Jay Rollins’ Twisted Special Holiday Interview with Twisted Sister’s Jay Jay French
Interview by Jay Rollins
Happy Holidays to all you Sick Motherfucking Friends of Twisted Sister from everyone at Metalheads Forever Magazine! I know you wanna rock and you’re not gonna take it until Jay Jay French comes out to play. Tough shit, after 9000 shows Jay Jay is hanging up his guitar and doesn’t plan to hit the stage again anytime soon. Twisted Sister defied the prescribed limits of any particular subgenre of rock as they took their live show from Long Island to England and then everywhere else. How do gnarly guys in drag gain legions of loyal fans? Hard work, great tunes, and an unstoppable live show. Twisted Sister always meant business, both on and off the stage, as they antagonized dull audiences and stood their ground to government officials. Now that Twisted Sister’s 40 year career has come to an end see what Jay Jay French has to say about: achieving success, who’s on the Mount Rushmore of rock, and paying respects to A.J. Pero and Lemmy.
I’m Jay Rollins, tis the holiday season and the year is coming to an end. To celebrate 2016’s overwhelmingly positive response to the launch of Metalheads Forever Magazine we are here with a member of a band who released one of my all-time favourite albums, Come Out and Play, and also my favourite Christmas album, A Twisted Christmas. Jay Jay French of Twisted Sister. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me during this hectic season.
My pleasure man, how are you doing?
Pretty good, pretty good, getting through the busy season.
You’re in Newfoundland, correct?
Yes, yes I am.
So it’s the first time I’ve ever seen a time which is an hour and a half away, it’s always one hour, two hours, three hours. What time is it in your time right now?
8:30 we’re the only place in the world with our own time zone.
Man, well actually there is one other place on earth with their own time zone, did you know this? It’s a little peninsula in Greece and it’s run by a Green Orthodox church and there are about twenty priests there and it’s been in existence for 1100 years and it runs on the Byzantine time clock. And it’s the only place on earth, that I thought, until now, that had their own time zone.
Interesting, cool.
Yeah they did a whole thing on them on Sixty Minutes, this is how we get our information, okay? A woman has not been in that part of Greece in 1100 years, they’re not allowed in to that peninsula.
Oh what a sad area.
It’s unbelievable! Anyways I don’t want to waste time on them, God will save them, so that’s good ha ha.
A large portion of the last 4 decades of your life involved touring, managing, recording, and dealing with every facet of life as a musician and business visionary with the iconic band Twisted Sister. Now that the Forty and Fuck It tour is complete, how do you feel reflecting back on your achievements?
Wow, you know I always knew people would ask me about reflecting back, and it’s always interesting when you always say to yourself, “I always want to move forward, I’m not a backwards looking person.” But you know, you are the sum of your experiences. There were a lot of great experiences, we got to relive a whole different life coming back the second time. We were around for fifteen years, took a break, and now we’ve been steadily out for fourteen years. When you add up all the shows, all the performances, for me it’s exceeding nine thousand performances. So I think that when people say “oh come on man, come on man you’re gonna do it”, you know after nine thousand shows I can safely tell you it’s not exactly sitting there as a desire to go back out and do it. However, it’s a wondrous life so I don’t want to make people think I don’t appreciate the life. It’s just that you do something nine thousand times a couple of things become very clear: number one if you suck after 9000 times you got a problem, so we don’t suck, and the second thing is that we’ve done a lot of it. I have filled that hole in my heart for wanting to be able to go out in front of 100,000 people a night and play for them. It’s a great experience, a phenomenal experience, I mean it’s something that 99.9999% of the world never get a chance to feel.
I imagine that as great as it has been there was also a high level of stress, is it a relief of sorts?
