When Twisted Sister returns to the stage later this year to celebrate their 50th anniversary, fans expecting the greasepaint and spandex of the MTV era will be disappointed. According to founding guitarist Jay Jay French, the band permanently retired their signature look over 15 years ago—and the decision wasn’t a calculated rebranding, but the result of a chaotic travel day involving Ambien, a weather delay, and a desperate helicopter ride.
In a new interview with “Metal Mayhem ROC,” French confirmed that the upcoming shows will present the band in their rawest form.
“No, we haven’t worn [the makeup] in 15 years. We stopped doing that. And we stopped doing it because of a funny story, actually… It’s actually very funny,” French said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
The pivotal moment occurred in 2008 at the Arrow Rock Festival in Nijmegen, Netherlands. The band was part of a massive lineup featuring KISS, Def Leppard, and Journey. While the rest of the band arrived early, frontman Dee Snider cut it close—too close.
“We stopped with the whole makeup thing in 2008 completely by accident. We were playing on a bill in Holland [at the Arrow Rock Festival in Nijmegen, Netherlands] — a mega bill — a one-day festival with Reo Speedwagon, Kansas, Motörhead, Whitesnake, Journey, Twisted Sister, Def Leppard and KISS. In one day. Imagine that — one day,” French recalled. “And the promoter goes, ‘Yeah, this is gonna be a perfect day. Everybody’s gonna do an hour starting at noon, and it’s gonna be exactly two stages every hour on the hour.’ So you had 50,000 kids in a field… So our stage time at that show was four in the afternoon. KISS was seven. They were headlining.”
Snider‘s travel plans quickly unraveled due to a weather hold in New York, leaving him stranded on the tarmac while fast asleep.
“So Dee goes to Kennedy airport, gets on the plane, he takes an Ambien [a medication primarily used for the short-term treatment of sleeping problems], goes to sleep. He wakes up seven hours later and he says to the guy next to him, ‘Wow, man, what a flight. It didn’t even feel like it moved.’ And the guy goes, ”Cause it didn’t. We’ve been on a weather hold for eight hours.’ So the flight doesn’t take off. And when it does take off, it arrives at 2:00 p.m. in the afternoon at Schiphol airport [in Amsterdam], and there’s no way that Dee is gonna make it to the show.”
Facing a contract that stated “if you don’t play, you lost your money,” the band scrambled for a solution. Their tour manager suggested a helicopter, which led to a dramatic entrance just minutes before their set time.
“The problem of getting a helicopter in Holland is that when you get a helicopter in Holland, you get the helicopter in Holland. There’s a helicopter, which cost a freaking fortune. So we get the helicopter,” French continued. “We’re all sitting around the dressing room, like in t-shirts and jeans. It’s 10 to four. We’re thinking we’re not going on. It lands. Dee comes out in t-shirts and jeans. The helicopter’s so small, it won’t take a suitcase. He’s got no stage clothes, he’s got no makeup, no nothing. So he goes, “Well, boys, let’s come on stage and kill it.'”
Stripped of their costumes and facing a crowd waiting for Kiss, the band took the stage in street clothes. To their surprise, the lack of theatrics forced the audience to focus solely on the music.
“So we went on stage with t-shirts and jeans — first time ever. So we do the show. People are kind of… I mean, I don’t know if they were in shock, ’cause we did it in t-shirts and jeans, but the next day in the Dutch national paper, there was a huge center spread on the concert, and there was only one photo and it was us. The only band’s photo was us. And it said Journey was great, KISS was great, Whitesnake was great, everybody was great, but the only band that provided a quasi-religious experience was Twisted Sisted. So we thought. ‘Wow. Why are we wearing this cr*p?’ And that was the end of it.”
French admitted he expected backlash from purists, but it never came.
“And then I thought, ‘Okay, I’m getting ready for the e-mails to come in. I’m ready for that onslaught.’ [Only] one e-mail [came in], and a fan said, ‘I thought you wore makeup.’ That was it.”
Reflecting on the change, French believes dropping the image ultimately saved the band’s career and broadened their appeal.
“[It was] the best thing that could have happened to us, and I’ll tell you why. Because there were people that didn’t like us ’cause of how we looked,” he explained. “They wouldn’t get past it, ’cause of the way we looked. Well, now we are not giving ’em a reason not to like us. So our popularity got even bigger. We became more successful. The shows got bigger, the offers got bigger, the festivals got bigger. And by the time we walked away in 2016, the average amount of people we were playing to was 75,000 a night, and it was up to 110,000 at the most.”
The upcoming 50th-anniversary tour will feature core members Jay Jay French, Dee Snider, and Eddie Ojeda. They will be joined by bassist Russell Pzütto (replacing Mark Mendoza) and drummer Joe Franco (stepping in for the late A.J. Pero). The band is set to perform at major European festivals this summer, including Sweden Rock, Copenhell, and Graspop Metal Meeting.
