50 Fun Facts About Twisted Sister

Which carol, recorded by Twisted Sister in 2006, does Dee Snider cite as an influence on We're Not Gonna Take It?

O Come, All Ye Faithful came full circle on A Twisted Christmas, where the band played the carol exactly in the style of their own hit.

Which folk singer testified beside Twisted Sister's Dee Snider and Frank Zappa at a 1985 Senate hearing on rock lyrics?

John Denver surprised those who expected him to back the campaigners by calling the proposed warning labels censorship, noting that his own Rocky Mountain High had been misread.

Which actor, later the Maestro on Seinfeld, plays the shouting father in Twisted Sister's We're Not Gonna Take It video?

Mark Metcalf was hired to revive his best-known screen bully, and he came back as the villain of the band's I Wanna Rock video later in 1984.

The father in Twisted Sister's We're Not Gonna Take It video revives a bullying ROTC officer from which 1978 comedy?

Animal House villain Doug Neidermeyer is the model, and the video even gives the father the same first name and middle initial.

Which pop star played piano on Twisted Sister's Be Chrool to Your Scuel, a song with a Clarence Clemons sax solo?

Billy Joel was one of several star guests on the 1985 track, which also carries a guitar solo by Brian Setzer of the Stray Cats.

The intro to Twisted Sister's song Come Out and Play pays homage to a villain's taunt in which 1979 gang film?

In The Warriors, the villain Luther clinks empty bottles together as he taunts the title gang, and the opening track of the 1985 album salutes the scene.

Twisted Sister are filming a mock video for Burn in Hell when a chase scene bursts through in which 1985 comedy?

Pee-wee's Big Adventure got its cameo after the film's star and Dee Snider hit it off at an MTV New Year's Eve party, and the comedian asked for that song by name.

Twisted Sister's I Wanna Rock was reworked as Goofy Goober Rock for a 2004 film based on which cartoon series?

SpongeBob SquarePants also gave Dee Snider a voice role of his own, as Angry Jack in the episode Shell Shocked.

Which future thrash metal giants toured as a young support act to Twisted Sister during the Stay Hungry era?

Metallica opened for a band at its commercial peak, as Stay Hungry went on to sell more than three million copies.

Dee Snider told a 1985 Senate hearing that Twisted Sister's Under the Blade was about a bandmate's fear of what?

Surgery was the theme, as guitarist Eddie Ojeda had faced a throat operation, and Snider told senators that any bondage in the song existed only in his accuser's mind.

Which shock-rock star shares lead vocals on Twisted Sister's Be Chrool to Your Scuel and stars in its video?

Alice Cooper was Dee Snider's hero, but the cameo backfired when MTV refused to show the video on the grounds that it was offensive.

Twisted Sister's 1985 single Leader of the Pack remade a chart-topping 1964 hit by which girl group?

The Shangri-Las sang it from the girlfriend's side, while the cover flips the story so that the biker tells it and his girlfriend is the one in the accident.

Which future Beverly Hills, 90210 heart-throb appears in the 1985 video for Twisted Sister's Be Chrool to Your Scuel?

Luke Perry turned up in the zany clip five years before the role of Dylan McKay made him a teen idol.

Which future Second Lady co-founded the group that named Twisted Sister's We're Not Gonna Take It in its Filthy Fifteen?

Tipper Gore started the Parents Music Resource Center in 1985 with other well-connected Washington wives, among them the wife of Treasury Secretary James Baker.

Under which heading did the PMRC's Filthy Fifteen list file Twisted Sister's We're Not Gonna Take It?

Violence was the complaint, and Dee Snider answered that the charity United Way had happily used the video's opening scene to talk about family communication.

Which country's courts awarded $1.5 million against a politician who reworded Twisted Sister's We're Not Gonna Take It?

Australia was where Clive Palmer argued in vain that he owed nothing, since he had written new words for his campaign ads and the tune echoed an old carol.

