TWISTED SISTER Singer Dee Snider - "We Were Defined By Our Anthems, Which Was Fine"
July 27, 2009, 14 years ago
Ben Kaplan from the Canwest News Service spoke with TWISTED SISTER singer Dee Snider recently about a number of topics including the release of their 25th Anniversary Edition Of Stay Hungry. A few excerpts from the chat follow:
Canwest News Service: Twenty-five years after the release of Stay Hungry, how does the record hold up?
Snider: "I go through a lot of changes in what I think. When I first saw the album cover I was like, 'Yeaaaah, bad-ass! That's metal!' A year later and I'm like, 'I look a bit like a clown.'"
Canwest News Service: And today?
Snider: "It captured a moment. It's really representative of what was going on and where I was at and where metal in general was at the time. There was a new wave of metal happening around then."
Canwest News Service: Stay Hungry is interesting because you have anthems, 'I Wanna Rock' and 'We're Not Gonna Take It', then a ballad and some vaguely satanic songs in the middle of the album. Did you set out to make heavy metal stew?
Snider: "That's just more reflective of what bands did back then. We came out in the '70s when a band like ZEPPELIN or AEROSMITH or QUEEN could have lots of different styles on an album. Zeppelin could do a metaly song like 'Immigrant Song' and on the same album have a banjo and folk song like 'Braun-Y-Aur-Stomp'. Queen did 'Bohemian Rhapsody' and 'My Best Friend' on the same record. We just grew from there."
Canwest News Service: Did that effect the writing of Stay hungry?
Snider: "As a songwriter, I liked having dark songs like 'Burn In Hell' and 'Captain Howdy' and then 'The Price', it seemed natural to me. Today, times they are a changin'. With MTV and MuchMusic people were quickly being defined by a song and the public's unwillingness to accept variety. We started doing very dark s-t, very fast s-t and big anthems, but when the anthems took off, people were like, `What's this other s-t on the record?' We were defined by our anthems, which was fine."
Read the entire interview here.