Born on March 15: Dee Snider, iconic singer of the turbulent Twisted Sister

The big question is whether Daniel "Dee" Snider already had the same peroxide mane and fierce grin when he let out his first screams in New York in 1955...

In any case, one can concede that he's got a knack for persistence considering he's never strayed from the heavy (very heavy) metal that most likely wrecked his eardrums.

He first got into the scene with bands that already had very provocative names such as Desperado, Widowmaker or SMF (for Sick Mother F++ of course). Listening to the anthems of his favourite band Twisted Sister such as "Burn In Hell" or "I Wanna Rock", it's somewhat difficult to imagine him as a choirboy singing quietly in the local church choir!

Between 1976 and 2016, during his forty years at the helm of Twisted Sister (with an inevitable hiatus of about ten years), he firmly held the reins of the band and took charge of writing almost all the songs, without hesitating to play up the clichés of the genre: raw energy, searing guitar solos, tributes to adolescence and even a hint of mild satanism. The band recorded seven studio albums that fans of the genre revere as relics.

Far from calming down with the onset of rheumatism, he released the explicit "For The Love Of Metal" in 2018, containing twelve tracks of scorching lava not fit for too sensitive ears. Dee Snider still has no desire to retire and seems to always need his daily dose of decibels. What vitality!

(MH with AK - Photo: © Etienne Tordoir)

Photo: Dee Snider with Twisted Sister on stage at Forest National in Brussels (Belgium) on April 27, 1986