memorabilia and recordings. One day I put stuff in a big pile and burned it. Not everything. Some stuff is lost forever. But I have found some interesting stuff, some demos that will show up on the re-release of Stay Hungry. Right now I can’t find the original demos of me playing guitar with Dee singing into a boom box. They go back to ’78, ’79. That’s how a lot of stuff was written, like that. Many songs started out with him and me.”

“I had a feeling it [a reunion] would happen because things have a way of coming back, especially now,” asserted Ojeda. “I think because there’s a lack of good music out there that people are looking for a lot of the old classic stuff [from the] ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. Look at shows on Broadway like ‘Jersey Boys,’ about The Four Seasons. ‘Hair’ and ‘West Side Story’ came back. A lot of good music came out of those decades, and each decade has its own group of stars and singers. I think there’s an audience for all of them. It’s all good. Everybody’s out there touring. Everything’s got an audience.”

The ’80s hair metal spoof ‘Rock of Ages” on Broadway includes two Twisted songs, “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and “I Wanna Rock.” Ojeda admitted that, despite being a bit biased for obvious reasons, he enjoyed the show and thinks it is well done. “I think a lot of people relate to it because back in the ’80s bands put on real shows with outfits and make-up,” he surmised. “I think that’s what the kids want to see.”

This is not the first time that the band has made it to Broadway in one form or another. In 2001, Snider played Riff Raff in the revival of The Rocky Horror Show, and now he and Twisted are working on adapting their recent Christmas album to the stage. If they can get it written by the end of the summer, said Ojeda, it could possibly be produced this year, although whether on Broadway or off has yet to be confirmed.

The irony behind the album A Twisted Christmas is that it was conjured up by French just as Snider decided he wanted to bring the band’s reunion to a close in 2006.

“I just wanted to end it, not because there was anything wrong, but because it was a reunion, not a reformation,” explained Snider. “Things were going great, but at some point you’re going to get sick of each other again, so I just wanted to end on a positive note and make sure everything was cool.”

Then French approached Snider with the Christmas album idea, and he immediately said, “Yes,” shocking his bandmate. But the singer knew it was a novelty record that could possibly get airplay.

“Back in the ’80s I thought there was a place for a metal Christmas album” said Snider. “People [now] were telling us it’s a career-killer. I’m like, what career? We’re doing a reunion. Nobody’s playing our music anymore except in commercials and movies, and we’re not selling albums. We’re just ending a reunion tour. What career are we killing?”

The Twisted Christmas collection of Yuletide songs did the opposite; it revitalized Twisted Sister’s career, selling 70,000 copies during the Christmas season of 2006.

“After the success of the Christmas album, we couldn’t stop because it was taking on a different life,” continued Snider. “Now I’m working on ‘A Twisted Christmas: The Musical.’ Right now we’re writing new music for the first time since the ’80s.”

He said that Twisted Sister will record an album of music to go along with the Christmas album and existing band material to create the 18 songs that comprise “the full-blown Twisted Christmas musical,” which is about a fictitious band.

“I’m trying to create a property that we could remove ourselves from, that could continue to exist after we’ve stopped playing,” added Snider. “Even though the fictitious band is currently called Bent Brother, it’s designed to be a performance piece that Twisted Sister would not actually have to get onstage for, even though I could see where we’re more than likely going to have to initially perform the thing to set up the awareness of it.”

As Twisted Sister’s alter ego, Bent Brother plays infrequent club gigs without make-up and tries out new material or sets. French has joked that once Twisted Sister takes off their make-up for future gigs, possibly to happen after their June appearance at Rocklahoma, Bent Brother may put it back on.

“I have people e-mail me and say, ‘Man, I went to see Bent Brother, and they really got you and Dee down’,” said Ojeda. “I e-mail back and say, ‘It’s really us, except we’re not using make-up and [we] use another name so we can break in new material or a new set in a club,’ and they don’t get it. ‘They’re a great tribute band. They sound just like you guys.’ Okay, it’s not us. I give up.”

Something unusual always seems to happen to Twisted Sister, even while they are riding high on their reunion efforts and musical plans. But Snider and company take it all in stride. This is a band that played 2,000 gigs before it finally got its mainstream due in 1984, fighting against all odds, record company indifference and trends. And they will always persevere.

“What’s not to be happy about?” proclaimed Mendoza. “Who would have thought in 1990 that I would be doing this again? I’m pretty sure we are the largest and most successful part-time rock band in the world. We’re not even part time. What do we do, 16 shows a year? In Europe, we’re headlining some of the biggest festivals ever. It’s kind of a unique situation. I love performing, I love playing onstage, especially with TS, but I love playing anything at anytime, whether it’s to eight people or 80 or 8,000 or 80,000. I love playing and performing, so it’s not something I ever want to stop doing. I do plenty of small gigs. It feels great to know I’ve just come off a show with 40,000 people and now I’m playing a benefit at a club for 200 or 300 people. It makes you feel good. TS is in my heart, it’s in my blood, it’s in my soul. I love what I do.”

And so do his bandmates, even despite all of the hurdles they always face.

“My wife says, ‘It’s never easy for you,’” said Snider. “I say, ‘Yeah, but at the end of the day I still have a pretty good life.’”