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Interview with Sebastian Bach and he doesn’t hold anything back
Posted on February 3, 2012
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Sebastian Bach burst onto the hard rock/ heavy metal scene in 1987 as the charismatic front man for Skid Row. Known as much for his long locks of hair as well as his forceful, powerful voice Sebastian stayed with Skid Row for close to a decade before parting ways with the band. Since leaving the band he has continued to write music, has been in television roles and even had a couple stints in Broadway plays, the most popular and best reviewed being ‘Jekyll & Hyde’ in which he starred for five months before turning the reigns over to David Hasselhoff.
Sebastian’s newest, just released solo album is called ‘Kicking and Screaming’. I got a chance to catch up with Sebastian and ask him what was up in his world.
Sebastian - Hello, Hello
Me - Hello this is Mike is it working?
by Mike Martin
Sebastian - Hello, Hello, O God.—Click
Well crap this isn’t how this was supposed to start out! This is Sebastian FRIKKIN Bach ya know? You know Sebastian….One of the most BAD ASS voices of rock n roll. Well that voice is Bach in Kicking and Screaming.
Sebastian-Hello
M - This is Mike from Interstate live. Thank You for taking my call.
S - Hey, How are you doing man?
M - Pretty good how have you been?
S – I’m all right. Where you calling from?
M - Denver, land of no Oxygen...
S - Denver?
M - Yes Sir
S – Oh, cool.
M - So how has the tour been going?
S - [Laughs] It’s been going good. We just did five big arena dates with Guns-N-Roses in Phoenix, Hartford and Pennsylvania and tomorrow night I play with Steve Stevens in New York City.
M - Sweet.
S - Then we start headlining shows all across America. We’re doing like thirteen headlining gigs starting next week, so a lot of fun.
M – Nice! Clubs or arenas?
S - I'm headlining clubs and theaters, and arenas when I play with other bands.
M - I just finished listening to Kicking and Screaming. Great Album.
S-Thank You
M – It reminds me of Slave to the Grind a little.
S- Yeah, that's me singing in the studio so it’s me. It’s….you know a lot of the songs that a lot of the industry latch on to….’18 And Life’,’ I Remember You’, ‘Youth Gone Wild’ and ‘Monkey Business’…. They love those songs so much it’s hard for them to believe I can do that again, but that’s what I do for a living. But all those songs weren’t just an accident or a joke. I know how to sing. I know what a good song is, good guitar riffs and good production. I could make albums like this for the rest of my life, and plan on doing that.
M - That won’t hurt many feelings. We love them...
S - Cool, cool. Thank you dude.
M - How is recording different than back in the day?
S – Well, I suppose the biggest difference is radio. The radio in America now completely sucks. There is actually no such thing as radio now compared to the way it was, because there are like seventeen hundred stations in America and only sixty or seventy play rock-n-roll. And the rock they play….like 90% is classic rock from twenty years ago like ‘Whole Lotta Love’ and ‘Dream On’. They will play I Remember You and 18 And Life ummm…. and Youth Gone Wild like forever and ever and ever but it’s hard for me to get a new song on the radio. I just don’t understand how people don’t get tired of those old songs. You know, hearing them for decades and decades and decades, it’s like play something else once in a while. I think the radio programmers in America are the biggest bunch of pussies in the fucking world. There are more pussies at rock stations than there are at the Playboy Mansion.
M - I listen to a lot of country radio and they are doing the same damn thing.
S – It’s the same songs over and over again and that's not the kind of rock fan that I am. I collect music, I collect albums and I’m always looking for a new album that I like to put on my IPOD, you know? I don't just listen to the same three songs for the rest of my life like these radio guys seem to do. It’s like, I love Pink Floyd ‘Comfortably Numb’ but I'm okay if I never hear it again for the rest of my life because I have heard it so many fucking times! [Sebastian singing off key] “I have become comfortably numb”…..How many times can I listen to the same fucking song? It’s like play another Pink Floyd song….Play something else! I don't know….I don't know. I just get frustrated because my record sold pretty good. It came out at #68 on the album charts but there is no where I can take it. There are no radio stations. It’s either you’re too old for the young stations or too young for the old stations. But the fans like the CD and that’s who I made it for. I made it for the fans. You know? They put it in the IPOD and the fans don’t need radio and that’s a good thing. With the IPOD and Internet you know….I can get my music out to the fans. I don’t really need a radio station. It sure would be nice though. It would be nice to get some help from the radio. I think that’s the biggest difference.
