 on the show, always a pleasure, J.J. French from Twisted Sister, and of course from the French Connection podcast and author, author of Twisted Business, correct? Yeah. Yeah. And thank you. Thank you for having me up at eight o'clock. Maybe I have a good radio voice at eight o'clock in the morning. Jewish Barry White thing, yeah, and I write for, you know, Copper Magazine and Goldmine Magazine and Tone Quest Magazine, a whole bunch of things, and getting over, I'm trying to deal with Jeff, the death of Jeff Beck right now, because that really sends shockwaves across the world, you know, even I took all the guitar player buddies in mind, it was just devastating. You know, like I wrote in the article, in my article that just appeared in Copper, which you can read if you wish, by going to a website called PS Audio, that's P as in Peter S as in Sam, PS Audio slash Copper, C-O-P-P-E-R, that's the magazine, the PS Audio site, and you can find my articles under the heading Twisted Systems. That's my article. You know, what I wrote about it was, if you think about our guitar heroes, you can almost always connect them to drug and alcohol abuse, you know, like how Keith is alive, who knows, Eric has been through stuff, but we never hear from Jeff, Jeff was never part of that, you know, drug and alcohol thing, so we never thought he would die, you know, just Jeff is always there, he's always making great records, he's always touring and he's groundbreaking and he's phenomenal. Now the argument is greatest of all time, you know, he's the greatest of all time, and that's a crazy concept because Jimi Hendrix has always been regarded as probably the greatest and the problem is Jimi's been dead for 52 years and in that 52 years of time, Jeff Beck has pioneered new ways to do things, you know, and Jimi probably could have too, but Jimi died. So let's talk about where they were at the same time, you know, let's, let us not forget that when Jeff Beck saw Jimi Hendrix for the first time at a club called The Bag and Nails in December of 1966 in London, he walked out and went, what's the point of playing? That was Jeff Beck's regard, that was Jeff Beck's comment after seeing Jimmy, he goes, he just turned to Pete Townsend and Eric and he goes, why am I even playing guitar? So let's begin there, that's Jeff Beck and why am I even playing, that's how many light years ahead Jimmy was at that time, and you know, that was 1966 going into 67, so then from 67 to 70 to 70 when Jimmy died, you can look at their careers, Jeff Beck with Jeff Beck group together made some spectacular albums, Truth and Beco was spectacular, you know, but Zeppelin recorded the first two Zeppelin albums and then Hendrix came out with All You Experience, Access Bolder's Love and Electric Lady Land and rewrote the book again with those albums and then Jimmy dies and then Jeff reinvents himself again. You know, I thought about this, this is kind of crazy, but follow me here, you know, I used to go to the Fulmore East all the time, you know, that's where our concert was, I'm 70 years old, so I realized that in one six month stretch of time, I saw Zeppelin twice, Jeff Beck twice and Jimmy Hendrix once in one six month run of time, so from May of 69, so I saw the Jeff Beck group in May of 69, then I saw Zeppelin, second I played in New York in, so May 3rd 69, I saw the Jeff Beck group, May 31st 69, I see Led Zeppelin, then on July 3rd 69, I see Jeff Beck again, and on January 31st, I see Jimmy Hendrix and Band of Gypsies. Amazing. So, you know, so that was all within a six month stretch. For seven bucks. For seven bucks. No, no, no, no, three dollars each. That's great. Three bucks, tickets of three, four and five dollars. What a steal. Go ahead. Oh, wait, what? Want to hear even crazier? Led Zeppelin played the Central Park Shaper Festival, I saw him there too, ticket to a dollar for that, a dollar and a dollar fifty for that, and I saw them with the Pavilion out at World's Fair for three dollars, okay? Unbelievable. Yeah, so that was unbelievable, right? And you can go with, when you have four shows a weekend, so for 12 bucks you could save four times. That's even crazier, but putting that aside of that craziness. The fact is that I saw, I saw Jeff Beck group, Led Zeppelin and Jimmy Hendrix within six months and trying to remember the impact they had on me at that time, at that time. So I remember Jeff Beck was still playing a Fender Telecaster, I think. Jeff Beck was great, but Rod Stewart was his lead singer, and what I remember most was that Rod was singing, but you couldn't see him because he was hiding behind the PA system. It's a famous story, he was so scared, and Jeff Beck had to go behind the PA and kick him in the ass and he goes flying across the stage, so that was a famous story. So I remembered the Jeff Beck group for that, and also Rod is a great vocalist. Let's be, let's, you know, he was great, and okay. So we saw that, you know, and then, you know, and Jeff Beck had, you know, had Truth and Beckola at that time and they were super heavy. He was playing through Univox amplifiers, which is strange, he wasn't using Marshalls, I don't know why. Then Zeppelin comes out, they played first in January of 69, this is the second time they played the Film War, and you know who opened for Led Zeppelin was the Woody Herman Jazz Orchestra. So I have a poster of Woody Herman and a clarinet and Led Zeppelin, the same poster, because only Bill Graham would have a show like that, okay, and Zeppelin was, they had, Jimmy stopped playing Fenders, he was playing a Les Paul through a Marshall half stack that night, and Zeppelin played the whole second album that night, and that was really great. That was really intense, you know, that was, that was pretty remarkable, as I wrote for that. That was really, I remember clearly how impressed I was with Jimmy's playing. And then, and then, and then I saw him at