Skid Row

Interview date

23 Novembre 2013

Interviewer

Blaster of Muppets

I N T E R V I E W

Interview Rachel Bolan (face to face)


Hi and thank you for taking some time to answer a few questions for the webzine Aux Portes du Metal.

Sure man, it’s my pleasure.

So, Skid Row is back again! Finally!! I don’t mean that in a disrespectful way but… What took you so long? It’s been seven years since “Revolutions Per Minute”!

I know, man… We have been touring so much! 95% of it has been in North America. The reason it took us so long to get back here is the same reason it took us so long to make another album: we were touring so much. I swear we didn’t even realise seven years had passed. That’s no joke. And one day, after a show, in the dressing room, someone said “Hey, how long has it been since we released an album?” and then we figured out it had been more than six years at that point so we said “Ok, we’ve got to do something” so we started writing and demoing and all that stuff… and here we are with the first chapter of “United World Rebellion”.

And really, since “Slave To The Grind”, there has always been a big lapse between two records…

Yeah, that’s true, we’ve never been the kind of band that releases a new album every two years. That’s always been partially due to touring and sometimes due to bad things happening in the band in the past… I wish we could release albums more often but, you know, that’s the philosophy behind the series of new mini-albums we’re working on. We’re doing that to keep a constant flow of new music coming out.

Let’s talk about “United World Rebellion”, the first EP was released last May… how has it been received?

It was a slow start. I come from the days of the EP, that’s how we heard all the bands from Europe in the States in our local record stores, there were EPs. So, to me and the guys in the band, it makes perfect sense to make EPs because we grew up listening to mini-albums…But it’s true that this is not the way music is made nowadays and it hasn’t been for a while. But it’s slowly coming around. And we did that for different reasons, first because as I said we wanted to have a more constant flow of new Skid Row music. We also did it from an economic standpoint because we thought that, instead of paying fifteen dollars for an album, maybe our fans would have six dollars to spend on a new record, and then eight or nine months later, maybe they would have another six dollars to spend. We wanted it to be easier for our fans to listen to our new music. Now, to get back to your question, yes, it was a slow start at first, it took some time for retail stores and radio stations to accept it but over here especially, in Europe, it’s picking up steam and people are understanding it. Other bands are also doing the same thing and I think that soon this will become the norm, releasing small bits of music.

When can we expect chapters two and three? Wasn’t a release planned for the end of the year as far as the second EP is concerned?

Yeah, at first we thought that the second part would be released at the end of this year but again we’ve been touring too much (he smiles)… So we didn’t really have time to write all the new songs. Now, we’re shooting for May 2014. Our last show in the States is on December 21st, then obviously we’ll have a break and spend Christmas and the end of the year with our families. And then, on the second week of January we’ll get back together and start recording.

Will the sequels be in the same vein, musically speaking, or should we expect different things?

From what we have now, yes it’s going to be in the same vein. It’s hard, it’s heavy, it’s pretty aggressive… and we’ll also stick to the same format that is five songs and two cover songs because it’s so much fun to do cover songs.

Do you know which songs you’d like to cover next?

There are so many great songs about rebellion that it’s hard to pick one. We have ideas about the next songs we might cover, we just have to agree on them… So I won’t give any away now because we might end up not doing them.

About the title of this series, you define yourselves as rebels, what does being a rebel mean to you these days?

It’s pretty much the same as it was when I was a kid. Doing what we do, you know, people on the outside don’t get it and don’t see it as a serious way of making a living and being successful. Today, I still rebel against people who say what we can or what we can’t do. I’m not talking about breaking rules or anything like that, I’m talking about people who tell you “You’re never gonna be able to do that… you’re never gonna be able to play until you’re fifty… you’re never gonna be able to make new music…”. This is what I rebelled against when I was a kid when some people told me “You’re wasting your time, it’s never gonna work, you should to go to college”. My parents didn’t even do that to me. They supported me from day one. I told them I wanted to play the bass and they said “Ok, what’s a bass?” (laughs). So I explained and I showed them a picture of Gene Simmons… I attribute a lot of my success to my parents’ support. But there were other people, bosses for example, who just didn’t like the fact that I had long hair… And these people want to see us do really badly. That’s sad. Some of our fans have to face this kind of situation, and we always thought that you had to stand up for yourself and believe in what you want to do, you can’t just let people tell you “No, you can’t do that” and let that affect you. So we wanted to unite all our fans, all these rebels together… because our fans can now constantly communicate with each other… So with all these rebels out there we wanted to send this message: stand up for yourself, do what you believe in and don’t let people tell you any different.