Spanish-speaking fans famously sing Twisted Sister's We're Not Gonna Take It as a phrase about which food?

Eggs with oil and lemon is what the Spanish soundalike means, and the band has sung it that way itself at concerts in Spanish-speaking regions.

Which British glam band, famed for Cum On Feel the Noize, does Dee Snider cite as an influence on Twisted Sister?

Slade, whom Snider names as a model for We're Not Gonna Take It, saw that single enter the UK chart at number one in 1973.

The actor who plays the father in Twisted Sister's We're Not Gonna Take It video returns in I Wanna Rock as what?

A teacher is his role this time, tormenting a pupil who has drawn the band's logo on a textbook until the boy and four classmates turn into Twisted Sister.

Which actor, Flounder in a 1978 college comedy, plays the principal in Twisted Sister's I Wanna Rock video?

Stephen Furst ends the video by turning a seltzer bottle on the villain, having suddenly decided that he approves of the band.

Which director, later the creator of HBO's Hard Knocks, made Twisted Sister's We're Not Gonna Take It video?

Marty Callner cast his own son as the boy whose guitar chord blasts the father out of the bedroom window.

In the 2012 election, Dee Snider asked which Republican to stop playing Twisted Sister's We're Not Gonna Take It?

Paul Ryan was told that the singer did not support him, although Snider had happily performed the song at Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign events in 2003.

Which Long Island magician was given Twisted Sister's We're Not Gonna Take It as the anthem for his HELP charity?

Criss Angel got the song free of charge in 2016, and Dee Snider recorded a stripped-down acoustic version in the desert outside Las Vegas for the cause.

Which Canadian superstar recorded The Magic of Christmas Day, a song written by Twisted Sister's Dee Snider, in 1998?

Celine Dion put it on her album These Are Special Times and, by Snider's account, had no idea at the time who had written it.

In 2010 Dee Snider joined the Broadway cast of which jukebox musical with Twisted Sister songs, as bar owner Dennis?

Rock of Ages gave him an 11-week run as the owner of the Bourbon Room, in a show built on hits by acts such as Journey, Bon Jovi and Poison.

Twisted Sister's Dee Snider calls himself an anti-rock star because he has shunned what since one bad night at age 14?

Alcohol has been off limits ever since, and he credits staying clean for the lasting power of his voice in a band that enforced its own ban on drink and drugs.

Twisted Sister made its name in Long Island clubs but was formed in 1972 in Ho-Ho-Kus, a borough in which state?

New Jersey gave the group its start as a glitter act modelled on the New York Dolls, years before it became one of the most popular bar bands around New York.

In which 2002 video game does Twisted Sister's I Wanna Rock play on the fictional radio station V Rock?

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was not the song's only game outing, as Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s later used the band's 2004 re-recording.

On Celebrity Wife Swap in 2012, the wife of Twisted Sister's Dee Snider traded places with the fiancée of which rapper?

Flavor Flav's household hosted Suzette Snider, the costume designer who has long shaped the look of her husband's stage outfits.

Which performer improvised the bottle-clinking taunt that Twisted Sister echo at the start of Come Out and Play?

David Patrick Kelly came up with the chant in his debut film after director Walter Hill, underwhelmed by the scripted version of the scene, asked him for ideas.

Luther, the screen villain whose taunt opens Twisted Sister's Come Out and Play, leads which New York street gang?

The Rogues' leader shoots the summit organiser Cyrus dead and lets a rival crew from Coney Island take the blame, which sets off the all-night chase of the 1979 film.

Which comedian, Zed in the Police Academy films, appears in Twisted Sister's videos from Come Out and Play?

Bobcat Goldthwait turns up in both the Leader of the Pack and Be Chrool to Your Scuel clips, which kept the comic formula of the Stay Hungry videos.

Dieter Dierks, producer of Twisted Sister's Come Out and Play, was best known for his long run with which German band?

Scorpions were signed to Dierks from 1975 to 1988, but his touch could not stop the 1985 album from selling far fewer copies than Stay Hungry.

