Twisted Sister's Dee Snider is a realist.
He knows that these days the music business isn't about selling records. In fact, he doesn't even try.

"It's terrifyingly different," admits the 55-year-old Long Island, N.Y.-based Snider. Despite his band earning a gold disc for 500,000 downloads of their 1984 rock classic We're Not Gonna Take It, Snider can't help but wonder how many more illegal copies have been made.

With four children aspiring to succeed in the entertainment business, Snider decided they needed to take a different route. "The (music) business I knew is gone," says Snider, who is hoping a reality show, Growing Up Twisted, will help his kids "get their starts." The show, which makes its debut at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Tuesday on A&E, isn't Snider's first foray into reality TV: he was on CMT's Gone Country and his rocker son Jesse Blaze, 27, was the 2008 runner-up in MTV's Rock the Cradle.

The rest of the children include comedic actor/writer Shane, 22, filmmaker/writer/director Cody Blue, 20, and singer Cheyenne, 13.

Snider is aware they're not the first rock star family to have a reality show, but he's not worried about any comparisons. "There's a huge difference between The Osbournes and The Sniders," he says. "I love Ozzy and Sharon and they're great but we wouldn't survive two seconds in their household and they wouldn't survive two seconds in ours."

Surprisingly, "the star of the show," says Snider, is Suzette, his wife of 34 years. "Oddly, she's the only one in the house who never wanted to be in front of the camera," says Snider. Over the years, her role has been behind-the-scenes: Suzette was charged with Twisted Sister's hair, makeup and logos.

Snider says the secret to his lasting marriage is simple. "Don't put yourself in the hot tub at the Playboy Mansion and you're less likely to get into trouble," jokes Snider. "(After shows) I used to be like, 'Just get me to the back of the bus as quickly as possible. Security, let's go.'"

Snider, now a grandfather to Jesse Blaze's 1-year-old daughter, Logan, says he would "love" viewers to learn from his brood. "We forget that there is an end game here. ... To be able to be at this point in your life and have a family that's together has incredible value."

"Back in the day, I was the guy who was always working out, didn't drink, didn't do drugs, was married and had kids," he explains. "It was the '80s. Everybody was looking at me like I had horns. And I'm looking at them, going 'You guys don't get it, this is not about winning a battle but surviving the war.' I'm looking at life in terms of decades, they're looking in terms of years."

For Snider, it all comes back to family. In fact, the classically trained countertenor says he owes his success to his father. "If you remember the We're Not Gonna Take It Anymore video," says Snider, "that was my dad screaming at the kid, 'What is that garbage? What do you want to do with your life?' He recognizes they were 'depression babies' so the idea of a dream coming true... I understand they wanted to protect me."

"That negative reinforcement at home just made me stronger."