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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.

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'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. On September 19, 1985, Dee Snider was called to testify before the U.S. The group argued for parental control of music that could expose children to adult themes or potentially offensive language, and it singled out 'We're Not Gonna Take It' for scrutiny.

Some readers of this story may be old enough to remember a group called the Parents Music Resource Center, established in 1985 Al Gore's then-wife Tipper was one of its leaders. Over time, though, the criticisms got more serious - and the critics had more power. And it made millions of dollars, so ha, ha, ha.'

But who has had the last laugh? I mean, 35, 40, whatever it was years later, it's a folk song, for God's sake. 'Aren't we so ironic and funny and wonderful. 'That was the review - what, from whom,' Snider says. Snider says he remembers one review of 'We're Not Gonna Take It' that simply read, ' What? From whom?' Snider says the chorus came to him quickly, but it took more than three years to complete the song to his satisfaction, before it was released in 1984.