the, they played in Central Park for a dollar, but when you go see them in Central Park, you don't need to be in the venue because it was a skating rink with a fence around it. And if you couldn't get in, you just sat outside. I mean, it's so loud, it doesn't matter. I mean, so I don't think I was in, I think I was sitting on a lawn selling weed or something, and just listen. And then, you know, on New Year's Eve, 69, I saw Band of Gypsies. So, and that was a revelation. Jimmy was ridiculous that night, and that was something I walked away going, wow, that may be the greatest thing I've ever seen in my life. So with that in mind, you know, Jimmy dies a couple years, Jimmy dies shortly, and I think 71, and, and he was 27 when he died. So all these guys were like 25, 26, 27. Think about that for a minute. They're all 25, 26, 27. Let's talk about that for a second. All of our rock heroes were like, you know, 24, 25, 26, 27. When I was 17, the Beatles, the Stones, the Who's that Floyd, Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, they're all like 27. Name me a 27-year-old rock star these days. It doesn't exist. You know, you got 20, you got 20 leaders, leaders in what they did. Right. That's even the most mind blowing. Yeah. I mean, you got you got 27-year-old pop singer or pop females and 27-year-old rappers and all that. But you don't have 27-year-old rock stars. Yeah. You've got old rock stars. Oh, anyway, so having witnessed all that stuff really like together and realizing that then Beck goes on and develops this incredible style of guitar playing over the next 50 years. OK, you know, guess what? Jimi's dead and you know, you developed and Jimmy didn't have the luxury of developing, you know, Eric didn't change much. Eric stayed the same. Jimmy Page got worse as time went on, sloppier and eventually straightened himself out. And I guess he's OK today. And by the way, I'm not knocking these people. These were my heroes. All right. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. My freaking heroes. You think of the greatest guitar players, though, you know, the ones who when you play and you hear them, you know who they are, not just that they're technically great, but you know who they are. So you can add to this list if you want. But this is the guitar players that I know. I hear them. I tell you who it is. BB King, no one sounds like BB King. Leslie West, no one sounds like Leslie West. Carlos Santana. Nobody sounds like Carlos Santana. Jimi Hendrix. Nobody sounds like Jimi Hendrix. Jeff Beck. Nobody sounds like Jeff Beck. When you get to Eric Clapton, there's a million guys. That play like that. It's true. Like Stevie Ray Vaughan, like Joe Bonamasso, like a million of them. And that doesn't take away how great they are. It's just that they don't necessarily. imbue their their personality through their fretboard in an individual way. I mean, you know, that's just my opinion. So you may have a feeling of other guitar players. Oh, Eddie Van Halen. I think Eddie Van Halen sounds like Eddie Rhodes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I can tell Eddie, I can't always say Randy if you because all those shredders came out of Southern California, all of a sudden there was Dockin and him and I think what happened with Randy Rhodes is he was kind of the first neoclassical guitarist. And because there's so many of those types today, you can't. It's sort of like meshed in. What are you putting in the Mount Stain and all that then? But in they was after Randy, right? Oh, they was probably like 80, 80, yeah, he was. I guess I guess Randy was 81 ish, 80, 80, 82, right? So he kind of like the four. Yuli John Roth would be the first real neoclassical like integrating classical with with Rock and Roll that is or heavy metal, whatever, hard rock. And then you had Randy Rhodes and then you had Inve. But Yuli John Roth wasn't. He was more of a Jimi Hendrix neoclassical versus Randy, which was more like metal ish. Yeah, I think I think, yeah, I wasn't really a big. I know who he is. This wasn't a big, big follower of this. But yeah, but no, no, but I think you're probably right. You know, there's only so much bandwidth you have to to getting into certain people and what they play like. And so, you know, when you listen to a body of work, I realized that a body of work is is what is owed your artist that you love. So you understand what they're trying to say, you know, like, you know, how people dismiss things they don't like. Like, oh, country sucks, rap sucks, this sucks. And that's because you don't pay any attention to it. You don't care. You ask a fan of any genre and they'll tell you, of course, there's a difference. But if you don't know the difference, you don't care. You don't know the difference. You'll never know the difference. You know, I mean, even country artists make fun of. Countries, sameness, I think it was. Alan Jackson said, if you play a country record backward, the dog comes back, the car comes back and the girl comes back, you know, and that's a country artist. But I mean, there's a lot of great country artists out there. I just don't know country enough, but there's a lot of great country artists out there. I don't know jazz enough. I certainly don't know. You know, like Coltrane is considered one of the greatest performers of Miles Davis. I don't know those guys well enough to know. So it's bandwidth, right? It's bandwidth. You do there's so much bandwidth. There's so much space you could put in your, you know. But if you listen to Coltrane over and over and over again for like a month, you would understand what he does. You hear his nuances and you could probably then pick it out in another record. You know what I mean? You go, oh, that's Coltrane because you would know it. But if you don't, you don't. So during COVID, I started doing that. I started playing a lot of Coltrane just because I wanted to understand why