Jay Jay French is a founding member of Twisted Sister
Speaking about bands that continued performing long after their peak, the Twisted Sister guitarist said:
“Judas Priest is 65, 70. Saxon is 80. The Rolling Stones are 90. Watching Keith [Richards] and [Ronnie Wood] try to play guitar is like being driven around on a tour bus by Jose Feliciano and Ray Charles without GPS – it’s a terrifying experience. If the Rolling Stones were smart, they’d hire two 25-year-old guys from Nashville who know how to play their parts and let these two corpses walk around on stage and act like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean. They can’t play. And it bothers me that they charge eight hundred dollars for a ticket. At least when you go to see The Eagles, there are 45 guys on stage because you want the band to sound like The Eagles. And when you go to see Roger Waters, there are 45 guys on stage too because you want to hear what The Wall sounds like, but the Rolling Stones insist you watch them decompose in front of your eyes for a high price. And they’re so bad.”.
I'm just annoyed because we work so hard to be perfect every night. And I watched them. I've been a Stones fan, by the way, all my life and saw them at the peak of their career – in '69, '70, '71, '72. They were arguably the greatest rock band on planet Earth. And there's a DVD, Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stone, that you can watch. Why are they happy sounding so bad when you have that?
Now, Judas Priest. Look what you have: KK [Downing, guitar] left, and now Glenn [Tipton, guitar]. And it's wonderful. Now it's essentially a cover band.
I come from a world of cover bands. When Twisted Sister started out in bars, the cover bands were better than the originals. The reason we were so big, the reason Rat Race Choir and Stanton Anderson Band – those are bands that existed as bar bands – the reason they were so good, was because they were better than the bands they were copying.
You don't even know that Led Zeppelin was deteriorating so much that in 1975 you couldn't go to one of their shows without throwing up. They were so bad! […] But if you saw Zebra playing Led Zeppelin on Long Island, you'd hear perfect Led Zeppelin. If you saw Rat Race Choir, you saw perfect Pink Floyd, you saw perfect Emerson, Lake & Palmer. It really mattered. I understand that. I understand. It's a cover band. And that's what a lot of those bands are. Foreigner is a complete cover band; there's nobody left.”
According to Jay Jay, Twisted Sister disbanded in 2016 because the band members wanted to leave while they could still do the kind of live performances that gave them the reputation of being one of the most active bands.
“Twisted Sister has a credibility thing. We like playing with a band called Twisted Sister, with the guys from Twisted Sister, playing Twisted Sister music, for Twisted Sister fans. And if we can't do that, we won't do it. That's a personal choice. And if we do it again, it will be because we all decided we wanted to, it's a matter of credibility that we have.”.
Twisted Sister is a perfectionist band. We play thousands of shows. Every show is perfect. Every show is the last show of our lives. Every show is done with the sincerity and desire to make sure you leave thinking it's the best thing you've ever done. We may not be the best band in the world, but when you see us live, playing with Iron Maiden or any of those other bands, you'll leave thinking we're the best band.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ARgkEZSOXc
