INTERVIEW: Dee Snider
DEE SNIDER has made a name for himself over the years in the world of rock and heavy metal. His voice is untameable, his attitude is outrageous, his love is metal. The days of TWISTED SISTER are now being left behind in the loved past, and his solo career is moving on quicker than the speed of light. We managed to chat with the titan himself to discuss his new album For The Love Of Metal, his views on how mental health in the music industry is now being spoken about more, his non-stop adventures and of course, his love of metal.
How are you doing?
Dee: I’m doing all right thank you. I just have a question before you started pressing questions. Have you heard the entire album?
Yeah, it’s phenomenal.
Dee: Wow! You mean that right? I’m just so excited, you know. You make these records in a vacuum and you know you’re amongst yourselves and you’re all ‘I think this is really great’ and then you start playing for people and people are reacting great and the record company is acting great but now it’s time we’re getting out to the writers and bits are coming out to the audience and we’ll just wait, because is it as good as we think it is because we worked really hard on it. Particularly Jamey Jasta, he challenged me to do this record and he really rose to the challenge and it mattered to him that this record was to be just awesome. I think he did an amazing job and deserves so much respect and credit for the job he did.
For the Love of Metal is due out next month, how you feeling putting out your next solo record?
Dee: My wife says to me, ‘I haven’t seen you this happy about a product’. This I feel it’s now and I feel it’s reintroducing me in a way. Things I’ve done like novelty records like Christmas albums and a Broadway record and I’ve done things that I wanted to do them, they were challenges and I’m always about the challenge, like can I do this Broadway record? Can I do this Christmas record? Can I do a mainstream rock record like We Are The Ones? But my passion always was always has been heavy metal. I’m OG metal guy, I’m 63 years old I had the first BLUE CHEER, the first MOUNTAIN, the first GRAND FUNK, the first SABBATH, the first ZEPPELIN, day one. You know it wasn’t called metal, it was hard rock, and I was that first group of people who said ‘You know what? I don’t like the Woodstock nation’, I didn’t like CROSBY, STILLS [& NASH]. Everybody liked everything up until metal arrived it was a ‘Peace, Love, we love it all!’, CROSBY, STILLS & NASH, THE WHO, THE STONES, MOUNTAIN was out there on stage and I was like ‘No, I don’t like RICHIE HAVENS, GRATEFUL DEAD, what is that? Ew, it’s shit!’ I like the hard stuff and so when hard rock decided to get focused I was just there swinging the sledgehammer destroying the Woodstock nation. I love metal, you’re going to find yourself asking many questions and people say, ‘Well you know this record’s more metal than TWISTED SISTER’ and I said that I joined TWISTED SISTER and they were a glitter rock band. They started in 1973 inspired by the NEW YORK DOLLS, DAVID BOWIE, T. REX, SLADE, MOTT THE HOOPLE, ALICE COOPER, and I love that stuff, and I joined that band and I brought with me my metal collection and created the music which was TWISTED SISTER. I wrote what was this mix of that glitter influence and became that glam rock, you know, hair metal and heavy metal combined. But at my core, I’m a metal head and I love new metal. All my kids are head bangers and I’ve gone to so many shows with them and I’ve enjoyed so much of the new music coming out. I love it, but I haven’t felt there was a place for me and I haven’t felt that I knew how to create the contemporary metal music and Jamey Jasta, he said ‘No man, I know what you have to do and everybody’s going to want to be a part of this record, you’re beloved, you’re iconic, you’re a legend, your voice is as strong as ever, we’re going to make a ‘now’ Dee Snider record.’ I’m so fucking happy, people ask if I’m happy making angry music and yes! That’s the beauty of metal, you express the darkest emotions through metal and we feel better afterwards for it. That’s why it’s there, so we get it out.
You make a lot of music about standing up for yourself, do you get a sense of purpose when you’re creating music that other people can relate to?
