TWISTED SISTER Pumps Up ARNOLD

Joal Ryan of E! Online reports that "We're Not Gonna Take It", the head-banging TWISTED SISTER anthem, denounced nearly 20 years ago as a kiddie-corrupter by a Tipper Gore-led group of Washington, D.C., powermoms, has been reborn as the "unofficial theme song" of Schwarzenegger's California gubernatorial campaign.

Dee Snider, who has heard his band's song used to rouse fans at sporting events and spur on the faithful at protest marches, appreciates the, well, twist.

"It's kind of freakish," Snider said Friday [September 5]. "We were the scourge of Washington...Now we're playing Six Flags."

Schwarzenegger, for one, hasn't yet used the song at an amusement park, but give him time. To date, "We're Not Gonna Take It" has been blared at three campaign stops for the Republican hopeful, including Wednesday's egg-splattered appearance at Cal State Long Beach University. The GOP convention was never like this.

"It's kind of the unofficial theme song," Schwarzenegger campaign spokeswoman Karen Hanretty said Friday. "People love it. They relate to it. It gets the crowd pumped up,"

Snider can relate.

"I'm pumped up actually," he said.

Speaking by telephone from his Long Island, New York, home, the 48-year-old rocker turned filmmaker and composer said he was elated to learn Team Terminator had turned to his 1984 hit for inspiration. And that's because the 1984 hit, and every other song on TWISTED SISTER's breakthrough third album, "Stay Hungry", was inspired by Schwarzenegger.

"We even sent a platinum [record] award to Arnold," Snider said of a years-ago gesture.

The album's title song, dedicated to Schwarzenegger, borrowed its very name from the 1976 comedy "Stay Hungry", in which the former Mr. Universe makes an early acting effort. Read more.