Former Skid Row frontman Sebastian Bach recently talked to Ultimate Classic Rock about his songwriting approach. When asked if he writes songs and lyrics regularly, he said: “If I’m going down this logic, ‘You didn’t write that!’ Then I should go in there and say, ‘Okay, I’m going to change this just to get my f*ckin’ name on it, because I’m a prick! I don’t work like that. A lot of people do.”
The singer also recalled the song he wasn’t given credit for: “Names that I won’t say, they think, ‘I’m the songwriter, so I have to write a song!’ I don’t ever think like that. If my next door neighbor has a kick ass riff, I don’t care that it’s my next door neighbor! Hey, let’s work on this! I’m into the content. I’m not into the form. I don’t give a f*ck about the logo. I don’t care! It means nothing to me. I care about what’s inside the record. I care about the riff of ‘Monkey Business,’ which I wrote with Snake, even though my name’s not on there. I crafted that riff with him. I’m into metal. I’m into heavy metal. Some fans say, ‘Why do Sebastian’s albums sound more like the early Skid Row records than Skid Row?’ Which they do. I’m not bragging — they do! They just do! I have two ears! I can hear.”
“The reason for that, is that I was the guy in the studio for ‘Slave to the Grind,’ with Michael Wagener, sitting next to him, picking the amp sounds, driving around town choosing Marshall amps that we liked. It was me, not anyone else. It was me and Michael Wagener, because we were fans of metal,” he added.
In December 2023, Skid Row bassist Rachel Bolan mentioned on that most of the 1989 debut album ‘Skid Row’ was written before Bach joined the band. Bach later responded to his comments during a show this year: “You might read online, you might read online my old bass player, and my old guitar player, ‘Oh, we came up with 98 percent of that sh*t.’ Well, if you look in the credits, I co-wrote that last song, I’ll have you know. I co-wrote these lyrics. I co-wrote these lyrics. It goes, ‘One, two, baby what you do / Three, four, let me show you the door / You’re better off dead than makin’ a mess of me / Five, six, take your last licks / Seven, eight, I’m gonna give it to you straight.’ It’s like f*cking Shakespeare. Those are some rhyming couplets that I just laid on you.”
The band members have shared different views on Bach’s contributions over the years. Bach thinks he wrote or helped write almost all the songs, while both Dave Sabo and Rachel Bolan disagree. Sabo even said that their former bandmate contributed to the songs ‘here and there,’ but wasn’t equal to what he and Bolan put into a song.