Dee: I feel this is my job now. Am I an angry young man? No. Am I happy? Yes. I’m successful, my dreams have come true, I live a great, interesting life, first class, I’m doing great, but what I realise is not only just because I’m better there are people out there who are not and need a voice and Dee Snider has always been that voice. Not just sonically, lyrically the spirit and believe me I feel I’m not too far removed from the scarring memories of the ugliness of life. It didn’t take much of anything to remind myself to go back to that place and say that I know how other people are feeling because I’ve been there. The bullying thing, I’ve been bullied since I was in high school but being bullied that stays with you, it stays with you as a person and it hurts. On this record I told Jamey I need to make some statements about the bullying thing, and Dead Hearts and Become The Storm became those songs. Nobody is bullying me now, but people are being bullied and they need a voice, they need inspiration, they need someone to say ‘fuck these mother fuckers’. I’m not a pacifist, I’m not like ‘Oh, try talking to them, stop bullying’, no, fuck bullies. Literally bend them over and fuck them. The only thing they repeat is dominance and superior show of force. When my son was being bullied, I put a bounty on the head of the boy and I told my son who was getting beaten up every day when he was eight years old, and I saw where this was going, and I said, ‘Son, what do would you want if you could have anything?’ ‘GI Joe’ ‘No, moneys not an object, anything’, ‘I really would like the new Nintendo Platform’ I said ‘Okay, you punch this kid in the face and when they call me down to school, I will sit with you in the Principal’s office and say yes Principal that was very bad what he did, you shouldn’t have hit that boy and I will talk to him when we get home, when we leave school I’m taking you to the toy store and I’m buying you that Nintendo’. Next day, my son punched that kid in the face and I bought him a Nintendo, no more bullying, changed his life that day. I’m sorry, violence stops violence, I’m a weird cheerleader for anti-bullying, fights will be breaking out all over the place. But, those people need a voice, so I just realised that I can be that voice, and I’m happy to be that voice.
As you said, you’ve experienced dark times and you’re in a better place now. When you first started your career, mental health in the music industry wasn’t talked about as much as it is now. What’s it like for you looking at the change in time and seeing it openly spoken about, even with the bullying aspects?
Dee: It’s true. The words depressed, anxiety, suicide, weren’t really words that were used. My songs have been against bullies, I Am (I’m Me) and We’re Not Gonna Take It and all these songs that I’ve written, who are these people you were talking to? The bullies, the oppressors. My father was a bully using his superior strength and position to forcibly make me do what he wanted, that’s bullying, it was always there but it wasn’t as focused and discussed and it’s good that it’s being discussed, but at the same time it’s kind of weird. I’m sensing a growing weakness like suicide is on a rise, depression is on the rise. I noticed it starting in the 90s with grunge. Suddenly people weren’t saying fuck you, they were complaining and whining in their songs and expressing emotions. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, but I think sometimes it feeds on it and you wallow in self pity and you wallow in the depression and the sorrow as opposed to rising up against it. I grew up in a different way, I think a lot of people coming from that era, and older people, we grew up in a different way. I think it’s healthy that it’s being discussed, I just wonder if sometimes it’s hyper-focusing on it rather than going against these feelings, it’s allowing people to stay there. I would have friends who would listen to sad songs when they’re depressed, and I would say ‘What the fuck are you doing? Why are you listening to sad, depressing songs? Put on some aggressive, angry music, happy music, it’s a fact, it triggers your emotions! You know their heart will be broken and listening to ballads about loves loss, no, no! Find some songs that scream fuck you and start screaming, scream it ‘til you believe it, fake it ‘til you make it as they say. I encourage people to lash out. Have you seen that article on that study that was done on the fact that headbangers being emotionally better adjusted than fans of other music?
Yeah.
Dee: I’ve just done an interview with Psychology Today, they’re doing a big piece studying this phenomenon and they said, ‘why is this?’ and I said because we get it out, it allows us to vent, it allows us to express sorrow, hatred, anxiety, depression, broken hearts, anger, whatever it is, it allows us to express our emotions and we feel better after. Everybody needs to let it out and if you don’t have that, if you’re going to wallow in it, if you’re just going to sit there and listen to sad songs, you’re not going to be better for it.
Do you think that fuels the raw intensity of your music? You always pack everything with attitude.
Dee: Thank you! When Jamey challenged me, I accepted. I was a little trepidatious about what was going to happen, was he going to make me HATEBREED? The other two key guys were Charlie and Nick Bellmore who are members of TOXIC HOLOCAUST and death metal guys, it was a challenge and it wasn’t their plan, so they said ‘No, we want you to be Dee, we want to shine the light on the most ferocious Dee, the most intense Dee and the Dee that spoke to us, like Burn In Hell and Under The Blade and things like that. That’s what we want.’ As we started recording I was like ‘Wow, this is perfect for me, I get this, I feel this, this is me,’ and they were on the other side of the glass screaming Holy fuck! He’s more intense than we thought. We were all firing each other up because it was more than they expected and more than I expected. I just tell people I was on Broadway a couple of months ago doing something called Rocktopia and in the show it was classical music and classic rock on Broadway, it was a concept performance. I was singing Stairway To Heaven, Kashmir, Dream On, those were my songs. I was singing beautifully, people were stunned that I could sing so good, sing so nice, I can do that but that’s not my comfort zone. For The Love Of Metal, that is me, that’s my place, that’s effortless, I don’t have to try to sing with that ferocity, that is Dee Snider, the other things that I’ve done and can do I’m working at it. It’s not me, I’m trying to sing. I’m sure Charlie Bellmore the guitar player for most of the tracks on this record and bass tracks, he played all metal and my songs, but I’m sure he could play folk songs if he wanted to, he’s a talented musician but it’s not his comfort zone. This is where I want to be.
