Dee Snider recently appeared as a guest on Vintage Rock Pod and revealed that he thinks Twisted Sister was the inspiration for Mötley Crüe and Van Halen.
After talking about how they came up with ideas for music videos for ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ and ‘I Wanna Rock’ and its impact on the industry, the singer explained:
“Yet it went on to become this huge phenomenon that other bands — like Van Halen, Mötley Crüe, everybody — started imitating the Twisted Sister style of storytelling, a little mini passion play video.”
Elsewhere during the interview, he reflected on how they worked on ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ and the ‘I Wanna Rock’ videos:
“Marty [Callner] came in, and he was cool enough and smart enough to see a young gun who was passionate, and he said, ‘What do you see for this video?’ I told him, ‘Dad’s yelling at the son. The son turns into me and drags the father down the stairs.’ He said, ‘Hold it, pull it. Let’s all write this down.’ He and I constructed the ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ video and the ‘I Wanna Rock’ video, which went on to be historic videos.”
The frontman also opened up about his creative process behind ‘Stay Hungry,’ noting:
“I mean, ‘Stay Hungry’ album, our biggest selling album, I wrote in 45 minutes, essentially wrote the entire record. My son was asleep in the crib, my wife went out to go to the grocery store, and I said, ‘Okay, I got a few minutes; let me turn on the faucet.’ I look at it now like that.”
The songs ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ and ‘I Wanna Rock’ had their music videos frequently played on MTV. These videos featured a lot of humorous comedy, which was different from what most bands were doing at the time and made Twisted Sister stand out. They even made a fictional video for their song ‘Burn In Hell’ in the movie ‘Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,’ which added to their comedic image.
You can listen to the full chat below.