You’re the first person to actually say that. The answer is hell yeah! I mean, first of all playing and managing is really hard, okay? Managing is crazy, playing is crazy enough but managing? You know, people say “what’s it like to manage an artist?” and I say “it’s like putting a saddle on an atomic bomb and jumping out of a plane, and you gotta hold onto that shit as long as possible so the bomb doesn’t blow up.” You know, when you are a manager you are literally sitting in the crosshairs of talent and dysfunction. You want to bring extraordinary talent to the people because this is what you love and it makes you feel great. You know you have a duty to want to make people succeed but you are also dealing with fucked up people for the most part. I mean artists are difficult and that’s why they are successful artists, you want them to have opinions, you want them to be strong-willed, you don’t want them to go “oh man what everybody else is doing is what I’m doing,” I mean that’s not really the key to the great bands. If you think about the great bands, think of the Mount Rushmore of rock: Beatles, Stones, Who, Zep, Floyd, Queen, that’s the Mount Rushmore of rock right there, by the way they’re all British and that’s a story in and of itself. But, if you think about the Mount Rushmore of rock, they’re all completely different: the Beatles don’t sound like the Stones, Zeppelin doesn’t sound like Pink Floyd, Pink Floyd doesn’t sound like The Who, right? Queen doesn’t sound like any of ‘em. This is extraordinary music created by extraordinary human beings that pioneered a whole unbelievable world that we, you and me, and our fans, are in the middle of still, because every band that we love is influenced by those bands. You could throw ACDC in the mix, easily, they’re of that level, I believe they’re probably at that level. But again, all these bands are not American bands, I used to think about that, I used to say “why is it that we don’t have great bands in America? Why is it that the best bands are the Beatles, Stones, Who, Zep, Floyd, Queen, maybe ACDC, maybe Sabbath, where’s ours?” The fact is there are some in America but there’s always with an asterisk next to it. There’s no asterisk next to the Beatles, or the Stones, or The Who, or Led Zeppelin, or Queen, or Pink Floyd, there’s just no asterisk. It’s freakin’ brilliant music played by world famous bands around the world, appreciated in every continent, unbelievable record sales, unbelievable popularity, but what we have in America is we have individuals. So we have Chuck Berry, and we have Roy Orbison, and we have Frank Sinatra, and we have Elvis Presley, and we have Bob Dylan, and we have Jimi Hendrix, and we have Bruce Springsteen, right? We have unbelievable individuals, maybe that’s part of the American way. But our bands, you know yeah I mean the Beach Boys are a great band, sure. You can make a case for Metallica and Aerosmith but the thing is you can make a case, it’s not slam dunk. We have unbelievably talented individual people, by the way I can’t leave out Aretha Franklin, I can’t leave out Stevie Wonder, I can’t leave out James Brown, right? These are monumental, monumental artists. The point is, we live, you and I, in an umbrella, a cocoon, and all of these people I mentioned to you are probably not the nicest people to deal with on a personal level. I guarantee you, you want to be the recipient of their artistry, but you don’t wanna deal with them business-wise. So there’s my short answer, how’s that?
Perfect, I appreciate it.
After suddenly losing long time drummer A.J. Pero in March 2015, the band decided to respectfully retire the Twisted Sister moniker. However, in honour of your friend and bandmate you embarked on a final tour and recorded a live album in his memory titled, Twisted Sister Metal Meltdown. The live release ended up at #1 in Billboard Magazine. Obviously you needed somebody legendary to take A.J.’s throne behind the kit and Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater was a great choice. How did it come about that Mike ended up taking the stage with Twisted Sister?
