Dee Snider and Twisted Sister recently announced that they had to cancel their upcoming 50th anniversary reunion tour due to the singer’s health issues. An official statement said that he can no longer perform on stage with the same level of intensity as before because he suffers from degenerative arthritis.
After a few weeks, they announced former Skid Row vocalist Sebastian Bach as his replacement for some of the live shows. In an interview with The Jasta Show, Snider revealed that his kids had an important role in convincing him to give up touring.
Dee Snider says his kids asked him to give up touring due to his health
“I’m not dying anytime soon. But I am dealing with issues that if I don’t deal with them, I could kill myself. And my dad is 95 years old, and my mom, before she got hit by the car, God bless her, she was as healthy as a horse at 85… I’ve got longevity, but I can’t do the things I do and expect to enjoy that longevity, the things the way I did them.”
He continued: “My body’s been causing me problems with growing arthritis and degenerative arthritis through my shoulders, my neck, my arms. It’s worked down my legs. It’s throughout my body. It hurts all the time. And I was taking so many painkillers, and I’m not the drug guy. I’m not the drug guy, but when you’re in pain, you’re just looking for relief. But it was screwing up my other organs, because you can’t take even Advil.”
“You start downing them by the handful, and before you know it, that’s what you’re doing all day long. You start hurting the liver, the kidneys or other organs in your body. And that started to become an issue for me. It was really when they discovered that I have hypertension and some heart issues that I have to address, and by addressing it means I gotta calm the fuck down.”
He continued:
“Tom Araya (Slayer) was a thrasher in his heart of hearts to the bitter end, but his neck gave out, as they do, and he could no longer (thrash around like he used to), as you know, in the years with Slayer. And it hurt him. I read it. He said, ‘The fact that I can’t throw down’ — I’m paraphrasing — ‘with the audience. I can’t bang and thrash, whip my head around like I used to do,’ he said, ‘it makes me sad that I can’t do that.'”
“And I’m not trashing Tom — please don’t take it as that — I’m applauding him and I’m commiserating with him and that feeling. I just don’t know if I could stop myself. … That’s the thing — I don’t think I can… But the point is I don’t know if I could do it. I don’t know if I could stop myself. I don’t know if I would want to… My kids sat me down and said, ‘Please stop’ — some were crying — ‘because you are gonna kill yourself,’ ’cause they know who I am,” Dee Snider said.