Producer Tom Werman is firing back at frontman Dee Snider over criticism that he brought too much of a pop sound to Twisted Sister's Stay Hungry. The ammunition, Werman says, can be found in the sales figures for a 2004 re-recording of the band's breakout 1984 album.

"Dee Snider thought I ruined his record, which five million people bought," Werman told Brian Sword in a recent interview with the Double Stop. "He wanted to make it 'the way it should have been made' – you know, because I destroyed it. He wrote some really, really nasty things about me in his book. It just wasn't nice. But he was wrong. Their album made no impact at all. Everybody liked the original."

Still Hungry, which featured updates of Twisted Sister's two biggest hits -- "We're Not Gonna Take It" and "I Wanna Rock" -- sold just 25,000 copies, according to Werman.

The producer took on Stay Hungry after already helping to steer Cheap Trick to a trio of platinum albums in the late '70s, including Dream Police. Werman also produced Dokken's platinum-selling 1984 LP Tooth and Nail, and three blockbuster Motley Crue albums between 1983-87, beginning with Shout at the Devil.

That success is why Werman doesn't have a problem with defending his legacy. After all, he says, while "some of them wanted to rock harder," the sales numbers from his collaborations speak for themselves.

"If it had been a failure, then they could have said, 'This guy blew it.' You know? 'He didn't know what he was doing!' But every single band I worked with, I made their biggest record," Werman argued. "This sounds really egotistical and self-serving, but when I stopped working with the bands I produced, they basically went away. I made their biggest record, and then they peaked, and that was it."

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