Do you think that made you want to rise to Jamey’s challenge then to create a contemporary metal record as he put it?
Dee: I rose to the challenge but also, he was right, there’s a place for Dee Snider in the contemporary scene. He’s playing this to people and we’re already getting people want us at every metal festival, and this isn’t an official announcement but SABATON called and they are hearing stuff and they want Dee Snider to go out and open for SABATON. I wouldn’t have got that call before For The Love Of Metal and I’ve met SABATON and their fans and they respect me, but they didn’t think TWISTED SISTER would be the right fit for a tour with SABATON, but decided with For The Love Of Metal, yes. Even though we’re not ready, not even close to ready, they’re [Napalm] like ‘We pick up the option for the second album’ and I’m like ‘We haven’t released the first one,’ but they want it. Jamey and I know that For The Love Of Metal II is somewhere in the future, it’s coming. I’ve found my place and I’m so happy to be doing this, I’m not a person. The first single we released is Tomorrow’s No Concern and this is about my belief system. I would rather talk to you about what I’m working on now, that hasn’t sold one record, one ticket. I’ve always thought that they talk about things from yesterday from decades ago, I’m proud of the past, I love the past, it was great, but this is what I’m doing now, not tomorrow but this we’re doing now and so tomorrow no concern. “I gave you yesterday, tomorrow is no concern, I gave you yesterday, I don’t need it because today is mine”, and it’s a message for the audience because I think everybody should live like that, there’s too much glory days out there, too much ‘Oh, the 80s was the best,’ or whatever you come from, there’s too much of that and not enough of doing this right now and I’m excited about it. This record defines me as a person who wants to feel vital what I’m doing now matters and counts. I’m so happy I thought there wasn’t that place in music for me. As I said I’ve been doing Broadway, Radio, TV, Movies, I’ve been finding my place now with other things that I’ve been doing but my first love is metal and music and to do a record that I feel is a place now, my wife said she hasn’t seen me this happy in a long time, and I’m always happy. She said I have an odd, childlike, glee, it’s crazy! I know, I’m 63 and not that I feel it, I’m healthy, people see me rock and their minds are blowing. I didn’t think at this point in my life this would be happening.
You’ve said that you don’t want to live in the past and want to focus on now, but are you concerned that fans who listen to For The Love Of Metal might be expecting TWISTED SISTER roots?
Dee: I’m not concerned, but it’s a chance I’m willing to take. If you’re not at least open to newer sounds, and I think Jamey crafted this record and he lost sleep, I told him ‘Dude, all your efforts to make a well-rounded record, people are hearing it, people are getting it.’ He said if they’re open and they love metal, we should create a record where they’ll feel connected to it and one of those things is always my voice, he says that ‘You’ve got an iconic voice that people know, and people love, all the original fans love it and newer fans love it, it’s a unique voice.’ I’ll give you a taste, we were in the studio at one point where we were doing this, and I slipped into a Jamey Jasta/Max Cavalera, no melody roar, and Jamey stopped and said ‘That’s really good, and I know you can do that, but I want you to be Dee Snider, I want you to be ferocious. I never want you to lose melody because you’ve always been about melody, you’ve always had melody in song. That’s Max, that’s Jamey, that’s Ozzy, that’s Oli from BRING ME THE HORIZON or at least it used to be, I need you to be Dee’. I thought cool, I was just getting into it and I do love to scream but you don’t want to go that far over the line. He made a real effort to connect with as many of the old fans as possible, I’m getting great responses, I’m not hearing from the ones who don’t like it, but plenty of the older fans who are going ‘fuck yeah!’ Hopefully I take a bunch a bunch of them with me and you know, the ones I’m losing I’ll make up with new fans.
You are an icon to the older generation of metal and you’ve been working with so many names who are icons to the newer generation. Was there any conflict on ideas on how to make the album contemporary?
Dee: Not for me, I put myself like a baby in Jamey Jasta’s arms because I knew I would love to make something like this, but I knew if I tried to create it I would be imitating, I’d be copying, imitating, you know in the 80s I wrote all the music and everything with TWISTED SISTER and I wasn’t thinking about what the other bands are doing. We were going since ’73 for God’s sake, there was no Motley Crue, and TWISTED they said was a birth of the glitter rock influence of the original band members and my metal. I combine those things to create things but we were leading the charge. I realised at the end of Widow Maker that I was listening to others and following, I was copying, I wasn’t creating, I wasn’t leading and so I said I depended on Jamey, but it wasn’t just Jamey, it was Howard Jones and it was people from LAMB OF GOD and people from DISTURBED and KILLSWITCH [ENGAGE] and TOXIC HOLOCAUST, you know death metal guys coming in with melody and saying ‘He’s not TOXIC HOLOCAUST, he’s Dee Snider and we want to present him to the newer audience in a way that he’s still Dee but they could enjoy what he does.’ I think there’s a line in A Streetcar Named Desire ‘I have always depended on the kindness of strangers’, I was depending on the kindness of strangers. I didn’t trust someone at the gate, I got to be honest, I love Jamey, but I was like ‘What are you planning here?’ But as it started happening I started seeing where they would go in and just each song was just ‘Fuck yes!’ it was just growing and growing into something amazing.
