Following the release of his new novel ‘Frats,’ Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider joined Fox 5 for an interview. When the chat shifted toward the topic of free speech, the singer looked back to his 1985 battle with the Parents Music Resource Center, a time when he publicly stood against music censorship. He said:
“You know, I went down there, and nobody expected what came out of my mouth, which was intelligent dialogue and interaction. Nobody expected that from the crazy guy with a bone in his face in Twisted Sister.”
He went on to reveal how attitudes changed over time:
“Years later, I went back with the Grammy Committee to discuss royalties and stuff like that. What a difference 40 years make. When I went to Washington this time, the senators, [Kevin] McCarthy, everybody was running out of rooms just to shake my hand. Nobody wanted to shake my hand back in 1985, but now, they all wanna say hello to Dee Snider.”
In a different incident, Snider recently backed up Paul Stanley’s views on children’s self-expression of gender identity on Twitter. The move led to a wave of criticism from the LGBTQ+ community and eventually resulted in his removal from the San Francisco Pride Parade & Celebration lineup.
During his interview with Fox 5, the former Twisted Sister vocalist linked the backlash to a new form of censorship existing in today’s world. To explain his point, he said:
“I recorded my last album, ‘Leave A Scar…’ I was writing a song called ‘In For The Kill,’ and it was metaphorical, yet I found myself, Dee Snider, the guy who fought censorship in 1985 in Washington DC sitting and going, ‘Can I say ‘In For The Kill’ metaphorically?'”
His words continued:
“My Dee voice said, ‘Yes, you can say it metaphorically.’ But that’s the world we live in, where we’re questioning the words that come out of our mouths, we’re checking everything because we’re afraid of offending somebody.”
You can watch Dee Snider’s recent interview here.