Twisted Sister guitarist Jay Jay French says he has no time for what he describes as the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s “political game.”
During a recent appearance on the Mistress Carrie Podcast, French was asked about Twisted Sister’s Hall odds – especially considering the way the institution tends to weigh artistic merit over commercial popularity.
“The thing that’s ironic about that statement is that our record sales are up there,” the rocker responded (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). “If you’re using record sales internationally, we’re at the 30-million mark, and I’ve got, like, 37 gold and platinum albums from around the world, and we’ve played in 40 countries as a headliner around the world.”
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“But you take a band like The Velvet Underground,” he continued. “There’s a cliché about the Velvet Underground: ‘The Velvet Underground only sold 3,000 albums, but everybody who bought one started a band.’ And I love that. I love that cliché, because we’re also big Velvet Underground fans. And so that’s exactly to your point. That’s exactly to your point. Now, The Velvet Underground is in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, I believe. So is Lou Reed. And they are justifiably in it. There are some artists, I don’t believe, are justifiably in it, but that’s a political game, because I think you know as well as I do there’s politics involved in every Hall of Fame.”
Jay Jay French Says Twisted Sister ‘Don’t Get the Respect We Should Get’
French went on to argue that Twisted Sister has never so much as received consideration from the Hall of Fame due to their unwillingness to play industry politics.
“It’s music ‘business’, and I know the politics of the business,” the guitarist remarked. “And so it almost doesn’t surprise me that we don’t get the respect we should get, because we’re from Long Island, and Long Island doesn’t get a lot of respect. It really doesn’t. I mean, yes, Billy Joel’s from Long Island — I get that — but Long Island in general doesn’t get that much respect in the industry, even though we’re only a stone’s throw from Manhattan. We just don’t.”
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French further contended that the music industry never warmed to Twisted Sister, despite the group rising at the same time that bands like Blondie and the Ramones were emerging from New York City.
“Those guys couldn’t work in any of the places we were playing because they couldn’t sell tickets,” the guitarist insisted. “We, however, were selling out 5,000-seaters all around New York and never playing New York City. So when our manager suggested we should play New York, we said, ‘There’s no place big enough to hold us.’ Remember, this is 1979 — no record deal. And he said, ‘Why don’t we play the Palladium Theater, which holds 3,500 people?’ And I said, ‘No band without a deal has ever sold out the Palladium.’ And we did — twice. And that was a point we made to the music business, which is, ‘You guys don’t respect us, you don’t understand us, but our following is massive.’ And we had a massive following.”
Twisted Sister is in the midst of a nationwide reunion tour, with Sebastian Bach filling in for the group’s classic frontman, Dee Snider. The trek is currently scheduled to conclude Dec. 11 in St. Petersburg, Florida.
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Gallery Credit: Ultimate Classic Rock Staff
