Blabbermouth — TWISTED SISTER singer Dee Snider spoke to the New Orleans radio station Bayou 95.7 about his involvement in “America’s Deadliest Concert: The Guest List”, a documentary about the infamous GREAT WHITE concert fire nearly two decades ago that killed a hundred people and injured hundreds more. The film will receive its premiere on Reelz today (Sunday, February 20) to coincide with the event’s 19th anniversary. A trailer for the documentary is available below.
Snider, who was interviewed for the film said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “It’s hard to remember and listen to, but a hundred people burned to death, over two hundred were injured, and 65 kids lost one or both parents in a fire in a nightclub. GREAT WHITE was playing. And yeah, GREAT WHITE, they were vilified. Their pyro ignited the building, and wrong or right, they’ve been shouldering the blame for a long time.
“One of the things I like about this documentary, it’s very well rounded and it actually allows Jack Russell [former GREAT WHITE singer, whose pyrotechnics ignited the deadly blaze on February 20, 2003 in Rhode Island] to speak,” he continued. “I remember Jack from back when, and we toured together back in the heyday, and now he’s a broken man. And people may say and rightfully so. But let me just say, was it stupid, was it foolish to set off pyro in a small club? Yes. Was it malicious? Not on your life. They would never, ever intentionally hurt any of their fans.”
According to Dee, the deadly event “struck a chord in so many ways” with him when it happened. “I had, post-TWISTED SISTER, gone from arenas to the bars, just like GREAT WHITE had, and I played The Station nightclub,” he explained. “The DJ, who was called Doctor Metal, he was this kid, and what he did with my show is what he did with GREAT WHITE — he introduced me and then jumped off the front of the stage into the front of the audience and rocked out, because he was that local guy, that fan. And he perished in the fire. There were so many people. To think that those same people who came to see me were probably at that GREAT WHITE show as well. So it just struck so many chords. And I got very involved in a concert event to help those people. Troy Luccketta from TESLA, myself… But more than the money we raised that night, it was a deadlock with the lawyers and the courts and the insurance companies for a decade. And because of the attention we brought to the plight of these people, 175 million dollars finally went through to help these people. But the truth of the matter is the scars, literally and figuratively, remain for that community. It’s very tough.”
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