Courtesy of Arts Alive

Perhaps the very last person you’d anticipate bumping into on Loyola’s campus is a world famous rock star. That’s exactly what happened to many students two weeks ago as Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider prepared for his upcoming show, Dee Snider’s Rock and Roll Christmas Tale in Mullady Theater. The show will open November 4 at the Broadway Playhouse. To purchase tickets click here!

Twisted Sister was an 80’s rock/metal band that boasted rebellious, head-banging music, big hair, and–as your parents can attest to—a lot of makeup. Dee Snider attaches his name to anthems like “We’re Not Going To Take It” and “I Wanna Rock”, but you may recognize his work on The Celebrity Apprentice, Wife Swap, or the Broadway production of Rock of Ages. DFPA would like to give you an exclusive look into the life of father, husband, and rocker, Dee Snider.

What inspired you to create this show?

You know what, it was a lot of different things all sort of coming together. There were some different flashpoints along the way. My family, we’re big Christmas junkies, and every year, like so many families, we’d take the kids into the city, see the tree, we’d go see a show, and we took them to see the Radio City Music Hall Holiday Spectacular – a show that I saw when I was a kid, and I was like ‘OHHH! This is amazing!’

So I took my kids there, and we came out and I said, “so what’d ya think?” and my then-ten-year-old son Shane said, “Dad, that show made me hate Christmas”—and I was like, “WHAT!” He said, “yeah, it was terrible- the wooden soldiers, and the Rocketts, and the Nativity scene”… He’s here working on the show. He’s 26 now. He still remembers clearly how scarring it was. He was like, “first the camel came out, and I said ‘oh, that’s kinda cool’ and then it just took forever for the people to get out on stage…” So, that was one flash point.

Then there was a flashpoint of my band Twisted Sister doing a rock Christmas album, and everybody said, ‘that’ll never work’, and it became one of my biggest selling records.  And I said, ‘wow, the idea of rock and Christmas are not mutually exclusive, and that there’s this desire like,’ yeah we want Christmas but we want to rock, too!’

And then another one was being on stage at a huge festival, and I brought my then-three-year-old granddaughter to see grandpa, and I’m up on stage jumping up and down singing I Wanna Rock, and I look over and she is jumping along with me, screaming, ‘I wanna rock’, and I literally stopped the song and said, ‘okay, people, this is something I’ve never seen happen… I didn’t expect to be alive, let alone to see this. That realization that these generations that were raised on rock and the new generations, that we can share rock and roll was huge. So, all of these different pieces came together, and it evolved.

How do you go about making this show family-friendly?

I swear to you, it’s a comedy; it’s a family show. [The band is] trying to exercise the spirit of Christmas. For some reason, ever since they sold their souls to the devil, they can’t stop singing Christmas songs. So, you know, people say how do you do that as family friendly? Well, this is my view of family friendly. I’m a family guy; there are a lot of things that are taboo. People joke about the devil, he’s in cartoons, and people are a lot more accepting. Halloween is the second biggest holiday after Christmas, and it’s the fastest growing. Halloween is massive! There are ghosts and goblins, so people recognize that things can be a little spooky and still be family friendly and fun. So, leave out the profanity, leave out the obscenities, leave out sexuality, and the overt fashion, and families will feel comfortable with their kids being there. Seven to seventy, blind, deaf, or crazy—that’s what I say. I wanted to create a show that I could not only bring my kids to, but one I could bring my grandkids to.

Your widfe Suzette is a gifted designer. How has she played a role, if any, in the creative process for this show?

Well, she’s played a role in the creative process of my life. We’ve been together for 38 years and when I met her, she was 15 and an aspiring costume designer and shortly after she came to the show one night and I was wearing the same top that she was, that I saw her wear and asked her where she got it and went out and bought it, she shortly there after started making costumes for me. She’s like, ‘yeah, that’s not going to happen anymore’. And then she was very involved in the developing of the makeup and the hair. She doesn’t like to take credit for my makeup, but she certainly inspired me—‘do you wanna do this, do you wanna do that?’… So she was very, very involved in everything I’ve done visually. She’s always been the force behind that.

The show is about a bunch of middle-aged guys who are still trying to make it as an 80s hair metal band, even though that’s way over. But they’re still dressing up, and having her—she’s very responsible for the whole look of the 80s and it’s natural for her to design what these guys are going to look like, doing their hair and makeup as well.

In your defense against the PMRC and Tipper Gore you said, songs allow a person to put their own imagination, experiences, and dreams into the lyrics people can interpret it many different ways. How have you put the Dee Snider touchon these classic Christmas songs?

First of all, even though I was raised Christian, I think [the holiday has] become more inclusive and it has become less about Christianity and Christ, and more about the spirit of the holidays. And I’m not saying that we shouldn’t recognize Christ’s birthday, but I like the fact that in general, Christmas has become something that can be shared by everybody, and it is being shared more and more… So my show tries not to be too religiously-based. Even though it is one of the few shows with Christmas in the title—nobody does that anymore—it’s called Christmas! Why can’t I call it Christmas? That’s me putting my touch on it, trying to make something that has a broader appeal, while still including the spirit.

You’ve done radio, Broadway. TV. Did you ever have classical training for any of those skills, or were they self-taught?

I was a classically trained counter tenor, but singing was always a place of solace for me. So the minute I learned how to voice I was singing in Glee Clubs, and Rock Bands, and I was always doing both at the same time. I had classical training, but I never wanted to be a classical singer, I just liked singing– any kind of singing. So, in school I did everything—barbershop, madrigal, quartet… As far as acting goes–no. Writing–no. I was self-taught. I was in the drama club… I made the videos that made Twisted famous, but I wrote them verbally, and a lot of film studios were like, ‘oh, do you have any scripts?’  because they liked my ideas,  so I said, ‘oh… I have good ideas, now I just have to figure out how to put them on paper’… So I taught myself how to write.