Well first of all, Mike Portnoy is just great, I mean I can’t say enough great things about Mike Portnoy. You know, if I keep saying great things about him it’ll look like I’m on his payroll, okay. So what happened was, A.J. Pero was in the band Adrenaline Mob, replaced actually Mike Portnoy, Portnoy was off on the Winery Dogs tour. A.J. died while being a member of Adrenaline Mob. So the night after A.J. passed away there was a memorial concert in New Jersey for A.J. and Adrenaline Mob asked me to play, I did, I came down and lo and behold, Portnoy came down. And although Mike and I knew each other just a bit, because we had seen each other at various music functions, we found ourselves standing in the dressing room – this is twenty four hours after A.J.’s death mind you – and were both in a complete state of shock. I think I cried for four days, for four solid days I cried. I went through bouts of crying, and I’m in the dressing room and I can’t believe what happened and I’m talking to Portnoy and he can’t believe what happened. And Mike just said “look man, I don’t know what your guys’ plans are, I don’t know if you plan to go, don’t go, play, don’t play, but I’m done with my Winery Dogs dates and I‘m available and if you need a drummer, please let me know, I’m here.” That’s basically how it happened.
Wow. What a great way for him to show his respects.
Oh, he showed respect. Let me tell you, there were people that called me who couldn’t even wait for A.J.’s body to be cold, offering their services and I just was like, hanging up, hanging up, deleting deleting deleting emails, it was disgusting to me. First of all, Twister Sister doesn’t need someone to call them. We call you, you know? If we make that decision we’ll call you and let you know that we’re interested in you. And frankly, the conversation with Portnoy happened earlier than we expected a conversation to happen. We expected to deal with the funeral, and then four days later to decide whether or not the band was going to continue, and then from there talk about who we know, how do we feel about certain guys. That’s how we thought it would go, so to have Mike Portnoy offer his services within 24 hours. Three days after A.J.’s death there was the [funeral service], and we went to the service, and we had a meeting to decide are we going to continue. I said “you know guys did you know that Mike Portnoy has offered his services,” and they were like well that would be the perfect choice. You know on top of which, just to give you some historical perspective, Mike Portnoy’s from Long Island where we started as a band, he used to sneak into the bars. He’s a metalhead, you think of Portnoy as this crazed prog guy, right, this phenomenal prog drummer, but in his heart you know he wants to play ACDC ha ha, like all drummers do, that’s meat and potatoes, like I just wanna grove, you know? So it suits Mike because Mike is in a million bands. I mean we joke about how many bands he’s in, I say on stage “ladies and gentlemen the drummer for the Beatles, Stones, Who, Zep, Floyd, Queen, ACDC, Black Sabbath who’s taken some time out of their reunion tours to play with us.” He’s just a great guy and a great musician.
Later in 2015 another tragedy would strike the metal community with the passing of Lemmy. He had been a supporter of Twisted Sister from the first time you shared the stage together. Many bands feel indebted to Motörhead but your relationship with band was unique. What was the most meaningful effect Lemmy had on Twisted Sister’s career?
Well he basically told people in England, “these guys are good.” We were terrified, we played the Wrexham festival with Motorhead our first show. We were in full drag back in those days, it’s hard to know how, I mean we know how to handle an audience but still in all he was like the Godfather he came into the dressing room like [Lemmy voice] “all right you guys I love it, yeah that’s great, you guys are amazing.” If you watch our documentary, Eddie Ojeda does a great Lemmy impersonation, I mean you need subtitles. Lemmy was just, he introduced us at the end of the night he said “I’m yours you’re mine”, he came to the Marquee club the next day, went to the Tube show with us and became our mentor in a way, and he told the metal community, “these guys are good. These guys are fine” and then we were really taken into the bosom of Kerrang magazine and Sounds magazine. It was a combination of things, it was Lemmy being from the music side and a bunch of journalists on the writing side. Gary Bushell, Dante Bonutto, Howard Johnson, there were a bunch of guys who wrote for Kerrang and Sounds magazine who validated the band outside of the New York/Long Island area and gave us this entrée into England, and Lemmy just kind of put it all together.
Solidified it. Once Lemmy gives the okay, people listen when Lemmy speaks.
