Dec 14

Dee Snider

DEE SNIDER
 
 
Dee Snider  (born Daniel Snider; March 15, 1955) is an American singer-songwriter, screenwriter, radio personality, and actor.  Snider is most famous for his role as the frontman of the heavy metal band Twisted Sister.  He was ranked 83 in the Hit Parader’s Top 100 Metal Vocalists of All Time.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 

You might remember “We’re Not Gonna Take It” as a classic music video on MTV back in the day; as Wikipedia describes it:  “The song is notable for its popular music video directed by Marty Callner, with its emphasis on slapstick comedy, where a parent gets the worst of the band’s mischief.  Controversy arose when the depiction of the family in the video caused a public outcry long before the ‘explicit lyrics’ warning was placed on records, cassettes, and CD’s.  

This led to the formation of the Parents Music Resource Center, co-founded by Tipper Gore (who later became Second Lady of the United States).  Mark Metcalf, the actor portraying the father in the video, had previously played   Neidermeyer, the ROTC student commander in National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978).  In a reference to his role in the film, Metcalf says in the video, ‘A Twisted Sister pin? On your uniform?!’.  [Lead singer Dee] Snider himself can also be heard cursing and swearing the question ‘A pledge pin? On your uniform?’ at the end of the song.” 

 

U. S. Senate hearings were held in 1985 about supposedly offensive song lyrics, where Twisted Sister lead singer Dee Snider and Frank Zappa (among others) testified.  A somewhat tongue-in-cheek TV movie about the controversy called Warning: Parental Advisory came out in 2002; it was created by VH1 and was directed by Mark Waters.  In one scene, appearing as himself, Dee Snider clomps into the Senate chambers in full Twisted Sister regalia to testify. 

 

(June 2013/2)

 

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It didn’t register right away, but eventually I noticed that Presidential candidate Donald Trump had the Twisted Sister song “We’re Not Gonna Take It” playing at a lot of his early rallies. Lead singer and songwriter Dee Snider personally gave Trump permission to use the song. I have written of their music video for this song before, featuring Animal House star Mark Metcalf and several lines of dialogue from the movie also. (Even the song has some of the dialogue in it).  
(March 2016)
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Why “We're Not Gonna Take It” showed up at all among the Filthy Fifteen is a real puzzler, but it brought out the ire of Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider, who provided the most memorable testimony at the U. S. Senate hearing that he made even more effective by dressing up for the occasion. The other two musicians who testified were Frank Zappa – at least one of the F15 alumni praised him as running interference for the whole rock industry – and John Denver. This wide-ranging trio gives some indication as to how offended rock musicians were in turn about the whole offending-lyrics business.
 
As quoted in the Nick Gillespie post, Dee Snider told the U. S. Senate: “You will note from the lyrics before you that there is absolutely no violence of any type either sung about or implied anywhere in the song. Now, it strikes me that the PMRC may have confused our video presentation for this song . . . with the lyrics, with the meaning of the lyrics. It is no secret that the videos often depict story lines completely unrelated to the lyrics of the song they accompany. The video ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ was simply meant to be a cartoon with human actors playing variations on the Road Runner – Wile E. Coyote theme. Each stunt was selected from my extensive personal collection of cartoons.”
 
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Rolling Stone’s article provides reflections from some of the rock artists involved in the PMRC controversy. Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider has this to say: “Everything I represented, stood for and said back then, I have lived and stand by today. . . . I practice self-censorship. When my own family got into Tenacious D, the first album [Tenacious D], including my little daughter who was only eight, I made a special tape for her without ‘F--k Her Gently’ on it ’cause she wasn’t ready for ‘F--k Her Gently’. But she clearly listened [to] ‘Wonderboy’ and the other songs her brothers were listening to. This is hands-on parenting and everything I stood for.”
 
(June 2016)
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Since I am down to a quarterly schedule rather than a monthly schedule, my annual list is a lot shorter, so I will try listing all of the people that I have discussed in some depth rather than just the Under Appreciated Rock Band and the Story of the Month. They are all punk rock bands of one kind or another this year (2015-2016), and the most recent post includes my overview of the early rap/hip hop scene that an old friend, George Konstantinow challenged me to write – probably so long ago that he might have forgotten.
 
 
(Year 7 Review)
Last edited: March 22, 2021