In a new interview with Metal Hammer, guitarist Dave “Snake” Sabo spoke at length about the making of the album with writer Clay Marshall.
On the band’s legacy:
“I embrace our history. I embrace what we’ve done. I embrace all of it, from beginning to now, because without any of it, we’re not here… I love going out and playing ’18 And Life’ and ‘Youth Gone Wild’, because without those songs, we’re not playing — we’re not doing this. How can you turn your back on that? You have to embrace it. You have to embrace the history of it, regardless of where we all are as individuals separately and collectively.
There’s no denying what we were able to do at that particular time in our lives, so I’m thankful for that, proud of all of it, and of everybody that took part in that — the five of us who played on the record and the songwriters and the management and the label and the press people and the BON JOVI guys and all of the bands that we were able to tour with thereafter. All of it. It always starts and ends with the music, and that’s what we’re celebrating here. I’m lucky — I’m really, really lucky, man. I get to celebrate it every single day because I get to go out and play these songs that I helped create and still get to play and see people’s faces and how much it means to them. That’s the most amazing payoff in the world, that I get to sit there and see people’s faces light up and sing those lyrics back to us that we wrote however long ago, and had no idea whether they would touch one person, much less as many as they have. I’m blown away by it.
Here’s another thing — here’s the craziest thing, too. To be able to be driving in a car, taking my kids to school in the morning, and one of those songs pops up on the radio. You’re sitting in the car with your kids, and you’re going, ‘Wow. What an unbelievable life I have.’ This isn’t a put-on, man; this is the truth — I am absolutely humbled by it, and I have so many great, amazing memories of that period of time. Things turn out the way they turn out, but you cannot take away what existed, and what we’ve all been through together at that particular time. A lot of people that played in a part of that, I may not have spoken to in a long time or have seen, or don’t even know where some of them are, but [to] everybody that was involved that played some sort of role in it, I’m forever thankful.”
On whether, 30 years later, he’d change anything about the album, he said:
“I think there have been times throughout the existence of the record that yeah, I felt like that, but not anymore. I think right after the record was done, I was questioning everything, because that’s who I was at that particular time in my life — questioning everything, completely unsure of what I did, what we did, praying that someone would buy the record, not knowing if anybody would, wondering what we were going to do if it failed. All those things — I was so worrisome, not allowing myself at all to be mindful and to be living in the moment.
I was just so worried — so nervous and worried and questioning everything. ‘I should’ve done this differently. I should’ve done that. This tone should have been that instead of that.’ I went through that several periods during the life of the record. I think it’s been a while now where I just look at it and I go, ‘No,’ because if you mess with one thing, you mess with the fate of that record. You change the whole balance of it in some way. There’s a butterfly effect. I look at it now, because I’m older and a slight bit wiser.”