How did you come to be at Loyola?

My youngest is 18 on Halloween—She goes to Loyola Marymount in California. My other son who is 24 went to Marymount in New York. The funny thing is, I walked around and people said, ‘young people don’t know you!’ and I thought, oh, they know me. They don’t think I would be there, so why would you go, ‘oh, there’s Dee Snider hanging out in the cafeteria?’  Your natural instinct would be ‘oh that must be someone who looks like him’.  As the week went on, slowly more and more people recognized me. – I definitely had some friends who told me, ‘I think I saw Dee Snider downstairs!’—Ha! Yeah, I kept saying I think we’re getting out of here just in time! Why Loyola, though? We needed a rehearsal space, ya know. And a lot of times we’d end up in rooms with big mirrors on the wall, but I guess in such a short amount of rehearsal time, the director of the project, who directed me in Rock of Ages on Broadway—that’s where we met—he felt it’d be better if we were in a theater environment so we had sort of a feel for the stage, and like this is where the set is going to be. The funny thing for me was, I felt like I was in high school. Except for the ages there’s no difference in starting a high school or college play. I’ve only done plays on Broadway, and I’ve only done plays like, where you build it from the ground up in high school, ya know. It just felt so like high school to me, in a positive way. It had a very exciting, youthful feel to it, which was great. So now tomorrow, we’ll walk in and the stage will be set, and there will be professional costumes, professional stages, lighting. So you’re officially done with Loyola, then? Yeah, Friday was the last day. Now we go over to the Broadway Playhouse.

Well, the fact of the matter is, I was very myopic. From the time I decided to be a rock star was in 1964, when I was nine. Period. That was it. That was the only thing I was ever going to be. And people would ask, ‘what’re you going to be?’ and I’d say ‘rock star, rock star’, so I got made fun of a lot because I just knew what I wanted. And I never thought I would have a career change. I just figured I’d become rich and famous—which I did—but then I lost everything. And the music scene changed, and the band broke up. And I woke up one day, and I literally said to myself, ‘okay, I’m married, I’ve got three kids now, and I am broke—I am flat broke.’ And at that point I started scrambling. I had no exit strategy; I had no other developed talents. And I started going, ‘what else can I do?’ .So this is where I started exploring different artistic things, and it turns out—thank god—I had talent as a radio announcer, and voiceover—my voice has always been great for me, and I started writing, and acting, and I started doing these things and just pushing myself because music was kind of shut of for me for a long time. It’s only reopened in a retro kind of way, when the 80s became ‘oldies’ and so now I can make money doing that again, but there was a time in the 90s where nobody wanted to see me, nobody wanted to know me, they didn’t want anything to do with me.  I’m all about being focused, and my siblings used to say to me—I have four brothers and a sister– they were always so jealous of me because I knew what I wanted. It’s rare when somebody knows with that kind of passion and that kind of commitment,  just unwavering—I’m blessed in that fashion. People shouldn’t feel bad about regrouping.

In your book, Shut Up and Give Me the Mic, you give this idea of positive mental attitude  (PMA). How did you maintain PMA throughout your life?

Positive mental attitude is what kept me going. And sometimes I look in the mirror and go, ‘are you kidding yourself?’ You know, it’s been years and you’ve lost everything and you’re still looking in the mirror going, ‘PMA, man. PMA’. But I just recognize that allowing negative thoughts to get into your brain, it does poison you. You start to expect failure.

I’ve got to give credit to Tony Robbins, he’s a motivational speaker. I had PMA of course, but at a very low point I needed a lift, and I’ve met Tony since and he was reinforcing positive messages as opposed to negative messages, and how society poisons us at birth with messages like, ‘money is the root of all evil, money doesn’t bring you happiness. Even things like, ‘It’s one of those days…. just my luck…” People get into this mindset—if you think like this, then it probably will be. So I just refuse to think that way, even when things are bad. This is a transition, this is a temporary place and you’ll come out of this, and I believe that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and I believe if you tell yourself something’s going to happen, then it does happen. I’m not saying if you sit there in your room and say that’s going to happen it will happen, you have to actively pursue it. That positive reinforcement can have an effect on your health.

You were very against censorship (Fighting the PMRC, hair metal), and now you are attempting to create a family-friendly show. How do you continue that Rock N Roll mentality?

I’ve always said that being a parent and being cool aren’t mutually exclusive. For example, my father-in-law. He was a badass. He played drums in a swing band, he drove a Corvette, he raced Harley Davidson motorcycles, and he was a Brooklyn/Italian, greaser… and he got married, and he sold the car, he quit the bikes, and he got a job as a bricklayer. His wife wanted to get a divorce, she asked, ‘what happened to the guy I married?’, and when I ask him about it he goes—well, he didn’t like me very much at the beginning… he threatened to kill me. You know, she was 15 and I was 21—But he said, ‘hey, you got married, so now you’re an adult, you have to stop being a kid’.  And I go, ‘why couldn’t you still be the person you are, and be a dad, and be responsible?’ I think for a lot of people there’s a sense that you can’t do both of those things. I’m sort of on a mission to prove that you can still be cool, you can still rock, you can still carry yourself, and still be a good parent and a good husband.We do have rules about that. We say “leave your cool at the door”. It’s really about being who you are, but recognizing that you can be multi–faceted.