TWISTED SISTER’s return will finally become reality in 2026, but fans hoping the band’s 50th-anniversary reunion tour will dig deep into the catalog may want to temper their expectations.
In a new interview with Don De Leaumont of the Talking The Talk With Don podcast, founding guitarist Jay Jay French discussed the upcoming run, which will reunite the band’s three core members — French, vocalist Dee Snider and longtime lead guitarist Eddie Ojeda — for a worldwide celebration marking five decades of TWISTED SISTER. The tour will not include bassist Mark “The Animal” Mendoza, with Russell Pzütto, who has toured with Snider’s solo band, stepping in on bass. Drummer Joe Franco, who briefly played with the group in the mid-1980s, will handle drums in place of the late A.J. Pero, who passed away in 2015 at age 55.
Addressing the scope of the tour, French made it clear that the reunion was never intended to be a full-scale, open-ended return. Asked whether the band plans an extensive trek or something more limited, he said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth): “Probably very controlled, because it was never an intention to do it again. Never. I had to be talked into it. And do you really wanna do it? And in a way it’s a victory lap tour. It’s called ‘Twisted Forever, Forever Twisted’. It’s 50 years of me and Eddie and Dee, who we’ve been shoulder to shoulder since February of ’76.
French also reflected on the band’s long and often misunderstood lineup history, noting that fans sometimes overlook how many personnel changes TWISTED SISTER went through over the years.
“Most people who have no idea of the history of the band don’t realize it — we’ve played with 10 different bass players and drummers,” Jay Jay continued. “They don’t even understand that. They don’t get it. We know it…
“So, it’s called ‘Twisted Forever, Forever Twisted’, or I call it ‘Sex, Prescription Drugs And Rock And Roll’,” the guitarist quipped. “That’s my secondary tour name.”
When it comes to the setlist, however, French suggested that nostalgia and fan expectations will likely outweigh any desire to resurrect rarely performed songs. Asked whether there are tracks that haven’t been played much — or at all — that he’d like to include, he acknowledged the challenge of fitting surprises into a tightly timed show.
“There probably are some, but the problem is when you’re doing 60 minutes or 75 minutes, ’cause that’s what you’re contracted for, you’re in the same dilemma that any other band is that’s been together 50 years with a million albums,” he explained. “And that dilemma is this. Do you play the 17 songs everybody wants to hear, or do you replace a couple of them with other more obscure stuff? That’s always the big question. And my answer to that question is, if you’re playing for the fans, you give them exactly what they want. That’s my theory. If you’re playing for yourself, it’s different. But if you’re really playing for the fans and you understand most of them wanna hear these 17 [songs]… I guarantee you, if we laid out, ‘These are the songs we’re gonna do. But we’re gonna remove two of them to put two things in. Which one should we remove?’ Nobody’s gonna want a single song removed. That’s the problem. That’s the problem. ‘Let’s take out ‘Destroyer’.’ ‘Let’s take out ‘You Can’t Stop Up Rock ‘N’ Roll’.’ ‘Let’s take out ‘Tear It Loose’.’ ‘Let’s take out ‘The Kids Are Back’.’ No. That’s the problem. So the problem is we’re gonna get together, we’re gonna rehearse and we’re gonna play a bunch of songs. And we have in our mind a couple songs we haven’t played much, and we’re gonna give it a shot, see how it sounds. We’re gonna see how it sounds.”
Meanwhile, Snider has previously revealed that the reunion itself was driven by deeply personal reasons. Speaking this past November on Steve And Rik’s POTcast, hosted by Steve Whiteman of KIX and Rik Parks, the singer admitted that a health scare prompted him to reconsider his long-standing refusal to reunite the band.
He said: “Why am I doing a reunion with TWISTED SISTER? [Sighs] I’ll say that it was my idea. The [other] guys [in the band] couldn’t even believe I was making the call. And it had to do with — I said this publicly already — I had a little bit of a health scare. It was okay, and it was okay, but it was enough to make me say, ‘Wow, that was weird.’ I never had to think about those things before. And I’m 70 years old, and I’m, like, ‘Do I wanna go out like that, go silently, or do I wanna go kicking and screaming?’ And I picked up the phone and I called up John [TWISTED SISTER’s founding guitarist Jay Jay French] and Eddie [Ojeda, TWISTED SISTER‘s longtime guitarist], Jay Jay and Eddie, and said, ‘What do you think about getting together?’ And they couldn’t believe I was suggesting it, ’cause I told ’em,'[It’s] not happening. [It will] never happen.’ But circumstances, particularly [since] this was emotional circumstances, made me change my mind. Am I regretting it? A little bit right now, sorry to say. [Laughs]”
Reeder, the visionary behind Metal Addicts, has transformed his lifelong passion for metal into a thriving online community for metal aficionados. As a fervent devotee of black metal, Reeder is captivated by its dark, atmospheric, and often unorthodox soundscapes.