Twisted Sister was one of the biggest rock bands of the 1980s, thanks to the commercial success of songs like “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and “I Wanna Rock,” as well as Dee Snider’s distinctive face and the band’s trademark iconography. The name is very catchy, and Harley-Davidson tried to adopt it as the name of a tire at one time, almost forcing guitarist Jay Jay French to pursue a lawsuit against the motorcycle business.
A band is a company, which French knows well, as seen by his latest book, Twisted Business: Lessons Learned From My Life in Rock ‘N’ Roll, which is a mix of narrative and business advice. In an interview with WBAB’s Joe Rock, French revealed that the Twisted Sister trademark is one that he has had to vigorously protect over the years often through the legal system.
“There were so many attempts to use the trademark, and I had to sue everybody — I had to keep suing people because I have the trademark. And I got a phone call one day from a guy representing Harley-Davidson. He said, ‘We want to name our tire ‘Twisted Sister’, and we did our due diligence and found out you own the trademark. And we’re calling you to let you know we’re going to use the name and we’re gonna call the tire ‘Twisted Sister,'” he stated.
And we’re phoning to let you know that we’re going to utilize your name for the tire, and we’re going to call it ‘Twisted Sister,” “recalled the French.
That did not sit well with the guitarist, and he was not going to take it.
“And I said to him, ‘Are you really just calling me to tell me you’re violating my trademark?’ I was dumbfounded. I said, ‘You’re really calling me up, telling me you acknowledge I own the trademark, you’re telling me you don’t care that I own the trademark ’cause you’re Harley-Davidson with $400 million worth of assets, and then you’re going to call a tire ‘Twisted Sister’ and you’re gonna send me a couple of tires as a thank you. That’s what you’re saying to me, right?’ And he says, ‘Yeah.”
He then asked for the representative’s phone number and hung up, leaving him “fucking livid.”
The 69-year-old musician, who also hosts a podcast (The Jay Jay French Connection: Beyond the Music), went on to say, “I called [him back] and this is what I said to him. I said, ‘Hey, man. Jay Jay French [here]. You know the phone number you called to reach me is a 212 number.’ He goes, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘You know what that means, don’t you? I’m a New York guy. In fact, I’m a New York Jew.’ That’s what I said to him.'”
French presented a retaliatory situation to illustrate to the representative how messed up the ‘Twisted Sister’ tire proposal was, saying, “‘If you fuck me like this, the first thing I’m going to do is I’m going to sign a band and call them the Harley-Davidsons. I’m going to send you a couple of guitar picks and a fucking thank you.’ And [the rep] said, ‘How much do you want?’ I said, ‘I want 10 percent and two Fat Boys [motorcycles] a year.’ … And I hung up on him. And he called me back the next day. He said, ‘We’ve rescinded our use of the name.’ And that was the end of that.”
