Twisted Sister
Biography
A product of New Yorker City's early-'70s glam rock scene, Twisted Sister were eager students of the New York Dolls, with the theatrics of Kiss and the shock rock of Alice Cooper thrown in for good measure. While providing an excellent role model from an artistic standpoint, the Dolls' disappointing record sales and subsequent implosion would make it difficult for such faithful disciples as Twisted Sister to land a record deal, and the band wound up struggling for nearly a decade before finally getting their big break in the early '80s. Unfortunately, when this break finally came, the band would then embody one of the most gruesome examples of record company overexposure in the history of rock & roll (or at least since Kiss' late-'70s decline), bringing an abrupt end to their brief moment of glory.Founded in December 1972 by guitarist Jay Jay French (who as John Segal, legend has it, played in a pre-Kiss band called Rainbow with Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley), Twisted Sister based their every move on the aforementioned New York Dolls. Their apprenticeship on the local club scene was a slow one, but by late 1975 a somewhat stable lineup had coalesced around French, fellow guitarist and high school buddy Eddie "Fingers" Ojeda, bassist Kenneth Harrison Neil, and drummer Kevin John Grace. A number of different vocalists filed through their ranks, but it was only with the arrival of Dee Snider in early 1976 that the band found its true leader. Snider brought a strong Alice Cooper influence to the band, giving their by then antiquated, fey glam sound a welcome kick in the a**. He also quickly developed into the band's dominant songwriter, and with new drummer Tony Petri in tow, Twisted Sister really started making a name for themselves in and around the city.
A significant growth spurt ensued; Snider wrote a wealth of original material and the band's live performances grew in local legend, setting attendance records that still stand in many clubs and culminating in a fruitful May 1978 recording session that would yield most of the material released 20 years later as the Club Daze album. Twisted Sister's transformation from glam rock also-rans into metallic hard rock contenders was completed later that year with the arrival of ex-Dictators bass player Mark "The Animal" Mendoza. November 1979 saw another studio session (this time at Electric Lady Studios with famed Hendrix engineer Eddie Kramer), which resulted in their first single, "I'll Never Grow Up Now!," released on the band's own TSR label in early 1980. Another single, "Bad Boys of Rock'n'Roll," followed that summer, but for all their hard work, come 1981 the band had only a growing collection of record company rejection slips to show for their efforts. Finally, independent Secret Records decided to take a chance on the group and after cutting the four-track Ruff Cuts EP, the group flew to England with new drummer A.J. Pero (ex-Cities) to record their first full-length album, Under the Blade, under the direction of UFO bassist Pete Way as producer. And despite obtaining only a mediocre sound from the inexperienced Way, the album became a surprise underground success, generating enough buzz to attract Atlantic Records, which came calling with a major distribution contract -- the final ingredient for Twisted Sister's assault on the charts over the next two years.
1983's seminal You Can't Stop Rock 'n' Roll laid the groundwork for things to come with its more polished production values and more consistent material, yielding only one chart-flirting single in the title track (for which the band filmed their first, incredibly cheesy, but rather amusing video) but garnering serious cred with the metal crowd. Later that year, L.A.'s Quiet Riot topped the charts with their smash hit Metal Health (the first heavy metal album to do so), and Twisted Sister took advantage of this sympathetic musical climate to unleash their own definitive statement, Stay Hungry. Digging deep into his pop and glam roots, Snider infused added commercial appeal to the band's hard rock onslaught, and with such monster hits as "We're Not Gonna Take It" and "I Wanna Rock" leading the way to radio and MTV saturation with their hilariously tongue-in-cheek videos, the album soon exceeded multi-platinum sales. The extensive touring that followed guaranteed the album's stay near the top of the charts for many months to come and, against all odds, helped make the "sick mo-fos" from Long Island into household names in America.
Of course the backlash, when it came, was equally sudden and incredibly vicious. Overexposed to the breaking point after converting every angry teenager in America and most of their parents, Twisted Sister had lost the edge of their dangerous image, not to mention the respect of their loyal but terribly possessive core metal fan base. To complicate matters, 1985's Come Out and Play album was very uneven; attempting to cater to both the band's hardcore elements and their newfound pop constituency and introducing an excessively glammed-up image makeover to boot, it quickly slid off the charts. Not even Atlantic Records' timely reissue of Under the Blade (with an added bonus track, "I'll Never Grow Up Now!") could staunch the bleeding, and a dumbfounded Twisted Sister found themselves quickly transformed from media darlings to favorite whipping boys.
For his part, Snider remained in the camera eye, however, appearing before a Senate committee later that year (along with such rock & roll luminaries as Frank Zappa and Bob Denver) to testify against the Parents Music Resource Center's demands for music censorship legislation. Sadly, it would prove to be Twisted Sister's highest profile appearance all year, as their concerts were frequently marred either by low attendance or crowd animosity. Adding insult to injury, drummer Pero had rendered his resignation at tour's end, opening the door to a very troubled 1986 for Twisted Sister, as rumors ran rampant about an irreparable rift between Snider and French over the band's direction. They eventually re-emerged with 1987's Love Is for Suckers, featuring new drummer Joey "Seven" Franco, but not even the services of flavor-of-the-month pop-metal producer Beau Hill could save the album from disappointing sales, and despite still getting by on the basis of their reliably fierce concert performances, Twisted Sister wound up disintegrating shortly thereafter.
Except for Dee Snider, who gamely soldiered on with an ultimately unsuccessful new hard rock band named Desperado (later renamed Widowmaker and featuring guitarist Bernie Tormé and drummer Franco), the members of Twisted Sister pretty much vanished from sight over the next few years. Grunge came and went, and posthumous releases like 1992's Big Hits and Nasty Cuts and 1994's Live at Hammersmith provided the only memory of Twisted Sister's meteoric flight across the hard rock firmament. As the '90s wore on, Snider's voice was heard promoting the New York State Lotto as often as shouting "I wanna rock!" and by decade's end he'd transitioned into a widely syndicated radio DJ and even sometime movie producer. He wrote and starred in the 1998 horror flick Strangeland, for which he also managed to reunite Twisted Sister's final lineup to record a brand new song entitled "Heroes Are Hard to Find."
His reconciliation with TS founder Jay Jay French (who'd kept busy managing bands, most notably nu-metallers Sevendust) eventually paved the way to a never-dreamed-of, full-fledged reunion of the "classic" Stay Hungry lineup, which performed publicly for the first time in almost 15 years at a post-9/11 benefit concert for New York City. By then, Spitfire Records had reissued much of Twisted Sister's original catalog, along with a pair of Club Daze collections documenting the band's "lost" '70s recordings, and, in 2004, released a re-recorded Stay Hungry (retitled Still Hungry) to mark its 20th anniversary. All of this activity fostered further demand for a more permanent return to action -- they even released a holiday album (Twisted Christmas) in 2006 -- and Twisted Sister has since toured sporadically across the globe, even, as documented by 2005's Live at Wacken DVD, performing to massive European festival audiences. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia, All Music Guide
Selected Discography

