You talked about B.O.C. and Sir Lord Baltimore. But in the ‘80s, when Metal became huge, did you have any relationship with New York bands that started in that era, like Manowar or Virgin Steele?
I don’t know any of ‘em. No, I mean our bass player’s in The Dictators. He had a relationship with them for a while.
Then fell out with them and really doesn’t talk to them anymore. But Manowar said something stupid in a magazine interview to us and we challenged them to a fight and they never showed up. And then they apologized.
What was it that they said?
Yeah, some stupid statement they made in the press. So we said, “Really? Well, meet us at Covent Garden,” and we called ‘em out in the press. We went down to Covent Garden, it was covered by all the rock magazines at the time in 1983, and they never showed up ‘cause they’re a bunch of pussies. They were in fear that Mendoza was gonna kick their ass and they released a statement saying, “We apologize if we said anything to upset Twisted Sister, blah, blah, blah…” So they were just a bunch of idiots. Look, we don’t pick fights with anybody. If you pick a fight with us, it’s a different story. But we don’t pick fights. We have no reason to. Our job is we do our job onstage. And if you can survive it, knock yourself out. Otherwise, go fuck yourself.