Yeah, yeah they do man. I mean he would show up periodically at gigs and play with us on stage and the last time he played with us he didn’t look well and that was about three years ago. He was standing next to me, we were doing “It’s Only Rock and Roll but I like it”, I looked in his eyes and I got really scared. I thought he was going to pass out. I mean I got really scared, he had a glazed look on his eye and I just said “hey you okay? You alright?” and he just goes “yeah I’m ok.” Last year we got this metal award in Las Vegas and Mikkey Dee was at that awards show, and we sat down and he told us about his last show with Lemmy and it was, I’m not going to get into the morbid aspect of it but you know what, he was a guy who you just, you can’t believe he’s gonna die. I mean it’s just not gonna happen right? He’s gonna live forever he’s immortal.
The embodiment of rock and roll.
Yeah, and you know, he died. He meant a lot to a lot of people.
Considering you dropped out of high school in your final semester in protest of the Kent State University murders that happened in 1970, social awareness must be something you have been conscious of since your youth. And although you play a heavier style of music and have faced your fair share of controversy, Twisted Sister stayed away from the glamorization of Satan and drugs. Did you purposely avoid these topics on a moral basis or were there just simply better things to write about?
Well I think you write about you know, you write about what gets you. We didn’t drink and do drugs so therefore you don’t write about what you don’t do. Not only did we not do them we hated them. We hated the effect it had on people and especially on the musicians in the band that we were in because the drug and alcohol abuse just set back our careers. People would get so wrecked they couldn’t do their job. I just looked at it as a problem, and when people said to me “how could you be in the middle of touring and all around it and not have fallen to it?” and I say “it’s very easy” it just never was an issue. We were a business and I don’t mean that in a cold way, but I think Dee and me, I think we saw eye to eye on one thing which is it’s gonna take a lot of work to become very successful and that work means you just gotta work all the time. Well you can’t work all the time if you’re fucked up, you just can’t it’s not gonna happen. Well Dee never drank and did drugs and I used to as a teenager but stopped before Twisted Sister started so I already was over it. And in the five years that the band was at the peak and we were touring around the world, if I told you that one time I was offered coke, once, by a roadie of a band, and I think it’s cause the band hadn’t warned him not to bother with us because we just don’t do it, we’re not interested. I was, I liked the band he worked with, I just said to him, I could have called him an asshole but I just said “listen pal, maybe you just don’t know, it’s not our thing. See ya later” and he walked away. It never was part of our life. As far as the devil thing, well Dee wrote the songs, I mean he’s not a religious person, I’m not a religious person so I guess you have to believe in the devil or think it’s real to make it a subject matter, it’s never been a subject matter. So all the clichés about metal, which do fit certain bands, never fit us, that’s what made us so astonished about the PMRC. It’s like, you’re picking on us? We’re like the straightest band on the planet, we’re just business guys who play rock and roll and you’re accusing us of destroying the moral fabric of America. We were just a bunch of hardworking guys from Long Island. That’s all we’re doing, we happen to be in a band but we’re just a bunch of hardworking guys and you’re saying that we’re devil worshipping and we’re leading people down the path; of what? Of what? They passed laws to keep us out of certain cities back in the eighties, I mean they were laughable, because the laws didn’t apply. They said if you perform sex with dead people, children, or animals on stage or if you sang songs about it you couldn’t play it. They thought that that would actually keep us from playing. I don’t know any band that does that, I frankly don’t know anybody who does that, alright, nobody. So where they thought that was it? I mean it was just so disconnected from the reality of it. We just kind of were always astonished by this, we were like really? Are you that dumb, not to say that there are not black metal and death metal bands that we play with in Europe all the time who may or may not believe in that stuff, but it’s not in our scope of our reality.
While solid musicianship is an evident factor in the success of Twisted Sister your business approach in managing your career is also a crucial factor to the band’s longevity. When did you first start to realize that in order to survive there was a business aspect of the music industry you had to contend with?
