NAMM has provided Rock N Roll Industries and myself with great new friendships and memories. I was also lucky enough to run into an 80’s Metal legend from a band everyone knows on a name basis – TWISTED SISTER. This rough and tumble painted crew from out East are still giving as few f*cks as ever and are having a blast stepping onstage in theater with classic songs fans will remember from their concerts. NAMM is no new thing for bassist Mark Mendoza, he gives us his candid and ballsy account on today’s Metal, politics and censorship in music, the Christmas album, why Twisted Sister will probably never do new material, and why they were certain that doing the Christmas album would usher in their career’s final big hit and nasty cut. RNR: So how you doing today? We’re at NAMM; how are you liking it so far? MARK: NAMM’s incredible. I do NAMM every year, and every year, there’s more exciting things going on, and I run into crazy people! RNR: You were hanging out at the Epiphone booth. Are you here with anybody in particular? MARK: Well, I was up at Epiphone because JJ’s endorsed by Epiphone, and JJ’s in Twisted Sister, so of course I spent some time up there. And I know everybody at Epiphone/Gibson, they’re friends of mine. RNR: So you guys last November did a stage production for your Christmas album. How was that? MARK: Well the Christmas album came out quite a few years now, four or five years already. But every year, we do couple of Christmas shows. We happened to be only available for two this year – a big theater in Huntington, Long Island called The Paramount, and we did the Best Buy Theater in Times Square in Manhattan. We have a big Christmas set, and it’s the crazy Santa, and it’s a lot of fun to do. Half our set is our metal Christmas songs, and some of our anthems and regular hits and stuff like that. But it’s a lot of fun; it’s a little more relaxed than the craziness of a regular Twisted Sister show. RNR: How did you guys get the idea to take it to the stage? MARK: Well we’ve been playing all our regular songs, and of course we love ‘em all, but we thought of one day – how can we really sink our careers? Honestly – let’s do a Metal Christmas album! So we came up with about 14-15 songs and picked the ones that are on the album and did metal versions of all these [Christmas] songs, we wanted it to be obviously Metal and Rock, which it is, but we also wanted it to be fun. Everybody puts out [sappy] drippy gooey Christmas songs. We wanted to ROCK OUT with Christmas, so we did it, thinking that it was probably gonna ruin our career, and unbeknownst to us it’s one of our biggest selling CD’s! It’s tremendous! 56 56Rock RockNNRoll RollIndustries IndustriesMagazine Magazine
RNR: Yeah! I read a reviewer actually said that it was one of the best Rock Christmas albums since Elvis’. MARK: You can’t touch the King! Elvis is the King. RNR: What’s your favorite Christmas cover that you guys have done? MARK: Oh, I don’t know. I think they’re all a lot of fun. A couple things about the CD – well, one of my favorites is “Let it Snow.” I love the song. I produced the album! The song the bass solo, it wasn’t supposed to be there. The song was supposed to fade at the end. And when we were playing, the band was playing the clos-
ing of the song I just started ripping out and going faster and faster, and when they all heard it they said, “You gotta leave it!” I said, “It’s a mistake, it’s not supposed to be there.” So we left it there, and that’s how that song came to be. The arrangements are a lot of fun, and we realized that O Come all Ye Faithful is – don’t tell anybody – but it’s really “We’re not gonna take it!” Same melody on the vocals, same chords, we’re not lettin the secret out, but that’s what it really is. RNR: You guys working on new material right now? MARK; Nah, we don’t write new material. Who wants to hear new material? Listen, you go see all these big tremendous metal bands and they say here’s a song form our new album, what does everybody do? They get up and they go to the bathroom. We play everything that everybody grew up on, that’s what we do and that’s what they wanna hear and we continue to do. We always say thats never gonna happen, but who knows, someday maybe we’ll put out new material. Right now there’s nothing in the works for it. RNR: What do you think about Heavy Metal
today and all the different subgenres that have arisen since you guys started? MARK: You know music is an ever-evolving form of art. And, growing up, I remember, my parents heard what I liked and they couldn’t believe how awful it was. And I listen to some of the Metal today and it takes me a little bit of time to get used to it, but I realize it’s an evolution. And I realize that Twisted and the bands in our generation took from the people we learned from, and now the newer bands are taking from us, and changing it. And that’s the best thing. You take what you know, you improve it, and you move on. And that’s flattering. And all the bands, whether it’s Motley Crue, Twisted Sister, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, or Black Sabbath, we should all be flattered, because these bands are taking from us and moving on. I’m excited about everything that happens in music. R N R : Dee Snyder has been a very strong advocate of freedom of speech and he’s against censorship in music, he even went to court to fight the accusations that musicians are responsible for what the fans that listen to their music do. He made a great case. What do you guys think about the whole political correctness thing that’s going on now and the bands that take it to extremes, in your face, deliberately offensive acts? MARK: In this country, some of our rights are based on certain things. Freedom of speech is one. And I believe that you can write any song and say anything you want. If somebody else takes an action on it, that’s their problem. Because I write a song that somebody deems or takes in a way that I didn’t intend it to be? That’s not my problem. I think we’re all looking in the wrong places and we’re putting Band-Aids on everything, and we shouldn’t. If someone’s a bad person, if someone’s an ass, they’re an ass! Okay, you can’t say that a song triggered them or “this was the case” people are gonna do what they’re gonna do. They’re gonna find a reason to do it, whether it’s an iron maiden song, twisted song, rap song, or a dance song – anything. You should be able to say and write the music you want without fear of prosecution or anybody coming down on you. And if people like to hear it they want to buy it, that’s their business. It’s like anything else. There’s a huge porno industry. Do we have to say we love porn or we don’t? No, and I may not like it, I’m not giving my personal choices here, but I’m saying I may not like it, but if somebody else wants it why shouldn’t they? You can go even further – how about the whole gay rights thing going on in the country? Because – and I’m not saying this is my opinion, I’m just stating something – because maybe I was brought up, the way the bible said something to think that gay people or lesbians shouldn’t get to marry. They should be allowed to, they’re two adults, they’re consenting adults. If they want to get married, they should be allowed to. Nobody should be governed by someone else’s beliefs. That’s a big thing – be responsible for your own actions. If you screw up, you get caught, you suffer for it.