What do Spain, Puerto Rico, Sweden, Germany, Greece, Holland, Hungry, Canada, South Korea, Mexico, Finland, Switzerland, the UK and the US have in common? They have fallen under the spell of the return of Twisted Sister, now celebrating its 30th anniversary. Want proof? How many promoters can risk the headlining position of any festival (from 10,000-50,000) full of heavy music fanatics? None. And yet Twisted Sister is called on consistently to close some of the most prestigious festivals in the hard rock & metal scene in 14 different countries since their return. There is no other live attraction on earth like Twisted Sister. What makes this rebirth especially remarkable is that Twisted Sister has been able to tailor its show so that they can headline amusement parks such as Great Adventure as well as all ages radio shows in the US on a Friday and then can turn around and headline the heaviest death metal festivals in Holland and Germany on a Saturday while, in each case, giving the audience the show of a lifetime. There is no other band in the world that has the professional expertise to accomplish this theatrical transformation. There is no other live attraction on earth like Twisted Sister. Add to this Twisted Sister is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year and is one of the few rock legends that has maintained all the original members from their recordings, giving even greater credibility to its image. The 30 year club is very exclusive and consists of road hardened metal legends AC/DC, KISS, MOTORHEAD, JUDAS PRIEST, RUSH, ALICE COOPER, AEROSMITH AND SCORPIONS. With the addition of Twisted Sister to this amazing group, the bands music and message are now more popular then ever. It only serves as additional proof of the timeless and international reach of heavy metal in the hands of professionals. Word of mouth about the awesome crowd response to the live show is responsible for Twisted Sisters emergence as one of the guaranteed closers of some of the biggest rock festivals in the world. Metal legend and AC/DC front man Brian Johnson, who joined Twisted Sister on stage at the Rock & Blues festival in Darbyshire, England in July 2004 for an encore of Whole Lotta Rosie told the band that the audience reaction was one of the greatest he had ever witnessed. At some point this year Twisted Sister will play its 9,000th performance. This puts them at the very highest level of reliability in the history of the modern rock era. Talent and hard work are virtues in heavy metal, and Twisted Sister is a perfect example of how they pay off. Hard work on the road in particular is a necessity. Rock 'n' roll has generated countless great records, but the music first and foremost was and always will be about live performances. Twisted Sister was widely regarded by many as one of the greatest live bands to ever grace a stage. Therefore, it's fitting that the band's 2003 reunion -- after disbanding in 1987 -- was based on touring. The classic lineup of lead vocalist Dee Snider, co-lead guitarist/vocalist Jay Jay French, co-lead guitarist/vocalist Eddie Ojeda, bass guitarist/vocalist Mark "The Animal" Mendoza and drummer/vocalist A.J. Pero regrouped for a USO tour of U.S. armed forces bases in South Korea and headlined major European summer festivals and select dates at home in the United States. "It's funny that back in 1985 we had to go before Congress and defend our music against censorship and now, with the South Korea shows, we were ambassadors for the Defense Department!" says French. Snider says, "I've never used the word before in my life, and I hope I never use it again, but it's about closure. It really is. It was unfinished business left hanging out there and it was never properly taken care of. I, for one, have got to go back and do it as friends, have fun, make some money -- not necessarily in that order -- and walk away waving and smiling and taking a bow, and then walk off into the sunset. "We're not at the same place we were. At the time we were angry young men with chips on our shoulders and now I'm a very confident, comfortable, middle-aged guy who's not mad at the world anymore and I'm glad I'm not. Being angry is a burden. We're more than happy to have chilled out, and really that's the one major difference between what we were doing then and now. Then, there was an anger to it all, at least for me. There was something to prove. Now, fun is behind it all. A desire to have a good time and have fun with it, and finish the thing off on a high note." Twisted Sister's 30-year legacy of 10 million records sold worldwide resulting in 33 gold and platinum awards and more than 9,000 shows is nothing short of amazing. French is the only holdover from the original Twisted Sister, which was formed in New York in December 1972. The band embraced the theatricality of the glam/glitter rock movement as well as the hard-rocking sound of groups like the New York Dolls and