Dee Snider says he wrote Twisted Sister’s biggest-selling album in 45 minutes

Dee Snider has claimed he wrote an early draft of Twisted Sister’s 1984 album Stay Hungry in 45 minutes, comparing the process to turning on a “faucet” of creativity in his mind.

The record proved to be the making of the band, spawning two of their biggest singles in the form of We’re Not Gonna Take It and I Wanna Rock and achieving multi-platinum levels of sales.

Now, Snider reflects on how the album came together at such speed in a recent interview with Vintage Rock Pod.

“I would have my song titles and I would get my tape recorder, handheld usually. And I would just look at a song title and get inspiration from the title. Twisted Sister’s We’re Not Gonna Take It… [via Killer Guitar Rigs]

“I mean, Stay Hungry album, our biggest-selling album, I wrote in 45 minutes, essentially wrote the entire record,” he says.  “My son was asleep in the crib, my wife went out to go to the grocery store, and I said, ‘Okay, I got a few minutes, let me turn on the faucet.’ I look at it now like that.”

He adds: “And I worked on some song ideas. I put a bunch of ideas on tape. And these are little bits and pieces. Usually, the whole song but not every word. And when she came back after 45 minutes, she said, ‘How’s it going?’ I said ‘I think I got some good ideas for the new record.’

“And every song from Stay Hungry was on there except The Price, which I had written in Jimmy Page’s bathroom while we were recording You Can’t Stop Rock ‘n’ Roll. But that’s another story.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Snider discusses the way that the videos for Stay Hungry‘s two big singles offered a blueprint for future artists with their music videos.

“They were my ideas,” he says. “It was the early days of MTV, and they brought in a video director — his first-time video director, but he had done concert video – Marty Callner, who went on to become one of the biggest rock video guys in the ’80s, and who I’m still friends with today. By the way, one of the few business friends I have.

“Marty came in, and he was cool enough and smart enough to see a young gun who was passionate, and he said, ‘What do you see for this video?’ I told him, ‘Dad’s yelling at the son. The son turns into me and drags the father down the stairs.’ He said, ‘Hold it, pull it. Let’s all write this down.’

“He and I constructed the We’re Not Gonna Take It video and the I Wanna Rock video, which went on to be historic videos.

“Yet it went on to become this huge phenomenon that other bands – like Van Halen, Mötley Crüe, everybody – started imitating the Twisted Sister style of storytelling, a little mini passion play video.”