HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: Skid Row – Skid Row
As the 1980’s ended, it seemed nothing could stop the continuing rise of glam and hair metal. 1987 represented the apex – BON JOVI made their ascent to headlining arenas with Slippery When Wet, WHITESNAKE released their self-titled record (also known as 1987) which would go eight times platinum, DEF LEPPARD brought out Hysteria, their best-selling record to date and, over in LA, a young quintet called GUNS N’ ROSES were bringing out arguably the greatest debut album of all time…
The momentum would continue until grunge and alternative rock began to take over in the early 90’s, but the scene was still in rude health in 1989, and that brings us to 35 years ago this month, when five upstarts from Toms River, New Jersey would bring out their first record and ride the coattails of those who came before them to global success.
Formed in 1986, SKID ROW – comprising guitarist Dave Sabo, bassist Rachel Bolan, guitarist Scott Hill, drummer Rob Affuso and singer Matt Fallon – were taking full advantage of a pact Sabo made with childhood friend Jon Bon Jovi that, if one succeeded in the music business, the other would help the other out. As such, the young up-and-comers were opening for their more successful counterparts on the Slippery When Wet Tour and caught the eye of BON JOVI manager Doc McGhee. He liked what he saw, but had a suggestion: replace Fallon, who was lacking the drive of the others.
Enter Sebastian Philip Bierk, known professionally as Sebastian Bach. Introduced to the group by Jon Bon Jovi’s parents after they saw him singing at the wedding of rock photographer Mark Weiss, he was the final piece of the puzzle, albeit one that would need taming; the first night the lineup performed, he nearly got into a fight at the bar they were playing. “Sebastian was very obnoxious and loud, but we needed a singer,” recalled Bolan some years later. “The good thing was that he also had drive – and then some. But frontmen were supposed to have spirit, right?”
In 1988, the band signed to Atlantic Records and travelled to Royal Recorders Studio in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin to record their self-titled debut album with producer Michael Wagener, who had a strong CV including working with OZZY OSBOURNE, ALICE COOPER and mixing METALLICA’s seminal Master Of Puppets (1986). Working to a schedule and remaining sober for the recording sessions, the experience was largely painless, helped by the fact SKID ROW had been playing the eleven songs that made the cut for a year already.
Released on January 24th 1989, Skid Row wasn’t an initial hit across the board. Reviews were mixed – while the likes of Kerrang! and Q were fairly positive, Robert Christgau and the Los Angeles Times were exceptionally critical. Three-and-a-half decades later, however, and there’s a reason it would eventually go five times platinum – the opening swagger of Big Gun, the sleaze-laden Piece Of Me and the riotous war-cry of lead single Youth Gone Wild are still huge anthems even today, expertly crafted and delivered with a maturity that hid the youthful powder keg waiting to explode, even if just from their charismatic, handsome and volatile frontman.
Of course, it was 18 And Life and I Still Remember, the other two singles, that really sent the band into superstardom. Both cracked the US Top Ten and their videos received regular airplay on MTV. The band went from opening for BON JOVI at Milton Keynes Bowl to headlining the 5,000 capacity Hammersmith Apollo (then Odeon) just two months after, joined onstage by Lemmy and Steve Harris and Nicko McBrain of IRON MAIDEN. Thanks to the television exposure and extensive touring, Skid Row would reach #6 in the Billboard 200 and stay there for months, accounting for the band’s extraordinary rise to fame.
However, crack began to appear, mainly stemming from Bach, whose ego had swelled almost as quickly as the band’s. His audience patter, largely ripped off from other vocalists of the time, was beginning to irritate Bolan immeasurably. “It used to bug the hell out of me when he said things that Dee Snider, David Lee Roth and even Paul Stanley had used before…he’d tell an audience what a song was about, but it had nothing to do with the lyrics I’d written. Unless I ignored it, I’d have walked off.”
Worse was to come on the band’s run with AEROSMITH from the winter of 1989 to the spring of 1990 – at the Springfield Civic Center in Massachusetts, Bach was hit by a glass bottle thrown from the crowd. In front of the MTV cameras, he returned it with interest, splitting open the head of teenage fan Elizabeth Myers and resulting in 125 stitches and six figures in damages. At one show in LA, he wore a profoundly homophobic t-shirt, although he was quick to regret his decision. “By that point the stupid shit he was doing was almost becoming sociopathic,” Bolan would reveal. “He seemed to feel that he was above all rules and regulations.”
Bach would eventually depart six years later after two further albums and more controversy; today, Sabo, Bolin and Hill continue to tour SKID ROW, completed by drummer Rob Hammersmith and singer Erik Grönwall. However, it wouldn’t be unfair to say that, if not for their excellent debut record, they would be little more than a footnote in hair metal’s long history.
Skid Row was originally released on January 24 1989 via Atlantic Records.
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