Courtesy of Philip Potempa for Lake Michigan Shore

Rock star Dee Snider recalls how excited he was when he saw his first big Christmas stage show in New York.

It was while growing up, as young Daniel Snider, raised in Long Island, NY, when he says his grandparents took him to Radio City Music Hall to see the New York City Rockettes in their annual Radio City Christmas Spectacular, the traditional stage chestnut favorite of generations.

“I was just so blown away by it all,” Snider says, while enjoying a simple salad topped with shrimp, washed down with an unsweetened iced tea during a lunch interview at the Chicago Yacht Club.

It’s an August afternoon in Chicago on the lakefront, but Snider’s mind and conversation are all about Christmas, both past and present.

“Not only was it the Rockettes up there on stage with all these lights, costumes and amazing sets, but there was also a real camel in the show,” he continues.

“You know how they do that live nativity scene as their finale? Well, I didn’t expect live animals.

The Christmas conversation (and the menu choices) don’t seem to fit the rock star front-man who made heavy metal band Twisted Sister part of music history, with the artist’s impact continuing even after the group disbanded in 1988.

But Snider, 59, still associated with his wild flowing blonde shock of hair and garish makep from the days of delivering 1980s rock anthems like “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and “I Wanna Rock,” is in the early Yuletide spirit with good reason.

The night before the lunch interview, he was center-stage at Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park in Chicago before more than 13,000 cheering fans eager for Christmas to come early and the chance to hear a tease from his new world premiere stage musical produced with Broadway in Chicago, Dee Snider’s Rock & Roll Christmas Tale.

Written by and starring Snider, it’s directed by Adam John Hunter and produced by John B. Yonover in association with Vicki and Bob Liggett, Charles Brennan and Mary and John Cooper. Tickets are now on sale for the run, which is at the Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place, 175 E. Chestnut, Nov. 4, 2014, through Jan. 4, 2015.

Dee Snider’s Rock & Roll Christmas Tale tells the story of Däisy Cütter, a heavy metal bar band looking to make it big even though the ’80s are long over. The four guys decide this is the year they are ready to take the ultimate step and, in mythic rock tradition, sell their souls to the devil in exchange for success beyond their wildest metal dreams. But every time they try to seal the infernal pact, their head-banging anthems turn into warm-hearted holiday carols. Soon these rockers are forced to realize their dreams of stardom are no match for the Christmas spirit.

Filled with humor, traditional holiday carol favorites and plenty of new music, Snider, who appears in the show and is billed as the narrator, is guaranteeing he has created “a very funny, very rocking and very sweet new holiday musical, for the entire family as a ‘twist’ on Christmas stage shows.

“We are delighted that Dee Snider’s Rock & Roll Christmas Tale is a new holiday musical that all generations in your family can enjoy together,” says producer Yonover, who lives in Chicago but is originally from Gary. “During the process, we’ve made sure every part of the story is family-friendly, but still done with plenty of humor and clever situations.

Snider says the idea for the holiday show began, and then evolved, after he joined the Broadway musical Rock of Ages in October 2010 at the Brooks Atkinson Theater in the role of nightclub owner Dennis. It was a natural fit, since the jukebox musical showcasing favorite hits of the 1980s includes the Twisted Sister songs “I Wanna Rock” and “We’re Not Gonna Take It.

“When thinking about what’s out there for Christmas shows, I thought back to when years later, I took my own kids to see the Rockettes in their Christmas show,” says Snider, who has four children, ranging in age from 34 to 15, with his wife of 35 years, Suzette, who was his band’s costume designer.

“They liked it, but it wasn’t the same experience that I was so drawn to when I was their age. That’s when I realized it was time for a new Christmas stage show for the new generations. I have three grandchildren now, and so I wanted to create something new for the holidays to span all audience ages.

Since he was working with Hunter, who was the associate director for the Broadway, London, Toronto and Melbourne companies of Rock of Ages, Snider began making suggestions for a show to Hunter and the two created a draft of what they imagined based on Snider’s script. With Snider as creator and Hunter on board as director, Yonover and his Chicago stage connections and the support of Broadway in Chicago became the perfect formula to make the dream a reality as the process began in 2011.

