In a new interview with Goldmine, TWISTED SISTER guitarist Jay Jay French discussed the band’s 2006 album “A Twisted Christmas”, which featured metal versions of Christmas songs, including the holiday carol “Oh Come All Ye Faithful”, which heavily inspired TWISTED SISTER‘s biggest hit, “We’re Not Gonna Take It”. Also appearing on the LP were such holiday chestnuts as “Silver Bells” and “Let It Snow”, propelling the album’s sales to more than 150,000 copies and spawning a live Christmas show the band performed annually for several years.
Jay Jay said: “Dee [Snider, TWISTED SISTER singer] had this idea years ago to get JUDAS PRIEST and IRON MAIDEN and all these bands to each do a Christmas song. When you listen to our Christmas album, if you really listen to it carefully, what we did with the Christmas [album] was, it was two things. One was we only used famous songs, [so] everybody could sing along with it. Number two, we would arrange each song to make it sound like the bands that we would love would play it. So, when you hear ‘Silver Bells’, it sounds like AC/DC would do ‘Silver Bells’. When you hear ‘I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus’, it’s like JUDAS PRIEST was doing ‘I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus’. When you hear ‘White Christmas’, it’s like IRON MAIDEN doing ‘White Christmas’. It was done deliberately as an homage to all the bands that we loved. So if you really kind of get into the minutiae of the album and the way the songs peeled themselves out, then you have to understand it was done that way. So, there was a lot going on on that Christmas record — a whole lot going on.”
French went on to say that he “loved” the entire Christmas project. “Not only did I love the Christmas album, I loved the Christmas DVD,” he said. “I loved playing the Christmas songs live. They’re so much fun. It’s a lot of fun. That stuff was really fun. That’s what made the reunion such a good thing for us, when we came back, ’cause we were able to really come back as friends. And that Christmas record became the biggest metal Christmas [album]. When we did it, I think a lot of metal bands thought we were nuts.”
Asked why TWISTED SISTER hasn’t released a follow-up Christmas LP, Jay Jay said: “We thought about it — we thought about it years ago, and the idea petered out. But here’s the amazing thing — next year is the 15th anniversary of the Christmas album, and we’re fondling the idea of recording a couple of new songs and re-releasing it. We also may have in the vaults an instrumental of the Hallelujah chorus, which would be, if we have it, the last A.J. Pero [late TWISTED SISTER drummer] track that we have, which would be great. So we’re looking to see if that is a practical reality.”
In 2016, TWISTED SISTER embarked on one final trek, titled “Forty And Fuck It”, in celebration of its 40th anniversary. These shows featured the band’s “core lineup” of French, Snider, guitarist Eddie Ojeda and bassist Mark Mendoza, along with drummer Mike Portnoy. The band’s last-ever concert took place in November of that year — 20 months after the passing of Pero.
TWISTED SISTER‘s original run ended in the late ’80s. After more than a decade, the band publicly reunited in November 2001 to top the bill of New York Steel, a hard-rock benefit concert to raise money for the New York Police And Fire Widows’ And Children’s Benefit Fund.