In the very early days of the band, we were managed by a guy whose name sounds like Frankie the chair, Billy the shoe, Freddie the knife, you know one of those kinds of guys. We had those kinds of guys around us. We were playing the bar scene, you know and it was all a mob kinda thing, so that’s what it was about. I walked into it thinking wow this is going to be an area that I don’t know so I’m just going to sit back and watch it. I’m not gonna put my face in, I’m just gonna watch the dynamics of how that all works. I watched it for two years, and then when the initial band broke up, and again all this is in the documentary We are Twisted Fucking Sister, which is the number one documentary on Netflix by the way, we talk about this. I said at this point I’ll take over. I took over management for four or five years and then it became too much to handle and play guitar at the same time and then we brought a guy in for five years. Then when he left and we put it back together I took over again. At that point I had run a big management company, I had a lot of artists on my roster, I had already found and developed Sevendust and produced them and they were hugely successful. I found myself completely comfortable within the scene now, I can sit there with anybody and negotiate any deal I want. Went through enough record deals, enough publishing deals, enough merch deals to know how this stuff works. We got our ass kicked all over the place, I mean that’s really what happens you gotta be prepared to get your ass kicked, and I was always prepared to get my ass kicked, I just swore that I would never get my ass kicked twice exactly the same way. I figure, if you’re gonna kick my ass you’re gonna have to find a new way to do it, ya know? I’m still learning, but you have to really pay attention and you have to have a business mind, you can’t be like “hey man, I don’t know”. There’s three kinds of people in this world, I believe in this cliché. There’s three kinds of people. There’s the people who make it happen, the people who watch it happen, and the people who say “what happened?” 99% of the people say “what happened?”, 99% of the remaining 1% watch it happen, and the 1% of the 1% they make it happen. I swore I would either be the one who made it happen or watched it happen, but I would never be the one to say “what happened?”
You could almost say you were an indie band before it was cool to be independent. This entrepreneurial spirit has manifested itself in various ways. Besides being a founding member and manager of Twisted Sister you also helped launch Sevendust’s career by producing their first few albums including my personal favourite “Home”. Besides being on stage what is your favourite role in the music business?
I think the greatest times in the role has changed. I loved being a musician in it, I loved being a manager in it, I loved being a facilitator of talent, finding talent and encouraging talent. I think it’s great, I mean I find a great musician and I’m happy. I’m really happy to help them expose themselves. So it really comes at different times. It just so happens right now the music business is in really bad shape. The rock music business is in terrible shape. So for me, I will continue to enjoy other people playing music and buying other people’s music. I have no desire to make a record at all and I have no desire to play right now. I mean I literally walked off stage November 13th, I haven’t looked at my guitar since then and I did this once before in 1987 when the band stopped. I don’t think I played a guitar for five years after I walked offstage the first time. So, the guitar’s a tool for me but it’s like not my “hey man, I gotta play my guitar today” you know, it’s not that, it’s just another tool in my tool belt so I can play guitar if I need to, but it’s not the thing that saves me, right now. Although I’m a blues guitar player, and I love the blues I could listen to the blues all day long. I just love, when I do go out on the rare occasions that I do want to listen to live music now, if I hear new music I really like, I’ll talk to the artists and just give them a pep talk and just say “hey, you’re on the right track.”
In 2001 the album Twisted Forever came out which featured all sorts of metal and rock artists, from Anthrax, to Overkill, Cradle of Filth, Joan Jet, and more paying tribute to Twisted Sister. It must have been great to hear so many bands from a wide range of music styles show their respect to your work. How were the bands chosen to do the album and as the producer what were the highlights of making that record?
