A press release went out Thursday announcing a worldwide talent search to find the new singer of Skid Row, the late-Eighties rock band that gave us indelible anthems like “Youth Gone Wild” and “I Remember You.” “This is not a contest or a gimmick,” the band informed fans. “It’s a genuine search for the right voice, presence, and authenticity to carry Skid Row forward.”
“Worldwide auditions officially open February 5, 2026, with no submission deadline,” the release continued. “Skid Row will continue reviewing submissions until the right singer is found.” It went on to direct fans to a website to upload their audition tapes.
Let’s just cut right to it and not mince words, since clearly the Skid Row guys need some tough love. Rachel Bolan, Dave “The Snake” Sabo, and Scotti Hill don’t need to bring in yet another ringer to front the band. By our count, they’ve had five different vocalists over the past three decades, including Halestorm’s Lzzy Hale, who awesomely took over the mic for a handful of shows in 2024.
Instead, what they need to do is — somehow, some way — get over whatever ancient beef they still have with Sebastian Bach and bring the voice of the band back into the fold. When fans come to see Skid Row concerts, most aren’t coming to hear songs from the 2003 LP Thickskin or 2022’s The Gang’s All Here (an audacious title for an album where the gang was most definitely not all there.) They come to hear “Youth Gone Wild,” “18 and Life,” “I Remember You,” and all those other Bach-era classics, from “Big Guns” to “In a Darkened Room.”
Skid Row themselves all but concede this whenever they tour. Look at this recent setlist from June 2024, with Hale on guest vocals. The band played six songs from their 1989 self-titled debut, another six from 1991’s Slave to the Grind, just three from The Gang’s All Here, and a cover of the Ramones’ “Psycho Therapy,” which they originally cut for the Bach-led compilation, 1992’s B-Side Ourselves. That’s 75 percent Bach, and less than 20 percent non-Bach.
This isn’t a David Byrne or Robert Plant situation where the lead singer doesn’t want to reunite and the other members are out of viable options for carrying forward. Bach is ready, willing, and very capable of returning to Skid Row duty. He’s made that clear roughly 1,000 times over the past quarter century. “The sad part about it is that we’re stronger together than apart,” he told Rock Daydream Nation last year. “I just know that if we came together again, we would definitely make some good music because I know that we know how to do that.”
Bach plays the hits and deep cuts at his solo shows, and even celebrated the 30th anniversary of Slave to the Grind in 2021 by performing it straight through. He invited all of the others to join him, but only drummer Rob Affuso accepted. (Affuso left the band along with Bach in 1996. Guitarists Sabo and Hill and bassist Bolan remain from the old days, with new drummer Rob Hammersmith.)
Without Bach out front, Skid Row regularly play venues like the Soaring Eagle Casino in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, and RC McGraws Bar and Grill in Manhattan, Kansas. With Bach back in the band, they likely wouldn’t be headlining Coachella or playing Madison Square Garden, but they’d get top billing at metal festivals all across the world, pack large rooms in America, and make significantly more money than any of them make on their own. It sure sounds like a headbanging no-brainer.
But the remaining members of Skid Row just don’t want to hear this. “If someone wants to complain about it and someone wants to post horrible things about it, don’t fucking listen to us, man,” Bolan said in 2018. “There’s so much more music out there to listen to if you’re not happy. You know what? Do something with your life… We’re very happy and we’re creative and this is it, man. If people got a problem with it, that’s exactly what it is: It’s their problem.”
Sabo agreed. “At the end of the day, that’s what matters the most,” he said. “You have to be happy with what you do. This is our lives. It’s not a job; it’s our lives…. You have to be happy and be able to look in the mirror and be able to look around that stage and say, ‘I don’t want to be anywhere else but onstage with those four other guys.’ And that’s what we have. That wasn’t always the case.”
Right around this time in 2018, Skid Row did actually engage in reunion talks with Bach’s camp. “The fact that it didn’t happen obviously makes me somewhat bitter,” Bach told Rolling Stone, “because life is only getting shorter, as the song says.”
Bolan didn’t dispute this in an e-mail to Rolling Stone. “We entertained the idea,” he said then. “Snake and I went as far as talking with agents and promoters about money. But we quickly learned after a few text conversations, why we fired him in the first place. Nothing is worth your happiness and peace of mind.”
Fair enough, but they’re certainly not the only musicians in history to hate their lead singer. Do they think Eddie Van Halen was thrilled about reuniting with David Lee Roth in 2007? He most assuredly was not. But no one accepted Gary Cherone as a Van Halen vocalist, the Sammy Hagar reunion of 2004 flamed out in spectacular fashion, and Eddie bowed to reality.
And it was a win/win: The fans got the singer they wanted, and Eddie got to headline huge venues and make a lot of money. It doesn’t mean he and Diamond Dave interacted offstage. It doesn’t mean any of the old feelings went away. It just means they were both adults, and they acted like it onstage.
The fellas in Skid Row have tried five different Gary Cherones. But Bach is Hagar and Roth rolled into one person, in the much smaller universe of this band. He’s the voice of every single song that fans come to hear. If we may, you’re lucky he’s still in good shape and willing to come back. And, hey, you don’t have to do it for the money — do it for the fans.
As far as Baz is concerned, we hope he submits a video application to his old band’s talent search. It would go super viral and underscore just how absurd this whole contest is — while the guy for the job can still sing the shit out of “I Remember You.”