people regarded him so highly and and and, you know, then kind of blew by Miles Davis, which is considered the biggest selling. It's the Abbey Road of jazz. It's the biggest selling jazz album in the world, for better or worse. So if you're not a novice to jazz, get it and listen to it. So I've been, I got it and listen to it a lot and Coltrane's in the band. So you really can kind of hear. So it's a great album. I'm really loving it. You know what? You know what? I like it by you, JJ. You're very deep in the morning. You've got a lot of you're very deep. I'm better. You know what? I'm deeper in the morning than I am any other time during the day. I start burning out as a day by 11 a.m. I am a vegetable. But you get me at like 8 a.m. right now and when the boom, when the synapses are rocking and I'm, you know, I'm there, man. So OK, so let's. So what do you want to talk about this thing called the heavy metal Hall of Fame? Yeah. Yeah. OK. So the we could talk about anything you want, but we'll go on this now. How's that? All right. On the 26th of January, which is next Thursday at the Canyon Club in Gora Hills, California, the metal Hall of Fame. And the big news is, you know, Twisted Sister is going to be inducted, which is is is something that's fabulous. I think the fans are super excited. And the bigger news is the band's actually going to perform. And you guys haven't performed since. Whoa, 2016, I think. Yeah, November 16th, I think. That's that's pretty big news. And my first question to you is why was it the right decision to induct Twisted Sister in the metal Hall of Fame? I have no idea. Those things happen without. Why do you think? Why do you think I could tell you why I think? Well, I think, well, first of all, they wanted to induct AJ Piro OK, as a drummer, because I think the people there knew AJ were friends of AJ. And I said when I was told that I want, that's really interesting. You want to you want to induct AJ. I mean, AJ happens to be one of the best rock drummers in the world, my opinion, I think Mark Mendoza and AJ Piro as a rhythm section. I want to grasp rhythm sections and all the metal. But I thought that was a bit peculiar. So I said, just I think I said so so not twisted. Oh, we didn't think you guys would come or so it was like, I don't know, or something. And I went, try us, you know. And so the next thing you know, I hear you guys, we want to induct you until they have you know, I'm like, OK, OK. So it was very much we didn't. I wasn't pushing for it at all, you know, and and then it happened. So that recognition is great. But I don't know why any of those things happen, you know, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, you know, they get together every year. They vote and, you know, they pick people. You know, they pick people. Some people are very deserving. Some people are not in my opinion. I'm not a voter. So I don't know how that works. Sometimes I go, really, that's Rock and Roll or that person. I don't understand why. And then the whole thing is the awards shows in general, like, you know, does it matter? I guess I guess it does. I guess to the fans, it matters. Yeah, that's right. Because to the fans, they go, see, I told you they were great. You know, see, I told you that's the pain. The people think they suck, you know, your fans go, really? They're the heavy metal Hall of Fame. You're not, you know, so fuck you. So I think to the fans, it's an important validation. That's right. That all the work we put in mattered. You know, so, you know, I've been thinking about what I'm going to say. You know, at this event, I can my opening, the opening is going to be, well, you know, 20 year old musician came up to me. This is a true story. Twenty year old musician came up to me a couple of years ago and said, hey, man, I want you to come see my band. And I go, oh, how long you guys been together? He goes, oh, two years, man. I said, how many shows you done? Oh, we've done a lot, man. We've done, like, 50 shows. I went, really, 50 shows, two years. I said, what, like, 45 minutes sad. So he goes, yeah, I said, you've done 50. Cool. I said, well, I'll tell you what, when you get to 500, contact me. I'll come and see you. Yeah, 500. Whoa. When they get to 500, I said, well, you're going to suck until you get to about 500. And I don't have time to watch you suck. So by the time you get to 500, you may be worth saying. And the guy goes, whoa, man, I mean, you guys play. And I said, well, the truth is that from the first day we played, which was March 23rd, 1973, this I can tell you to the first break we took, which was in which was a Labor Day weekend, 1975, so it's 30 months. The first 20 months we played, we played 3,440 shows, 3,440 shows. And then for the rest of the time, like so from 73 to 82, when we got signed to Atlantic, we had 7,500 shows. And that's how come, I guess we're in the heavy metal hall of fame, you add another, you know, a couple of thousand out of that worldwide touring and you're over 9000. And that makes a band good and bulletproof and justifies who we are. But at the end of the day, is it, you know, is it a numbers game? You know, everyone always throws the numbers around. How many records you sell, how many blues, dev, blah, blah, blah. You know, our resume is is is good, you know, like at 25 or 30 million records, Canada is responsible for a lot of them. By the way, the band was enormously. Much music really got behind us. You know, we became a coffee table band up there. Everybody had to have a copy. J.J., every time I turned on the TV, your video was playing. Like, yeah, I was like, rotation was heavy, heavy, super heavy. So, you know, with that, you know, multiple platinum and gold records around the world, you know, and we headline 40 countries. And, you know, we came back, you know, we were turned down more times in a bed sheet in a whorehouse. We've come back more times in