Psychedelic Lunch

Welcome to our “Psychedelic Lunch Series,”where we find out how deep the rabbit hole really goes and explore music from the 60’s to today. Weekdays At Noon EST. Enjoy the trip!

The band had three different lead singers before Snider joined in 1976. Their original singer, Michael O’Neill, came up with the name, although he didn’t remember doing so. According to Jay Jay French, O’Neill called him from a bar and said he had the perfect name: Twisted Sister. French loved it, but the next day, O’Neill didn’t remember any of it.

Dee Snider created a website called Take Back the Horns that is devoted to restoring metal music (and the emblematic metal hand gesture) to its former glory.

A.J. Pero, drummer of Twisted Sister, said that his son likes Twisted Sister, but “likes Linkin Park better.”

Some members of Twisted Sister have admitted to wearing wigs for performances, in order to live up to their former head-banging glory and to put on a good show for their fans.

Twisted Sister has been described both as a metal band and a glam rock band. Dee Snider has said that Twisted Sister consider themselves a metal band, “but the first glam metal band.”

Twisted Sister singer Dee Snider got his start in music by singing in the choir at the All Saints Episcopal Church in Baldwin, New York and the Church of the Transfiguration in Freeport, New York.

After the band broke up in 1988, they continued to get media attention as nostalgia set in – Twisted Sister showed up in a bunch of shows, articles and lists devoted to hair metal and early MTV. Snider would often appear to provide a sound bite, happy to oblige in any tribute to the band’s legacy. Snider himself stayed visible (or at least audible) in the mid-’90s when he did the morning show on the Hartford, Connecticut radio station WMRQ.

Along with Frank Zappa and John Denver, Dee Snider testified at congressional hearings on September 19, 1985 regarding warning labels on albums deemed to contain explicit lyrics. The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), led by Tipper Gore, testified in favor of the labels, while the musicians argued that it was censorship. The result of the hearing were labels on albums containing lyrics depicting sex, drug or violence.

On December 3, 2013, AJ Pero was announced as the new drummer of the band Adrenaline Mob, replacing founder member Mike Portney.

Pero passed away peacefully in his bunk on Adrenaline Mob’s tour bus of a heart attack on March 20, 2015. The band was traveling from Baltimore to Poughkeepsie at a time and Adrenaline Mob’s band members attempted, but failed to wake the stickman. Pero was taken to a hospital where he was declared dead. It was later announced that the drummer had advanced heart disease.

In 2006, Twisted Sister reunited to release A Twisted Christmas, which is a collection of unique takes on classic Christmas carols and standards. The band introduced each carol with a classic rock song such as “War Pigs” by Black Sabbath or one of the many Judas Priest hits.

The cover of their 1984 breakthrough album Stay Hungry was supposed to show the full band, but Dee Snider stayed behind at the shoot and photographer Mark Weiss captured him in the feral pose that made the cover.

Twisted Sister once got involved with Manowar after the New York heavy metal group called Dee Snider and his band mates a bunch of “sissy boys with makeup.” Twisted Sister challenged them to a street fight at Covent Garden in London, but Manowar never showed up and later apologized for offending them.