Sebastian Bach
In Set List, we talk to veteran musicians about some of their most famous songs, learning about their lives and careers (and maybe hearing a good backstage anecdote or two) in the process.
The artist: Former Skid Row frontman Sebastian Bach hasn’t been with the Jersey metal band since 1996, but that hasn’t stopped him from making a name for himself across the entertainment world to this day. He’s been on Broadway; shredded in Stars Hollow’s heppest band on Gilmore Girls; and appeared on countless reality shows, from VH1’s Celebrity Fit Club to CMT’s Gone Country. The A.V. Club talked to Bach before his Feb. 8 show at the Cubby Bear about his new solo record, Kicking & Screaming, as well as a few of the other projects he’s been involved in over the years.
“Youth Gone Wild” (from Skid Row’s 1989 self-titled debut)
Sebastian Bach: What can I say about “Youth Gone Wild”? It’s just a classic song that has definitely stood the test of time. You know, they still get played on the radio everyday.
The A.V. Club: Supposedly you joined Skid Row after you heard demos of the “Youth Gone Wild” and “18 And Life.” Do you remember hearing them? Did you think they were any good?
SB: I didn’t think they were very good when I first heard them. I wasn’t impressed too much. The singer they had at the time was a complete Jon Bon Jovi clone. The way he sang was not the way I sang. So I kept listening to them and, the more I listened to the songs, I thought they were good songs. So, I tried out, and they tried out for me, and we made the record and everybody around the world freaked out. I got this tattoo of “Youth Gone Wild” before we did the album.
AVC: Oh, that worked out well, then.
SB: Yeah, [I got the tattoo] before we even had a record deal. I got it because I love the song and I thought it was very autobiographical of my life at the time.
AVC: How so?
SB: Well, because I was a youth and I was wild. [Laughs.] These days it’s bittersweet for me to talk about these songs because radio in the United States of America completely fucking sucks. There is nowhere a guy like me can get a new song on the radio, because there’s like over 1,700 radio stations in America and only 60 or 70 of them play rock music. And, those stations that do play rock are all classic rock where they’ll play “Youth Gone Wild” and “18 [And] Life” from 22, 23 years ago, but my new record, Kicking And Screaming, which debuted at 68 on the Top 200 Billboard chart—which is a respectable-selling album—they won’t play a song from that. So, you know, talking about old Skid Row sometimes is not my favorite thing to do, but I know you all love “Youth Gone Wild,” even though I’m 43.
“Kicking & Screaming” (from 2011’s Kicking & Screaming)
SB: I got a new guitar player in my band who started when he was 19. His name is Nick Sterling, and we made the record starting last year in January. He’s 21 now, so he kind of is the “Youth Gone Wild.” At least we have one of them on the stage.
We recorded in Hollywood with Bob Marlette and just got the best reviews in my whole career. But, you know, you won’t hear it on The Loop in Chicago, but you’ll hear “Youth Gone Wild.” But yeah, the album came out great. I love it. I hope you get to hear it sometime.
AVC: When fans come out to see you now, are you doing mostly Kicking & Screaming material?
SB: No, I do whatever I feel in my heart. I’ll do all the old Skid Row songs because I know that’s why people are buying a ticket to come see me play. But, you know, I’m 43 years old. I don’t get excited running onstage saying, “We are the youth gone wild,” when I’m almost 50. It’s kind of silly. I don’t get on the tour bus and drive across the country so I can play my 22-year-old song. I’m doing it so that I can play my new song.
AVC: That’s respectable. A lot of artists don’t feel that way.
SB: I mean, think about what we’re talking about. I don’t walk around in 2012 thinking about 1989. I don’t know who does do that but, that’s, I guess, the nature of the business I’m in. But, when I was a kid, we were always excited about the next record that Led Zeppelin was going to put out and the next KISS tour, the new KISS costume, and the new KISS record. We didn’t just listen to Rock And Roll All Nite for three decades.
AVC: Yeah, but that’s the radio landscape now.
SB: That’s what I’m saying. I would like to say to every radio programmer reading this: “You are a fucking pussy. You are not a rock fan. You are hustling nostalgia and you have no balls and you suck.” That’s what I would like to say.
AVC: Do you worry that, in 20 years, let’s say, people won’t know music that came out in 2012? They’ll just know songs from the ’70s and ’80s?
SB: I mean, I love the song “Dream On” by Aerosmith, but I’m okay if I never hear it again. I’ve heard [sings] “Sing with me, sing for the years / Sing for the laughter, sing—.” I’ve heard it so many times. Like, “Comfortably Numb” by Pink Floyd—okay, we’ve got it [sings] “There is no pain you are receding.” I’ve fucking heard it since my dad played it when I was fucking 5. I don’t need to hear it anymore. It drives me nuts.
That’s not the kind of rock fan that I am. I collect music; I collect rock ’n’ roll. I’m always looking for another record to dump into my iPod. It’s like we invent these iPods that have the storage capability to store every song ever recorded by every musician ever in the history of music, but radio only plays shit from 20 years ago. It’s like, why do we have all these gigabytes? To store the first two Led Zeppelin records? Holy shit. [Laughs.] Give me something new. I’m so weird. I like Robert Plant with Alison Krauss more than Led Zeppelin. I’m the guy that says, “Let him be Robert Plant. Let him make something that he’s proud of that is artistically interesting, instead of having a 70-year-old man squeezing his lemon juice as it’s running down his leg.” That was ’72. People are like, “Why doesn’t he get the band back together?” It’s like, “Why don’t you fucking grow up?”
