How TWISTED SISTER's DEE SNIDER Picked Himself Up After Losing Everything

TWISTED SISTER frontman Dee Snider was a guest on Toronto, Ontario, Canada's "Breakfast Television", where he discussed the upcoming Toronto run of his holiday rock musical "Dee Snider's Rock & Roll Christmas Tale", among other topics.

Speaking about how the rise of grunge in the early 1990s spelled the end of most "hair metal" bands, including TWISTED SISTER, Dee said (see video below): "Grunge rock was, like, the cure for 'hair metal.' One day I woke up and I said, 'What do you mean we're not doing that anymore?' I dedicated my life to one form of music, one style of performing, and no one cared. So I actually lost everything — all the millions I made, I lost everything. I woke up one day with three kids, married and broke, and I had to start all over. But I'm doing great now."

According to Dee, he managed to reinvent himself through many years of hard-learned trial-and-error experience. He said: "Really, it's a matter of just not selling yourself short, and believing in yourself enough to know to say, 'Hey, I'm not a one-note horn.' People wanted to write me off in the '80s and say, 'Okay, yeah, you did that, makeup guy and crazy hair. We're done with you.' And I'm going, 'I'm not dead yet.' And I started doing voiceover work, and I started doing radio, and I started writing screenplays, and I started trying acting. I didn't say it was easy — I had to learn these crafts — but you have to have some belief and faith in yourself and pick yourself up and keep trying."

"Dee Snider's Rock & Roll Christmas Tale" tells the story of DÄISY CÜTTER, a heavy metal bar band looking to make it big even though the '80s are long over. This year, these four guys are ready to take the ultimate step and, in mythic rock tradition, sell their souls to the devil in exchange for success beyond their wildest metal dreams! But every time they try to seal the infernal pact, their headbanging anthems turn into warm-hearted carols. Soon these rockers are forced to realize their dreams of stardom are no match for the Christmas spirit.

Snider, who appears in the show as both the narrator and exorcist, says: "It's about a band that has a dream and is giving it everything they've got for that dream, and also recognizing that sometimes we overlook all the great things we have in our life."

"Dee Snider's Rock & Roll Christmas Tale" had a two-month run last year at the Broadway Playhouse in Chicago and will be at Toronto's Winter Garden Theater this coming holiday season (November 17 - January 3).