Dee Snider To Paul Ryan: Stop Playing ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’

By on August 23, 2012 in News 28

It’s sort of a tradition that unhip Republicans use iconic American music without permission and then very publicly are humilated by the artists who created the music. Randall Roberts reports on Paul Ryan’s humiliation at the hands of Dee Snider for the LA Times:

Pretty soon, the only songs Mitt Romney and Paul Ryanmight be able to play will be the collected works of Hank Williams Jr. and Ted Nugent, at least judging by a statement Dee Snider made Wednesday morning.

After learning that Republican vice presidential hopeful Ryan had been warming up crowds with “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” the lead singer of Twisted Sister requested that the song be pulled from Ryan’s playlist.

This comes after Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello wrote an editorial denouncing Ryan after learning that the candidate was a Rage fan; and after L.A. band Silversun Pickups decried Ryan’s campaign for using their “Panic Switch.”

Twisted Sister’s 1984 hair metal song, which has sold more than 8 million copies, is one of the heartiest workout anthems of that decade. Perhaps this is why Ryan, an avowed weighlifting fanatic, has used it to get the crowd pumped.

But Snider, who was a vocal supporter of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s California gubernatorial campaign (and even sang a duet of “We’re Not Gonna Take It” with the future governor in 2003), isn’t happy about it. He issued the following statement Wednesday morning, replete with a body-building joke:

“I emphatically denounce Paul Ryan’s use of my song ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ as recorded by my band Twisted Sister. There is almost nothing on which I  agree with Paul Ryan, except perhaps the use of the P90X.”…

[continues in the LA Times]

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  • Anarchy Pony

    What’s even funnier is that apparently Ryan is a Rage Against the Machine fan, while being utterly unaware of what any of their songs are actually about.

    • Jin The Ninja

      lol seriously? that is actually quite funny.

      • Anarchy Pony

        Well I read it on the internet, so take that for what it’s worth.

        • zombieslapper

          Tom Morello: ‘Paul Ryan Is the Embodiment of the Machine Our Music Rages Against’
          Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/tom-morello-paul-ryan-is-the-embodiment-of-the-machine-our-music-rages-against-20120816#ixzz24Qoi0Q5I
           

          • FollowBrains

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            In the mean time, send $19.99 for diagrams of the above to P.O. Box 969. C/O Little Jesus don’t do Mormons. Hanging Chad, Fl. 334666

          • 6Blackie6

             Thanks for the link!  This is by far the more relevant story here…. “Mega-rich Corporate Stooge Enjoys Band that Despises His Kind”

          • Apathesis

             Interesting.  Tom Morello writing for a magazine that gave a Jonas Brothers album a FOUR STAR review.  I lost any respect I had left for RS that day.

  • spider418

    since Kurt Cobain is dead I’m pretty sure they could use “Rape Me”

  • Linda Webster

    snider is and has always been an asshole,something he has in common with ryan

  • Earth Star

    Funny thing is, Twisted Sister was a Canadian Band, not American like Majestic stated

    • Dee Snidest

      You say that on the basis that someone in Canada once bought one of their ‘best of’ CD’s in the bargain bin of a Toronto 2nd hand store?  All their members were born in metro NY, which was also where the band was started.

      Not that even I really cared, but it gets a bit tiresome to hear how it was a Canadian who did this and did that and did the other:  “Did you know that Napoleon Bonaparte was Canadian?  Moses, too!”  and so on and so forth.

      • fredrich

        An odd thing for an American to say in any situation whatsoever, as you folk claim responsibility for a number of inventions that were in fact made by other nationalities. But then that is the American way, isn’t it. Your country is going to burn to the ground.

        • Dee Snidest

          Who said I was American?

          Just like a Canadian to jump to conclusions like that.

          BTW, did you know that Hammurabi was Canadian?  Born in Yellow Knife.

          • Calypso_1

            I thought it was Moose Jaw.

          • Dee Snidest

            You’re thinking of Sampson, of “Sampson of Delilah”.  He once killed 1,000 men with the jawbone of a moose (hence the town’s name).

            But wouldn’t you know it, some scheming Yankee cheated an honest Canadian out of the printing contract for the 1st addition King James, so they changed it to “jawbone of an ass”.

          • Calypso_1

            I suppose the Garden of Eden is not in Branson, Missouri either?

          • Anarchy Pony

            This thread is so much win.

        • Anarchy Pony

          Missed the point by miles.

    • Matt Staggs

      Eighties-era metalhead, here. Those fellows are native New Yorkers. http://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Twisted_Sister/4975

      • Dee Snidest

        Yeah, but apparently they once opened for some local jackhole band in Moose Jaw in ’84, so that gives them enough ‘Canadian Content’ credibility to get a multi-part “where are they now” documentary on CBC.

  • Matt Staggs
  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=632001428 Kitwench Ferret

    The artists are well within their rights to speak out and say they don’t support the candidate, but in all of these cases the right to the song are licensed out, and the artists doesn’t legally have the right to prohibit these uses.
    I think it’s interesting that the artists who have benefited most from the licensing system are the ones trying to end around it here.

    • http://twitter.com/alizardx A.Lizard

      I’ve heard of several instances where the song was NOT licensed by the GOP campaigns using them. You have ASCAP or BMI information that says different?

  • http://twitter.com/alizardx A.Lizard

    Wait until Sinider finds out that the Ryan campaign people are not paying for the use of his music in public venues if you want to see REAL “rage against the machine”. Don’t know that the GOP isn’t, but not paying for appropriation of pop music *is* a GOP tradition. If Snider’s serious, he needs to make sure he isn’t getting paid and send a C&D notice to the campaign.

  • Little_green_chicken

    If Americans vote Romney and Ryan in, they either got exactly what they deserved, or democracy is completely dead in the USA…period.

    • Anarchy Pony

      The US is fucked no matter who they vote for.

  • mole_face

    Me to Dee Snider – Stop playing “We’re Not Gonna Take It”. 

  • d1420244

    Musicians are such whiney punk Bit@hes!   Who cares if some government stooge is playing ‘your song’?  An musician complaining that someone likes their band!  No band would be popular if they acted like assh@les to the listeners who love them.  Who really gives a SH!T ANYWAY?