Metal-Is - What - Is-terviews

SKID ROW - STILL GOING WILD

In 1990, there was no other band that carried more street credibility into the 'Billboard' charts than SKID ROW. The group's punk-tinged hard rock was a perfect blending of pop accessibility and heavy metal overdrive. Offstage, they were the last of the genuine rock and roll rebels, and they still have the arrest records to prove it. Skid Row, in 1990, were the legitimate kings of rock.

With all of this energy emanating from only five guys, somewhere, somehow, a gasket was bound to blow and in 1996, it did. When the news hit that Sebastian Bach had been fired from Skid Row, it barely caused a ripple in the music industry pool, for these were the days of grunge and all of that long hair, guitar god stuff was way out of place with the flannel faction. Despite millions of records sold and countless numbers of shows played, the world kept on spinning without the Skids and as this writer sees it, it was pretty fuckin' boring.

While it is still a bit early to say that the likes of the Backstreet Boys and 'N-Sync will be supplanted by a reformed Skid Row, at least there is now reason to hope. Returning with their musical core (bassist Rachel Bolan and guitarists Scotti Hill and Dave 'Snake' Sabo intact, Skid Row have hired the considerable talents of John Solinger and Charlie Mills to fill the vocalist and drummer vacancies respectively. This 'new' Skid Row will be judged best by the music they eventually create, but in the meantime, they seem to have been fully accepted by the 20,000 fans they play for every night as they tour the States opening Kiss' farewell tour.

Skid Row founder and songwriter Rachel Bolan is more than content to sail the course he set some 15 years ago when he formed the band with Sabo. For Bolan, it has always been about being a rocker and not a 'rock star' and, as you will read, he is living confirmation that rock is far from dead.

After a few years off, you are once again a member of Skid Row. How does that feel?

Man, it's great!

Actually, the three original Skid Row members were in another band previous to this 'reunion', weren't you?

That's right, we had a band called Ozone Monday. I don't know whether we were doing it just to keep ourselves occupied or what it was. We all did other things as well, like I had another band called Prunella Scales and I toured Japan with that. We were all keeping ourselves busy and then one day Snake and I were talking and we said, "Hey, lets do it again - we'll audition some singers and just see what happens. It could work out or it could blow up in our faces, let's see!" (laughs) Charlie Mills was in Ozone Monday, so we decided to keep him on. We were just getting inundated with mail saying, 'We miss Skid Row!' and the three of us missed Skid Row as well. We knew that it wasn't going to work the way that it had been left, so that is when we started auditioning singers. We found John Solinger via the Internet and here we are!

It was such a strange thing to have watched Skid Row grow as fast as it did and then when you guys were at the height of it all, it just ended. What happened that made you decide that it just wasn't worth doing any more with Sebastian?

It was a long time in coming. We did get success pretty quickly, especially on a big scale like we did. There was a lot of in-fighting, not so much with Scotti, Snake and myself, or with Rob (Affuso, the group's original drummer) for that matter, but it was just like, with Bas, he had a different idea of what Skid Row was about than the rest of us did. Personally, I didn't get into the business to become a rock star, I wanted to write songs and play for people, all of the other bells and whistles that came with it were secondary to me. I don't think that was the situation with him (Bach). It just got real bad there for a while, where everything was an argument and everything was a hassle. It became not fun, so we just called it a day. Something that I built with Snake, something that I had always wanted to do, became something that I almost wished that I had never done. Since then, we have definitely missed the fans and all of the other stuff, so we just called up Scotti and said, "Let's do it again with a new singer." We were never a band to shy away from a challenge.

Amazing. It really does say something, though, because it was five or six years that you guys were out of it and now coming back in such a big way, it really is impressive.

Yeah, the actual last Skid Row was five years ago and it is funny, right after I called John and gave him the news that he got the gig, I had to call him again a week later and say, "Well, uh, we are going out with Kiss!" (laughs) He was like, "You are kidding me?" We were all just really fired up about it when it was offered to us. We were like, "Uh, let me think about it..." (laughs) Naw, we jumped right on it and we probably were not ready, but the fact is that everyone had the same drive to do it and the show came together really fast.

