“Twisted Sister: Breaking The Band”, which focuses on how TWISTED SISTER crashed and burned in the 1980s, will premiere on Saturday, February 6 at 8 p.m. ET/ 5 p.m. PT on Reelz.
Official show description: “In 1984, TWISTED SISTER were one of the biggest heavy metal bands on the planet with the world at their feet. After a decade battling to get to the top, this Long Island bar band were hailed as the new rock gods of MTV but their crash and burn would be spectacular! Told by the band themselves and their lead singer, the voice of ‘Breaking The Band’, Dee Snider. This is a cautionary tale of how ego, overexposure and intra-band tension would rip the group apart. Revealing the true story behind the split of rock and roll’s most outrageous, heavily made up and beloved acts, this is ‘Breaking The Band’: TWISTED SISTER.”
Asked in a new interview with Fox News how he feels about TWISTED SISTER‘s legacy as a band in 2021, Snider said: “TWISTED SISTER was one of the greatest live performing bands of all time. We went and decimated so many festivals and so many concert arenas, and so many bands we opened up for. We were lethal.
“And Lemmy Kilmister, shortly before he died, he said to me, ‘Dee, you’re one of the three greatest frontmen I’ve ever seen. And the greatest at talking to the audience.’ I had to communicate with the audience. And Lemmy, he was a man who roadied for Jimi Hendrix and saw THE BEATLES at the Cavern Club. He knew about frontmen. But it’s frustrating that we weren’t at the top long enough for people to really come to know that.
“Fortunately, after we reunited, more people came to know that. We were reunited longer than when we were together the first time, which was weird… People are seeing that there was more to this band than just the moment in the sun that we had in the ’80s. And we were significant, influencing a lot of upstarts in the Northeast, BON JOVI and SKID ROW and CINDERELLA and OVERKILL and ANTHRAX and PUBLIC ENEMY.
“Chuck D said, ‘If it wasn’t for TWISTED SISTER, there would be no PUBLIC ENEMY.’ He used to come to see us in the clubs, and we were just this rebellious, in-your-face, fuck-you band. And he said it inspired him to go and put together a rebellious, in-your-face, fuck-you hip-hop act. So, people have come to realize, ‘Well, this band had more significance than just a couple of songs and videos on MTV.'”
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 Snider, guitarists Jay Jay French and 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 drummer A.J. 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.
