By Martin Popoff
"Johnny's been on since 2000," begins Snake, with respect to the acquisition of Johnny Solinger, interviewed by us on February 7th, 2000, somewherez within an hour (give or take) of getting the job. "One of the things is, when we got the Kiss tour in 2000, that lasted through October and then we went out on our own through Christmas. We came back home, started working on a new record in like April, recorded a bunch of stuff for that, went back out on tour for the rest of the year and then started out this year trying to finish up what we started. And we're kind of still in the process of doing that. So it's been a disjointed effort. Right now we feel that we are close but we are very skeptical and we know it's an extremely competitive market out there especially when you have a new singer and a new drummer in the band. You're facing an uphill battle, but that's where we've always seemed to be at our best, is when we've been the underdog. Whether it's been going out with Bon Jovi or Aerosmith or Motley Crue or Guns N' Roses, we just always seem to thrive in that arena. We rise to the challenge and certainly from the response we're getting, we feel there is a market and a need for what we're doing. But we're just a straight-ahead heavy rock band and that will never change. We're not trying to do anything that would be disingenuous. It's just two guitars and loud vocals and loud drums and loud bass; full-on energy."
And where are you in the process?
"We've recorded about 16 songs, and I think we're pretty secure in seven or eight of them. We want to write a couple more things and remix some stuff and I think we'll be pretty cool to get going. What label it's going to come out on, I'm not quite sure. Technically we're still signed to Atlantic Records, but I don't know how much backing we would get from them to be quite honest. It's a new regime over there, new people; everybody we knew is since gone. I don't know how into it they would be. You have people there who would go 'Yeah, maybe, blah blah blah' and you just get the run around and that's the thing we don't want. We don't want someone to go 'Maybe.' We want someone to go, 'I love this!' And whatever it takes to do that, it doesn't matter to us. We know there are people out there who want to hear what we're doing. It's evident by the shows. And we have the utmost confidence in what we're doing. We always have. And we were always best when were behind the ball."
SKID ROW - Youth Gone... Page 3