Snake Sabo’s New-Singer Prank on Skid Row’s Rachel Bolan
Skid Row’s Rachel Bolan and Snake Sabo recalled that new singer Erik Gronwall fit in with the band’s sense of humor so well that he was the subject of a prank soon after meeting his new bandmates for the first time.
Most of them gathered in New York in early 2022, while bassist Bolan was already in Las Vegas preparing for the band's residency run with Scorpions. That meant he was a phone call away when the other band members finally met, even though work on the new album, The Gang’s All Here, was already well underway.
“Right off the bat we started laughing at the stupidest shit - it was very, very strange,” Sabo told Classic Rock in a recent interview. “We almost felt like long-lost brothers that hadn’t seen each other in decades. Rachel was already in Vegas so I called him and said, ‘Dude, we’ve got a big problem. This guy’s a dick. He’s completely egotistical and doesn’t care about the band at all. It ain’t gonna work.’ Rachel replied, ‘Oh, no, you’ve gotta be kidding.’ And then he heard Erik laughing in the background and realized that we were fucking with him.”
Bolan agreed it was “a brilliant windup,” noting, “I think I hung up on him. Bear in mind that when Snake met him for that first time in New York, Erik had already sung 80% of the record. ... Maybe the coolest thing about what we have is that we can be incredibly honest, in terms of feedback, If somebody doesn’t like a song, or if an idea is put forward, then we feel completely free to voice an objection. In the history of this band, that wasn’t always the case.”
Gronwall added that Skid Row has started work on a follow-up to The Gang’s All Here. "There are a few demos, and we will keep on writing," he said. But he refused to put a release date on the project. “Right now we are just focused on the songs. It’s going really well. I’ve had some ideas that I’m bringing in, and I’ve heard the demos from the others that sound incredible.”