![]() ![]() ![]() That creative closeness led to the spontaneity of actually writing new songs during rehearsal. "This album truly is a group effort, and I really enjoyed how much of a close knit group of guys this whole experience has been." "The way we spent eight to ten hours a day, just trying ideas and playing things, that took us back to the feeling of being a kid in the garage with your friends," he says. The only difference is now we've got air conditioning and we're not breathing kerosene heater exhaust." "This felt like we were back in that garage again, like the old days. "It's so much fun doing it like that, in a room banging it out," Scotti says. Making the new album did feel just like the beginning, when the gang meticulously crafted songs together in a garage in New Jersey. "I felt like, whoa! We're doing something really cool here!" "I wound up feeling the same as when we wrote "18 and Life" and "Youth Gone Wild," he says. Nick got us back to that train of thought: what approach did we take on those first two records? What were we doing?" "We wrote from a vastly different perspective. "We were kids," Rachel says about writing songs that debuted Slave To The Grind at #1 on Billboard and made the self-titled album a #6 multi-platinum hit. That was a heavy moment for me, this guy having to bring something that is Skid Row out of me, yet I'm a founding member of the band!" The one time I got it right, he goes, now that's Skid Row. It created a difficult move, and I didn't know how to physically do that, but he challenged me. Nick said, play the chord up here, an octave up from the original notes. "On 'World On Fire,' I had written this very cool riff. He became the arbiter of their legacy, daring them to revert to instinct and be the same rambunctious kids who made their first two albums. Producer Nick Raskulinecz lit a creative wildfire by challenging them to deconstruct good ideas and rebuild them into something even better. The Gang's All Here is the octane of an attitude that's been festering since the band formed in 1986. The truth is that they spend the rest of their lives trying to understand how they did it. It's cliché to say that a band has all their lives to write a first album. "Skid Row are the youth gone wild, and I wanted the same thing. "You're young, a bit crazy - fist in the air and fuck yeah - that kind of feeling," recalls Erik Grönwall. That fucking band built something powerful and so timeless that years later, halfway around the world, it roused a young Swedish singer. I was like, I gotta be in this fucking band!" Right from the beginning, I loved where the music was going. "It had three songs on it - including 'Clock Strikes Midnight' - and I loved all three of those songs. A demo of songs Rachel and Snake wrote together was the first time Scotti Hill heard Skid Row, and he wanted in. Their attitude and swagger was palpable in those songs. ![]() "Right when we came up with the name - Skid Row - that's when I realized we were going to build something really special that really drew on our influences," Rachel remembers. That something - and that name - represented the unrelenting impulse of rambunctious kids, channeling their love of punk and metal into something understood by a worldwide audience of other kids just like them. It was the birth of what would be Skid Row." I'm like, yeah, this is where we're supposed to be at this moment in our lives. It made me go, man, this is the start of something. "I saw all this talent he had - and has - and he brought something out of me. Snake Sabo realized he wasn't alone after striking up a songwriting partnership with Rachel Bolan. Every kid goes through that, and Skid Row made you realize that you're not alone." "Everybody goes through that phase of me against the world, where you just have to stand up and assert yourself. Rob Hammersmith saw himself in that gang mentality. We saw and heard ourselves in the band and rallied around their oversized choruses of camaraderie and rebellion. That exhilarating sound of being young was everywhere. "18 and Life" was a summertime hit single and the band was on the covers of Hit Parader, Circus, and Metal Edge magazines. Remember that first time you heard Skid Row? ![]()
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