[youtube]https://youtu.be/pWAJG71Urbw[/youtube]
30 years ago today (9), Twisted Sister released the follow-up to their 1984 smash Stay Hungry. Come Out and Play was, well, it was not particularly great. While the album was popular enough to go gold, it didn’t quite have the hits that the previous album had and was reportedly one of the first CDs to go out of print. You can get a hint of the direction of the album from its lead single, a cover of the 60s girl group the Shangri-Las’ “Leader of the Pack.”
The multi-platinum success of Stay Hungry led the band to go for broke and take a shot at the mainstream with “Be Chrool To Your Scuel.” As the headline references, not only did the band recruit fellow Long Islander Billy Joel to play piano on the track, they also called in Alice Cooper, who’d also written his own anthem about school. Bruce Springsteeen saxophonist Clarence Clemons, Stray Cats guitarist Brian Setzer and the Uptown Horns, were among the others that played on the track.
Given that the band’s slapsticky Stay Hungry music videos were a key to the band’s success, of course “Be Chrool To Your Scuel” had an accompanying video. Starring then-popular Police Academy comedian Bobcat Goldthwait and featuring makeup effects from horror guru Tom Savini (who also appears in the video), there was enough gore in the video for it to be banned by MTV. Ultimately, they were probably done a favor because the song, a pretty brazen attempt at mainstream rock, was cheesy and kinda dated-sounding even then. Their last album of original material, 1986’s Love is For Suckers, was released in 1987.