Freddie Cougar. I mean, this is this is the story of the band. But, you know, at the end of the day, the the single biggest thing for me is that we made a difference in people's lives. And and they loved us and they supported us. And and I got emails from fans saying, you know, because of what you did and how you did it. And always we always held you up as an example of people just, you know, work and work and work. And if you go after your dreams, it sounds so corny. But at the end of the day, what else is there? That's it. Did you change people's lives? And the answer is we did. And because we did, I think that's why it's, you know what? I think it is. I think it's it's exactly what you said that if you keep on working and keep on bettering your craft, you can do anything you want. It just requires a lot of hard work. And it's exactly what you said. You know, you're that sort of model of, yeah, if you do work hard, you can make it versus the, oh, I just, you know, I played two shows. I got a hit single and suddenly I'm famous, you know, American Idol or something, you know, exactly. So people ask me what I think about that stuff, you know. And if you win the lottery, congratulations. But unfortunately, you have no foundation underneath you. That's the problem. So when the shit hits the fan, you have nothing to figure out how to survive with. But if you're, you know, I love, I love it with American Idol. You know, they win. They go, I want to thank my fans. Just stick it with me for 15 weeks, thinking, you know, 15 weeks. We've been together 50 years. Yeah. Thank you for saying 15 weeks. It comes down to that sort of old thing, you know, like, would you want a brain surgeon who's, you know, operated for 50 hours or 5,000 hours? Well, there you go. There you go. See, it's, yeah, that's a perfect analogy. Yeah, it's perfect. So, you know, if you happen to win the lottery, great. And, you know, don't ever take it for granted. I mean, we played with our, I remember the tour we did with Queens, right in 80 in 83, they had been together for about a year and they got a great record deal, you know, and we had been together that boy 10 years and we met up with them in a parking lot in Kansas City. We had, we came in in a, in a 16 passenger van. They came in in a Silver Eagle tour bus, you know, and I'm looking at this tour bus and I'm going and they were very nice guys. And I said, man, you know, wow, look at this. And they said, yeah, I said, how are you together? They said, oh, a year and a half, two years. And I went, how big was your record advances at $200,000? They were the exception, though. They were the exception. No, but the thing was, like I went, I said, how old are you guys? They go over 19. So I'm looking at this. They go, we're 30, they're 19. We've been together 10 years or any other year and a half. They have a tour bus. We have a van. They got $200,000 record deal. We had like no tour support. And I said, I mean, look at that. So I said to them, I think I said to one of them, I said, don't take this for granted. I said, you guys, you know, guys, and oh, I said, how many shows you play? They said 12. I went 12. I said, 1200 and no 12. I said, what do you mean 12? Yeah, which was three with Ozzie, three with Def Leppard, three with Jess, I went, and they were great, by the way. They were very good there. They were really good band. And they were, you know what? They felt so bad for us. They let us sleep on their bus because they had extra bunks. So we would revolve band members and sleep on their bus. And they were, they were great. But, you know, sometimes that's the way it goes. You know, JJ, for Queens Rake, I think they were sort of the exception that they took another road to get there. Like, you know, they jammed in their basement, they practiced, they finessed their craft to the point where when they did release an EP, it just, it connected with people, right? But not like in a pop artist connection, in a sort of like an underground connection. Oh, like, they were like an American Iron Maiden or something, you know? That's right, exactly. They were, we played, but we did a whole tour with them. I watched them every night. And they were great. They were super young, but I thought they were like more Maiden-esque. You know, more than A.C. and D.C. and Priest was us. They were more Maiden-esque. But Jeff was one of the best vocalists I'd ever heard. Oh, they were all great. And great guys and a great band. And just, I'm just doing that to illustrate, you know, how- Absolutely, absolutely. I guess my point is they chose another role, but they worked hard at that role too. It's just a different way, you know? Yeah. Yeah, all right, yeah. So speaking of greats, Mark Portnoy is gonna play drums. Mike Portnoy, yeah. Tell me about, you know, the decision to use him again. Well, you know, Mike Portnoy and Steve Vai are going to induct us. And the reason why they are going to induct us, is that they used to sneak in to see Twisted Sister when they were 15 years old in the bars in Long Island. This is Steve Vai and Mike Portnoy. Two of the greatest rock musicians on the planet. Yeah. And, you know, when A.J. died, for those of you who don't know, A.J. was in a band called the Adrenaline Mob and that was his side gig. So when Twisted wasn't on the road, he was on the road with Adrenaline Mob. And he died in the tour bus of Adrenaline Mob in a parking lot in Poughkeepsie, New York. He had a heart attack. And he died. And he replaced Mike Portnoy, who was in Adrenaline Mob. So Mark Portnoy has been in every band that's ever been signed on the planet Earth. I make a joke. I said, ladies and gentlemen, when he's not on tour with The Beatles Stones, who's Floyd Jimi Hendrix, Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, he's playing with us. Because Mike Portnoy is just a playing whore. And he plays with everybody. He's not even a house brain