It must have been incredible to see so many people you’ve inspired over the years wanting to make a record with you, because of you.
Dee: It’s incredibly flattering, incredibly flattering, and all my kids are headbangers and my daughter she’s so fucking hardcore, since she’s been 13 she’s been dragging me because she couldn’t get into shows and been exposing me to music and she’d get me to go because she couldn’t go by herself, you know how it goes. At the Vans Warped Tour she’s 14 or 15 and I get her and her friends in and then they leave, and I’d be standing backstage by myself for five or six hours and people will first be walking around and see people looking and asking ‘Is that Dee Snider?’ they couldn’t imagine that I’d be standing alone in the back area at the Vans Warped Tour and slowly someone will get the nerve to come up, usually the roadie and ask if I am and by then my daughter would usually come back to get me and all the bands will be hanging out with me and she was like ‘Holy shit, they all admire my dad.’ The kids are older now by comparison but the BRING ME THE HORIZONs, the BLACK VEIL BRIDEs, the ASKING ALEXANDRIAs, the ESCAPE THE FATEs, all these bands along the way. I’d meet them, and they’d tell me what fans they were and it’s cool that whatever I’ve been doing, and it was more than just TWISTED SISTER, it was about my attitude and standing up, fighting censorship and things I’ve done over the years, just what I’ve represented, there was this respect for me, and that’s what Jamey saw and wanted to tap into.
There was a study going around in the week that said something about people over the age of 35 don’t discover new music. I think you’ve just called it on that.
Dee: Well, what will some people do? I get that all the time that people say there’s no good music out there and they’re usually parents and I say ‘Please, there’s great music out there’ and then they say there’s nothing they can listen to. There’s lots of great new music! MONSTER TRUCK, RIVAL SONS, you know like ZEPPELIN kind of music, but then there’s bands like VOLBEAT which combines the best elements of punk and metal and western and ska. There’s so much out there they can introduce you to and connect you to and bring what you want, you don’t got to live with the same bands you’ve been listening to for the last 30 years. That’s just being lazy and being old. I got a radio show called the House of Hair, 20 years, it plays nothing but 80s, it’s been on for over 20 years, over 220 stations, I’ve been hosting the show. A lot of young people listen to it, but this is all they want to hear it, we never play new music and they love it. Every week they tune in by the millions to listen to the old music. It’s your right but it’s a choice you’re making as you get older to not be open to new ideas, it’s the choice you’re making to not look and listen and find stuff out there that appeals to you.
Did you get a lot of insight from the people that you worked with on the record on modern ideas?
Dee: Yes, it was all these people just putting, bringing their talents, bringing their ideas and creating this record and again, the lion’s share of the credit goes to Jamey. He told me that he’s challenged many people and I was the only one that said yes, he challenged Sebastian Bach, he didn’t say yes, but I said yes and all of a sudden, I was like I have to deliver on this. I see it, I get it but there’s a different between seeing it and actually making it happen. Remember, no recording budget, no record deal, it was out of our own pocket we were just doing this, everybody working for free. It was a passion project, that’s the title For The Love Of Metal because people were just coming in purely out of a love interest to work with Dee Snider, it was an interesting, exciting project, a challenging project and then delivering.
As you’ve just said it was all out of your own pocket, no record deal whatsoever. It was a passion project, but Napalm Records stepped forward as with a lot of others about the album. How did you make your choice with picking Napalm?
Dee: As Jamey started showing these metal labels the music everybody wanted it, every major metal label wanted it and were bidding on it. I’ll tell you something off the record, or on the record, put it on the record. It was the first time I ever made money off a record deal and I can’t believe it. I mean this first time I ever got a cheque, I’ve never got a cheque off a record deal! I mean it wasn’t like I’m not a millionaire from it, but I’m stunned that in 2018 that with the state of the record industry and things like that, they didn’t take a deal on me or anything, they gave me a legitimate record deal with video budget, promotional budget. These great labels all wanting Dee Snider and Napalm wanted it the most and it’s an honour that such a heavy label, it’s like a seal of approval just to be on that label, Napalm have gone yes Dee Snider, he is that heavy.
For The Love Of Metal is out July 27 via Napalm Records.
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