The uphill battle to record the Twisted Sister Hit 'We're Not Gonna Take It."
Twisted Sister’s hit song We’re Not Going to Take It not only incurred the wrath of washington politicians and the parents music resource center, but Twisted Sister’s producer. As a result, the song almost never made it onto their breakout album 1984’s Stay Hungry.. Today, let’s discuss the history behind the song ” & how the band made a cool million dollars off of shear stupidity.
Hailing from New Jersey, Twisted Sister cut their teeth as a cover band playing clubs in the 70’s. Even before landing a recording contract they gained a rabid following and were playing some pretty big venues. But despite this, it took the band a decade to land a major recording contract with Atlantic Records. Their first major release for Atlantic, You Can’t Stop Rock N’ Roll had some success in America charting at number 130 on the billboard charts, going gold. But the band had a warmer reception across the pond in the UK where it peaked at number 14 For their subsequent album Stay Hungry Atlantic president Doug Morris wanted to break the band in America and so he personally called tom werman to produce the album.. Werman’s resume included motley crue, ted nugent and cheap trick/
The effort paid off as Stay Hungry would be the biggest album of Twisted Sister’s career producing two massive hits in We’re Not Gonna Take it and I wanna rock. Frontman Dee Snider would tell NPR where inspiration for we’re not gonna take it “I wanted to write an anthem," "I'm from the Alice Cooper school of 'School's Out,' 'I'm Eighteen,' you know? And Alice was very big on these anthemic songs. So I wanted to write an anthem for the audience to raise their fists in the air in righteous anger."
It wasn’t just Alice Cooper who influenced the song, but in the book Nothin’ But a Good time dee and his bandmates cited Quiet Riot as being responsible for band’s success in two ways: One was for allowing hard rock to have a resurgence in the 80’s thanks to Quiett Riot’s album mental health, which topped the album charts making them the first metal band to achieve such a feet. The other was that Quiet Riot’s cover of the slade track Come on feel the noise influenced how Twisted Sister approached song writing. Dee would recall “Let’s steal the structure.Drum, chorus, song kicks in. Audience participation was always paramount to me. He would admit in a separate interview to boom 97.3 he had written the hook for the song in 1980 before the band had a major recording contract, but he had trouble finishing it initially. But there was another piece of the puzzle as Dee revealed in this interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uC9k5rIr4ZY
But recording stay hungry was an uphill battle. Dee would add in the same book Let it be known that when we were doing stay hungry i was in the studio fighting everyday with tom werman to keep him from killing my band. Snyder would add that he had to beg werman to let the band record we’re not gonna take it. with guitarist jay jay french adding “Tom didn’t like some of the songs that dee wrote and wanted us to do saxon songs. But Werman would push back against some of the claims in the book saying that producers are an employee of the band and cannot stop the band from recording certain songs. He would add
. “I thought we’re not gonna take it. It was like a little bit like a nursery rhyme. Dee had been working on the band for seven years and getting no where so finally im introduced into the picture they have a huge hit and i get the credit. And he’s pissed. He’s like trump.
We’re not gonna take itwould be sent out to radio stations as the Stay Hungry’s first single. The video wouldn’t show up on MTV until weeks later and according to Snider about 145 radio stations added the song initially. It got some airplay, but the video on MTV put them over the top. The single would peak at number 20 on the hot 100 charts and be certified gold. Stay Hungry would go triple platinum selling over 3 million copies inAmerica.
Directing the music video would be Marty Callner who at that point in this career had worked with HBO directing both their musical and comedy specials. Because of his comedy and musical background Callner would claim Atlantic records thought he’d be a perfect fit for shooting the video. He would tell the book I Want My MTV
“We’re not gonna take it” is based on the rebellious nature of road runner cartoons. I wrote the spoken word part at the beginning and we cast Mark Metcalf who had just come from a hot movie Animal House .” According to Snider in the same book it was him and his brothers who were huge fans of animal house and were always quoting the movie. They were surprised to learn that for just $2,000 and a roundtrip bus ticket Metcalf would agree to do the video. , Normally the band would send a PA to pick him up, but Dee was a such a big fan he went to the bus station and met him the actor. When MTV received the vid
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