The opening drum beats are unmistakable, the attitude is fierce, and no other song quite represents being a teen in the 1980s more than the Twisted Sister classic “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” The song took on a life of its own in the summer of 1984, with millions of teens worshiping their new found rock heroes as the advent of MTV brought them right into our very own living rooms. With their outrageous makeup and costumes, Twisted Sister was the stuff teenage dreams are made of and parents had nightmares about. Over the years “We’re Not Gonna Take It” has become an anthem of our youth and has been used around the world at sporting events and even political campaigns.
The band’s rise to fame seemed to appear out of nowhere but Twisted Sister had been slugging it out in the clubs for well over a decade and it’s their live show that really made them who they are as a band. They have had their fair share of ups and downs over the last 40 years, both personally and professionally, with the most tragic being the unexpected passing of drummer A.J. Pero in 2015. But in true Twisted fashion, the band has persevered sometimes against all odds and is in the midst of perhaps their busiest year yet. Their live DVD “Metal Meltdown-Live at the Hard Rock Casino-Las Vegas” which was dedicated to the late A.J. Pero debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts. They also have a new documentary film “Rockshow” and are out on the road for one final run with the “Forty and F*ck It-The Final Tour” in full swing.
BackstageAxxess recently had the opportunity to chat with guitarist Jay Jay French to find out all the latest happenings with the band. Unfortunately, we caught up with Jay Jay on a travel day and were unable to run the audio of our conversation. At the time of our interview, he was traveling across England via train so there was quite a bit of noise and we lost connection a few times. Being a true gentleman and consummate professional, Jay Jay sincerely apologized for the challenges that arose during our talk making sure we got everything we needed as he spoke openly and honestly during the interview. We at BackstageAxxess are proud to present an interview with one of the best guitarists around and one of the best people in the business, Jay Jay French.
KE: Hello Jay Jay, how are you?
JJF: I’m well. Where are you located?
KE: I’m in Charlotte, North Carolina.
JJF: I’m in England on my way from visiting my daughter in Bath on the train to London. The sun is shining and it’s 80 degrees so it’s basically like an alien life force over here right now.
KE: Very nice. Thank you for taking the time to call in and talk with us today. We appreciate it.
JJF: My pleasure.
KE: Twisted has a lot going on this year with the final tour but let’s talk about that new DVD release “Metal Meltdown-Live at the Hard Rock Casino Las Vegas.” It debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts. How gratifying was that after all the hard work over the years doing what you do?
JJF: Oh, one of the highlights of my career, so had the band never been able to come back, we’ve been able to experience the unique love that our fans have for us worldwide , amazingly gratifying. A.J. would have been overwhelmed by it just as we are.
KE: Now the show was filmed just two (2) months after the tragic death of A.J. After losing not only a bandmate but I’m sure a very close friend, how difficult was it to continue on and do those shows?
JJF: I think the weeks following his death, we were traumatized by it and we questioned what to do. We had just signed on to do that, I think we signed the deal maybe a week before A.J.’s death, we finished concluding the negotiations. It was a strange series of events because we agreed to do the DVD filming and then Dee and I had a discussion about, you know, how much longer we were gonna do this in general. We were kind of saying maybe we should end it in 2015 and so we left the conversation on March 19th with, you know what, why don’t we say this is it. This year’s it, the dvd will come out in 2015 and we’ll call it a day. And then I called A.J. about 7:30 in the evening and I said listen A.J., I just want you to know we had a discussion and I think it’s time. We’ve been doing the reunion for 13 years. We were only going to do the reunion for 3 years and it’s been 12, I think we’re gonna end it. He said really and I said yeah. So I said, you know what, you got your plans with Adrenaline Mob and Four By Fate, keep all those irons in the fire because 2015 is gonna be it. I said you should probably call your son too because we’re gonna use the European road crew and you won’t need to bring A.J. Jr. He said my shoulder’s bothering me and I’m leaving to go to rehab so if you hear my shoulder’s bothering me and I’ve left, it’s only because my shoulder’s bothering me but everything’s ok. Well unbeknownst to me, he had a heart attack two days prior to that. unbeknownst to A.J. he had been walking around for two days having had a heart attack.
KE: Oh my!
JJF: And so I said to him come into New York on Monday, we’re gonna go over some business stuff. And he said ok and before I hung up the phone, I said good bye Mr. Pero and he said goodbye Mr. French because we called each other Mr. Pero and Mr. French , just an inside joke between the two of us you know. And he hung up and then the next morning I was having breakfast with the director of the documentary about Twisted Sister about the promotion of the documentary. That was about 9 o’clock in the morning and then my phone rang, my cell, and I was told that A.J. had had a heart attack and was on his way to the hospital. So I leave the breakfast thinking it’s got to be indigestion, it can’t be real. And I took a walk and about ten minutes after I took a walk the phone rang and I was given the news. So now, we’re all shellshocked, completely shellshocked. The next day… hey you don’t mind me giving you the story here do you?
