Although Twisted Sister are most famous for the melodic hard rock anthems “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and “I Wanna Rock,” the New York rockers generally had a heavier and sometimes darker slant to the material on both that 1984 breakthrough album, the Triple Platinum Stay Hungry, and their previous studio releases, Under the Blade and You Can’t Stop Rock ‘n’ Roll. Let’s take a closer look at the meaning behind Twisted Sister’s “Under the Blade.”
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Less Sinister; Just as Scary
We rewind back to one of the darkest songs on Twisted Sister’s 1982 debut, Under the Blade. The menacing title track was the third song Dee Snider ever wrote. From a quick listen to the song or look at the lyrics, one might immediately assume that it was about a vicious knife attack in an alleyway. But in fact the knife that is the object of fear in the song is a surgical one. Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider wrote the song about guitarist Eddie Ojeda’s fear in facing throat surgery.
A glint of steel, a flash of light
You know you’re not going home tonight
Be it jack or switch, doctor’s or mind
Nowhere to run, everywhere you’ll find
You can’t escape from the bed you’ve made
When your time has come, you’ll accept the
Blade
Of the song’s lyrical content, Snider once explained, “The song was written about my guitar player, Eddie Ojeda. He was having polyps removed from his throat and he was very fearful of this operation. And I said: ‘Eddie, while you are in the hospital I am going to write a song for you.’ I said it was about the fear of operations. I think people imagine being helpless on a table, the bright light in their face, the blade coming down on them, and being totally afraid that they may wake up, who knows, dead, handicapped. There is a certain fear of hospitals. That is what, in my imagination, what I see the hospitals like.”
Just the Tipper
“Under the Blade” is raw, powerful, and full throttle, and it certainly invokes the vibe of someone afraid to go under anesthesia and be cut open. Despite the cathartic aspect of the song, it aroused the ire of the PMRC (the Parents Music Resource Center), a self-appointed watchdog group of Senators’ housewives in the mid-1980s who sought to ferret out what they perceived was obscenity, vulgarity, and adult themes in rock and pop music lyrics. Their “Filthy Fifteen” list included songs like Mötley Crüe’s “Bastard,” Prince’s “Darling Nikki,” and Sheila E’s “Sugar Walls”. One could see how some of those songs might make certain parents uncomfortable, but the reality was they didn’t want to just simply criticize the songs – they wanted to do away with them altogether.
“We’re Not Gonna Take It” made the Filthy Fifteen list because of the cartoon violence depicted in the video, in which a verbally abused child and his siblings turned into the members of Twisted Sister and tossed their dad around their house like a rag doll. It was a Looney Tunes type of comedy, not an actual threat to the parental unit. As if that were not enough, PMRC co-founder and ex-Second Lady Tipper Gore also decided that Twisted’s “Under the Blade” was problematic because, as she saw it, the song depicted sexual violence and depravity.
When Dee Snider, along with Frank Zappa and John Denver, went down to the PMRC’s Senate hearings in Washington on September 19, 1985, he let his feelings be known about the serious misinterpretation of his lyrics.
Dee Owns the PMRC
Speaking of one of three accusations made against him by Tipper Gore, Snider rebutted, “This attack was contained in an article written by Tipper Gore, which was given the forum of a full page in my hometown newspaper on Long Island. In this article, Ms. Gore claimed that one of my songs, ‘Under the Blade,’ had lyrics encouraging sadomasochism, bondage, and rape.
“The lyrics she quoted have absolutely nothing to do with these topics. On the contrary, the words in question are about surgery and the fear that it instills in people. Furthermore, the reader of this article is led to believe that the three lines she quotes go together in the song when, as you can see from reading the lyrics, the first two lines she cites are an edited phrase from the second verse and the third line is a misquote of a line from the chorus.
“That the writer could misquote me is curious, since we make it a point to print all our lyrics on the inner sleeve of every album,” Snider continued, concluding, “As the creator of ‘Under the Blade,’ I can say categorically that the only sadomasochism, bondage, and rape in this song is in the mind of Ms. Gore.”
The PMRC succeeded in getting the music industry to put warning labels on some albums and offer censored versions of some, but in the end it simply made certain music more desirable to many kids because it seemed taboo. Snider’s testimony was smarter and more thoughtful than they anticipated, and John Denver surprised the committee by taking Snider and Zappa’s side.
Several Cuts Above
After the hearings, the Twisted frontman felt ostracized by his peers at the time for different reasons—some did not approve of him going to D.C., while others didn’t appreciate his admitting that he wasn’t a party animal and led a straight-edged life which goes against rock ‘n’ roll mythology. For other reasons, the band’s popularity would wane by 1986 and they would break up less than two years later after the release of their fifth album Love Is for Suckers, with individual members moving on to other projects.
But once fully reunited in the early 2000s, Twisted became stronger, playing American shows again (including a 9/11 benefit), reissuing their catalog and rare material, becoming a festival headlining act in Europe, and having their music licensed across myriad formats, while Snider continued to perform “Under the Blade,” with the band and solo, up until recently retiring from touring.
In other words, Snider and Twisted Sister weren’t under the blade of scrutiny anymore. They were several cuts above.
Photo: ‘The Best of the Atlantic Years’ Album Cover / Atlantic Records
