Dee Snider
After having “completely crashed and burned”, former Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider is now enjoying the kind of career no one – including him – could have dreamed of.
After having “completely crashed and burned”, the former Twisted Sister frontman is enjoying the kind of career no one – including him – could have dreamed of.
Dee Snider speaks in exclamation marks. A lot of his words also come in italics. “I’m doing awesome,” he says. “Always!”
Now 63, Snider’s public persona has hardly changed from the days when he fronted Twisted Sister – loud, proud, unbowed. Hey, he’s a native New Yorker. He leads with his mouth. He talked his way into a successful early-80s splurge with Twisted Sister, followed by the wilderness years after he talked himself out of a job. That’s been followed by a ‘no one could have predicted it’ career as a DJ, reality TV star, Broadway alumnus, horror movie director, film actor, podcast bon viveur, and occasional character – Angry Jack – in SpongeBob SquarePants.
Now he’s back with a new album, For The Love Of Metal. Produced and curated by Hatebreed vocalist Jamey Jasta, it features contributions from Howard Jones (ex-Killswitch Engage), Mark Morton (Lamb Of God), Alissa White-Gluz (Arch Enemy), Charlie Bellmore (Kingdom Of Sorrow), and Joel Grind and Nick Bellmore (Toxic Holocaust). No surprise, then, to find Snyder talking it up as “a true metal album with a more contemporary sound”.
How did the new album come about?
It’s amazing. It’s just so unexpected. I really wasn’t thinking that I’d be doing any more music. Then Jamey Jasta – the Sherpa, as I call him – challenges me. I accept the challenge and he rises to it. And he’s helped me deliver something really compelling and contemporary but that represents me very much as well.
I take credit for being willing to go for it, but Jamey was the driver on this and I just can’t sing his praises enough. It all came from his inspiration. There was no money, no deal. I said: “Who’s going to write the songs?” He said: “Everybody. Everybody’s going to want to be involved with this record.”
And he was right! He knew the community. We did one song, then two, then three, and it built. He said: “Let’s make a true metal album, à la Halford’s Resurrection.” That was his edict – be you, but at the same time make an album that’s a more contemporary-sounding record. But I don’t think we knew for a fact that it was gonna work and go the way it did. It got to the point where we had thirteen tracks, and Jamey was bringing in more. I’m like, “Is this is a double album? What are we doing?”
At which point we thought, “Let’s see if there’s any interest.” And interest was huge. All the metal labels were clamouring for it. Again, I was so pleased. It was so unexpected and so much fun. And it’s all for the right reasons, man.
You’ve always been a leader. When you joined Twisted Sister in 1976, they had been going for three years, killing it in the clubs, but you came in and transformed them. Where did that drive come from?
It came from my upbringing and my frustration and my anger, just being mad at the world and feeling that I was being underappreciated, underrated, undereverything. I was never expected to excel. Whether it was my parents, teachers, friends, I was told I didn’t have the looks, I didn’t have the talent, I didn’t have whatever it was expected to be. I was just going to be another one of the faceless. I wasn’t a popular kid. I didn’t fit in. The turning point came at sixteen, when I literally said to myself: “Are you gonna be one of the faceless millions, or are you gonna be a face they know?” That’s when I started dressing differently, behaving differently.
“I killed it. I became impossible. I destroyed my band. I nearly destroyed my marriage.”
With their make-up, out-there clothes and glam-metal, Twisted Sister predated Mötley Crüe, Ratt and that whole eighties hair-metal scene.
I was stunned when I got in Twisted Sister and this other group of oddballs. But the first song I brought to Jay Jay [French, guitarist], he was dismissive about it. I was younger than them and he treated me like a dorky kid. I found myself saying: “I’m gonna show you!”
I had a list of people I wanted to get even with, and it drove me, drove me, drove me. So yeah, we were before Mötley Crüe. Before us there were none of these other bands. In fairness to Nikki Sixx, he was over on the West Coast, one of those people like me, over on the East Coast, hanging on to this glitter thing. The glam scene was supposed to be dead by the time I joined the band, but I wasn’t going to let it stop me dressing up and being exactly how I wanted to be. Forcing the band to come with me on that.