So, I am forming this picture in my head of what this tour is like - tell me if I'm way off. First, I see Ted Nugent coming back to camp around dinnertime with whatever life form he was able to get his arrows into and then serving it up to you guys, after which Gene Simmons brings you some of his female 'desserts' that he couldn't finish for the night. Am I close or just fantasising here?! (laughs)

I think that everyone is a bit more mellowed out. I have only spoken with Ted once and he seems like a pretty cool guy, he is an ass-kicking guitar player. As far as the Kiss guys go, we have known them for some time. I first met Gene in '89 or '90 and I told him back then that he was the reason that I started playing bass. It is cool because he didn't look down at that like a lot of guys would. Paul Stanley, he is one of the funniest guys that I have ever met in my life, I had no idea he was such a riot. Ace and Peter are great too. This sounds like an ass-kissing segment, but it's not, because they have been really kind. I will sit there and talk to Gene and he will have the make-up on and it is like talking to a regular dude, but as soon as he throws on his spikes and stuff, I am talking to the 'God of Thunder!' (laughs) And that is really cool!

I know that this is all new to the five of you - at least this version of the band - but do you have an idea of what Skid Row's music will sound like with John and Charlie as opposed to the old band?

We just started writing, but it is just straight-ahead, non-thinking, big dumb rock! We are just going to write as much as we can out on the road and then take it from there.

With that, I bet that both John and Charlie are getting a bit itchy to put down something on tape with the band?

Yeah, definitely.

Will they be contributing as writers?

Well, right now, Snake and I, we are just in the beginning stages of writing, so what we always used to do is that Snake and I would just disappear for a while and we would write a bunch of tunes and get the direction of where we were going and that way, everyone was on the same page.

I am sure that it will sound like Skid Row, but are you shooting for anything different in 2000?

No, definitely not. We just want it to be raw, like the first couple of records were. Throw a couple of amps in a room and mic the drums, and here we go! We are not going to try and make anything that we are not.

Are you going to produce it yourself this time?

Michael Wagener (who produced the band's first two albums) is a thought right now, but I can't say that we are going to use anyone definitely, because we haven't sat and talked about it yet.

A few years ago, John Kalodner hatched a plan to reintroduce a lot of the heavy bands from the Eighties, but little of it was successful. Do you worry about the fact that people will, at least at first, plunk you down alongside Ratt and Great White as an 'oldies band'?

No, because we are coming at this from a different perspective, we are not doing this for nostalgia. I don't know whether that was their intention or not, but that is the way that it came across. We are doing this to get back in the game and we are going to write songs. This is not to say that those bands just threw together songs, but Snake and I have a way of writing, we have our own unique technique, and that is how we are going to do this record and we won't settle for just anything. We are going to write until we know that we have ten great songs that we can put out, and we are not going to try and do anything that we are not, like be an industrial band or an alternative band, we are just going to be Skid Row.

Towards the beginning of the Kiss tour, Snake broke his ankle. What was the whole story behind that?

We were in Las Vegas and as fate would have it, we had the day off, which is always threatening! (laughs) So, we were there and he went to the Hard Rock Cafe and Casino - which he will probably own soon and he has promised all of the guys in the band their own wing! (laughs). Anyway, he was there to gamble with a couple of friends and got up to take a piss and when he came out of the bathroom, he turned the corner and someone had vomited on the floor and no one had cleaned it up. He hit it and slid forward, then backward, and when he looked down, he said that his foot was on backwards! He has to sit on a stool while he plays and he just feels like a moron, but, you know, he gets to concentrate on his guitar playing a little more! (laughs)

So he won't be flying off the amps or doing the splits any time soon?

No, he won't be doing any Van Halen kicks or anything like that soon.

I don't think that Eddie can do those any more either!

Yeah, right! (laughs)

Are there any younger bands out there that genuinely capture the spirit of rock and roll, in your estimation?

Buckcherry. I saw them and I was pretty impressed with their energy and the attitude, which needs to be brought back into rock. They are definitely one of them.

Is there a lot left to be said for Skid Row, musically?

I think so, especially now. I almost feel that being on this farewell tour is almost like a passing of the torch. It is just kind of weird to have grown up listening to your favorite band, having the first concert that most of us saw be Kiss. They made such an impact on us and people of our age group, and here we are now opening up for their farewell tour. It is a very cool thing.