SKID ROW Guitarist Talks SEBASTIAN BACH, Upcoming Album

Marko Syrjala of Metal-Rules.com recently conducted an interview with SKID ROW guitarist Dave "Snake" Sabo. A few excerpts from the chat follow below.

Metal-Rules.com: The one thing which has been headlines lately is that one certain photo [of you and former SKID ROW singer Sebastian Bach]. You know what I'm talking about here?

Sabo: Right.

Metal-Rules.com: What's the story behind that?

Sabo: I had flown into L.A. that day because Duff McKagan, whom I manage, was doing two shows at the Viper Room and… So I flew in and I went there and one of the guys, an assistant of ours told me, he goes, "Sebastian's here," and stuff like that. I'm like… I don't mean… I mean, I hold no ill will or any bad blood or anything — everybody else can have that. I have no negativity in my life whatsoever. So at the end of the show, I was in the dressing room and it was very small at the Viper Room dressing room and I saw him standing across the stage and I… I mean, across the room, and he made a beeline over with his girlfriend, had his hand out, and I shook his hand, you know, "How you doing? How you doing?" Exchanged the pleasantries and stuff. It was all very cool and very cordial; no heavy talk, like, "Come on, dude, we got to put this band back together." It was nothing like that, you know. It was like, "How's your family doing?" "I'm sorry that you got divorced," you know, and she was a lovely girl and asked me how the kids are, you know… showing pictures and everything like that, and he's like… bunch of people shooting pictures and he's goes, "Let's take a picture together," and sure enough, you know, it was, you know, that's the one that ended up out there.

Metal-Rules.com: Yeah, that's the way how gossips start…

Sabo: Yeah, that's okay. I mean, other people keep talking, but it's really, so… it's far simpler than people are making it out to be, whereas you know we have a long history together. It was one of those things where I did not want to… I don't know I didn't want to sit there and be like an angry prick or anything like that. I mean, life goes on and you make the most of it and I keep all negativity away from me, so…

Metal-Rules.com: How did you like the comments he put out later on?

Sabo: What about in the future… you know what?! That's him, you know, that's him — you know I don't know what to do… I… The way I look at it is, you know, I don't know what tomorrow's going to bring. I just… hopefully we'll make it on the plane home, you know. I kind of look at life like that lately. It's too short. I'd rather enjoy the moment. If something like that happens down the road, then it happens, then it's supposed to be, and if it doesn't, then it wasn't supposed to be, you know?! That's just the way… that's life, you know. To me, it's no… I'm not going to beat myself about the head over it and I'm not going to push for it or whatever. It's like if little things present themselves in a way that.. that's its conducive and everybody wants to do it, then that's something to talk about, but right now it's a non-issue.

Metal-Rules.com: He seems to be a kind of kind of guy who always says out loud what he thinks.

Sabo: Of course. I mean, that's just, I guess, that's just the way he's always been, but, you know, going back to like us meeting again, something like that, I didn't… again, because he was cool and he was sober and he wasn't hyper and he was… he was nice, you know, it was a nice ten-minute… ten-, fifteen-minute conversation with him and it wasn't any big deal, and I'm glad it wasn't a big deal — I'm glad it was just as cordial as it was.

Metal-Rules.com: I just learned that you have plans to release some new music soon. Would you tell something more about it?

Sabo: We're doing an EP. We start doing the EP, well, this month in the next three weeks. We're going to do a succession of, like, three EPs, five or six songs on each one released like every six months or something like that.

Metal-Rules.com: That's a kind of thing what DOWN just announced to do some time ago.

Sabo: Well, that's my… It was my idea. I manage DOWN, so it was Scott McGhee and I, [we] sat down with the band a couple years ago and we said this is what we think we should do.

Metal-Rules.com: Right. It's been six years since the last SKID ROW album was released… What’s the main reason it did took so long time to be creative again?

Sabo: Well, I think, well that's what we're doing now so we figure we might as well apply it to our own band. For me, it's been a lot of different reasons. A lot of managerial stuff that was going on and some other people were doing some things on their own. Some health issues with me as well so… But we're all good now so I think we're back on the right path.

Metal-Rules.com: Would you tell something about musical direction of the new material at this point?

Sabo: Some of the stuff sounds like it could be on "Slave To The Grind", you know…

Metal-Rules.com: Sounds like heavy stuff then?

Sabo: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely, definitely heavy stuff.

Metal-Rules.com: About the upcoming EP, do you have a label at the moment?

Dave Sabo: I would probably go through Megaforce. Marsha Zazula and her husband, who own the label, are old friends of ours so. And we're still debating whether we're going… we'll do that in the States, we're debating whether we're going to do that in the rest of the world as well, but there might be something… it is a bunch of stuff, Nuclear Blast or Universal or you know… So I'm not really concerned about that right now. My main concern is getting in the studio and knocking this thing out and making it… it's got to be great. It's got to be great; it's got to be great. You know, that’s the way it is — you just got to have the great music regardless.

Read the entire interview from Metal-Rules.com.

Photo credit: Fran Strine