You might know their glam hard rock personas as an 80s phenom but this band that was first based in New Jersey and then Long Island struggled for 10 years before they got a record deal.
- First formed in 1973 the band had a different lineup of musicians than their most famous incarnation and did not include famous frontman Dee Snyder
- Twisted Sister guitarist Jay Jay French was an original founding member of the band
- French once auditioned for a band called Wicked Lester with Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley
- Wicked Lester is the original band that would eventually form into KISS
- French was heavily influenced by glam rock band New York Dolls and David Bowie
- They were originally formed in a place called Ho-Ho-Kus in New Jersey
- The name of the band then was Silverstar
- Original lead singer, Michael O'Neill, came up with the name Twisted Sister
- He doesn’t remember doing this because French says he was drunk at the time
- In 1973, the band started a regular gig at the Mad Hatter in East Quogue, playing 78 shows there
- Early on, the band broke up a number of times and reformed with slightly different player
- They went through three different singers until Dee Snider joined in 1976
- Dee Snider’s real name is Daniel
- French suggested he shorten it to Dee when he joined the group
- Snider became the main songwriter for the group after he joined penning their biggest hits
- Their debut album “Under the Blade” was recorded in 1982
- The name of the album was inspired by guitarist Eddie Ojeda's throat surgery in the 1970s
- Atlantic Records signed the band after their previous record label went bankrupt
- They released “You Can't Stop Rock 'N' Roll” in 1983
- The band's 1984 follow-up album “Stay Hungry” was a huge smash
- Both "I Wanna Rock" and "We're Not Gonna Take It" made the top 40 and the videos enjoyed heavy rotation on MTV
- The cover for the album featuring Snider holding a bone was a last minute shot after a 22 hour photo shoot in a rundown, abandoned building
- Apparently, the bone stunk and no one else wanted to touch it
- Photographer Mark Weiss told Snider to “Go nuts! Get into character like you're a caged animal, and you're hungry” when photographing him
- “The very last photo was the photo they used for the cover," Weiss said
- They are considered both heavy metal and glam rock
- Dee Snider testified before Congress in 1985 when the government wanted to put warning labels on albums
- Snider was joined by an unlikely alliance of singers in the Congressional hearings that included Frank Zappa and John Denver
- It was a time of moral outrage against heavy-metal music and Dungeons and Dragons, which parents thought was influencing their children to join cults and engage in violent behavior
- The band almost got into a fistfight with Manowar over a diss
- Twisted Sister challenged Manowar to a fight in England but Manowar never showed up and later apologized
- In 1985 on his annual list, fashion critic Richard Blackwell named Dee Snider of one of the worst dressed of the year, calling his look "a car crash in a whorehouse”
- According to Variety, MTV banned the group’s music video for “Be Chrool to Your Scuel,” because they objected “to scenes of zombie violence, despite playing Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ video”
- Variety says that Snider believes the ban was “due to his outspokenness against the lobbying group Parents Music Resource Center”
- Luke Perry of 90210 fame played a bit part in the video
- The band actually performed a song on their own 2001 tribute album, “Twisted Forever”
- The band played in a benefit concert for the September 11th NYPD and FDNY Widows and Orphans' Fund
- In 2006, Twisted Sister released “A Twisted Christmas,” filled with heavy metal takes on holiday classics
- VH1 ranked the band number 73 on their list of 100 greatest artists of hard rock
- A. J. Pero was the band’s drummer, joining in 1982He left the band in 1986 but came back for their 1997 reunion
- Pero died of a heart attack on a tour bus in 2015 with another band he had been in called Adrenaline Mob
- The L.A. Times reported that Pedro “was well-known for a scene in the video for 1984’s ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ in which he struck a snare drum covered with glitter, sending it spraying into the air.”
- Bassist Mark "The Animal" Mendoza joined the band in 1978
- He is a member of Joe Rock and the All Stars, a Long Island band that features Joe Rock from WBAB
- Mendoza grew up in West Hempstead, New York
- He graduated from West Hempstead High School in 1974
- Eddie Ojeda played guitar for Twisted Sister and joined the band early on in 1975
- He is known for his custom-made bullseye guitar
- Ojeda says that the red and black bullseye design was from the original Twisted Sister logo
- In 2016 the band went on a farewell tour called "Forty and F**k It"
- In 2022, Snider said he approved of Ukrainians who adopted the Twisted Sister anthem “We’re Not Gonna Take It” in their battlecry against Russia
- The band will be inducted into the Metal Hall of Fame on January 26, 2023
- It is reported that the band will perform live for the first time since 2016 at the ceremony