TWISTED SISTER: Kontroversi Stay Hungry (1984) vs Still Hungry (2004)

Komen deaf-angel tentang album re-record MANOWAR, Battle Hymns dengan rujukan kepada album TWISTED SISTER Still Hungry, menarik perhatian aku.

Sebab aku tak perasan pun yang TWISTED SISTER pernah riliskan album re-record Stay Hungry!

Ditekan oleh sifat ingin tahu, aku pun memulakan sedikit pencarian. Untuk ini blabbermouth memang rules! Aku sekadar memudahkan pembacaan anda.

Ceritanya begini (untuk mereka yang tak tahu lagi macam aku) - secara kronologi:

1. Dee Snider bila ditanya mengenai halatuju TWISTED SISTER selepas album paling laris mereka, Stay Hungry; mengiakannya atas alasan sudah terkesan dengan kekayaan selepas album tersebut.

"After 'Stay Hungry' I remember saying 'Shit. I've got a million dollar house, five cars, two boats, fame, fortune, everybody loves me. I want to keep this going'," Dee said. "And then the biggest mistake you can make [is to say], 'All right, what did I do to get here?' What got you there, was the genuineness, and the heartfeltness of what you were doing. I remember sitting poolside at my house trying to write lyrics of teen angst and feeling nothing." SUMBER

2. Dee Snider mengumumkan hasrat beliau untuk merakamkan kembali album Stay Hungry sempena ulangtahun ke 20 album tersebut. SUMBER

3. Tom Werman, produser album Stay Hungry pada tahun 1984, apabila ditanya mengenai pengalaman menjadi produser album - terlepas cakap -

"It's not always easy, especially if the artists were using drugs or drinking. That was common. It's not anymore. It's harder to make a hit record with a band like TWISTED SISTER than with a band like THE EAGLES, because THE EAGLES know what they're doing." SUMBER

4. Yang kemudiannya menimbulkan kemarahan Dee Snider -

Snider slams Werman for his comment, accusing him of, among other things, not knowing what he was doing behind the board, doing drugs, and trying to keep the band's biggest hit, "We're Not Gonna Take It", off the "Stay Hungry" album, and finally concluding by saying that Werman "should shut the fuck up before I fuck him up." SUMBER

5. Akhirnya, TWISTED SISTER masuk studio untuk sesi rakaman Still Hungry

The group's manager, Daniel Stanton of Coallier Entertainment Ltd., stated. " 'Stay Hungry' will be that record. Better than it was before. Better… stronger… faster. As they guys finish laying down all the drums and bass for the entire 'Stay Hungry' record and more songs to boot, guitar tracks are being set for this weekend, then vocals... The rebuilding of this record will make history!" SUMBER

Dan untuk album yang akan mencipta sejarah ini, TWISTED SISTER mula menempah beberapa siri konsert menjelajah dunia.

6. Still Hungry akhirnya dirilis melalui label Detonator Records (Stay Hungry oleh Atlantic Records). Bersama dengannya juga akan dirilis DVD Still Hungry Live At Wacken 2003. SUMBER

7. Eagle Rock Entertainment mengumumkan rilisnya album Still Hungry (bukan Detonator Records). Antara lain, TWISTED SISTER mengatakan album Still Hungry ini dirilis untuk menampal kesilapan dan ketidakpuashatian mereka terhadap album Stay Hungry yang asal terutama produksi.

" 'Still Hungry' is 'Stay Hungry - The Way It Ought to Be'," stated guitarist Jay Jay French. "It has an ultra-heavy sound, which is the way we wanted 'Stay Hungry' in the first place. But at that time rock records had a thin, very midrange kind of sound and so 'Stay Hungry' was recorded very lightly. We battled Atlantic Records and producer Tom Werman about it, but we lost.

"These re-recordings are faithful to the original arrangements but they sound much heavier," he continued.

"Even the cover art is now the way we wanted it," said French. "It shows us as five starving musicians in street clothes in a tenement sitting at a table to represent where we came from, and the ghostly looking image of us in our stage clothes behind that shot represents what we imagined we could achieve." SUMBER

8. Tom Werman (produser asal) mengkritik TWISTED SISTER kerana merilis Still Hungry atas alasan beliaulah punca album Stay Hungry tidak mendapat produksi yang dikehendaki oleh TWISTED SISTER sendiri.

