According to Mark Mendoza, Mike Portnoy isn’t familiar with Twisted Sister’s deep history and dynamics.
“The guys in the band, we all talk. We’re all good friends,” the bassist told the Rockstrap podcast about his bond with his longtime bandmates. “We talk often. Obviously, A.J.’s [Pero, late Twisted Sister drummer] not around anymore, ’cause if A.J. were there, it’d be five of us.”
He continued, “And we love [stand-in Twisted Sister drummer] Mike Portnoy, but he doesn’t know that all the inside stuff on the band. But the four of us — that would be Dee [Snider, vocals], Jay Jay [French, guitar], Eddie [Ojeda, guitar] and myself — we have a group text message, and once every two months or so, somebody says something idiotic to somebody else, and it’s like a nuclear war.”
“The stuff that goes on, I sit here and I read it and I get in on it and you start crying. It is so funny,” the musician lastly added.
Twisted Sister’s drummer A.J. Pero passed away from a heart attack in his sleep on March 20, 2015, while on Adrenaline Mob’s tour bus. Twisted Sister announced their final tour, ‘Forty and F*ck It,’ in 2016, with Mike Portnoy stepping in as drummer. The band also held tribute shows for Pero.
During a 2020 chat with UG’s David Slavković, Twisted Sister singer Dee Snider also talked about working with Portnoy. The singer said, “And what was really incredible, the classiest thing – people need to know this – he studied A.J.’s live tapes, and he copied them, beat for beat, hit for hit, cymbal crash for cymbal crash.”
“He stepped in, and it was like… He changed nothing. He put no Mike Portnoy in there, he did A.J.’s live parts. And when we asked him if he wanted to do a solo, he said, ‘I will not do a solo,'” Snider added.
The rocker further shared, “And what we did is that we lowered a video screen, and we had the second-to-last show that A.J. played filmed, and we played that solo. Mike would not do the drum solo, and we let A.J. do a drum solo every night. People in the audience would cry. So, this is a classy person, a talented person, a respectful person who respects other musicians and their art as well – so, he’s not just about showing off and being Mike Portnoy. I love that guy.”
On January 26, 2023, Twisted Sister reunited for the Metal Hall of Fame induction at The Canyon Club in Agoura Hills. They performed three songs with Portnoy on drums and Keith Robert War filling in for Eddie Ojeda, who had COVID-19.