Wow, you’re very lucky to have had parents who supported you, especially after showing them a picture of Gene Simmons at the time, it was a risky way to ask for a bass!! (laughs)

Yeah (laughs)!! He had blood on his chest… I think it was the picture from “Kiss Alive”. But yeah, they reacted really well so they told me to put a bass on my Christmas list. So, for Christmas I got a bass… At the time, I thought it was the worst bass in the world but I was so appreciative to have it. I wish I still had that bass. It was a Coral Wasp…

Now, “United World Rebellion” has got very good songs. The opening track is killer, for instance and some people seem to appreciate it more than some of your previous releases because it sounds more like what old fans could expect from you. How do you feel about that? Are you glad or frustrated?

I’m not frustrated at all. We put out “Revolutions Per Minute” and that album was completely experimental. I think every band, at some point, needs to put out a record like that and do what they want to do. People either liked it or hated it… Well, most of them hated it (he smiles) but we needed to do something like that… When you’ve been together for so long and toured so much and grown up, obviously you tend to forget where your roots are, musically… and this album helped us getting back to our roots, it was so strange and different. Snake and I sat and talked about who we were when we were kids, where our heads were at the time when we started making music. We went back to the music that influenced us when we wrote our first albums… Retracing your steps to your roots, well, for me, was not that easy. But we started to work and write songs and said “Yeah, these are good songs but they’re not Skid Row songs”. The song “Kings of Demolition” was actually the first one we rewrote a couple of times and Snake changed something in the riff and I said to myself “Yes, that’s the guy I used to write some songs with”! And then I came up with some lyrics and I could see Snake thinking the same thing. When the other guys heard that song and started playing, you could tell by their body language and by the energy in the room that we were doing something special! I like the fact that people say that it sounds like “Slave To The Grind”. There’s no reason not to like that, that was a great album… But of course, there are also people who say “You’re copying your old stuff!”… So it’s like “Oh my God, when we do different things, people complain, when we do this, they say we’re copying our old stuff!”. But you know, this new music feels good, that’s what we wanted to do and you can’t please everybody… If you try to please everyone, then you’re gonna fail miserably because it’s just impossible. That’s the advice I got from Tom Hamilton from Aerosmith. We were having lunch one day, we were getting ready to write our second album and we were touring with Aerosmith at the time. So he asked me “Are you working on some new stuff?” and I said “Yeah but it’s such a daunting task, we’ve had so much success with our first album, we don’t know where to go”… And his advice was “Write the songs that get you energized, write some music that makes you pumped up and happy and I guarantee that it will all transcend to your fans, they’ll get it”.

Talking about the new songs, who are the “Kings of Demolition”? What is this song about exactly?

I consider us to be the kings of demolition. We use metaphors but it’s just about breaking down walls. Breaking down walls so that people understand each other… You know, like in a conversation “you understand what I’m saying, why put a wall between us?”… people tend to do that and isolate themselves.

On stage, you play many songs from the first two albums, your most popular records. How do Johnny and Rob feel about that? You know, the fact that you play more songs from the time they were not in the band.

It’s working great. Johnny has much respect for what we did before he joined the band, he respects our songwriting and stays close to the melodies and everything. Of course he adds his own feeling into it... and Rob is the same way. We’ve had other drummers who tried to make it really busy and we were just like “Hey man, we’re not Rush, and that’s no disrespect to Rush, we’re just a simple band”. And Rob just wants to be a great rock drummer, which he is; he has no desire to be a rock star. And these guys accept it, they like playing our old songs and they’re very good at it… So, it’s all cool.

Anything you’d like to say, a message, a thought, something I didn’t ask you and you wish I did, this is your chance:

Well, obviously, if you want to see what we’re doing we have our youTube channel, our facebook, our twitter, www.skidrow.com/... So don’t hesitate! But most of all, what I'd like to say is that for twenty-five years we’ve been coming to France and here we are again, at a sold out show with Ugly Kid Joe and… that never gets lost you know, the fact that people are still supporting us. It makes us feel so good. I just want to say thank you to our fans, we really appreciate their support, and it’s just great to be able to come back here. So, really, thank you for having us.


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