Well you know I was the executive producer for that, I really was, I mean there was no producer. There was executive producer. So I was approached by this guy whose name is David something, unfortunately I don’t remember his name, I don’t have the CD in front of me. But he approached me, and said our label would like to do this, how do you feel about it? And that if we do this what bands would you suggest do these songs? So I [along with others] made some phone calls to some of the bands, we contacted Motorhead and we called the guys in Sevendust and said would you do a song? Joan Jet, we contacted Hammerfall, a big Twisted Sister fan band, Anthrax was a big Twisted Sister fan band, you know we had a lot of bands around. Sebastian Bach was fun to do “Can’t Stop Rock and Roll” with Sebastian Bach, it was fun for us to do “Sin City” on that thing by the way too. You know we did the one non-Twisted song, right we did an ACDC song. Our homage to, arguably our favourite band, you know arguably the band that we kind of bowed to. I say we bow to ACDC and Judas Priest I think the most. I think but I don’t want to talk for the other guys, I think we do. But that’s how that kinda came about. I didn’t bring that project to the label, that project was I think brought to me, and asked “how do you think we can make that happen?”
It’s interesting that there’s so much back-and-forth where you are in management roles and you can either be a propeller or you can accept different projects. Just so many more options.
Well if you’re entrepreneurial you sit around all day long and think of things to do. That’s why I don’t sit around and go “oh I got nothing to do today”, it doesn’t work. I sit at my desk and come up with a hundred projects and then you gotta figure out the ones that work. But that’s what you do as an entrepreneur, you create your own world. I mean the beauty of it is you can dress any way you want but the downside is you have to make a living. So I’m not getting a paycheque from anybody, I have to make something happen. In the context of Twisted Sister, we have partners, it’s not like I run everything or Dee runs everything, you have Mark and Eddie, well A.J.’s now gone, and Mark’s the producer, Mark has produced almost all the stuff we’ve done since we reformed. Mark learned his chops in the studio, you know Eddie’s a great arranger, I mean everyone’s got their job to do. I think people look at me as a facilitator to get the deals done or at least explain to them how the deals are happening because they wanna know exactly what it is, and I’m in the room so I can do that but I like that. I enjoy that, I enjoy the challenge of that, but again you have to have the entrepreneurial spirit inside of you. Dee has it; Dee comes up with projects all day long, it never ceases to amaze me. The guy just keeps pushing, he’s like the energizer bunny. We work in different ways, I do it more with Twisted projects he does it as his own solo projects he wants to promote his own thing, which is fine, but we both drive this machine in our own strange train and I’ll tell you why I rely on him because he has that energy that’s astonishing. He’s one of the best frontmen in the world.
As a veteran in the music industry you have taken your experiences from Twisted Sister and diversified your skill set even further. In addition to running your own management company, you share your experiences with the business community as a motivational speaker. Before I let you get back to business are there any plans for you professionally you’d like to share? Perhaps a commemorative Twisted Sister boxset or anything like that?
Yeah there will be a box set coming out next year on vinyl which we’re really excited about. We’ve got the Christmas album on vinyl too which will be really great because it has not been out. That took a lot of negotiations because our products were being released by different people all over the world and I needed to bring them into one house, so we’re in the process of bringing it all into one house. Once it’s all in one house it’s gonna be easier to direct the future of the band’s marketing from a perspective of material being released. The vinyl boxset is gonna be great, it’s gonna be a lot of fun to do that with Rhino, with our label that controls the masters for the biggest albums. Like I said it’s gonna have some good stuff on it, it’s gonna have hopefully, I want the Christmas album to be part of the vinyl box set because the Christmas album’s such a big hit especially now during the Christmastime it would have been perfect this year. But this year was the best year we’ve ever had, I mean it was the best live year we’ve ever had, we played to more people than we’ve ever played to, we played twice to crowds of over 100,000 people. We finished in Mexico, by the way Mexico is our number one Spotify country, which is interesting to me. We played that crazy festival in Canada, the Looney Tunes fucking production nightmare, the Amnesia festival, it was aptly named I choose to forget it. I mean we love to play for the fans but I don’t know what the fuck they were thinking when they produced that show, it was one of