functions. He remembers more shit. He knows way more stuff than we do about us than I do. Like, you know, I'm sure when we get together and rehearse, oh, no, oh, you fucked that up too. Thanks, Mike. I appreciate you telling me that part. Mike just has an encyclopedic performance mind. And he happens to be a great guy. So anyway, the thing is that the AJ dies and the day after AJ died, there was a memorial show in New Jersey. Adrenaline Mob put on the show. And I went because they asked me to appear on behalf of Twisted Sister and play a song with Adrenaline Mob. And I'm sitting there and Mike Portnoy was there. And Mike Portnoy and I were in the dressing room. We'd never met officially. And we were both crying because AJ just died 24 hours before. We're both like crying. Like, I can't, I mean, Mike knew AJ and, you know, AJ, I think said to Mike at one point, if anything ever happens to me, I want you to be the drummer or something like that. But anyway, Mike looked at me and he goes, he says, man, what are you guys gonna do? Cause we had a tour lined up. And I went, I don't know. I don't know. We haven't even discussed it. This could be it. And he said, well, look, I'm not touring this summer. And if you need a drummer, call me. I'm available. Now I have to tell you that within a minute of the announcement that AJ died, my office was inundated with a million phone calls from drummers. And I remember saying to my assistant, anyone who's calling for AJ's job, blacklist them for me. I never want to talk to them again. Like, if you wait, if you can't wait for the body to get cold, I don't need to talk to you. Like that's how I felt. I was so, I don't know. I guess I was naive in thinking about it. I would get these calls, hey man, it sucks about AJ, but my name is bella ball and I can play John. And it was really disgusting. And anyway, but here's Mike and I in the dressing room. Mike just looks at me and he goes, if you guys need help, call me. That was it. And I went, wow, wow. Okay. So we attended AJ's wake a couple of days later and we're all sitting around D's father-in-law's house in Staten Island discussing the future of the band. And I went, you know, Mike Portnoy offered his services should we decide to continue. Now at that point, the whole European festival tour was set up that summer. So we, all these promoters are now calling to find out, because we're headlining 15 festivals and we're telling them, give us some time because we can't process this as too traumatic. And, you know, kind of like you don't ask, don't ask someone that loses a Super Bowl the next day if they're retiring, you know, just give them some space, whatever, you know, or if you lose a boxing match or something, you can't make those decisions while you're traumatized. You need some space. So, you know, we were so blown away by Mike's offer and we thought about it and said, you know what? Oh, we'll take you up on it. And that's how you become our drummer. So anyway, outside of him, Frankie Bernali is the only other person who played drums with us because Mike couldn't make the Las Vegas awards show six years ago and Frankie was there because he's in California. This is before the cancer diagnosis. And Frankie was also a great friend of AJ and Frankie played that one night. It was fun, that Frankie, but Mike just became our drummer. And so anyway, getting to this thing, so the Rockwell Hall of Fame, excuse me, the heavy metal Hall of Fame comes up. So we're thinking, OK, we'll just show up and get the award and go home. I mean, that was really it. I don't live in LA, D does. I was like, D, why don't you just go and get the award? Say thank you on behalf of the band. Thank you. That's it. That's it. But if you're not in LA, maybe I'll fly out on behalf of the band. And that started the conversation about what does it mean? And we haven't been together since we broke up. And so I think we all thought maybe be a cool thing, a fun thing to do, play three songs, like that's it. So we're going there. We're going to rehearse three songs. You're going to go to rehearse. Do you really need to rehearse? Well, the fact is, you kind of do when you've been out of it so long, I don't play professionally anymore. So I mean, I really need to like, you know, you need to put the shoulder pads on and the helmet on. You have to kind of just have to kind of get yourself in a state of mind to do it. Because it does take a certain thing to do it. You have to adjust yourself to the volume because you don't normally do that. We're older now, you know. And so as time goes on, you know, this is very reminiscent of other past reunions. In 2000, we played a special one off for Jason Flom, the A&R guy. He was being honored by the UJA in New York City. And we, and so all of the artists that that were that he signed over the years appeared to play in a little restaurant in New York in a little Italian restaurant, a little restaurant called Tavern on the Green and Central Park. It was Matchbox 20, the blue man group because he went to college with the blue man group. Matchbox 20, Kid Rock, oh God, Sebastian Bach. So everybody was appearing and playing basically unplugged because it was at a restaurant. And we hadn't been together in 12 years. And so we all met, we had a rehearsal but Mark couldn't make it and we had a rehearsal. And then we all met behind the stove because Jason didn't know we were appearing and we were all crouched behind the stove in the kitchen. I'm thinking to myself, this is how the bands reuniting, you know, like we're crouched behind the stove in a kitchen in Central Park. And this is it. Anyway, we came out, we did three songs. Didn't think twice about it. We wound up, you know, on stage with us was Matchbox 20, it was Kid Rock, was a blue man group and a bunch of other artists that Jason had signed. And it was, you know, it was fun. And we didn't think anything of it. That was