Skid Row are one of those bands that I grew up listening to as a kid and to be honest, they never left my playlist almost 30 years since I discovered them back when Youth Gone Wild was hitting the airwaves and my buddies were wearing that iconic Big Guns t-shirt that eventually led me to the band. The staying power of Skid Row is a testament to the strength of the songwriting which can be credited partly to founding member and bassist Rachel Bolan who I was lucky enough to have a chat to recently in anticipation for their upcoming tour to Australia this October. It was certainly a wild trip on the nostalgia train for sure but there’s a bright future glowing for the band too as they prepare for a new record with new singer ZP Theart which we find out more on.
Andrew: So how’s things with the band at the moment?
Rachel: Things are going great man! We’re getting a lot of touring done this year, we’ve been to the UK already and going back in August, been to Europe once this year and through the States. We’ve got a lot of stuff coming up in the States and of course in October we’re coming down to see you guys. In between all that we’re trying to record a record [laughs], so we actually have to say to our agencies, ‘OK we can’t do anymore shows if we plan on putting out a record next year’. So it’s a good problem to have for sure.
Andrew: Yeah definitely! For the amount of time you guys have been doing this it must feel great to be super busy like this in this part of your career I guess.
Rachel: Yeah it’s really great and believe me, none of us take it for granted. Since ZP (Theart, vocals) joined the band, the band’s stock has gone up and we’re just having so much fun out on the road. People are digging it, people are loving Z so couldn’t be happier.
Andrew: Before we get to the tour in Australia I do want to ask about ZP and how things have been going with him. Obviously he’s well known for being with Dragonforce over the years but how has things been going with him so far?
Rachel: They’ve been great! You would think the guy was in the band since we started but he would of been 10 or 12 [laughs]. It’s just going really well, it’s all about the same 5 guys with the same goal and there’s never any personal agendas going on with anyone in the band and just the fact that he’s got an insane voice is the icing on the cake.
Andrew: Good to hear! Band chemistry must obviously be very important to you guys and ZP must be one of those guys that just fits in really well with you guys personally speaking.
Rachel: Yeah without a doubt, personally and agenda wise. It’s just one of those things, you can hang and bust each others balls, noones getting upset. He was raised in South Africa which is a completely different life and we grew up in New Jersey and you would never know it, we’re all just friends and brothers and we get together and make noise and have fun.
Andrew: Well it’s exciting to see you back in Australia again, we caught you last time I guess it was with Ugly Kid Joe about 4 years ago right?
Rachel: Yeah that sounds about right.
Andrew: So how was that tour?
Rachel: That was really fun, we toured Europe with Ugly Kid Joe as well and we built up a lot of really cool, solid friendships with those guys and it was a good time, a lot of fun.
Andrew: I remember speaking to Whitfield Crane about a year ago before they came and did their own tour here and he said it was one of the best tours he done here in Australia so I’m glad to see it worked out. What are you guys bringing to us this time around? I know you have a new record coming out at some point so will you be playing any of the new stuff as well?
Rachel: It’s possible but I can’t guarantee it. We’re going into pre-production starting on the 25th of this month, we’re going into the studio with Michael Wagener and just going into rehearsals now in pre- production and start working the songs out. We’re still writing in the meantime but stranger things have happened, when we did “Get The Fuck Out” we wrote it on the airplane on the way to Australia and we did that on the first couple of nights so it’s a possibility.
Andrew: It’s amazing that you guys are still able to write such great songs as well. I mean obviously a lot of fans are still stuck on the older stuff but the later stuff including the “United World Rebellion” trilogy, I guess this album coming out will be the third and last part of the trilogy right?
Rachel: That’s right and it’s going to be a full length and not an EP.
Andrew: Oh OK so what was the idea behind that? Why did you want to change it to a full length?
Rachel: Well the whole idea with the trilogy is to put EP’s out so we can get them out quickly, meaning maybe a year between each one and just with what was going on member wise in the band, it just didn’t work out that way. So here we are now and this is a first impression of sorts so lets do a full length record and lets do it how we used to do it. Lets try not to reinvent the wheel and go out and just do a full record and see what happens.
Andrew: How are the songs shaping up? And what have been the main inspirations musically speaking on the songs this time around?
Rachel: The songs I’m really liking them, I think we all are. We’ve been in rehearsals with them a bit here and there and messed around with them but they’re shaping up really well and you know what, with us anything could inspire us. I don’t know how guys in their 40’s and 50’s find this teenage angst all the time but it’s just festering there down inside of all of us! We’re trying to keep to the theme of United World Rebellion and just kind of center ourselves around that whole kind of idea of about being yourself and do what you want to do first before someone tells you what to do. That’s kind of always been our mantra, you have to believe in yourself or noone else will.
Andrew: Yeah I guess when you guys first started out that was maybe one of the biggest inspirations to be in a band, was to do things your own way.