KE: No, absolutely not, please continue on.
JJF: OK, so the next day Adrenaline Mob played a memorial show for A.J. at a little venue called the Starland and they called me and asked would I come down and do a song for A.J. and I was crying my eyes out and I was still in total shock and I said ok. So I went to the Starland and I was in the dressing room waiting to go on and Mike Portnoy is sitting there. Mike and I had seen each other at various events but we had never really spoken and he looked at me and he said “listen, my Winery Dog gig is over for the year and I have nothing on the schedule, I don’t know what you’re going to do, I don’t know if you’ve made a decision to do anything or do nothing but if you need me for any reason, I’m here.” And I kind of looked at him and then we both went on stage and played some songs and then two days after that was A.J.’ s funeral. And following the service, me, Dee, Eddie, and Mark Mendoza went to Dee’s house on Staten Island and had a meeting and discussed what we were doing. Anything? Nothing? Where are we going with this? And we decided that we would finish and I told the guys that Mike Portnoy said he would play and everybody was on board, and by the way, Mike Portnoy comes with all of that on his end. I mean he’s legendary in his own way and it was such an offer because A.J. said to us at one point, if anything ever happens to me, call Mike Portnoy because A.J. replaced Portnoy in Adrenaline Mob. There was kind of a ironic cycle, you know what I mean, like the completion of the circuit. So I think if Mike had not offered, I don’t know what would have happened. I’m not sure. We all said, ok we’ll do the concert and it evolved into a tribute and then we’ll play out the dates. And then 2016 will be the 40th anniversary of me, Dee, and Eddie in the band and I said maybe we should call it a day and tie things up. Knowing that the documentary would be coming out in 2016 and knowing that the DVD that we recorded would be out in 2016, knowing that a three CD package of stuff from the ’70s was gonna come out in 2016, and the record label Warner Music was gonna do a release, we all kind of thought this was the last five minutes of the Twisted Sister fireworks display. So we agreed to continue on and we booked the biggest shows in the world for this summer and this summer has turned out to be beyond my wildest dreams, beyond everything. Number one, the documentary is number one on Netflix release. The DVD debuted at number one, the shows have been phenomenal and it looks like this year is going to be one of the best years that we ever had. I’m kind of overwhelmed that it’s 40 years in, 43 for me, 9,000 shows, I never would have expected this to happen at this point in our career. It’s amazing.
KE: Absolutely, Twisted has always been about the live show and is one of, if not, in Dee’s words, the best live band ever and you’re one of the few bands that still puts out the live DVDs. How important has it been for the band over the years to capture that live energy and make that available for the fans?
JJF: It’s very important for the band. It’s our meat and potatoes. It’s what we’re known for. It’s what we’re most proud of. We don’t have to release new material every year but you have to be really great live. If someone is going to travel to see you these days especially, you better kick their ass. And we respect our fans and we give them exactly what they want and that’s why we’re so successful. Other bands wonder, how come your band is so good live and it’s because we give them exactly what they want. I see other bands play and I see the mistakes that they make. They don’t do the right song choices. They don’t do them in the right order. That’s their choice. That’s their business. They can do whatever they want to do and it’s not my job to tell them how to survive. I know that we learned our lessons in the bars and learned how to become a great live band by playing thousands of shows. We’re at 9,000 performances which puts us at the most of any band that I know of. You learn how to be great and you earn your reputation. You play a lot live and learn how to do it and we take great pride in it. If we weren’t great, we’d have a problem. I think the reason we want to stop is we want to stop when our show is still great.
KE: You mentioned the documentary release. What was it like to kind of go back in time and relive some of those important moments in the band’s history?
JJF: Well, to review the band’s history, if you’re married to one of us or a girlfriend or a close friend, you’ve probably heard these stories a thousand times but I think the reason why girlfriends leave their rock musician husbands is because they’re sick of hearing the stories. It’s like my girlfriend gets up and leaves the room. Everyone asks me like the same three questions every time and you kind of get used to it. I think it’s important for the world to see the story of the first 10 years because nobody knew the story of the first ten years. It’s so unique and so completely different and it gives real gravitas to those people that think the band kind of just materialized one afternoon after MTV . Thinking, oh let’s put together a band, put on some hair and makeup and have a hit record. What they didn’t understand was that prior to that there was a huge, huge, huge story. That’s what I’m most proud of with the documentary is that it tells a story that’s never been told, a story unlike any other, a story of rock and roll.
