In a recent interview with TMZ, Dee Snider discussed SKID ROW‘s hesitance to reunite with singer Sebastian Bach, despite ongoing fan demands for the band’s classic lineup to reunite after nearly three decades.
“I am close friends with Sebastian and I’m close friends with Snake [SKID ROW guitarist Dave Sabo] — both sides, close friends,” Dee said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). “I actually counseled them to get them through the Slave To The Grind record. I was literally talking to both parties, just trying to keep it together. I’m a friend to them.”
“Sebastian‘s a very intense dude, and I love him, but just like my band, TWISTED SISTER, they came to hate me, and they wanted nothing to do with me. And I changed. I had an epiphany — I went through a lot of stuff in the ’90s and 2000s, and I’m a different person than I was back in the ’80s. I was a real a-hole back then. And so the band has reunited with me and we are friends.”
“Until people just sort of get over themselves — all parties — it’s never gonna happen. It’s never gonna happen,” he added.
In an interview with The Hook Rocks podcast this past Month, SKID ROW guitarist Dave “Snake” Sabo was asked whether he and his bandmates have considered any new singers following the departure of their latest frontman, Erik Grönwall, who left the band to focus on his health.
“We haven’t targeted anybody,” Dave responded. “If we wanna continue as SKID ROW, we’re gonna have to get another singer. But we haven’t targeted anybody. There’s a lot of great singers out there. But Lzzy [Hale of HALESTORM who recently played two shows with SKID ROW as a stand-in singer] just raised the bar, man.
“And Erik is a great singer. He raised the bar as well. And then Lzzy just came in here and just really raised the bar and showed us another side of what this band could be. So, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a male singer in SKID ROW. The options are wide open. And like I said, there’s so much talent out there, but we just wanna make sure that we make the right choice and that we can bring the band to another level. That’s the hope.”
When asked if his perspective on a potential reunion with SKID ROW classic-era singer, Sebastian Bach, had changed, Snake responded: “Well, the answer has been the same for — I don’t know — 20,000 years now. It’s not gonna happen. And I say the same thing every time. I’m thankful that people have such an interest in wanting to see that happen, but I also have to reiterate that this is about being happy in the situation that you’re in. So I’ll speak for myself personally.
“First of all, I do need to say something too, is that the reason that this isn’t happening is because there’s three of us — myself, Scotti [Hill, SKID ROW guitarist] and Rachel [Bolan, SKID ROW bassist] — who’ve had conversations about this, and we’ve all been on the same page that we don’t wanna go down that road again. We just — we don’t.
“Rachel has taken a beating over this through the years. He’s the one who’s been blamed for this. ‘Oh, it’s Rachel‘s ego.’ ‘It’s this and that.’ No, that’s a load of bulls**t. That is not true. And I feel bad because he’s really, really had to shoulder that blame and has never said anything derogatory or anything like that. But you know what? The truth of the matter is that Rachel, Scotti and myself have continually felt the same way, that we enjoy being happy in this band and we’re really happy.
“It’s been such a great experience for the last however, 35 years, everything, all the ups, all the downs, everything, but we just don’t wanna revisit that particular aspect of our history,” he continued. “I love the songs, [I] love a lot of the memories, [I am] not fond of some of the memories, but just as individuals and as a collective, that’s just how we feel. So this is not on Rachel. And this has nothing to do with anyone’s ego or anything like that. So that’s just gotta be clear. Again, for anyone to sit there and make assumptions that this is Rachel Bolan saying ‘nope,’ it’s not. It’s the three of us, and we’ve all collectively sat there and just said that we don’t wanna do it. We just don’t wanna do it. And we wish everybody all the best.”
“We’ve been just ripped apart by ex-members of the band and stuff — ripped apart,” Sabo aded. “Some really s**tty stuff [has been] said about all of us. And we just choose not to [respond]. It’s not who I am. It’s not who we are. We won’t go down that road. We just wanna play music and be happy. This has really never been about a monetary aspect of things because it’s known that we’ve been offered a good amount of money to do shows together and to reunite [with Sebastian] and whatever, but it’s just never been about the money, man.
“I choose my happiness, my willingness to continue to be a really good friend to my best friends and a really good husband and a really good dad and bandmate and person. And I don’t wanna endanger that in any way. So the people that we choose to play with, those choices are made in order to keep those particular things in line for all of us.”
This past March, singer Erik Grönwall announced his decision to leave SKID ROW explaining that he wanted to “prioritize [his] health and full recovery.”
HALESTORM‘s Lzzy Hale was announced to step in to handle vocal duties for the four concerts on their upcoming schedule.
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