18 and Life on Skid Row

by Sebastian Bach

  Anyway, back to the night he got shot. Even I didn’t quite understand my physical reaction to this news. I could not stop crying. I was away from my family. John Lennon felt like family to me. After a considerable amount of time, Mr. Chellew came back into the room.

  “Sebastian. I had no idea this would affect you in this way. Come with me.”

  He brought me into the TV room and switched on the news. I was the only student in there. He had compassion. He could see how this was killing me.

  As I watched the late-night news, what I saw was completely heart-wrenching to a little boy. How someone could just take away someone else, who had touched so many. How someone could silence the voice and music of generations. It was unfathomable that John Lennon was no longer on this earth. This is maybe my first real experience with death.

  There was an amazing part of the school curriculum called Playfair/Pathfinder, which entailed all grade-ten students spending two weeks on a real brigantine ship, sailing around all five Great Lakes, from Ontario to Michigan and beyond. Together, living at sea (actually, lake), embarking upon a true expedition before the school year started. Very much a Lord of the Flies, separate-the-strong-from-the-weak kind of deal. Kids heaved up their guts into the pristine Canadian waters on a daily basis. This was an incredible experience for an average tenth-grade student to go through. I was a year younger than all the other kids, but I had a great time.

  We would spend some days on the calm waters of Lake Huron. I can see it now. No other humans, no land in sight. Just us, cracking jokes, having fun. Cooking food in the galley below, where we also slept. In tiny bunks. We sailed all five Great Lakes and lived to tell the tale.

  Not all nights were easy, or even remotely safe. One night we all thought we were going to die. A class of tenth-grade students, sailing Lake Superior, caught in the midst of a Noreaster. If the keel leaned any more to the right of the dial, it would mean we capsize. Sent up on the deck to change the jib sheet, required us to fasten ourselves to the railing, with wire attached to our bodies, lest we be jettisoned into the raging waters below. I am not making this up. When I write this down, for this book, I can’t believe what I’m reading.

  We would get shore leave every couple of days, where we would pull up to a dock somewhere in a Canadian or American town. Walking around the streets for an hour or two, before we would be required back to the brigantine. A funny sight to see, kids standing in line at a Harvey’s Restaurant with sea legs. Standing in line and just falling over, for no apparent reason, not being used to a stationary horizontal plane for days.

  One morning, on top of the crow’s nest, I heard an amazing sound. Coming up out of the galley quarters, I climbed up the ladder and onto the deck. Looking up the rope netting, where we would climb up high above the waters below. Looking out at the horizon, upon the still, reflective lake, was a beautiful sight to behold.

  On this day, a guy by the name of Tony Vineberg was sitting by himself high up in the crow’s nest. With an acoustic guitar. I could not believe the music he was playing.

  Tony was playing the lead guitar solo to “Runnin’ with the Devil” by Van Halen. I flipped out immediately, and scaled the heights of the poop deck to the crow’s nest above. Where Tony was sitting cross-legged and playing the guitar. It was the first time I had ever heard an actual human being play a Van Halen song on the guitar, in front of my naked steaming eyes, as David Lee Roth himself would say.

  Immediately Tony and I became best friends. I was in the church choir, and he was the only guitar player I knew of in the school. We decided to form a band.

  A couple of days later we found out that we had been assigned to the exact same dorm. Tony and me would be living with each other for the whole next year. This was good news for two nascent rockers who had just formed a band.

  We collected albums and played them constantly, getting ready for football, falling asleep at night, whenever we could. Which wasn’t all that much, because of our insane school schedule. He turned me on to guitar music such as Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin, Paco de Lucía. We even went to see those three play live in Toronto with opener Steve Morse. My dad’s friend Bill Kimball took us to the show.

  We went to other shows as well. When Van Halen played the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, New York, on the Diver Down Tour, my dad was cool enough to take me and my friend George Jeffery all the way from Lakefield to Syracuse, six hours, to see the mighty Van Halen. What an incredible experience. We turned into Syracuse, and the area of the Carrier Dome, being completely surrounded by dudes in spandex pants, with bandanas going from their knees down to their ankles. Just like fans dressed up for a KISS show, there were so many David Lee Roth clones walking around I couldn’t believe my eyes. This was a considerable influence on the young Sebastian Bach.

  We went to the concert and had the shittiest seats imaginable. We sat at the very top of the back row, on the side. We could barely even see the stage. It was still fun to be there, though. After the show we met Dad in the parking lot. He had an insane story to tell. As usual.

  “Hey guys!! Did you have fun????”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know where I watched the show from???”

  “What do you mean, you watched the show, Dad??? You didn’t even have a ticket!”

  “Well, check this out, fellas!! I went to the backstage and told them that my son was missing! Could they please let me come in and find him? At first they wouldn’t let me in, but after I begged and pleaded, they said ‘Okay, come on in!’ And then I found myself on the side of the stage watching the show. That is until David Lee Roth walked right past me! In a pair of assless chaps!” Which we couldn’t see, because we were sitting five miles from the stage.

  I could not believe that my dad was standing side stage at Van Halen, while we were up in the rafters. I made a note to myself that would have to change in the future at some point.