Unlike almost everyone else in that scene, you were never into drink and drugs.
I made a decision about it at fourteen. I drank for the first time and I got so ploughed that I was lying on the ground just vomiting on myself. The little voice in my head, the one that’s there when you’re drunk, was screaming: “Get up! Get up! They’re laughing at you!” I said, “God, if you ever let me walk again, I will swear off the demon alcohol.” I’m obsessive, and I don’t have the ability to know when to stop. I knew if I went down this path with drink and so on I’d be one of those casualties.
Twisted Sister took off like a rocket then plunged to its death in the space of five years. What happened?
Regrettably, the name was not in the plural. We were the twisted sisters. But because it was Twisted Sis-ter, they thought it meant me. I took [success] in my stride, but then that same stride destroyed it. This guy that fought his entre life for people to listen to and believe in him, once I got it, the definition of megalomania set in. Up to then, the band voted on the songs we’d do for an album, and I’d get the opinion of the record company, the producer. Now I thought, “I don’t need to listen to you fuckers any more!” And I killed it. I became impossible. I destroyed my band. I nearly destroyed my marriage.
While it lasted, you did some pretty amazing things, like standing up to Tipper Gore and the whole PMRC thing.
That speech I made in Washington changed the way a lot of people that didn’t really know the music thought about heavy metal. For the first time, people saw a heavy metal guy [speak articulately]. Until that, they had perceived us as one thing.
What kicked off your personal comeback? The money was going away, I was getting deeper and deeper in debt, and I’ve got three children… Mentally I was better, though. I regrouped in the nineties and went into voiceover, answering phones at a desk job, managing a recording studio. Then I worked my way back doing radio, then got the television and movies and all these other things. Then the retro thing hit and Twisted Sister re-formed and the back catalogue value went through the roof. Next I’m doing children’s animated television shows and films and productions. I resurrected my career, but it wasn’t until I had completely crashed and burned.
If you hadn’t fallen from grace in the eighties, you might never have had this new career? Absolutely right! It was the best thing that ever happened to me. If I had continued on my trajectory with Twisted Sister, I wouldn’t be married. I wouldn’t have my family or my grandkids at this point. Even with more success I wouldn’t have been a happy guy. I was just manic. I’ve just had these incredibly wise instincts on some things, and one of them was my wife, Suzette. When I met her, the band had no popularity, she had no interest in me whatsoever, didn’t own a stereo. I said: “This is my girl! If I can win this girl’s heart it will be forever.” I knew I was gonna be famous, and I said to myself: “I will never be sure if they love me for me or for who I am.” I saw this!
When things fell apart and I lost everything, I never thought for a second that my wife would leave. She just went to work. She was there when I had nothing, there when I had everything, there again when I had nothing. And she’s here now when I have everything again.
There’s nothing like a good humbling to make you a better man. You get taken out at the knees, it makes you appreciate things, and it makes your perception of things so much healthier and way better for it. I decided I was just going to say yes to opportunities, because in Twisted Sister I had been so myopic. If you had told me back then that one day I would be on Broadway [in Rock Of Ages], I would have literally punched you in the face.
You could say you’ve come full circle with the new album, but it’s a more modern sound.
I’m a day-one headbanger. It wasn’t even heavy metal back then, it was hard rock. It’s so in me, it’s so real. Whatever I’ve done, I’m heavy metal to the core. I have a heavy metal heart. There’s no doubt about it – even when I was supposedly doing something different. Like when I was on Broadway: stepping onto the stage was one of the greatest challenges of my life, .
At a rock’n’roll show, you face your audience. In Broadway you’re supposed to not acknowledge your audience, other than maybe wait a beat for a laugh, or a reaction. You know, the fourth wall. Well, there’s no fourth wall in rock’n’roll.
Not at my shows!
“That PMRC speech I made changed the way a lot of people that didn’t know the music thought about heavy metal.”