Skid Row And Life To Go Heavy rockers return to the mid-state on September 29th by Benjy Eisen “I agree with you. It totally is trivial,” laughs Skid Row guitarist Dave “The Snake” Sabo when I practically dismiss his band’s four-year break up. “Especially in light of everything that’s going on. It’s all so trivial!” And it is. But that’s not to discredit the impact that his band has had on music history, nor is it to diminish the ambitious task that band has set for itself in reforming last year with a revamped line-up. Twelve years ago, Snake, along with his cohorts in Skid Row, were what was fresh and exciting and new in heavy metal. In an era defined by hair bands, their lead singer’s locks were the longest. That’s pertinent only because it was indicative of the music they were making. Skid Row offered the genre a punky attitude and an original sound. It also happened to be an enormously accessible sound, as their self-titled debut album sold millions of copies and spawned the MTV video hits “I Remember You,” “18 and Life,” and “Youth Gone Wild.” Three years later, in 1992, Skid Row released Slave To The Grind and became the first heavy metal band to have an album debut at number one on the Billboard music charts. Perhaps in a parallel universe with Axl Rose, lead singer Sebastian Bach had a growing reputation for immense immaturity and even generated a few fan-filed law-suits. Still, even after grunge made the mid-’90s desolate for all but the most indignant metal maniacs, Skid Row was able to chart their 1995 release, Subhuman Race, in the Top 40. But all was not pretty in the land of glam. “I could not get along with Sebastian anymore,” Snake says honestly. “It was an impossible situation and I worked at it for so long, so hard. I wasn’t happy with who I was as a person because I was allowing certain things to go down that I certainly didn’t agree with but I felt that I was doing it for the greater good of the band.” The original incarnation of Skid Row was put to rest for good in 1996 when the band disbanded. “Well you know what goes into it,” Snake explains, “and this happens to a lot of organizations, whether you’re a band or a corporation or whatever, is that you have successes, and you have what could be deemed as failures and it’s all how we react to those situations that pretty much dictate who we truly are … It’s really easy to be forthright and a good guy through success. It’s through failure that people see your true colors come out. And we saw people’s true colors come out and they were pretty dark. And it sucked.” During his time away from the band, Snake wrote music with other people, including an unlikely songwriting collaboration with Sugar Ray. But he started missing his best friends and his own band. When he and band members Rachel Bolan and Scotti Hill decided to regroup in 2000, a lot of thought went into the conditions. The band decided immediately to find a new lead singer and ended up with a new drummer as well. “We had to make sure when we put this together, that it was going to be something that was better than what it had been previously, because if what we had previously was so great, it still would’ve been together,” says Snake. Reforming with the name “Skid Row” wasn’t much of an issue for the shape-shifting outfit. “If I were married and I had children and my wife and I got divorced would I change the child’s name? No. Rachel and I started Skid Row and we came up with the name Skid Row, and we own the name Skid Row, and 90 percent of the songs within Skid Row are written by Rachel and myself, so I mean does AC/DC change their name because their original singer isn’t in the band anymore?” Still, keeping the name has meant a number of sudden obstacles. “We realized that we didn’t really ‘go out on top,’ as they say, and our popularity had diminished and we were well aware of that when we put this thing back together,” he says. “And you couple that with the fact that you have a new singer and a new drummer and people are not only going to be skeptical but they may not even care.” The band decided to press on because they had product they believed in, and because they loved the music, they loved the songs, and they loved performing both live. Is it the same Skid Row of 1989? Not exactly, but then again Skid Row was constantly changing, with every record sounding different from the last. And then you have the obvious: “You have a new singer and a new drummer. I’m not sure that people put a lot of credence in the drummer thing, but they should because it’s a whole new vibe. It’s a whole new groove.” And of course lead singer Johnny Solinger gives the band a new audible voice as well. Immediately after reuniting the band went out on a summer tour in 2000, playing to packed amphitheaters as the opening act for KISS. After that, the band took what they saw as a renaissance in themselves as people, and a re-ignited passion for their music, and started recording a new album, which they hope to put out in late January 2002. While they’re putting the finishing touches on it in preparation for release, the band has scheduled a club jaunt that will wrap up in Hershey this Saturday, September 29 at Shakey’s. “I’m pretty much resigned to the fact that everyone is going to be somewhat skeptical and you know what? I honor that and I understand that because I was the same way with Van Halen and all the bands that I loved that made changes — Iron Maiden and AC/DC,” says Snake. “I was certainly skeptical, but I was never disappointed. And I can say safely that nine out of 10 people who come to see us who were skeptical, walk away really, really psyched that they were there.”