Album Review: Skid Row - The Atlantic Years
Reviewed by Dan Barners
As the year begins to fade, Atlantic Records have issued this five CD or Seven vinyl retrospective of one of the brightest flames of the late eighties/ early nineties rock scene. Proteges of Bon Jovi due to JBJ knowing six-stringer Dave Sabo, and pretenders to the Guns N’ Roses sleaze crown, Skid Row emerged just before the decade changed and were a breath of fresh air in a scene that had turned more stale than last night’s beer.
Disc 1 of this set is the self-titled debut which still sounds as fresh today as it did in 1989. Big Guns, Sweet Little Sister, Piece of Me, Makin’ a Mess are all fist-pumping anthems, guaranteed to get the faux-leather fingerless-gloved hand in the air. 18 and Life was a darling of MTV – when MTV actually played music videos – and one wonders how many thirty-somethings walking around today were conceived to I Remember You! And how many of their parents still mean it when they sing along to Youth Gone Wild?
In many ways Skid Row captured lightning in a bottle with their debut: they had the backing of the biggest artist on the planet at the time, which saw them in front of tens of thousands of people in places usually inaccessible to bands of their then stature. The Moscow Music Peace Festival and the Jersey Syndicate show at Milton Keynes Bowl in the August of 1989 may not have been shows a band on their first touring forays would have been expecting to play.
Regardless of the support, Skid Row needed to have the chops and be able to produce them when it mattered, something they managed in spades on the debut. Sabo and Scott Hill’s guitars ooze just the right amount of sleazy punk attitude and mainstream playability and, in Sebastian Bach, Skid Row possessed a bona fide rock god in the making and the furthest thing from a shrinking violet you could find.
That Skid Row shifted upward of six-million units is a testament to the quality and commitment the band put in as the Bon Jovi connection would only get them so far.
By 1991 the rock world was waiting with bated breath for the Skid Row sequel and it dropped in the June of that year, having been trailered by the single Monkey Business the previous month. Slave to the Grind was an altogether meatier affair and has been given the two-disc vinyl treatment for this set.
Everything about Slave to the Grind was bigger than the debut. The title track was a statement of intent and is still used by the band as a set opener to this day. The one thing that Slave… didn’t have was the immediate singles of its predecessor, but this was more to do with the overall quality of the album and the more mature song writing from the band. The title track, Wasted Time, In a Darkened Room and Quicksand Jesus all joined Monkey Business as singles but the nature of the subject matter made them less instantly accessible to the casual listener.
Skid Row and Slave to the Grind are very different albums and neither is better than the other. Rather, they chart the progress of a group of young musicians growing up in public and, having been a fan of the band since the debut – and having lived with these tracks for more than thirty years – I still feel both sound as fresh reviewing them today as they did when the eighteen-year old me dropped the needle onto Big Guns for the first time.
By the time of Slave to the Grind Skid Row had emerged from beneath Bon Jovi’s wing and had flown the nest, becoming a dominant touring machine in its own right. Their show with Guns N’ Roses at Wembley Stadium at the end of August 1991 saw them defy a council order not to play Get the Fuck Out and get themselves banned from playing in the Wembley area; a problem when you have an arena tour booked, but one which was resolved by shifting the show over to the short-lived Docklands Arena.
Perhaps it was the more mature nature of Slave to the Grind but the album only sold about half as many units as the previous record, clocking in with a not-inconsiderable three-million.
The following autumn saw the release of the EP B-Sides Ourselves which was a collection of covers of such bands as Ramones, Judas Priest, Kiss, Rush and Jimi Hendrix. They played Psycho Therapy during the special guest slot at the 1992 Donington Monsters of Rock show, appearing above The Almighty, W.A.S.P., Slayer and Thunder and beneath only Iron Maiden.
The covers are fair representations of the band’s influences and rather than being carbon-copies of the originals are filtered through the Skid Row aesthetic. Delivering the Goods is a live version with the band being joined onstage by Rob Halford himself. Hendrix’s Little Wing is remarkably faithful, whereas What You’re Doing understandably strays furthest from the source.
All went quiet on the Skid Row front for a couple of years until the spring of 1995 when they released album number three, Subhuman Race, produced by Bob Rock and here also given the two-vinyl treatment.
In the years between Slave to the Grind and Subhuman Race the heavy music scene had witnessed a monumental shift. Gone were the excesses of the eighties glam-era, replaced by Grunge and a new, groove-oriented sound. In order to keep up with the changing times, Subhuman Race had openly modernised Skid Row’s sound, evident by the first few seconds of lead single My Enemy, which embraced a Pantera-esque vibe.
Elsewhere on the album you’ll find a grungy flavour to some of the tracks, with Frozen coming over like Alice in Chains and Into Another using those spaces to create a dark atmosphere. The band hadn’t entirely ditched their trademark sound as the title track itself was packed with old school Skid Row charm.
Curious to note that after the conclusion of the Subhuman Beings tour the band did not feature any of the album’s songs on any of their subsequent live sets.
The final disc in this collection is the live EP Subhuman Beings on Tour, recorded during the 1995 trek and released for the Japanese market. Featuring nothing from the debut, only Beat Yourself Blind from Subhuman Race, a couple of covers, including a different Rob Halford guested Delivery the Goods from the one on B-Sides Ourselves, and Psycho Therapy along with Slave to the Grind, Riot Act and Monkey Business.
Subhuman Beings on Tour would be the last new product the band would release on Atlantic Records, save a Best of compilation. Sadly, the band would call it quits in 1996, only to reform again in 1999 with only Sabo, Hill and bassist Rachel Bolan returning and still remaining to this day.
The 2003 album, Thickskin, with the late Johnny Solinger on vocals and Phil Varone on the drum stool would be something of a return to the original sound but, alas, time had moved on and as good as Thickskin is there was little chance of the band recapturing the magic, particularly in an era following nu-metal and the burgeoning NWAHM scene.
Revisiting these records, especially the debut and Slave to the Grind, got the old memories flowing. In their moment Skid Row had the world at their feet and produced some of the songs that would become the soundtrack to a generation of people’s lives. I was a teenager when I first heard Youth Gone Wild and that track spoke to me; as a middle-aged man I’m probably more angry now than I was back then; as I grow into old age I imagine I’ll be bloody furious. But at least I got to witness the burning bright of such a flame.
