Skid Row – The Crazy Gang

New Jersey’s Skid Row have 36 years on the clock and a clutch of platinum records on the wall, but far from resting on the laurels of their peak successes back in the early 90s, they’re now back on ebullient form with their first album in 16 years, The Gang’s All Here. With a new frontman and a bright future, the band feel they’ve got a new lease of life. “How lucky are we?” founder member Dave ‘Snake’ Sabo and vocalist Erik Grönwall ask John Tucker.

- By John Tucker

Speaking from his home in Long Island, guitarist Dave ‘Snake’ Sabo is clearly very happy with Skid Row’s new album, The Gang’s All Here. “Yes, I am,” he confirms. “We had to change our perspective, and our execution, in putting this record together, but it was a wonderful experience even when it was tough – even when we were, I don’t want to say doubting ourselves, but maybe hitting a bump in the road.

“The experience of working with producer Nick Raskulinecz, though, was one of the highlights of my musical career, both personally and with the band,” he continues. “We’re talking about a guy who’s not only an amazingly well-rounded, talented musician and songwriter, but I think one of his greatest qualities is that he’s able to extract the very best out of the people that work with him because he challenges you in such a way that you want to meet – and exceed – those challenges to make him happy. He never set anything that wasn’t, in his mind, within our reach and so because he believed it, we believed it. And the key to that is that you’ve got to leave a large part of your ego at the door when you walk in the studio. You can’t sit there with this inner voice telling you that whatever you say is greater than what anybody else says. We knew that we had to do things very differently than we had in the past. And the first step was accepting that everything that we write isn’t 100 per cent perfect and putting our trust in a person that we’d never worked with before but who has an incredible reputation and a discography that speaks for itself.”