In a recent interview on Rockin’ 101‘s “The Johnny Rock Show,” SKID ROW guitarist Dave “Snake” Sabo talked about the events that led to the band’s separation from Swedish singer Erik Grönwall earlier this year.
Erik said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth): “Erik did The Gang’s All Here record, and then Erik was able to spend almost three years in the band. But whether you know or not, Erik‘s a cancer survivor, and he had a bone marrow transplant in order to put him in remission. And he immediately, once he was in remission and started getting some energy back, he immediately wanted to get back out and start singing again. And so we called him up and said, ‘Hey, man, we just recorded a record and we’d love for you to sing on it.’ And we sent him the music, and he did. Then all of a sudden we started touring. We could see early on that his health was still not there yet, and he knew it too. And so we did the best that we could with his situation, and he gave us all that he could, but it got to a point where it just was too much for his body at that particular point.
“And the way we tour, it’s tough, it’s a grind, and we attempted to compromise and come up with a situation where it would benefit his health,” he continued. “But after speaking with his doctors and him and his family and stuff, it turned out to be that we just wouldn’t be able to work it out from a health perspective for him and from a sort of an economic standpoint for the band. We didn’t wanna go and go in and have to go postpone more shows and things like that and then have to make them up later on down the road.
“It wasn’t good for him and it wasn’t good for the band and stuff. But we’re thankful for the time that we got to spend with them. He’s a great singer. And we were able to do two records that we’re really, really proud of — The Gang’s All Here, which we’re extremely proud of, we all are. And then the live record.”
Erik announced his decision to leave SKID ROW in late March this year, explaining that he wanted to “prioritize [his] health and full recovery.”
HALESTORM‘s Lzzy Hale stepped in as lead vocalist for the band’s four shows in late May and early June.
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