Alice Cooper. Countless personnel changes occurred during those early years as the band evolved. Snider joined in 1976 and Twisted Sister was steadily making a name for itself on the grueling club circuit while including more and more original material in the sets. "Dee Snider is the best frontman in rock, period. And there is no better rhythm section in rock than Mark and A.J.," French says. The fans got it, even if record companies didn't -- at first. Twisted Sister had built a hard-won following among hard-to-please New Yorkers. Die-hard followers became known as SMFs -- the Sick Motherfuckin' Friends of Twisted Sister. The band conquered New York City and Long Island and ultimately became the powerhouse act in the tri-state area. Quite simply, Twisted Sister ruled New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Despite being an unsigned band, Twisted Sister drew 23,000 people to an outdoor show in July 1979. After several rejections from various record companies, the industry could no longer ignore Twisted Sister. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the most exciting heavy metal music was coming from England and the small English label Secret Records, although known for its punk roster, signed Twisted Sister in 1982. Secret issued Under the Blade later in the year but soon went bankrupt, leaving the band without a record deal. By 1983, Atlantic Records had signed the band on the strength of a powerful performance on a British television appearance. The first Atlantic album, You Can't Stop Rock 'N' Roll, went gold and cemented Twisted Sister's standing in the heavy metal community and set the stage for the breakthrough into the mainstream. The album was especially popular in England, where it generated three hit singles including "I Am (I'm Me)." Stay Hungry exploded onto the scene in 1984 and was a smash hit thanks to the sing-along anthems "We're Not Gonna Take It" and "I Wanna Rock" created under the direction of highly respected producer Tom Werman. MTV was cresting as a cultural force at this time, and the television channel greatly influenced the mainstream's embrace of traditional hard rock and heavy metal and lighter, more radio-friendly, pop-metal and hair metal. Musically, Twisted Sister combined these elements and with their over-the-top makeup and costumes, videos were the next logical step. The "We're Not Gonna Take It" video became an MTV favorite while simultaneously stirring up controversy. It featured cartoon-like slapstick in which an overbearing father (played by actor Mark Metcalf, essentially recreating his famous role as the bullying, tyrannical military officer-in-training Neidermeyer in the classic 1978 film comedy National Lampoon's Animal House) gets his comeuppance at the hands of Twisted Sister and his metal-loving, teen-age son. Uptight types decried the video as violent. They didn't get the joke. Unfortunately, this was just a foreshadowing of the criticism to come. Soon, wives of powerful Washington politicians had formed the Parents' Music Resource Center and started a witch hunt about allegedly objectionable content in popular music. The PMRC's blustering resulted in congressional hearings for which Snider was one of the most visible, eloquent spokesmen on behalf of artists' rights. He surprised government critics when it quickly became evident he was a thoughtful, intelligent, articulate family man. Twisted Sister was on top of the world at this time. Stay Hungry went triple platinum and sold-out concert dates all over the world was the norm. "Interestingly enough, I used to write the next album while we were recording the previous album. While we were recording, there would be so much down time I would be working on new songs," says Snider. "When we were recording You Can't Stop Rock 'N' Roll I was writing Stay Hungry. So all those people who thought Stay Hungry was written as a pure sellout record, well I've got news for you, it was written while we were broken and downtrodden before You Can&..39;t Stop Rock 'N' Roll even came out." Come Out and Play appeared in 1985 and went gold. The leadoff single was a tongue-in-cheek cover of the Shangri-Las' "Leader of the Pack." Twisted Sister had played the song for years in the bars and it was a longtime club favorite. "(With Come Out and Play) that's the only time I've wondered would I have produced something different if I had written the next record when I was recording Stay Hungry instead of after. I guess the reason I think about that is because writing it after Stay Hungry, I found myself second-guessing myself because we had the huge success with it. I was analyzing it, trying to figure out what I did that reached people on Stay Hungry. Big mistake," Snider says. "I clearly remember sitting writing lyrics trying to write the next song of teen angst poolside at my million-dollar house with five cars and two boats in the driveway. I remember sitting there going, 'I'm