DEE SNIDER: “I won’t be surprised if we’re (Twisted Sister) reuniting this election year to champion some important causes”

Canada’s The Metal Voice recently spoke to Twisted Sister’s singer Dee Snider about his new graphic novel by Z2 Comics ‘He’s Not Gonna take it’ outlining his battle for freedom of expression at the PMRC hearings in 1985.

Snider also touched on if Twisted Sister would ever reunite again.

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When asked if there will ever be another Twisted Sister Reunion
“I won’t be surprised if we’re (Twisted Sister) reuniting this election year to champion some important causes. I can see we’re all on the same page (the whole band) pretty much all of us on the same page. And I could see us fighting, helping fight the good fight. I mean because this is a big picture election and with things like women’s right to choose, that’s a big picture thing you know, that’s going to hurt the other side. I say the other side because I’m not on that side. You can’t roll back the clock, we’re not going back in time, we’re going forward. So there are important important issues so it’ll be more about less about the politicians and more about the parties they represent and what they represent. “

When asked about the the aftermath of the PMRC Hearings
“I felt very abandoned by the rock community for the most part, they did not understand the importance of what was going on. And the industry as I said to you before they folded before we even spoke. They agreed to the sticker; it was a done deal. And a lot of the other musicians stayed out of it, they went quiet, they said just waited for the dust to settle. They deliberately made that move. I damaged my band. I became Public Enemy Number One even though you the fans knew we were not the worst of the bunch. But still that face to Mom and Dad was like oh yeah you can go see Motley Crue but you can’t go see Twisted Sister. My mail was checked, my phones were tapped, my packages were being checked. It was disheartening. I remember Ronnie Dio trashing me in the Press and he said who is Dee Snider to speak for us. And my first line (at the hearings) was “I cannot speak for anyone but myself he didn’t even listen to my first line and then reacted and spoke out against me, years later he apologized but no one remembers the retraction.”

Dee Snider and Z2 Comics have teamed up to bring you Dee Snider: HE’S NOT GONNA TAKE IT.
The name of Dee Snider is synonymous with the battle for freedom of expression in the arts. This new graphic novel will follow the impact of it throughout Dee’s life. From a childhood where he was frequently silenced, through the early efforts to stifle his band’s music, to the open warfare of the PMRC hearings in Washington DC, and his current efforts on social media, HE’S NOT GONNA TAKE IT tells the story of why free speech is so important to this man who has fought for it. Even when it endangered everything that was important to him.

Creator Credits

Written by Dee Snider and Frank Marraffino. Interior art by Steve Kurth featuring covers by Erik Rodriguez and Josh Bernstein. Prints by Roy Burdine, Javier Aranda and Carlos Olivares. Edited by Rantz A. Hoseley and designed by Josh Bernstein.

The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) was an American committee formed in 1985 with the stated goal of increasing parental control over the access of children to music deemed to have violent, drug-related, or sexual themes via labeling albums with Parental Advisory stickers. The committee was founded by four women known as the “Washington Wives”—a reference to their husbands’ connections with government in the Washington, D.C. area. The women who founded the PMRC are Tipper Gore, wife of Senator and later Vice President Al Gore; Susan Baker, wife of Treasury Secretary James Baker; Pam Howar, wife of Washington realtor Raymond Howar; and Sally Nevius, wife of former Washington City Council Chairman John Nevius. The PMRC eventually grew to include 22 participants before shutting down in the mid-to-late 1990s.