Widowmaker Quotes

This is the history of Twisted Sister...Popular view was that the band was an 'overnight sensation,' or we 'caught on the wave of the glam resurgence and capitalized on it'. But, few people know that we were one of the bands who actually started it. In '73 was the original glam era...bands like The New York Dolls and KISS were playing the NY clubs...as was Twisted Sister, which only featured Jay Jay French at the time. It was a full-on glam/sleaze-rock band. Actually, Jay Jay was in a band called Wicked Lester with Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley for a short time. Jay Jay had left the band and Ace Freeley took his place, and they changed their name to KISS. Jay Jay then went on to form Twisted Sister. Now, Twisted plays the clubs, they open for bands like Mott The Hoople, but nothing really happens, so they break up in '74/'75. Then Jay Jay reforms the band in '76 and I come on board as vocalist. And I'm the metalhead/glam-rocker. Glam, at the time, had Rolling Stones-ish type riffs, but I'm bringing in Sabbath, AC/DC and Priest influences. Then, the bottom falls out of the glam market, yet we were refusing to let it go. I was younger than those guys, so I'm like, 'I don't give a shit if it's over, this is what I love!' We build up a huge audience in the suburbs, which was really the heartland for metal...that's the reason why metal broke out so big in LA a few years later...and we're packin' in the clubs, yet there was nothing going on as far as the recording industry. New Wave hits the market and no one cares about heavy rock. Yet we were still packing in 2-3,000 people per night! We did an outdoor show in '79 and drew 23,000 people! And KISS was at the Garden that night, and they didn't sell out. And we had no album. So, we get signed in '82, and around that same time Motley Crue starts getting into the glam thing. They all owned the early Twisted Sister singles. We were hanging on to this glam-metal thing before anybody was. Also, we were from the East Coast, all those other glam bands (Motley, Ratt, etc.) were from the west coast. 
Dee Snider