that. And then a year later, 9-11 happened. And we reunited for that. And that was a charity event. And that was cool. And we didn't expect anything to happen from that. And from that, everything happened because the word got out. And now this event is also a charity event from what I understand. The money is donated to you. So it's costing us money to do the shows because, you know, we have, there's a sponsor but we're also paying, you know, to do it. So there's no money involved. Also, you know, there's no reunion to speak of. I'm not gonna be so cynical and say that it couldn't lead to conversations but we never had a single conversation about a reunion prior to this. Not one. People always go, when are you guys getting back together? And I said, well, we talk all the time but we never talk about playing. But we talk about business. Why do we talk about business? Because we're not gonna take it and I wanna rock are the most famous licensed songs in the history of the music business. They're in more TV commercials, movies, soundtracks. So we do licensing deals all day long. I mean, that's really what we do. I'm in the business of music licensing. Yeah. Which was a business I didn't know existed 20 years ago. If you said to me, you're gonna be in the licensing business. I'd say what, marriage license, driver's license? No, we're in the music licensing business. And this year, for example, Discover Card in the US where the song Discover Card, T-Mobile, hundreds of corporations have licensed our music. We're not gonna take it as the number one protest song in the world. It's sung everywhere, sung everywhere. Suck on both sides. Yes, you got that right. It's sung on both sides. The truckers in Canada did a video with we're not gonna take it. Yeah, nurses went on strike in New York, we're singing it on the street. I got a newspaper clipping. I mean, it's sung around the world, the Ukrainian freedom fighters. That's right. Both the left and the right. It's a timeless message and we'll remain so. And that's kind of an honor too, just to think about that, you know. That fits in to my initial question of why do you think Twisted Sisters should be united? Why should they receive this award? I think we've sort of, you know, the sort of legacy of Twisted Sisters, the sort of social culture that it's part of, you know, into the everyday's world, right? Social political, we'll call it, right? And of course, albums sold, like you said, most licensed song. There's just so many in genre defining, right? In the sense that you guys broke out with the videos, you made the videos popular, music videos, plus just in general, just sales in general, just, you know, when it. Yeah, so I mean, you add all that up and I guess you've affected a lot of people and therefore to be recognized for that accomplishment, it's a huge accomplishment. Yeah. And rightfully so, rightfully so. The Long Island Music Hall of Fame, which we were inducted in 2006, just opened up their building in Stony Brook, Long Island and we went to that and that building has Twisted Sisters everywhere. They've got like six foot models of us. They've got our backdrops. They've got our posters. We're all over that Long Island Music Hall of Fame. You can't walk in there without thinking it's the Twisted Sister Music Hall of Fame almost. So to have that and the Heavy Metal Hall of Fame as a recognition after all these years, it's something to be very proud of. Yeah, and I think it's, to your point, it's the fans to be proud that they supported you all these years, right? They feel like one of ours sort of made it, right? Yeah. That's big for them. Yeah, I mean, a lot of them took a lot of abuse for that, you know, how cool and not cool they are. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's, you know, it hasn't really hit me and it may hit me more when I'm there or actually when we're sitting there playing, you know, and rehearsing these songs and standing on stage and then just getting an award. So... It's a great event. It's a great event. I've been there many times this year. Unfortunately, I won't be there due to personal reasons, but I'll tell you something, it's a glamorous. You feel like you're at the Academy Awards. And it feels, and it's just a, Patches Waldo puts on a spectacular event. It's really great. Well, good. So we're really looking forward to it. And, you know, to our fellow, you know, have the ACDC and Judas Priest at Motorhead. These are bands that we are emotionally attached to. Yeah. Either through the genre that we play, the music that we play or the personal relationships that we have, and it matters a great deal to be associated with them. I mean, you know, Priest, I just think is really, you know, in terms of metal, it's the bullseye metal sound for us. And then ACDC is just the attitude and the humor is, you know, and I mean, when Twisted first came to England, Brian Johnson, the first time we played in Newcastle, we were in a hotel and all of a sudden the car comes, it's a van and its guy says, hey man, Brian Johnson wants you to come over to his house. He heard you were staying here. So we went over to his house. The whole band went over to his house and he said, and it was a bank holiday. So which means everything was shut down, you know? So he goes, hey, Lattie, you know, he's like, hey, Lattie. Hungry, Lattie. I went, yeah, he goes, well, Lattie, you know, I'll just call up an Indian restaurant around here and they'll open for me and we'll order food and he ordered all his food in him. And then Brian came and played with us in England in 2010. He did a whole lot of Rosie with us. I have a video of him. Wow, that's cool. Man, he's just pretty crazy. So here's my last question to you. Okay. You know, here, Twist's sister is sort of the band that's paid their dues, thousands of shows. And then you see bands go on stage to your point, like, you know, 50 shows they've played