“This Is The Moment” (from Broadway’s Jekyll And Hyde)
AVC: At this point, you’ve done Broadway, and TV shows, and records. Is the way you approach music collecting—looking for new material, new sounds—kind of the way you approach working as well?
SB: I just kind of keep my head down and try to make things that are interesting to me. That’s what I did on “Youth Gone Wild” and “18 And Life,” but I was 18, so I loved “18 And Life” and I will always love that song, but that’s a one-time thing. I want to make music that expresses who I am today, just like when I was 18, I made that song.
Jekyll And Hyde was very autobiographical. Even Jesus Christ Superstar, I did that play when my father died because it was about Jesus singing to his father in heaven. I’ve always picked projects or music that I can fully put 100 percent of my emotion into.
Jekyll And Hyde, the play on Broadway—the plot was Dr. Jekyll trying to save his dying father by inventing medicines and trying them out on himself, and that’s what turned him into Mr. Hyde. At the time I was doing that play, my own father was dying of leukemia. So, he would come watch me do the play about me saving my dying father, and he’d be in the third row and people would say, “Sebastian is a good actor,” and I’d be like, “I’m not acting at all. There’s not one part of me that is acting.” I am onstage, saving my dying father, doing anything I can to keep him alive. And, of course, the actor’s name that played my father was David—my father’s name—and how could it not be? My life has always been like that.
Kicking & Screaming is an album I wrote with my guitar player, Nick, while I was going through a divorce of my wife from 20 years, which was extremely fucked up and painful. I met a new girl, Minnie Gupta, that I am totally in love with, who’s on the cover and in two of the videos. So a lot of songs on the record are about finding new love or losing your old love. That’s what I was going through in my life, so that’s what I’m singing about right now.
Albums are special, and they come along and you have to stand next to them for the rest of your life and put your name on them and believe in them. So, I can only do things that I believe in with my heart, and that’s the way I’ve always done this. That’s the way I will always continue to do it.
“Believe It Or Not” (from Gilmore Girls)
AVC: Some readers of The A.V. Club readers will freak if you don’t talk about Gilmore Girls.
SB: No, that’s cool. That was a fun thing to do. There are very few shows around these days that are like the Gilmore Girls. We actually had to learn dialogue and memorize our lines and dress up like other people and become different characters. Nowadays it’s all reality TV or singing contests, which is cool—but there are very few shows like the Gilmore Girls anymore where you’re actually acting and stuff. It’s all The Biggest Loser, The Bachelor, “Celebrity Fuckface,” “Donald Trump Comb Over Hour.” [Laughs.]
AVC: You’ve done several of those, though, including VH1’s Supergroup and CMT’s Gone Country.
SB: Yeah, and I was on Celebrity Fit Club with Kevin Federline, and I was on Celebrity Rap Superstar with Kendra Wilkinson, and I’ve been on a bunch of Celebrity Douchebag shows. [Laughs.]
AVC: How do you justify hating them, then?
SB: Well, because the reality shows are just the lowest common denominator entertainment. They don’t last. Nobody in the world is talking about Celebrity Rap Superstar right now, but you can hear “I Remember You” or “18 and Life” on the radio. I guarantee you’ll hear those today if you search around the stations.
I’m just saying music lasts forever and it’s a meaningful art form, but I don’t consider reality TV anything less than just disposable. People don’t talk about it once it’s off the air. Nobody says, “Oh, do you remember that show, fucking The Bachelor season six?” Nobody gives a shit. Nobody cares. You don’t even remember half the people that were named American Idol. What was the one that looked like a math teacher? Fucking, you know, Ruben Studdard? It’s just crazy. That stuff doesn’t last. Music lasts. Once it gets into your heart, music doesn’t go away; it lasts. Reality TV is forgotten about as soon as the last episode is done.
The ironic thing is how much money they give you to be on these shows. They make it impossible for you to say no. I have a son that goes to Rutgers. I’ve got to pay mortgage on a condemned home. I got rent, health insurance, and car payments. The way that the music industry is today, I can’t support myself just playing rock and roll. That’s the way it is. You’ll see me on “Celebrity Douchebag,” or whatever the fucking latest TV show is, because I got to pay the Rutgers college semester fees. And, anybody that’s got a kid in college understands that they got to pay the fucking bills.
If rock fans were like rap fans, then there would be no problem. Then you wouldn’t see me on those shows. I don’t understand how Chris Brown can give Rihanna a black eye and then sell five million records, I’m like “What the fuck?” [Laughs.] I wish that rock fans supported their artists like rap fans do, or country fans do. Rock fans seem to be pretty cheap. [Laughs.]
AVC: Why do you think that is?
SB: I don’t know why. The new rock stars are the DJs, like Deadmau5 and all these DJs. They’ll play a club for a hundred grand and have hundreds of thousands of people trying to get in. The crazy thing is that all they’re doing is playing albums by guys like me and going “wa-cu-cu-cu,” and, like, putting it in a Queen song or a Guns N’ Roses song. And, the DJ will get paid more than Guns N’ Roses. You know? It’s a fucked up world. I don’t really get it, but what can I do about that? Not much.
“Sorry” (from Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy)
AVC: You were on the latest Guns N’ Roses record, speaking of. You’ve also sung “My Michelle” with Axl Rose onstage recently.
SB: Axl sang three songs on my last solo album, Angel Down, and I just did five arena shows with Guns across America. They were great, great shows—really a lot of fun.