fucking not angry!' " Tensions were rising internally within the band. Pero left and was replaced by Joey Franco for 1987's Love Is For Suckers. The album was not well received and Twisted Sister disbanded after a 15-year career. "We were together many years and had internal problems, but we had a common enemy -- the record business. We were unified in our focus on that greater evil. But once we had our success, we had to turn on each other. Then when there werenât the big records, the big tours and the big money, we started looking at each other (to blame). It wasn't working anymore because we didn't have a common enemy. Once we achieved the success we struggled so hard to make, then we started looking at other problems," Snider recalls. The band members went their separate ways but stayed involved in music to varying degrees while pursuing other interests. Snider became a successful disc jockey and filmmaker. French runs a management company and directs the careers of several bands. Mendoza produced new Twisted Sister tracks for Snider's first movie, and a Twisted tribute album. His other credits include Sevendust's hit debut CD. With the passage of time, appreciation of Twisted Sister swelled, particularly when it became apparent that many newer bands couldn't cut it live on stage on the most basic level, let alone excel in concert. In the summer of 2001, VH-1 broadcast a brutally honest episode of its acclaimed documentary "Behind the Music" about Twisted Sister in which all of the problems and acrimony were on display. "Behind the Music" served a useful purpose in that allowed bottled-up feelings to be released and the band members rekindled their friendship. The band was also closely involved with 2001's Twisted Forever: A Tribute to the Legendary Twisted Sister on Koch Records. Participating artists included Lit, Motorhead, Nashville Pussy, Nine Days, Chuck D, Anthrax, Overkill, Cradle of Filth, Vision of Disorder, The Step Kings, Fu Manchu, Joan Jett, Sebastian Bach & Friends, Hammerfall and Sevendust. Twisted Sister itself contributed a cover of AC/DC's "Sin City." "The reunion process definitely needed a catalyst along the way and without 'Behind the Music' and the tribute record it would have never happened. It needed to be nudged along. You had five different people in five different locations, and we weren't going to do it ourselves. A.J. has been laboring for years to try to put things together. Some of the incidents that brought things together were accidental," says Snider. "For Jay Jay and me, the first contact at all between us seven or eight years ago was when he sent me a triple platinum Stay Hungry record, but I did not know I was getting it. There was a strange package on my step. It came from the company that makes platinum records, but I didn't know that. It's a strange name, a strange package, I don't know who this is, so I'm frickin' sending it back. So as a result of that we wound up communicating over a platinum record!" The tragic events of September 11, 2001, led to a benefit concert for New York police officers and firefighters. Twisted Sister reunited to headline the NY Steel show held that November, but the members adamantly refused to use the event for self-promotion: that night was about the charitable cause, not the band. "September 11 seriously affected me emotionally. The NY Steel show happened about six months after the VH-1 'Behind the Music' episode," French says. "After that 'Behind the Music' special, which was great theater that brought up dormant bad feelings, we had the desire to do something constructive. We had the realization that only the five of us can do what we do. We did nothing to promote our performance at the NY Steel show. I was dead-set against the appearance of self-promotion. I was so focused on the event itself being the center of attention rather than the band that immediately after we were done playing I walked out with my family and went straight home." French and Mendoza also managed Twisted Sister's business affairs between the 1987 breakup and the 2001 "Behind the Music" episode. They produced new Twisted Sister compilations, live records and the tribute album. Twisted Sister's discography includes Under the Blade, You Can't Stop Rock 'N' Roll, Come Out and Play, Love Is For Suckers, Club Daze Volume I: The Studio Sessions, Club Daze Volume II: Live in the Bars and Live at Hammersmith on Spitfire Records and Stay Hungry and Big Hits and Nasty Cuts: The Best of Twisted Sister on Atlantic Records. 2004 saw the release of Still Hungry, a re-recorded version of Stay Hungry with several bonus tracks. 10 million records sold worldwide, 35 gold and platinum records from 8 different countries, 9,000 performances in 22 countries and now headlining the biggest shows in the world. There is no other live attraction on earth like.....TWISTED SISTER!! For all the latest news and tour updates, visit www.twistedsister.com.