Still Hungry
2004

Big Hits And Nasty Cuts
1992

Come Out And Play 1999 Spitfire Remaster
1985

Stay Hungry
1984

U Can't Stop Rock N Roll
1983

Under The Blade
1982
I remember Twisted Sister opening for Iron Maiden in '86 for the Somewhere In Time tour in San Diego. Iron Maiden had this huge elaborate stage, and Twisted Sister had about 40 feet of pink spray painted chain link fence, it was hilarious.
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The #1 Rock Anthem of the 80's hands down !!!! Plan to se the Twisted X-mas party Dec 6 in NYC !!! woooOOO !! I Wanna.....@& * # !!!
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Hail all you SMF's
Twisted Sister rock check out there new tune called 30 |
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We're not gonna take it,no we aint gonna take it.....Yes in the famous words of me,Good stuff!!!
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TS was the band that finally made me cross over into the realm of metal. I went down the rabbit hole and never came back! Thank you! I'm an SMF and proud of it!
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I did see them live - and they went down well - I give them credit for that. However, I stood with my back to the stage for most of the show. These SMU's? were nowehere to be found. My reason for not liking these guys stem from negative and less than flattering comments made by DeeDee re Iron Maiden. DeeDee couldn;t hold Eddies jock on his best day.
This is why I despise this band. And while they do have a few catchy songs - their lead guitar playing sucks. |
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Stay Hungry is one of me favorite albums! It is good that they are still on audio. Good people.
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Well Chuch4 You obviously are a complete moron...and have never seen the masters play live! Yes they look a bit trashy, but that's glam baby. Paying homage to their roots. They would literally tell the SMF's to kick the living s**t outta your sorry a**! Still everyone is entitled to his/her own opinion. Get em boys!...
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chuckt4, if they saw what you wrote theyd say youre gonna "burn in hell" or "were not gonna take it", they rock, no doubt in my mind. dont go dissn the iron men of rock n' roll.
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Could this f'kin band be any more gay? No - none more gay. Could any band in the hisory of the entire f'kin universe stink any more than these f@ggots? No - they are indeed the worst. I urinate on this band and despise them with every fiber of my being. Friggin clown faced, no-talent posers.
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Not the best band ever, but still a great band. I love listening to Dee Schneider's radio show "the house of hair" on weekday nights, there's nothing like some good old fashioned metal!
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I like Twisted Sister, but if someone’s talking trash about them I wouldn’t defend them as much as Iron Maiden or Megadeth.
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It says alot about the musical vacuum of the mid 80's that Twisted Sister was actually RELEVANT back then. I'm not saying they're bad (I put in my thumbs up!), just that everyone breathed a sigh of relief when 'Appetite for Destruction' came out in '87.
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They used to scare the crap out of me as a kid, but I couldn't resist them! Two thumbs up!
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a glam band with some REAL metal in them?! has the world gone crazy? well, i ain't complaining
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The only 80s band where dressing like women would be logical, since their name is Twisted Sister.
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twisted sister awsomest 80s rok band ever!!!!!!!! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
rock on !!!!!!!!!!!! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! |
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I saw Twisted Sister live at Rocklahoma in 2007. They tore it up, Dee Snider
is a great front man. Even after all these years they can still bring it. You're a SMF \m/ \m/ |
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There was a bar called Tueys in Setauket LI NY, I went to just after graduation often, that Twisted Sister use to play many weekends.
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what more can i say, i grew up on long island. i used to pump gas,yea that was a job at the time..dee drove a yellow vet at the time and gased him many of times.by the time i was 18 i worked at key largo were they played alot,got to know them alot from there.few years back ran into dee in port jeff. LI. he still has it!!!
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I am young, but I love Twisted Sister. My parents put this song on the other night, and I was singing, but I didn't know who it was. I was surprised that I knew the song. I love this song!!
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They found their niche & got paid for years of hard work. Not for everyone, but a part of rock history nonetheless.
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Ramon461, Are you so unhappy that you need to put down things that other people like? Not everyone enjoys the same music, and Twisted Sister is a good band that knows rock and roll. I hate turnips and beets, but do I need to post it on this message board so that you will know it? Lighten up, enjoy life, and change radio stations if you're that unhappy.
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Hearing Twisted Sister brings back Memories of years gone by I remember When "We're Not Gonna Take It" came out I loved that song and still do!!
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