Lyrics in a metal song are often abhorrent. Usually songs are made when an IT worker starts thinking about the mist in a forest on a dark night and places himself there as a werewolf, or better yet a monk. This usually leads to the type of heavy music that dudes listen to at a barbeque with four of their mates sitting around on milk crates going yeah, and no girls at all. Not true for Sebastian Bach (Seb, Baz) and his Skid Row days. His time served as frontman for the multiplatinum megastars was no blip on the radar, it was a time known for the words and especially the feelings which have remained the staple of MTV tunes, in all their simplicity, for the next 20 years or more. He has that and the 20million albums sold as well as a stadium full of thrown soiled white cottons as proof of his reign over girls’ hearts, but Baz’ heart skipped only to Maria’s song. They met at age 17.
Seb grew up among palm trees in the Bahamas with his Mom and his Pop, (an art teacher and artist) who died recently at the age of 57. Seb moved to Toronto as a boy where he never dreamed of being the rock star he became. “Back then I could never fathom selling 20 million records absolutely not, no way.” He explained suspiciously when asked about his pre-fame life, captured on you tube from when he was 11 years old. Suspicious because he fronted lesser known Toronto hardrockers Herrenvolk, Madame X, Kid Wikkid and V05 (a deadpan choice of a hair care product name) before Skid Row, which was almost an anachronism by the time they poached Baz from across the border. Skid Row pulled up the caboose on the hair metal gravy train by 1989 at the release of Skid Row’s first big and self-titled album. But, by 1991 Nirvana led the new wave that swept out the 80s with a big long sigh. Skid Row still sold more than any of Baz’ other bands ever would and he owes it all to one thing. “Most people don’t have a voice like Sebastian Bach” he says.
Oh, and Bon Jovi’s guitarist Dave Sabo’s cultural cachet as founding member helped as well. Jovi took Skid Row on their ‘89 tour which shuffled them out of the deck and onto the high rollers’ table on MTV with ‘Youth Gone Wild’. These songs that were written with Seb Bach in mind had lyrics that effortlessly cut down the bullshit and got right to the core of the whole hair metal scene;
“boss screaming in my ear, about who I’m supposed to be,
get a 3-piece, wall street suit and a cellular just like me.
I said ‘Hey man there’s something you ought to know,
I’ll tell ya Park Avenue is just Skid Row’”.
Or, as Baz mused “the music industry is not for people that want to do it, it’s for people who need to do it. Y’know, I don’t want to fill somebody’s head with hope and they quit their job or something like that because the music industry is not for somebody who feels like it’s a job. You have to be more into the music than the money part of it to survive”.
Stage begat stage and after1997’s Skid Row split the frontman with the operatic highs joined a different set. He starred in “Jesus Christ Superstar and the Rocky Horror Picture Show on Broadway” he is sighing, he doesn’t hold the theatre in the same esteem “I’ve done very well for myself in theatre” he sighs again “I feel like that’s set me up for a lot later in life, like when I’m 65 I can go on Broadway and play a role and I think that’s very cool to be able to do that” he finishes, as ever on a positive. It begs the question, did he like playing Jesus? “I liked it for the first five months… the sixth month wasn’t that great. When you go on the road things just get ugly man what can I tell ya? [The] mark of a good show in Jesus Christ Superstar is at the end of act two, everybody’s crying. It was hard to put your mind in that place every single night, twice on Sundays and twice on Saturdays.” He becomes more up-tempo, makes a joke and sets up for his philosophy “That tale in Jesus Christ Superstar is so fucking sad. I want to rock dude!” he chuckles. “Rock and Roll is all about having fun”
Sure, but I guess there’s always a Pop Idol survivor that thinks otherwise. Baz appeared on a couple of TV shows on VH1, a ‘family show’ called the Gilmour Girls and his very own (he thought) reality show where he butt heads with Evan Seinfeld, Ted Nugent, Scott Ian and Jason Bonham while trying to put a band together in 12 days. The high rating aptly titled show, Supergroup, produced this Frankenstein’s band called Damnocracy. The show is hilarious, and tragic. “We lived in a house for 12 days, and at the end of the 12 days we have this sort of concert” Seb fills in the facts, it may sound something like the Surreal Life with Flava Flav and some other C-listers but not according to him. “We played music every day. At the end we played a sold out show in Las Vegas, at the Empire Ballroom, I never saw the chick from The Brady Bunch do that!”
In all fairness they did play music at least once every day but a lot of their time was spent ‘bonding’, lead by Ted, shooting bullets out of high powered machine guns and taking pornographic happy snaps of Baz’s wife Maria with Tera Patrick, Evan’s wife. “Maybe when Ozzie became a huge star on the Osbornes they went through the list of metal lead singers and my name came up” said Baz. The VH1 brain chose so many big personalities; clashes make good TV so they combined a lot of frontmen and fame egos in a house. Seb begins the tale, “as the series went on we rehearsed and learned each others songs we started [Ted’s] song [Cat Scratch Fever]. We ran to the microphone and he beat me [to it] and started singing, I was like ‘what do you want me to do play tambourine?’... I had to talk to him and bargain with him to sing in my own band! It was the first time I had to do that.”
Tangling with Uncle Ted is dangerous; “Ted was definitely the alpha male in the group, the only male walking around with a pistol strapped to his waist, he has it with him at all times even on stage! You know, we were walking on stage with him in Las Vegas and I said ‘look at my leather pants’ and he says look at my outfit Sebastian (Ted always called Baz ‘Sebastian’)... he pulls his guitar out and he has a gun. I ask ‘why would you need a gun on stage?’” Baz laughs; it’s the sort of laugh that keeps going and going “Why do you need it up there? I guess it’s a security thing, I always wondered why he didn’t keep a lot of his lead singers in his band. Ted wants to be the frontman” Seb laughs again, so far Seb has only stopped giggling to tell stories.
“There are a lot of bands these days like Avenged Sevenfold, AFI, Cory Taylor and those guys that put meat the top of their list. I used to say the same thing about Kiss and Van Halen. I find that really amazing” Seb says this with incredulous awe. The frontman whose natural talent shot him to the top still doesn’t believe he is there, despite meeting his idols. “Sure, I’ve played with them [KISS] about two weeks ago in Japan. I think Ace Frehley was my favourite guy in the band, and I think without The Ace the band feels a lot different. When I was a kid KISS were like Santa Claus, they were like Mickey Mouse, or Bugs Bunny. They were that big in North America.” He relays.
Last time Skid Row was in Australia in 1991 they played Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne and sold out Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion four nights in a row. This time Sebastian is playing a limited run of just two cities. If the Motley Crüe show was anything to go by there will be wave upon wave of girls. Girls that wanted to go to the show, girls that weren’t allowed back then, girls whose big sisters weren’t allowed. I ask Seb if he believes this could happen again “Yes I would” he says emphatically. Seb will tour with his band: Metal Mike Chlasciak and Johnny Chromatic on guitars, Bobby Jarzombek on drums and Steve DiGiorgio on bass. He’s going to play the old favourites as well as his extensive solo works, and some up and coming new release due out in the new year on Artimus Records in The States. Like all hair metal this will definitely include reverb on the snare, grinding and shimmying crescendos and the sort of show that puts indie and metalcore to bed where it belongs, Seb Bach is back.