the worst. The guy can argue all he wants with me, we play the best festivals around the world, with the best promoters around the world; South America, ex-communist countries, places where you’d think it would suck and it just doesn’t suck. But boy did they blow it, Amnesia just didn’t have their shit together, you know and that’s a problem but we did it. We did it and we played for our Canadian fans which we have who are incredibly loyal. You know [Heavy] MTL we did two years ago and that was unbelievable, it was great. We’ve just been really lucky, but for me, I’m gonna do my book next year and I’m just going to do more speaking engagements which involve motivational speaking to business groups because the story of Twisted Sister is about challenges, it’s really about challenges, how to overcome challenges. These topics are universal. Rock and roll is sexy, that’s true I mean rock and roll is very sexy, so if you can tell the story in the context of rock and roll, people will listen and pay attention to you. They’ll know that you were serious about what you did and I think they’re always surprised at how we did our business and succeeded. Again, in the documentary We are Twisted Fucking Sister, number one on Netflix, you can buy the DVD for the extras but on Netflix you can see the story, and the story’s about the first ten years of the band, that’s all it is, nothing to do with “Not Gonna Take It” nothing to do with “I Wanna Rock”, nothing to do with any of that. It had to do with what we went through as a company to get our foot in the door. Don’t forget by the time we signed a record deal all we did was get to the base camp of Everest, ha. So we did, it was ten years to get to the base camp and that’s what makes the movie so compelling, that’s why it’s won so many awards and people love it. And then of course we did the DVD in memorial to A.J. Pero this year and that went number one on Billboard. And the tours have been great, so it’s been a great great year. The fans have been absolutely fantastic. The one thing I’ll miss is not so much playing, it’s just meeting our fans around the world because they’re just great people. To know that you have an effect like that on someone’s life, that your music makes them happy, it gets them through their day, I don’t think there’s a better testimony to me as to what my contribution was to the human race as much as it is when I hear someone say “thank you for your music. Your music really helped me.” That is the greatest.
Feels good as an artist I’m sure.
Feels great, I don’t think any artist would ever tell you no. I would like to think, otherwise they got a real depression problem right? I would think so.
Thank you again for taking the time to discuss the closing of this chapter of Twisted Sister’s career as Metalheads Forever continues our journey into depths of metal’s legacy. Happy holidays and a safe New Year.
Thank you, thank you to all our fans. By the way, pay attention to Killcode, they’re a really good band. They’re comin up, they’ve been playing along with us lately and they’re coming up. Pay attention to that band Killcode.
Absolutely, they’ve actually crossed my path already, and they’re on the radar so that’s wicked.
I know indie bands trying to make it these days, it’s tough. But thank you so much and you have a happy holiday in Newfoundland, okay?
I appreciate it. And, well there’s lots of albums, but the Come Out and Play album didn’t leave my record player when I was in high school for a good eight months easy.
You know what I liked about this interview by the way? You did some research. And you really asked me some good questions and I appreciate that.
I try to manage a couple of acts locally while I go to school for business and English so looking into your career, the music aspect was great but I was really drawn to learning about the business and the transferable skills. Like you say rock and roll is sexy so you’re able to tell the story of business and those hurdles of supply, demand, breaking into new markets and that’s one of the things about the documentary that I watched that really spoke to me is that you were all talking about markets. It wasn’t about the crowds, it was “I need to get into a new market” and develop into new markets and it was just like, growing a business. It was awesome, I appreciate it thank you very very much.
Yeah well, by the way my articles in Inc Magazine, I’ll just push that for a second. I write for Inc, the business magazine not ink as in tattoos but inc as in incorporated. If you go to inc.com/author/jay-jay-french all of my articles come up there. People who want to follow my business advice, and see what I write about, please go and read my articles at inc.com.
Absolutely.
Okay man well tune into twistedsister.com for always up to date information on the band and that has links to all the guys’ separate facebook pages, twitter feeds, and that’s how we can stay connected to everybody and, again thank you for keeping the faith on Twisted Sister. You have a great holiday.
Perfect, cheers brother.
Jay Rollins: facebook.com/jayrollinsMHF
Jay Jay French: inc.com/author/jay-jay-french
Jay Rollins / MHF