“We wanted to make sure Dee was willing to not only create this new show, but also be in it, so audiences would get to have him as part of their experience,” says Hunter, who lives in Red Hook, Brooklyn, with his wife and two daughters. “So often, a musical might feature the work of an artist or the songs everyone knows, but you don’t get to have the actual artist as part of the stage story night after night. We have that with Dee.

Snider says it didn’t take much convincing for him to agree to the time commitment to see a new Broadway show built from the foundation and make it to opening night and then a two month run. “I don’t say no to anything I want to do,” Snider says.

“That was why I loved being on Donald Trump’s show Celebrity Apprentice in 2012 and then coming back again the next year for the All-Star Celebrity Apprentice.

The casting is already complete for Dee Snider’s Rock & Roll Christmas Tale and guitars are being supplied exclusively by ESP Guitars, along with other sponsorship by Wintrust Bank, Northwest Comprehensive, Paris Club, Studio Paris and The Original Pancake House. Rehearsals start Oct. 6 and the tech previews are Oct. 27 before the show’s opening in early November.

“This new holiday stage offering is great for Chicago audiences, because right now, we have all of the usual stage traditions like A Christmas Carol and The Nutcracker, but it’s time for something new to join what’s out there,” says Yonover, who has supported and invested in more than 25 productions on Broadway, Chicago and London’s West End, including Memphis the Musical, Hair,Addams Family, Come Fly Away, Catch Me If You Can, Ghost the Musical and the Chicago production of To Master the Art.

Yonover, who was in London this month (October) as an associate producer for the West End production of Memphis the Musical, has appeared as a guest judge on one episode of Trump’sApprentice alongside Daryl Roth and Kristen Chenoweth.

Snider also makes it a habit to accomplish anything he sets out to do, despite critics and naysayers. “Our band has not only released six studio albums and six live albums, but also a hugely successful 2006 holiday record A Twisted Christmas, which I was told not to do because no one would buy it,” he says.

“But they did.

Having grown up singing in both his church and high school choirs, Snider has always been drawn to Christmas and favorite holiday memories.

In 1998, Snider penned a song titled “The Magic of Christmas Day (God Bless Us Everyone),” which would be recorded in 1998 by Celine Dion for her album These Are Special Times. According to Snider, Dion at the time was not aware of who wrote the song. And now, he’s including it in Dee Snider’s Rock & Roll Christmas Tale as a gift to theater audiences.

He also remains very close to his parents, father, Bob, a retired New York State Trooper and his mother, Marguerite, a retired art teacher.

“They’ve always believed in me,” he says.

“Even when we were starting Twisted Sister and it was entering the decade of the 1980s, there were a lot of people who told me that our kind of music was gone and had ended with the 1970s. But we did it, and that’s because my parent taught me to fight for what I believe in.

He says his father was especially proud of him in 1985, when he joined his son in Washington D.C. for the Senate hearing instigated by Tipper Gore and the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), who wanted to introduce a parental warning system that would label all albums containing offensive material. The system was to include letters identifying the type of objectionable content to be found in each album (e.g. O for occult themes, S for sex, D for drugs, V for violence, etc.).

Snider was joined by late greats John Denver and Frank Zappa, all testifying against censorship and the proposed warning system. (Though such a system was never implemented, the result of the hearing brought about what is now the generic “Parental Advisory: Explicit Content” label.)

“Frank had his kids with him, Moon Unit and Dweezil, and when it was his turn to testify, he asked my dad if he would watch his kids while he was inside testifying,” Snider says.

“My dad did it, and later, he would always tell the story of how he helped out watching Frank’s kids, but he’d never get any of the names right.

So will Snider’s parents be coming to Chicago to watch his new world premiere holiday musical?

“They’ll definitely be there for the opening,” he says.

“Christmas is about family.