In a brand new interview with “Lipps Service With Scott Lipps”, Dee Snider was asked if thinks TWISTED SISTER will ever play live again, nearly five years after the band completed its farewell tour. The singer responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “We’ve been on the same page with this. I would absolutely reunite with the guys for a song or two for a charity or for a moment. If [American talk show host Jimmy] Fallon called up and said — he’s a big TWISTED fan — ‘Hey, would you guys come on [my] show and do one of your Christmas songs?’ or whatever, I would love to. Go out and do a 90[-minute] or two-hour set as TWISTED SISTER again? I don’t see that happening.”
He continued: “I’m getting a pretty great response [as a solo artist]. I broke into the Top 20 with my last [solo] album, ‘For The Love Of Metal’, which shocked the hell out of Taylor Swift and Kanye [West]. ‘What’s that old white guy doing up here?’ And I’m, like, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what happened. But people like the new record.’
“It took quite a bit to find my place in the [metal] community [as a solo artist], so I’m staying the course now.”
Last June, guitarist Eddie Ojeda also didn’t completely rule out a TWISTED SISTER reunion, telling Talking Metal: “I never say never, because you never know. It depends on the situation. You always miss it, no matter how much you’ve done it.
“The whole comeback — we were back together for 14 years, and we did a lot of shows in the last 14 years, and we were headlining all the shows,” he continued. “We were bigger now than we were in the ’80s. So it was a great time.
“I think it just got to the point where we just felt — maybe it was like [the American sitcom] ‘Seinfeld’: go out on a high note. But as far as that goes, THE WHO blows everybody away — they are the biggest liars of all time. [They played their farewell tour in 1983] and they [are] still touring. Forty tours later, and they’re still saying, ‘We mean it this time.’ So if anybody’s gonna complain, they’d better talk to THE WHO first.”
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, guitarist Jay Jay French, 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 TWISTED‘s longtime 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.
Two years ago, French said that he was that “blissfully retired” from playing music. “I walked off stage at the last show in Mexico, and I gave all my guitars away to my crew,” he told the “Neil Jones Rock Show”. “I said, ‘Guys, thank you. It’s been great. See you later.’ I never looked back. We didn’t even meet in the lobby and have a drink. I was off stage in a golf cart with my wife on the way to the hotel. I was on a plane and out of here.”
French said that he played nine thousand shows with TWISTED SISTER and he “loved every bit of it.” But he understood when people told him that they don’t believe the band is completely retired.
“I never said we weren’t coming back,” he explained. “We retired for a while. And I said, ‘No, I’m not gonna say never.’ We could. Maybe there’s a charity [event that we could play at]. Maybe there’s Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. I doubt it, but maybe. Whatever. It could happen. But at this point in my life, I don’t think about it.”