and they are lip syncing. And to me, Twist has never come across as a band that's gonna go up there and just fake it, right? You guys are the real deal, at least from my understanding what I see, right? You guys would be the last guys to start going up there and using backing tracks. And well, I mean, what are your feelings towards what's going on in music today where, you know, everyone's just lip syncing stuff and they're not even playing their instruments anymore. It's, yeah. Well, you know, this goes back to my father's criticism of my genre, which he said our music, not like everything after 1946 sucked. Like he just kind of, he just wrapped it all up in one big ball and he goes, it all sucks, right? Like it's all just baby, baby, baby, yeah, yeah, yeah, right? Cause he just didn't give a shit. He loved classical music. And I don't want to sound like my dad, which means that whatever, if you figure out a way to make money and you're selling it, that's your business. Do I like listening to it? No, it's manipulated a lot. So no, but then again, the music business has always been manipulated. Let's also be really clear about this and not naive. You know, there's been a lot of trickery in the music industry. Most live albums are never live albums. Even back in the day, they were like fake live albums. And very, I mean, they would, they would either go back in the studio, re-record all the parts again. So let's be honest about that. Very few live albums. I think Dave Edmonds, or excuse me, either Dave Edmonds or Dave Mason made an album that said, we officially proclaimed that every track on this is live, that they had to make a statement because it was all bullshit. You know, without naming the artists involved and the producers involved, there was a lot of trickery. So if that happens, who's to say? You know, those who live in glass houses. So if you are going to be part of the world of manipulative media, then you have to expect the manipulative media to continue on in ever more elaborate ways. And if you buy it, you buy it. And if you don't, you don't. I hear things differently than my daughter hears things. And so, and her, you know, and my three-year-old granddaughter will hear things differently than she heard it. And it's their decisions to make, not my decisions, what I think is good or bad. You either like it or you don't like it. So I don't pass judgment because again, you know, when you hear stories like Tony Bennett took 73 takes to record, I left my heart in San Francisco or something like that, you know? So what's the difference? Okay, it's 73 takes. They didn't get it right the first time and they kept reaching for perfection. And that's the point. It's this perfection business and it's this manipulative desire to reach perfection. And if it doesn't sell, it's a failure. And if it sells, it justifies its existence and more people will do it because that's the nature of pop culture, which is innovate and then imitate. And that's what you do. You innovate and you imitate. I don't care what genre of music you're in. Go to Liverpool in 1964 when the Beatles hit and you had 50 bands that sounded just like the Beatles because you innovate and you imitate. And if you don't know the difference between them and someone sat you down and played you a Beatle record, Jerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, the searchers, they all sounded exactly the same if you didn't know the difference. That's the genre situations. Look at the LA metal bands of the 80s. If you didn't know the difference, wouldn't they all sound the same to you? The warrants and the this and the that and the motley? It's like, there's no different. And that's not a knock. It's just, that's what happens. And then part of it is this. So what do you have now? You have beats, you have hip hop, you have beats, you have rap, you have, you know, and how much of it is, you know, is innovate and imitate. And that's built into the sauce and country artists. Now, what does country sound like? It doesn't like Dolly Parton anymore. It doesn't like George Jones, it doesn't like George Strait. It sounds like Deff Leppard with a cowboy hat. You know, that's what country music sounds like to me. It's, you know, it's like Mutt Lang's drum sound. And, you know, and then, you know, guys, you know, driving their pickup truck and it, I don't know. Here's the thing, there's so much out there. The good news is that it doesn't cost much to make a record, but the bad news is, everybody can make a record now. And so we're being forced to listen to it. So here's my question to you, with all that's out there, how do you pick what you listen to? Do you get it because a friend of yours says, hey, you should really check this out? Like, is that how you get referred to? You know what? I'm a special case, okay? Because I'm kind of in this sort of industry, right? So I'm getting thrown at by publicists what to listen to all day long. So I might not be the best example, but I know what you're saying. How does someone differentiate? And I don't know, it's how do they discover, right? It's not word of mouth, that's for sure. So it's not word of mouth for you. In other words, a friend of yours doesn't say, man, check this out. It could be, it could be, it could be, but I get links every day from YouTube since saying check this out, check this out to the point where I can't check anything out anymore. Okay. It's to your point that there's just too much to check out that I don't have enough space in my brain to check it out. And when you do check it out and you like something. Yeah. Do you then go deeper in or you just go, well, that's today's lunch. I gotta find something else. I guess, I guess if it really stands out, I'll go deeper in and, you know, like anyone else. So that's the problem. So for example, a friend of mine is into a band called Tame Impala. You familiar with them? They're very