DEE SNIDER On TWISTED SISTER: 'We're Very Close To Wrapping This Thing Up'

On Track Magazine recently conducted an interview with TWISTED SISTER frontman Dee Snider. An excerpt from the interview follows:

On Track Magazine: For the record, let me say that TWISTED SISTER officially reunited in 2003 and although you've managed to play a number of festivals around the world, a few dates here in the States and re-record your 1984 landmark album, "Stay Hungry", under the moniker of "Still Hungry", the band more-or-less remains a part-time gig. There are a lot of fans out there that would like to see you expand your touring plans so that they can have an opportunity to see the band back in action once again, do you see this being a possibility any time in the near future?

Dee: "Absolutely, definitely not. We're very close to wrapping this thing up, I think. There's a few issues here: number one, you've got the fact that it took us a long time to find lives after rock and roll and no one's that anxious to give that up. You've gotta recognize that a reunion is a short-time thing, and my peers, and there are many of them — they are legion — who believe that they're actually restarting their careers are kidding themselves. I think KISS learned that the hard way. First it was a reunion and then all of a sudden it was, 'We're back!' 'We're KISS, we're back!' 'Psycho Circus' and nobody cared. You look at the sales patterns on any of the follow-up albums, it's just not there. The concept that your middle-aged fans are gonna put on the denim and leather and start followin' the band again is just naïve at best. So that's number one, and my peers hate when I say that. They like to see themselves, but the record sales and history bears me out, I'm just being honest. The second thing is: the demand. But it's not on an AEROSMITH level, it's not on a BON JOVI level, it's not on a MÖTLEY CRÜE level where you're gonna set aside your lives and say, 'OK, let's hit the road for a year and play coliseums,' and there's Lear jets everywhere ya go; it's at a smaller level. And it's tough to motivate yourself to go back into that whole world, again, when you've spent so much time building a new one and the interest is not that great. You'd love to be able to do a show for every single dyed-in-the-wool TWISTED fan who's dyin' to see it because they are certainly deserving, but there's a bigger picture and unfortunately it's one we have to deal with."

On Track Magazine: So when you say you're headin' towards "wrapping this thing up" does that mean that TWISTED SISTER is just gonna stop altogether at some point in the not-too-distant future?

Dee: "There's two schools of thought on that, one school of thought is: it's gonna stop altogether. We're gettin' along great, that was our motivation, it was the purest of motivations to become friends again and to end on a better note than we did in the late '80s. So we figured we'd do it for a few summers — this is summer three. So it's run its course. The other school of thought is: why don't we just keep open-ended and do select dates when we get the right offers, only do the best events and the biggest concert events. But my concern about that is: I'm in great physical shape and the band's playing at a level very close to what it did in the day; people will see it and they think it's like we never stopped. I know 'cause I see video tapes. There's a certain psychosis that I had that's definitely not there anymore and that created a certain level of performance that came from being in a frenzy, and I'm not in that frenzy, but when people watch it they're like, 'Oh, holy shit! This f*ckin' guy looks amazing, he's performing amazing.' and that's where you wanna leave people; with that memory. At some point it's gonna be difficult to sustain that, you know what I mean? Eventually you reach a point where you're gonna start slowin' down and I don't wanta leave on that note. I'd rather have the lasting memories of TWISTED SISTER's reunion being as good as it was. I don't want it to be where people start analyzing and aping and going, 'They were better the last time.' And individual members start saying, 'Well, I'm packin' up shop, I'm outta here.' You know, sort of the KISS scenario. And I don't want the hip replacement surgery and rumors of this or that, I'd rather end it with people havin' a great memory. One of the guys in the MURDERDOLLS writes occasional articles for Metal Edge and he reviewed our show and he said, 'You know, when a reunion is good, it makes you feel young again and when it's bad, it makes you feel old.' And that struck a chord for me because I remember seeing UFO a couple years back and I was like a high school kid. They looked good, they were playin' great and I was in the crowd losin' my fuckin' mind, and I had to go see ‘em the next night, I drove to the next city to see ‘em; it was like that. And I said, 'This is what I want people to feel when they see TWISTED SISTER.' I want the people who saw us back in the day to feel young again, relive their youth one last time. And the people who never saw it, who were into the whole retro thing of it, to see a pretty close facsimile and to walk away goin, 'So that's what TWISTED SISTER was.' I never want to be around long enough where people go, 'Geez, it's not a shadow of what it used to be.' But you're dealing with a very physical act, it's not like Robert Plant where he stands on stage, strikes a pose and sings, 'Does Anybody Remember Laughter?' For me TWISTED SISTER was more of a physical entity, live, than it ever was a musical one."

Read Dee Snider's entire interview with On Track Magazine at this location.