KE: With this summer’s tour, it seems like the audiences are just going crazy, knowing it’s probably the last time they will get to see Twisted Sister perform. There’s a video clip going around from Wacken Open Air and the audience participation is simply incredible, the best I’ve ever seen. Can you tell us a bit about that performance, maybe take us into the moment a bit?
JJF: Well, crowd size is always an interesting analysis. So let’s say for Sweden Rock this year we did about 60,000 people which is huge right? Then we went to Hellfest in France and they said we played in front of 75,000 which is really huge and then we went to Belgium and they said we played in front of 90,000 which is really, really huge. (Laughter) And then we played Wacken and I don’t even know the numbers any more. I’ve given up. Is it 110,000? I mean, it almost doesn’t matter because you can’t tell anymore. We did Metal Montreal two (2) years ago and they said there were 80,000 people singing along with us and I have videos of all of it. All of it’s overwhelming, especially when you’re on the stage and you’re presiding over all this madness and you’re just going Holy Shit! I can’t believe I am 64 years old and still doing this. I mean, I dreamed about it when I was 20 and I thought it would be over with by the time I was 25, so to be 64 and to witness it at this level , it’s kind of mindblowing actually. Especially when people see it, otherwise it just sounds like a bunch of hype, you know what I mean? Like, oh really, really, you had that many people really? It’s like a dying wolf, just bragging about it. But I say to people here, you tell me how would you describe it, I’m sick of describing it. (Laughter) Like Wacken, I was like, fuck, it was pretty crazy. But you know what, the crowds all over the world are crazy, South American crowds are freaking crazy. The kids in the soccer stadiums in Bolivia are crazy. The kids in the arenas in Argentina are like a religious experience, so just from a numbers view, rock and roll is probably insane to look at it, really insane to look at it. But the reaction on stage all over the world, almost exactly the same which is maybe the most gratifying because it says to you that music is a universal language and that’s most gratifying part about it.
KE: You have some dates in the States coming up and I wanted to ask you about Rock Carnival because that will be your last appearance in the New York, New Jersey area. What are your feelings on that?
JJF: Well, we have two more shows in Europe before that and a show in England will be very historic and emotional because England was so important to the band. So that’s the first one coming up, then we go back to Belgium and that’s going to be important with both of those festivals having 30-40,000 people. And then in New York we’re doing it live on TV on Fox News which will be pretty huge and then we have the New Jersey show which will be pretty emotional because it’s the only festival in America and it will be in New Jersey and the tri state area. And it’s the only opportunity we have to play for a lot of people because there are not that many festivals in the United States. That’s a perfect festival, perfect time for it and I’m sure it will be emotional. I’m sure there will be hardcore fans coming out there, kind of celebrating and getting all misty that it’s the final US performance.
KE: Since this is going to be the final thing for Twisted Sister, do you have any plans for what you are going to be doing once it’s all over?
JJF: Life is a chess match. I’ve thought 20 steps ahead all my life and I write for Inc. magazine. I write a business column for them, not ink like tattoo ink but Inc.com. I write for them and I’m writing a book. I do keynote speeches and I do motivational speeches for entrepreneurs. So that’s my focus when this is done. Just to move into the business world completely. Because the lessons learned in the band’s success, are lessons that should be used in all business, they’re common in all business. You know we were the ultimate entrepreneurs. The lessons that we learned are universal so I enjoy telling those stories and explaining to people the techniques and the tools we used to get through tough times too. And I just plan to rest because after 9,000 shows, I can look back and say you know I don’t need to look in the mirror with a guitar and pretend I’m a rock star. I can try to take it easy. Plus, Twisted Sister is still going to be doing business. There’s still going to be releases coming out. The band still goes on. The licensing of our music is huge, we’re like the number one licensed band in the United States with “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and “I Wanna Rock” so there will be more tv shows, more commercials, more movies than any other band. We’re going to continue to license our music and we have to review all the video from the summer and make a DVD and put some more merchandise out there and hope to carry on the Twisted Sister name for the next hundred years.
KE: We look foward to all of that and for whatever the future holds for you. Thank you again for taking the time to talk with us today. I know it wasn’t easy with your schedule and we do appreciate it.
JJF: Thank you for being knowledgeable and for asking the right questions. We really appreciate all the support. At this point in our careers, it’s astonishing. Thank you very, very much.
KE: It was my pleasure.
JJF: Thanks, bye, bye
We would like to thank Amanda Cagan from ABC PR for setting up the interview with Jay Jay. For more information on the new Twisted Sister DVD or their current tour, please go to: Twisted Sister.
