Jay Jay French said he didn’t know if his career with Twisted Sister had been worth the price he paid for it.
The guitarist cited the examples of George Harrison and David Bowie to support his argument that lives in rock ’n’ roll seldom come with a fairytale ending.
“You know when they tell little girls at Disneyland that when you get married to your prince, it’s happily ever after?” French asked Kylie Olsson in a new interview (video below). “That bullshit they just give you when you’re young – it’s the same bullshit in the music business… It ain’t happily ever after, motherfucker. The price I paid for that shit – I don’t even know if it’s worth it.”
He called the music industry a “fucking horrible business” requiring the ability to “withstand the bullshit… in order to succeed in it.” He added: “To go there, you’re going to be exposed to more crap than you could possibly imagine; meet more fucked up people than you can possibly imagine; [deal with] more lies than you could possibly imagine; deal with more rip-offs than you could possibly imagine; deal with mob guys, be threatened… all the stuff that has nothing to do with playing guitar in a band. If it was just playing guitar in a band, that would be one thing. But man, all of this is because of way bigger things. And the price one pays is huge.”
French said Harrison had been “the most unhappy guy in the world” as a result of the Beatles’ success. “He was in the biggest band in the world, right? He hated it, the whole thing. He’s why we’re here, and he fucking hated it.” He continued: “David Bowie has a quote about fame that I happen to agree with. What Bowie said was, ‘The only tangible value that fame has is that you could get a reservation in a restaurant when you need it; and if you need a good doctor you can pretty much get one right away.” He added: “That is about the sum of the fucking value of rock ’n’ roll celebrity.”
Watch Jay Jay French’s Interview
Hear Twisted Sister Perform ‘The Price’
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