I’d go some place where I had a million friends, some place where the party never stops , some place where they ride in limousines with women on each arm and I’d sweat! I’d be dripping in my own room just rockin’ out. I’d feel good and it made my life bearable."

Dem bones dem bones dem... Dee Snider got to pose with the decaying meat-coated leg of a recently deceased cow during the photo sessions for the sleeve of Twisted Sister’s ‘Stay Hungry’ LP. "It stank," said Dee, meaning the bone not the record.

Dee Snider: Hair, limbs, Mickey Mouse vest, extrovert nose and mouth. He’s on the couch and I’m on the Lucazade.

"I had a strict, physical and repressive kind of a father. He was a cop, in good shape, definitely a hard ass. It took me longer than most kids to start to rebel but it got to the point where he couldn’t keep a hold on me and as soon as I could I got out of the house.

"When I was 16 he gave up hope. He had this image of his son as this guy who would be a policeman he hadn’t been lucky enough to be a professional ball player. He was a cop who liked being a cop but really wanted to be a baseball player. He felt I had talent. I was quite a good athlete but when I quit playing ball to practice with my band he was horrified and disgusted.

"There was a four year period when he wouldn’t even look at me. I was an embarrassment, a kid with athletic talent wasting himself singing rock and roll. He would do anything to discourage me from my rock and roll career. He wouldn’t allow me to go to rehearsal so I’d say ‘I’m going jogging’ and I’d jog to rehearsal and jog back again afterwards.

"When I was 16 he cut my hair off repeatedly until the neighbours complained. He gave me a military haircut that was so repulsive the neighbours actually said ‘what are you doing to him, he looks horrible’. So he said he wouldn’t cut my hair anymore so I said, ‘brilliant, have you got any glue?’

Dee Snider is now 29 and with his dad:

"Friendly, we’re real close. Once you get a distance you realise they’re just a product of their parents. You always have this view of your grandparents as these angelic beings who bring sweets over on the weekend but then you think maybe they were screwed up and maybe that’s why my old man was like that.

"I realised the problem wasn’t that my parents didn’t like me but that they loved me so much they had to interfere with my life because they thought I was going the wrong way.

"They were brought up with America, Apple Pie, Fight For Your Country, Depression Babies, World War Two! Kill the Nazis! They were really Americans and they couldn’t understand long hair. I was only about 14 or 15 in the late Sixties when all of the craziness was going on but the atmosphere was there. Everybody rebelling and going on anti-government protests. They didn’t want their son turning out to be like that."

Play it loud, mother. You didn’t pursue other alleyways of rebellion?

"I don’t think they realised how bad I could’ve been. I was not a bad kid! I just lived for music and wanted to grow my hair long. I didn’t do drugs or smoke or hang out, I wasn’t cool. I liked cars, I got a few speeding tickets but my friends were drugged out, stoned, drunk, 15-year-olds who never went home.

"My parents thought I was a dream when my brothers got older. One is real dirtbag. Leather jacket, hot-rod, the classic street fighter, getting arrested – a bad seed. All I ever wanted to do was sing!"

What good do you think came out of that era for America as a whole?

"The realisation that the government is not this angelic, God-fearing organisation that only does what’s right for the people and would never swear or get drunk or have sex. The concept my parents and the people like then had was that the government was above everything.

"But they’re lying, conniving cheatin’ scumbags who run the world. Bullshit, sex and drugs. Why is there such a big thing about curing Aids? It’s because some of the politicians have Aids and they don’t want it to get out.

"For my parents it was sad. They believed so hard in the government and the American Way, they were real Americans who’d hang the flag out the window and yell ‘love it or leave it’.

"Then when the truth about Nixon came out, that he was liar and a disgusting person, it meant everything to us kids, although I hadn’t really been a hippie, what we had been screaming about what was true and they were wrong.

"The backlash is like their spirit’s been broken, they don’t stand up like they used and say The President Is For Everyman. Now it’s ‘oh, Reagan, just out for the rich’. They seem beaten. It took the belief in America away from them and from all the people like them."

So what is the current rage with 16-year-old Americans?

"Apathy. They’re very big on apathy. Just into the same things I was. I wasn’t morally conscious but with my peers I was wearing the ecology patches. But the whole thing of ‘68 had got beyond a movement and had become commercially sellable. So there were little kids with peace symbols on their lunch boxes and Ken and Barbie dolls with headbands and big round glasses.

"The hippie movement became a trend and we became basically apathetic. Not politically conscious or active – like going back to the Fifties ra-ra, having fun, getting high, drivin’, cruisin’, listening to rock and roll – the do nothing and enjoy yourself lifestyle. I don’t know that’s good either."

You don’t know if you approve of it? Surely Twisted Sister are a part of that lifestyle.

"Yeah, but in the extreme I don’t approve of it. I don’t approve of ignoring things but then again I don’t think the kids are even conscious anymore. They’re having a good time as they should. When I look back at high school it seemed such a chore but you don’t appreciate the fun and lack of worries. Maybe that’s what life should be about, people enjoying themselves more. Making a point of enjoying themselves more."

Don’t Let Me Down (a Twisted Sister song).

"We all need heroes," says Dee. His is Alice Cooper, Or was.

"When you’re a kid you want to be like someone. I didn’t have the looks or the physical presence to be like Bowie – gliding into a room and filling it with perfume and presence. Alice Cooper was just sweaty, a day’s growth, big nose, sharp features – that’s me!

"It’s a shame that he’s gone like he’s gone. Oh God, he’s been putting out albums full of ballads! He changed. On a national TV special in the States he tore himself apart. He said he didn’t know who the person on stage was but he knew he didn’t like that person. Now when you believe in a person and the person who it is starts telling you that, you feel a fool. I was hurt as a fan. I thought ‘what am I doing here? This is my hero and he’s telling me he sucks."

At Hammersmith Odeon (where the crowd was crazy and the band were kickin’ ass) Dee Snider had several thousand throats chanting ‘I’m a sick muthafucker’.

Are you a different person on stage?

"To the average eye, people say I definitely am. I won’t say I’m sick of hearing that but these people are fooling themselves. They look at me off stage and they say ‘oh, you’re so nice’ and I say ‘yeah? Well cross me!’ That’s a side of me that I let out on stage, it’s a negative aside. I let out all the bad for positive results.

"I consider rock and roll a therapy. I let out every inhibition and frustration and anger that I have and I come off stage and I feel good. I guess I am able to keep stable because of that I am able to be very content and satisfied with my life because of that.

"I like to be nice and friendly but when people cross me they see the stage character is not far away, just a split second away actually. If someone whistles at me in the street I’ll turn and scream abuse but they don’t often do anything to my face. If they’re in a car I’ll chase the car and kick it.

"People take advantage of sincerity, honest and kindness. You can be walking by construction worker smiling and laughing and they’ll think ‘look at that idiot laughing and smiling’ and they’ll go ‘hey pooftah’ and I’ll do it again. It seems to be something about human nature, the minute they see innocence it’s taken as some form of weakness.

"I was a very innocent child, honestly, very quiet, very sensitive, lonely, introverted and I got hassled and stepped on so much that I went the other way.

"Inside I don’t wanna bother anyone and I don’t want anyone to hassle me. I just wanna be left alone. The message from Twisted Sister is personal freedom."

Grabbing a quartet of WEA women for our arms, me and Dee strutted off into the Soho afternoon looking for bones and limos and the place where the party never stops.