And also MTV! You know the only place you can get your videos shown if you’re a rocker is VH1 Classic and they might start playing your new video a couple times, and they are playing my new video, but you’re really lucky if you get on there. There’s really no other place you can see a new video, like a new Motley Crue video or an Ozzy Osbourne video. It’s like where can you see that?
M - There is only one place I have seen yours. On the Internet and not on TV at all.
S - But that’s pretty cool, cuz the technology is so good you can just plug your computer into the back of your HDTV. So they are watching YouTube on the television, which is cool. [It’s] So hard for me to fathom all of this technology because it’s so different. Like, I am friends with these guys, The Black Veil Brides and I went over to the guitar player’s house and they watch all of their stuff that way, they don’t watch TV they watch YouTube on their TV. But I think a lot of people are doing that these days.
M - Kind of going back a little bit, how did you get hooked up with the Duck…The Oregon Ducks?
S - Oh wow ummm….Well, Jimmy Fallon, I was on his television show and he called me the power ballad champion or something like that. So they wrote a song for the Ducks and I sang it on the Jimmy Fallon show and they saw it. The Ducks saw it and hired me to come sing it at the football game which was in Phoenix AZ, at the Rally. It was a big, big show. That was really fun.
M - Thanks I just had to ask. I grew up in southern Oregon and am a big Duck fan.
S – Yeah, I was pretty popular with the Duck fans that day, just rockin’ it, and they were all, “You’re that Power ballad guy!” Everyone was coming up to me yelling, “Don’t fuck with the Ducks”!
M - You toured with Pantera quite a long time ago. But how was working with Dimebag?
S-That’s a good question. He was a wild, wild dude. He drank…….we all did back in the day and ummm some of us still do. We were lucky to be with Pantera on our very first arena tour of America, and let’s just say that the expression “They are a tough act to follow” I think that it was invented for the band Pantera.
M - It was a great show, and it was my first mosh pit to tell the truth.
S - Yeah, Yeah…..you know that was my first experience with having a band on before us that was giving us a run for our money every night. To go on after them was not all that fun sometimes.
M - I have a quick story for you. You did a show in Medford Oregon, probably ’91. It was with Pantera, and two things stuck with me. You were crowd surfing and when you got back on stage the girls pulled your pants down, you turned, grabbed yourself and said, “This is what you wanted to see”?
S-[laughing] Did I?
M- Yeah! And at the same show you got a guy and a girl onstage to dive, and the girl was this little, itty bitty thing that just stood at the front of the stage and took a nice dive. The guy was like 6ft 350lbs and he went all the way back to the drum riser and took a running swan dive into the crowd.
S - Oh no!
M - The crowd parted like the Red Sea. You could have heard a pin drop in the place till you said, “Dude, I hope you’re OK, ‘cuz I don’t need to get sued again”.
S – Nice!
M - I have been waiting to tell you that story forever.
S - Well we don’t do the stage diving anymore…..too many lawsuits, too many people getting hurt. I don’t do that shit anymore. I am sorry to whoever that person was. I apologize…please accept my apologies two decades later.
M - You know, I just have one more quick question for you. What’s your favorite guitar riff of all time?
S-ummm…’Tunnel Vision’ on the new album. That song really kicks ass, I really like that.
M - I don’t want to keep you any longer I know you’re a busy guy. I appreciate it.
S - I can’t wait to read this online. Thank you very much!
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Click album cover to check out Kicking and Screaming on iTunes
Photo by Clay Patrick McBride
