Twisted Sister reunited on the stage for the Metal Hall Of Fame on January 26 for their first live performance since 2016. The band hasn’t been on the stage for seven years, so Ultimate Guitar asked Twisted Sister’s guitarist Jay Jay French how it felt to be together on the stage after so many years. The guitarist said:
‘’When we walked off stage for the last time in 2016, we felt good about it. In truth, I thought that the last time would have come a lot sooner. But this time, it was nice to be in the same room and do it all again. And, of course, A.J. (Pero) is no longer with us, but it was still pretty special. But A.J. wasn’t with us toward the end anyway. We did two solid years of performances after he died, with Mike Portnoy filling in.”
The band’s reunion was at risk due to illness. Fortunately, they came up with a backup plan and got back on stages. Jay Jay explained the situation:
”Anyway, just before we were supposed to rehearse the induction, our guitar player Eddie Ojeda said he had COVID and couldn’t travel. So, that was a little bit stressful for about half an hour until we realized there was a way to handle it. And that was Eddie’s guitar tech, Keith (Robert War), who was out in Los Angeles and is a great player. We just called him, and he flew in from L.A., and as soon as he got there, we knew we were golden.’’
Seeing Twisted Sister reunion might not surprise the fans since Dee Snider only ruled out a permanent reunion. The lead singer previously talked about one-off appearances on Metal From The Inside Podcast. He explained possible reasons to get together only for one-off appearances:
“I could see us doing a couple of songs for charity, for the right reasons. We got (back) together originally for charity, which was a good reason to get together.”
It seems like a ‘good reason’ is not the only thing worth getting back together; he said they could appear on TV too:
“I could see (Jimmy) Fallon — he’s a big fan — if he said, ‘Hey, guys, can you guys come on (The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon) and do ‘White Christmas’ for us?’ F— yeah!”
Unfortunate news for the fans, the Twisted Sister songwriter underlined that he is committed to not reuniting permanently. And it gives the impression that the frontman is not alone:
“But to do a tour, to do 90 minutes, two hours on a stage, I don’t see that happening. And credit to everybody in the band, and I know some people — without naming names — some guys, they would have kept going; others did not wanna keep going.”
You can reach Metal From The Inside podcast’s episode starring Dee Snider below.
