Dee Snider may be one of the most iconic rock stars of the ’80s, but his life hasn’t been without its challenges.
The Twisted Sister frontman spoke with Fox News Digital in an extensive interview, discussing his musical beginnings in his church choir, his upcoming plans to set foot in the film industry, and a period of his life during which he declared bankruptcy – twice.
The singer, who is the subject of “Biography: Dee Snider,” a new A&E special airing Sunday at 9 p.m. ET, said he has no problem discussing these difficult times because “the People need to share their failures, not just the successes. You know, people need to know that there is no shame in falling and that you are not the only one who falls.
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Snider said that in the early ’90s, after Twisted Sister broke up, he “lost everything.”
“Double bankruptcy, my career collapsed,” he says. “I was riding my bike to my office job and answering phones. I was married, I had three kids. You know, things got incredibly bad.”
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He added: “People need to hear these stories and know they are not alone.”
Snider explained that he was able to get through these difficult times with the help of his “partner in crime” – his wife Suzette, to whom he has been married for more than 40 years.
WATCH: DEE SNIDER SHARES TOUGH TIMES AFTER TWISTED SISTER’S BREAKUP
“She’s been by my side forever,” he said. “So I always had someone on my side saying, ‘We got this,’ which is great.”
Another thing that helped was the attitude that accompanied his biggest hit, “We’re Not Gonna Take It.”
“I sing my song to myself,” he revealed. “We’re not going to accept it. I’m going to get through it. I’m going to get through it and keep moving forward… And ultimately, you know, radio, voiceover, reality TV, movies, I do all these things. And then the band came together for a while, and it was great.
The singer noted: “Don’t worry about Dee, he kicks ass…”
In 2012, Snider spoke more to Fox News Digital about this difficult time, saying that after gradually losing money over the years, by 1995 he was “completely broke” – so much so that he and his wife “couldn’t run into a 7-Eleven with our kids because we couldn’t afford to buy them candy.”
He explained: “The ego that takes you to the top and convinces you that you’ll make it, that same ego won’t accept the warning signs. Your ego just won’t let you act intelligently. If I was bundled up and downsized… But no, I just kept spending; I’m a rock star, baby, everything’s going to be okay!”
In 2015, Snider sold his music catalog, which included Twisted Sister’s biggest hits, but in the early ’90s, when he was struggling financially, no one was interested in buying it.
“I would have given it,” he admitted to “Jackass” star Steve-O on his “Wild Ride” podcast last year. At the time, the genre of metal Snider was known for was “so out of fashion” and the grunge scene had become so popular that he couldn’t sell it.
Things changed when a Christmas song he had written years before for his wife was recorded by Celine Dion for her 1998 holiday album “These Are Special Times” – a song called “The Magic of the Day of Christmas (God bless us all).” The song was a huge success and Snider owns the publishing rights to it.
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The song has religious overtones, which makes sense given Snider’s background.
“I was an altar boy,” he told Fox News Digital. “I also sang in the church choir until I was about 19, but that was sort of concurrent, interestingly, about the same time I decided to becoming a rock star. At school, I started going to glee club and church choir, we went to church every Sunday, so I started singing and I discovered: ” Oh, well, by the way, he really can sing.
“So I thought, ‘Oh, great,’ because it’s hard to be a rock star if you don’t have talent. So by day I sang in the choir, by night I played with the group… (they) really fought, guess who won?
WATCH: DEE SNIDER SAYS HE SING IN A CHURCH CHOIR WHILE TRYING TO BECOME A ROCK STAR
Snider remembers being an “outcast” as a child, not fitting in anywhere, but said, “When I sang, whether it was in a band or a choir, I had a home. It doesn’t matter how I look. It didn’t matter for my hair. It didn’t matter what I wore. When I opened my mouth and sang, people were like, “OK, you can hang on.”
He continued, “So as I went through life and, of course, became famous for Twisted Sister, I went from being a totally unpopular kid to being the center of attention. It’s very dangerous to give this kind of attention to an unpopular child – it really gets to our heads.”
Snider admitted that there was “a big difference between where I started and what I ended up with.”
When he was 16, he remembers feeling like he was “disappearing into the background.”
“I had this epiphany one day,” he recalls. “I said, ‘I’m not going to go quietly into the night. I don’t need the approval of all these people. I’m just going to become my own biggest fan.’ And I kind of changed my attitude in general and just got comfortable with who I was. And that’s when people started to listen and listen. said, “Well, this guy is pretty cool in his own weird way.” You know?
This change in attitude, coupled with the decade that passed between the formation of Twisted Sister and when they finally achieved mainstream success, is what inspired the group’s best-known song, “We’ reNot Gonna Take It.”
“We went from being like, ‘Hey, we’re having fun playing rock and roll,’ and then we get this endless rejection,” Snider explained. “We’ve developed this chip on our shoulders, and there’s this straightforward attitude.”
He said: “It was really just my life of rejection, you know, and I felt rejected constantly since I was a kid and being told ‘no’ and ‘you can’t’ and ‘not you’. “
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WATCH: DEE SNIDER REVEALS HOW HE BECAME HIS ‘OWN BIGGEST FAN’
The song “We’re Not Gonna Take It” was written “in the very early ’80s,” he said, although it wasn’t released until 1984. Snider shared, “I wanted to write a song that expressed my frustration, but I wanted it to be a song for everyone’s frustration. »
When the track was released, Village Voice published a review, Snider said, asking what the band wasn’t going to take it from and who they weren’t going to take it from.
“And I shout to the newspaper: ‘That’s exactly it!'” he shared. “It’s what you’re not taking from who? It’s your song. It’s not just our song. It’s ‘We won’t take it,’ not ‘I won’t take it .’ And it became a song that transcended genre, era, internationally. It’s like a folk song for every time someone is angry at the world, “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” ” is his favorite song.
Twisted Sister broke up in 1988. They reunited briefly over the years, including for a farewell tour in 2016. Snider told Fox News Digital that they had planned for this tour to be their last hurray, but offers keep coming, and he said they’re getting “bigger and bigger every year.”
“We have this theory that the longer we go, the bigger we become, the more valuable we become,” he explained. “So we actually had a conversation like, well, if the numbers went to the stratosphere, should we do the ‘We’re Only In It For The Money’ tour, as we’re considering calling it. A good title .At least it’s honest.
Original article source: Twisted Sister Singer Dee Snider Filed Double Bankruptcy After Becoming a Rock Star: ‘No Shame in Falling’