Bassist Mark Mendoza joined Twisted Sister in 1978 after leaving which New York punk band?

The Dictators later supplied a drummer too, as Richie Teeter kept the Twisted Sister drum stool warm before the classic line-up settled in 1982.

Before joining Twisted Sister in 1982, drummer A. J. Pero trained in jazz and earned a living driving what?

A taxi paid the bills for the Staten Island native, who joined after watching the band play a club and hearing that it needed a drummer.

Twisted Sister guitarist Eddie Ojeda, nicknamed Fingers, is best known for a custom guitar painted with which design?

A bullseye was part of the original Twisted Sister logo design, he has explained, and Charvel built the first black-and-red version of the guitar in the 1980s.

After Twisted Sister split, guitarist Jay Jay French moved into management and produced which metal band's debut album?

Sevendust released that self-titled debut in 1997, with his old bandmate Mark Mendoza also credited among its producers.

Dee Snider wrote the Twisted Sister song The Price in the bathroom of an English studio owned by which guitarist?

Jimmy Page's Sol Studios hosted the sessions for the band's second album, and the song grew out of months spent out of reach of his wife and baby son.

Tom Werman angered Dee Snider at Twisted Sister's Stay Hungry sessions by bringing in songs by which English metal band?

Saxon were only meant as listening, but Snider took it as a hint that the producer wanted cover versions in place of some of his own songs.

Fast Eddie Clarke, who plays a guest solo on Twisted Sister's 1982 song Tear It Loose, was a guitarist with which band?

Motörhead also gave the newcomers a leg up, taking Twisted Sister on as an opening act once the debut album had made their name in Britain.

Twisted Sister's debut album was produced by Pete Way, the bassist of which British hard rock band?

UFO's bassist shared the producing with Dee Snider and Mark Mendoza, working from a mobile unit that belonged to the hitmaker Mickie Most.

Twisted Sister recorded its 1982 debut album with a mobile studio in which unlikely English setting?

A farm barn it was, with hay bales stacked round the drums and amplifiers, and the gear had to be cleared away whenever a dance was held there.

A slot on which British music TV show led Atlantic Records to sign Twisted Sister after earlier turning them down?

The Tube was a gamble, as the band took $22,000 to Britain in order to appear, and the label that had passed on them in their club days soon came calling.

Which 1983 single gave Twisted Sister a first chart hit, reaching number 18 in Britain without a US release?

I Am (I'm Me) put the band on Top of the Pops in full make-up, and the BBC took complaints from startled viewers.

Which 1987 Twisted Sister album began as a Dee Snider solo record, with Reb Beach playing most of the guitar parts?

Love Is for Suckers came out under the group's name at the label's insistence, and within months Snider had quit and the band was finished.

Two songs from Twisted Sister's Stay Hungry became the basis of which 1998 horror film written by Dee Snider?

Strangeland grew out of the two-part Horror-Teria suite, with Snider himself playing its villain, Captain Howdy.

Twisted Sister grew out of a glitter band, modelled on the New York Dolls, that Jay Jay French joined under which name?

Silver Star lasted only until Valentine's Day 1973, when the group's singer came up with the replacement name at a rehearsal.

In 1997 Dee Snider of Twisted Sister began hosting which syndicated radio show devoted to 1980s hard rock and metal?

The House of Hair went out on more than 200 stations across North America, a career turn he credits to encouragement from his friend Howard Stern.

Clarence Clemons, sax soloist on Twisted Sister's Be Chrool to Your Scuel, spent decades in which star's backing group?

The E Street Band had him as Bruce Springsteen's saxophonist from 1972 until his death in 2011, and his is one of four star cameos on the 1985 track.

Which horror make-up artist, famed for Dawn of the Dead, appears in Twisted Sister's Be Chrool to Your Scuel video?

Tom Savini created his signature palette of severed limbs and bite marks on that zombie film, and the clip he joined was refused by MTV as offensive.