popular, okay, but they're huge. They can sell multiple nights out at the garden. I never even knew they existed. Never knew. A friend of mine says, you don't know Tame Impala like I'm an idiot. Like, yeah. All of a sudden the world of Tame Impala opens up. Oh my God. Tons of records. Great stuff. There's a reason why they're that popular. I don't know them. I don't know their music. I don't know they existed. That kind of blows my mind. Used to be in the old days, everybody that could go to the garden, I would know. Now people sell at the garden, I never heard of them. You must be aware of that phenomenon, right? Artists who are gigantic, you don't even know about when you go, how did that happen under the radar? All the time. Yeah, happens all the time. So I need somebody to focus me. I write a Beatles column, so I listen to the Beatles too much and much to my wife's dismay. I don't need to listen to another Beatles record for the rest of my life. I mean, let's be fair. I don't need to listen to a Led Zeppelin record for the rest of my life. I don't listen to a priest record. These records were imprinted in our DNA. The Rolling Stones, the Who's, the Floyd, all that stuff is imprinted in our DNA. And what you listen to between the ages of 12 and 20 is the music that lasts with you for the rest of your life. So regardless of what happens as you get older, pretty much the music that you fell in love with between the ages of 12 and 20, when you had all the time to spend. That's right. You fall in love with it because you know as well as I do, as you get older, you don't have time to spend anymore. You got, you're married, you got kids, you got school, you got house payments, you know, what all that stuff that gets in the way, you know, it gets in the way of it. But when you're 12 to 20, nothing's in the way of it. You're just getting high and listening to music and you become, and you, whatever you fall in love with during that period of time, you fall in love with during that period of time. That will never be taken away from you. That's just part of who you are. And once you get past 20 and 30 and 40 and 50 and life gets in the way, it becomes less and less an opportunity, not to mention the fact, how much does it cost to go to a show? I mean, look, I am a celebrity. I can call up a promoter, I can go to a show. But still and all, let's say I wanted to go to a show and I needed a babysitter and I wanted to pay parking, you know, how much is that costing these days? Buy a hot dog. You want to buy a hot dog? Forget about it. What about a family of four wants to go to a baseball game? How much does that cost? I brought my son to a hockey game and I was like, don't eat chips, don't eat pizza. I can't imagine. Yeah, but I'm sure it's a lot of money. You know, I don't want to sound like, you know, when I was, look, when Twisted Sister started, gasoline was 29 cents a gallon, you know? And Richard Nixon was president. That's right. And, you know, and we rented a house for $300 a month and you know, that was, and that sounds like when I was a boy, we walked five miles of school and we had no, but think about that. Think about the economics of success. Yeah, yeah. 29 cents a gallon, how much gas was? Nixon was president. I mean, McDonald's only had one million hamburgers sold back in those days. One million, not eight trillion. I remember there was a site, first time I saw McDonald's, it said one million sold. I never saw McDonald's, live in Manhattan. We didn't have McDonald's in Manhattan. I'm now in the suburbs. I see this big golden M thing. What's that? McDonald's, wow, a million hamburgers sold. Isn't that yesterday now? There was no drive-through back then. It was the chocolate shakes. I don't have shakes anymore. So on that note, I'm gonna have to let you go. Always a pleasure, JJ. You know, always welcome back. You know, always welcome back to the show. I love talking to you, man. I love all your philosophy. I love what you think. I love picking your brain. You got me up at eight o'clock in the morning. So buy my book Twisted Business. It's on Amazon. Buy the book Twisted Business. Listen to my podcast, the JJ French Connection, which is on Spotify, Apple, and every other platform, the podcast. One, read my articles in Copper Magazine or Goldmine or ToneQuest. And then listen to me pontificate on various podcasts, hopefully a little later in the day. But you got me while things were rocking, man. I'm telling you, my brain was working this morning. You know, so thank you very much. All right, and most of all, the Metal Hall of Fame happening next week. Yeah, which is the 26th, which I don't even know how tickets are available, but yes, on January 26th, Agora Hills at the Canyon Club in LA, Twisted Sister will be indicted. No, inducted. Sorry, we're not in time. We'll be after the show. We'll be, the indictment will be after the show. We'll be inducted to the heavy metal. And I would like to thank my fellow sisters, really Dee and Eddie and Mark for killing themselves for all those years. You know, I can't really say enough to them for the sacrifices on Portnoy for being there for us when you need be. And for Steve Vai for helping induct us. But to the guys in my band for all the years and the hard work and the sacrifice. And we all, we all did. I am forever indebted to all of them. Yeah, just a few tickets left, metalhallofame.org. You can pick them up there. And I, from what I'm hearing, people are flying from all around the world. Yeah. To this event. Just to see you guys be inducted. Of course, Chris and Pilateri, Lou Graham, Raven's also being inducted. And then indicted after the show. So, there you go. I'm pretty sad that I won't be there this year because I would have loved to see you guys be inducted and performed. But you know what? It is what it is. I know you guys got to kick some ass anyways. Yeah, well, thank you so much for having me.