Background and career
Daniel "Dee" Snider (born March 15, 1955) is an American musician, radio, and television personality best known as the former lead singer and songwriter of the heavy metal band Twisted Sister. The band's 1984 song "We're Not Gonna Take It" reached No. 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and was ranked No. 47 on 100 Greatest '80s Songs. Snider later formed and was the lead singer in the heavy metal bands Desperado, Widowmaker, and SMFs (Sick Mutha Fuckers). He also released several solo albums. Snider was ranked No. 83 in the Hit Parader's Top 100 Metal Vocalists of All Time.
Daniel Snider was born in the Astoria neighborhood of New York City's Queens borough on March 15, 1955, the son of art teacher Marguerite (November 17, 1932 — January 2, 2018) and New York State Trooper (and later Nassau County court clerk) Bob Snider. He has Swiss and Ukrainian ancestry. Although his mother was Catholic and his father was Jewish, he and his siblings were raised as Episcopalians after his mother converted. He grew up in the Long Island towns of Baldwin and Freeport. He sang in a church choir, school choruses, and concert choirs in high school. He was selected for the All-State Chorus for singing. He graduated from Baldwin Senior High School in 1973.
In early 1976, Snider joined Twisted Sister and became the band's sole songwriter. He has explained that as the younger suburban newcomer among older New York City musicians, he initially felt alienated and was treated "like the kid." After attempts at co-writing failed, he worked largely alone, developing melodies and lyrics while bandmates socialized or partied; he would present finished ideas (including basic guitar and drum parts) to the group. This approach continued throughout the classic albums, with Snider receiving sole songwriting credit. To emphasize the "Twisted Sister" image, Snider adopted a trademark persona of metal-inspired drag with long blond curly hair, an excessive amount of eye shadow and rouge, a beauty mark, and bright red lipstick.
The group released their debut studio album, Under the Blade, in September 1982 and developed a following in the UK. Snider provided lead vocals and wrote all the material. One early song, the title track, was inspired by guitarist Eddie Ojeda’s fear of impending throat surgery. Around this time, Snider married costume designer Suzette Gargiulo and had his first child, Jesse Blaze Snider, who was born on September 19, 1982. The family lived a relatively grounded life on Long Island, with Snider maintaining a straight-edge lifestyle (no alcohol or drugs) that stood in contrast to typical rock excess.
Less than a year later, Twisted Sister released their second album, You Can't Stop Rock 'n' Roll. Snider again handled lead vocals and songwriting on the band’s first major-label release. He routinely worked ahead, developing ideas for future material during recording sessions. During the making of this album at Jimmy Page’s Sol Studios in England, he wrote "The Price" (later used on Stay Hungry) in the studio bathroom, reflecting the loneliness of being away from his wife and infant son for months without the means to contact them easily. The period was still one of financial struggle for the band.
Their third album, Stay Hungry, hit shelves on May 10, 1984. This became the band's most successful record with the hits "We're Not Gonna Take It" and "I Wanna Rock". "We're Not Gonna Take It" reached No. 2 on the UK singles chart and No. 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, and was ranked No. 47 on 100 Greatest 80's Songs. In 1985, Snider was involved in a Senate hearing instigated by the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), which sought to introduce a parental warning system that would label all albums containing what they considered offensive material. Before the appearance by PMRC in Congress, they had singled out a list of songs entitled the "Filthy Fifteen" to demonstrate the dangers of such material to youth, with "We're Not Gonna Take It" featuring on the list alongside Prince's "Darling Nikki", Madonna's "Dress You Up", and Venom's "Possessed", among other titles. The PMRC proposed a system involving letters that identified the types of objectionable content they determined to be found in each album (e.g., "O" for occult themes, "X" for sex and profanity, "D/A" for drugs and alcohol, "V" for violence, etc.). Snider, John Denver, and Frank Zappa all testified against censorship and the proposed warning system. The system was never implemented, and the music industry had already adopted what is now the generic "Parental Advisory: Explicit Content" label. The PMRC involved prominent public figures such as Tipper Gore, the then-wife of Senator Al Gore (D-TN), and Susan Baker, the wife of then-Secretary of State James Baker. Tipper Gore and Snider had a publicly antagonistic relationship as a consequence, with Snider accusing her of having a "dirty mind" for alleging that the lyrics of "Under the Blade" contained sadomasochistic undertones, when in fact, they were about medical surgery. Snider also alleged during the Senate hearing that Tipper Gore had fabricated evidence concerning merchandise sold by the band when she stated that "the t-shirts that kids wear" featured "Twisted Sister and a woman in handcuffs sort of spread-eagled". Snider challenged her to produce such a shirt, to which Al Gore clarified that "the word 't-shirts' was in plural, and one of them referred to Twisted Sister and the other referred to a woman in handcuffs".
