![]() Which brings us back to the striking teachers in Oklahoma. And I said, 'Are we cool?' And he said, 'Dee, we've done so much charity work together - of course we're cool.' " I can't have people think I am endorsing you by using the song.' He said OK - and that night, he never used it again. "To his credit, I called and I said, 'You've gotta stop using the song. Three months later, I'm tapping out: He is now talking about things we never spoke about at dinner. "And Donald asked if he could use the song. They were great we did charity events together," he says. The two brash New Yorkers had struck up a friendship. Snider had been a contestant on Trump's reality show, The Celebrity Apprentice. "I called him up and said, 'The first line of the song is, ' We've got the right to choose.' Don't you even vet these things?' "Īmerican Anthem 'Like A Virgin' Lives On, A Winking Anthem For Women Getting Marriedīut it was a far more complicated decision when it came to Donald Trump's use of the song. "I am pro-choice to a fault, and Paul Ryan stands so far on the other side of that fence," he explains. I was a huge fan from back in his bodybuilding days, and 'stay hungry' was one of his catch phrases." He was less thrilled when Paul Ryan started playing it on the campaign trail. Snider says he was okay with Arnold Schwarzenegger using it: "My Stay Hungry album was literally inspired by reading one of Arnold's books. A Christian rock band, Apologetix, reinterpreted it as " We're Not Going to Canaan." And in a great ironic twist, just a few decades after the song was pilloried on Capitol Hill, politicians started using it at campaign events. The New York Yankees adopted it, as did soccer fans in Germany. It wasn't long before the song started to be used as an anthem elsewhere in public life. But in the process, "We're Not Gonna Take It" had become an anthem about fighting censorship. In the end, Congress didn't have to act on the matter, because the major recording labels voluntarily agreed to put generic "Parental Advisory" stickers on some albums. We cannot allow this to continue."ĭee Snider appears on Capitol Hill at the Parents Music Resource Center senate hearing in 1985. The examples I cited earlier showed clear evidence of Twisted Sister's music being completely misinterpreted and unfairly judged by supposedly well-informed adults. Snider said in testimony that day: "The beauty of literature, poetry and music is that they leave room for the audience to put its own imagination, experiences and dreams into the words. You know, 'You got your homework, Dee?' 'Yeah.' And then I just laid them out." I'm gonna have my speech that we worked on for two weeks stuffed in the back pocket of my skinny jeans.' And I pulled it out like the bad kid in class. And I said, 'They're gonna look at me, and I'm gonna play right into this. "There was an old TV show called Columbo with Peter Falk, and it was this bumbling detective who seemed like such a screw-up but he was actually brilliant. "I knew I was going to blindside 'em," Snider says. Not Snider: He showed up with a black cutoff t-shirt, ripped-up jeans and his signature explosion of long, curly blond hair. You'd think even a rock star might wear a suit for the occasion, or at least a button down shirt. From a childhood where he was frequently silenced, through the early efforts to stifle his band's music, to the open warfare of the PMRC hearings in Washington DC, and his current efforts on social media, He's Not Gonna Take It tells the story of why free speech is so important to this man who has perpetually fought for it - even when it endangered everything that was important to him.On September 19, 1985, Dee Snider was called to testify before the U.S. The graphic novel "charts that one-man war throughout Dee's life. ![]() Partnering with Z2 Comics, Snider's war to preserve the first amendment will be retold in He's Not Gonna Take It, a graphic novel charting the rocker's articulate battle against censorship." "Co-founded by Tipper Gore, a committee of politicians' spouses labeling themselves the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) had lobbied to plaster 'Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics' labels on any music that conformed to their definition of overtly sexual, violent, or drug-endorsing. "More than 35 years ago, Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider marched into the United States Senate's Committee on Commerce in a jean jacket and tank top to confront a band of concerned Washington housewives hellbent on silencing the howl of metal and beyond," Z2 writes. ![]()
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