Rachel: Absolutely and we still see it that way. This band we do everything in-house, Snake and I manage it, we deisgn the merch, we decide what songs…there’s noone telling us really what to do and granted, could there be a manager out there that says he could do a better job? Probably but we’re doing it our way, I’m saying probably and I really mean possibly [laughs]. But it’s all us, everything rests on our shoulders and we’re fine with that.
Andrew: For you personally how has the song writing process changed over the years? As you get older do you find things are getting fine tuned and tweaked even better for you or do find things are just as difficult and just as inspirational as it always has been?
Rachel: It’s kind of as it’s always been, some days it’s difficult. Snake and I will get in a room and we’ll shoot ideas at each other and sometimes we’ll just look at each other and go, ‘Man I didn’t like any of your ideas, did you like any of mine? Nope’. You know what I mean [laughs]. So it’s like, OK what the hell do we do now? Let’s put on a drum loop and see what comes out. The way we’re writing and the way we’ve always written is very organic, you really have to feel it. There’s no real formula to the way we do things, the big difference on what we’ve been doing lately is we finally said, ‘Ok we’ve never really written with outside writers, we have so many friends in bands so lets start with that. Let’s not go straight to, ok this guy wrote this hit for this band. We did write with a couple of people like that but we mainly wrote with friends from other bands and it’s just really cool because you sit around just like Snake and I would do and you laugh and you mght not get the song writing for 2 hours because you’re telling stupid stories from the road and then you start getting creative and shit just starts flowing out of you and you’re like, ‘Cool we have a song’, or a skeleton of a song. It’s been really fun doing it like that but I mean granted, Snake and I are still writing the bulk of everything but Scott [Hill, guitars] has been sending ideas and Rob [Hammersmith, drums] gets in there and puts his feel. No matter who writes it it’s not a Skid Row song until we all get in a room together and put our feel into it.
Andrew: That must translate pretty well live then. Do you ever think about how the song will play out to a live audience or live on stage?
Rachel: You know, it’s hard to tell. You would think over this many years you would know exactly what works but we don’t write like that, we write to write a song that we like and hopefully our fans will like it as well. But what we have been making a concerted effort is to retrace our steps to the roots of what influenced us and inspired us in the first place when we were in our 20’s. Me personally when we get down and I know we’re going to start songwriting however long it takes, I don’t listen to anything past 1979 because that’s the stuff that influenced me as a song writer. Not that I don’t like new bands, I like a lot of bands, I like a lot of different bands but I want that stuff that influenced me. That Aerosmith influence and Kiss and AC/DC and the Ramones, Sex Pistols, I want all that in my head again. I drive people crazy and they’re like, ‘Are you listening to Nevermind The Bollocks again?’ [laughs] and I’m like, ‘Yes I am!’ I just keep stuff on constant rotation so it just puts that energy back in me like it did when I was a teenager.
Andrew: Yeah I definitely get that, I mean I think about all the stuff that I was listening to as well when I was growing up including Skid Row. I discovered Skid Row when the first album came out back in ’89 and I remember a friend of mine was wearing the Big Guns shirt with the chicks and the guns and everything and I just thought that was the coolest thing in the world and that’s how I discovered the band, was through the imagery of it.
Rachel: Sure!
Andrew: But I read an article recently where it said that people stop listening to new music at the age of 30 and I’m wondering if you still listen to or discover new music at all or as you mentioned before, do you still stick to the stuff that you grew up with?
Rachel: I definitely listen to new stuff, I may not go out of my way to do it but I go out and see bands a lot and if I see a band that I like I immediately go to the merch table and buy their CD. There was a band that just opened for us in Europe called Double Crush Syndrome from Germany and they were amazing and so I got one of their CD’s. They had the same influences that we did but kind of the second time around because they are younger than us so I’m like, ‘Cool! So this isn’t going to take away that Aerosmith album I just listened to.’ I know it sounds crazy and it probably is so this is what living in my brain is like [laughs].
Andrew: [laughs]
Rachel: But yeah they are a really great band and I’ve been listening to that CD quite a bit lately.
Andrew: That is great! Well I better let you go as we only have a short amount of time but do you have any messages for the Aussie fans before you get down to Australia?
Rachel: I’m so excited to get there and hang out and party and have fun with all of you. Because it’s been one of those places that when we see the country on the calendar that we all get really excited about. And the fact that ZP’s family lives there and it’s going to be a homecoming for him of sorts, it’s going to be wild and we can’t wait.
Skid Row Australian and NZ Tour Dates:
Thursday 18th October BRISBANE Eatons Hill Hotel
Friday 19th October MELBOURNE Prince Bandroom
Saturday 20th October SYDNEY Manning Bar
Sunday 21st October PERTH Astor Theatre
Tuesday 23rd October ADELAIDE The Gov
Wednesday 24th October AUCKLAND The Studio
Tickets: silverbacktouring.com.au