Speaking to Eddie Trunk of the "Friday Night Rocks" show on New York's Q104.3 FM, Werman responded to the band's comments, stating, "Initially, the band appeared to be quite excited about their double-platinum record, but as with many bands, the story changes over time — first, [TWISTED SISTER frontman] Dee [Snider] said I wouldn't 'allow' 'We're Not Gonna Take It' on the record, and generally slagged me for providing Jay Jay with different amps, since it took us three full days to arrive at a basically acceptable rhythm guitar sound.

"The producer has zero influence on the selection of recorded material for the record. He sequences it, but the label A&R has the last and only word on LP content. As for the rhythm guitar sound (the foundation of every good metal song), Jay Jay's live sound was not at all right for the record, and we spent three days until we found one that was barely acceptable. Our engineer was damn good, too. SUMBER

8. Mark Mendoza (TWISTED SISTER) yang juga menjadi produser album Still Hungry - menekankan bahawa kali ini album Stay Hungry akan dipersembahkan dalam bentuk yang sepatutnya.

J.D. Page: Tom Werman is not happy at all about "Still Hungry" coming October 5 that you produced.

Mark Mendoza: "Let's get this straight right here and right now. I don't know what he said. I don't particulary care what he thinks or says. I'm not particulary anti-Tom Werman or pro-Tom Werman. It's just that I'm producing the new 'Still Hungry' album on behalf of TWISTED SISTER, and it's gonna be done the right way." SUMBER

9. Hujah akhir Dee Snider sepanjang kontroversi ini:

BackstageAxxess.com: Actually I was going to ask if you re-recorded "Stay Hungry" because you weren't satisfied with "Still Hungry"?

Dee: "Still Hungry" was like to us what "Some Kind of Monster" was to METALLICA. Realization was that things started to unravel during the recording of "Stay Hungry" and things continued to unravel until we broke up a few years later. If you follow the path, where did the problems of the band start? It was a disagreement during the recording of "Stay Hungry". I said, "We should go back to the studio and re-record it to the way we envisioned it." The way METALLICA went to therapists to solve their problems. METALLICA wound up getting it filmed and releasing it on DVD. Our record company said, "If you are going to do that, we will pay for it and release it!" Basically, "Still Hungry" was our therapy. The observation of it, when all is said and done, the differences are so slight that the differences are what we wanted in the recording process and the arrangements would have changed the fate of the album. We then would have been a much happier band and have a longer life. Instead, the record company and record producers squashed more metallic elements of the band, but the difference is really not that much. So now to the 25th anniversary of "Stay Hungry", there are so many things other bands have done to commemorate things. This is a 25th anniversary, it's a significant milestone, our biggest selling record (5 million international) and the record company wanted to do a special release package. It's like we're not re-inventing the wheel here, so they were like what do you have? Well, interestingly, when I wrote songs for albums I always overwrote. In this case, we went in and demoed almost 25 songs. Then the band will sit and pick the best 10. So when we were going over the tapes we had, I started calling J.J. [French] and it was like, "Holy shit, man" there was some great shit we didn't put on that album. We could have done a follow-up with "Stay Hungry II", or a double album, or something like that. This makes it a find for the listener or true fan. So we put all of those oddities and extra tracks and all that stuff (what people do) on there. Then the song I wrote when I was on "Gone Country" on CMT was a song called "30" as my country song. Two notations, one; I really write good country (laughs) and two; country music and rock and roll have a lineage. Rock and roll is descendant of early country and blues. So basically, it's a rock and roll song and when the band heard it (the song was about me and TWISTED SISTER lyrically), they were like, "Fuck, man, let's rock this out! It's pretty much "Rock and Roll" by LED ZEPPELIN. So we recorded it for this record.  SUMBER

PENGHAKIMANNYA???

Kontroversi sells tetapi dalam bukan dalam semua hal. Terutamanya bila bercakap tentang merilis kembali (re-release) dengan rakaman baru.


"Still Hungry" track listing:

01. Stay Hungry
02. We're Not Gonna Take It
03. Burn In Hell
04. Horror-Teria
a. Captain Howdy
b. Street Justice
05. I Wanna Rock
06. The Price
07. Don't Let Me Down
08. The Beast
09. S.M.F.
10. Never Say Never
11. Blastin' Fast & Loud

Bonus Tracks:
12. Heroes Are Hard To Find
13. Plastic Money
14. Come Back
15. You Know I Cry
16. Rock N Roll Saviors