  The singing continued on at Lakefield. I sang in the church choir the whole time I was in the school, and was picked by the choirmaster Mr. Thompson, to sing the lead at Christmas mass. A song called “Once in Royal David’s City,” at the Lakefield Town Church, on an assembly day. I shut my eyes on a Sunday morning and for about six hundred people sang the song myself with Mr. Thompson on piano. We did it again in chapel for the school the next day. The older kids congratulated me and told me I was a good singer. I couldn’t believe I was picked to do this.

  Back in our dorm room, Tony and I played our albums. This was around the time when my voice started to change. Due to my newfound status as a singer, I did not want to get kicked out of the choir. So I did something that I don’t know if anybody else ever did. Feeling my voice change from a higher pitch to a lower pitch, I locked myself in my dorm and sang along to the highest music I could find. Rush. The Police. Anything that would keep my voice in the soprano register. I don’t know if this worked or not. But I like to think that it did.

  One day I was singing along to a Police song called “Roxanne.” There was a knock at the door. An older prefect, Dave Kitchen, sat down and said, “Who was singing that?” Tony pointed at me. David, from grade thirteen, said, “Sing it again.” I sang the Police hit. He told me to do it again. And again. He called his friend Louis Paget into the room. And other older kids. Then they asked me and Tony an incredible thing.

  “Hey, we want you guys to join our band.” We were blown away. They were all so much older than us. Then of course we said, “Okay.” Thus, the band Anthem was born!

  We rehearsed in one of the classrooms whenever we were allotted the time. An eclectic mixture of songs, including “Red Barchetta” by Rush, “Message in a Bottle” by The Police, “The Weight” by The Band, “Under My Thumb” by The Rolling Stones, “Freebird,” and perhaps most incredibly, we even covered the song “Wino” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. Yes, I repeat. I covered the song “Wino” in my first-ever band! The mind boggles. Life imitates art? More on this later!

  We were asked by Head Boy Michael Hope t
o play at the upcoming school dance. For this we needed girls. The girls were bused in from our sister school, Bethany. Imagine that. An all-boys school having girls shipped in from an all-girls school. Neither of us having seen boys or girls in months. The pressure was on the band to deliver the goods.

  I was so nervous, I really didn’t think it would even go down. Somehow I had obtained a red driver’s one-piece racing suit, an all-body red outfit that I thought looked really cool. For totally badass effect I tied a bandana around my thigh. I was thinking David Lee Roth. But I looked more like Chachi from Happy Days.

  I took a bunch more bandanas and tied them around my ankles, up to my knee. Like I had seen the guys do at the Van Halen concert at Carrier Dome. But with my short hair, I wasn’t quite pulling off the look yet.

  The night of the dance, we walked to the makeshift stage, which was put together in front of the fireplace. The full school cafeteria, cleared of tables and chairs, was now packed with the whole student body. Plus the girls from Bethany. It was time for my first ever show to begin.

  There was no way this was going to happen. I wanted to puke, and die. We went through the kitchen of the cafeteria so we could make our entrance unseen by the crowd. In the kitchen, near the ovens, I said, “I can’t do this.” I sat down and told them, “There’s no way.”

  The older guys in the band literally grabbed my racing suit by the scruff of the neck and dragged me to the stage, which they proceeded to throw me onto. I had no choice. I grabbed the microphone, closed my eyes, and begin to sing.

  After the show, an amazing thing happened to me. For the first time.

  Girls wanted to talk to me.

  Michael Hope ran up.

  “Oh my God Sebastian. You’re not going to believe this. Every single girl here wants to say hello to you. I have a lineup of girls who want to say ‘Hi’ to you and get a picture.” This was in 1980, before smartphones, folks. Some things never change.

  As I stood there, Michael introduced girl after girl to me. They all looked at me in a way I had never been looked at before. Whereas before, my way of making friends was to be the class clown, to make people laugh, now my whole perception, to others, had changed. After I did that show, people looked at me with respect. Older kids in the school came up and shook my hand. Kids that had never spoken to me before all looked at me with that same weird look in their eye. It was that very moment I decided. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.

  Moons Over My Hammy: Suspended Animation

  On our way to after-school sports, at nearby Trent University. Today was a day of swimming. We were all put in a yellow school bus to make the short drive to the nearby school. As we bounced on down the road, boys will be boys and we’re joking around. Having some fun. As boys tend to do.

  It was fun back in those days to moon complete strangers. Pull your pants down, grab your ankles, and flash your ass to some stranger, unbeknownst of the mooning assault about to occur. This was one of those times.

  Guys were mooning the cars that were following the bus. We made a barricade of students so the bus driver couldn’t see. Cars would be following our asses, pressed to the windows, as they honked on in utter dismay, behind the bus.

  Okay, so it was my turn. I went to the back of the bus. Made sure the driver couldn’t see me behind the other guys. Pulled my pants down to my knees, and pressed my ass up to the window. Everybody laughed. Until they stopped. I turned around and looked behind me.

  The car directly behind my behind passed us, and the car behind that one took its place. Behind my ass.

  Behind the wheel of this car was now our English teacher, Mrs. Brown. Staring at my ass.

  Katie Brown was the only teacher in school that had tits. We would sit in her class and stare at her bountiful bosom, a bunch of boys with no girls except for the teacher in front of the blackboard. Now here she was in her car, driving home after a day teaching school. Staring at her student’s ass, above her. The student’s ass was mine, dear reader.

  The look on Mrs. Brown’s face was a look I will never forget, or want to ever see again.

  She stared up at me, as I pulled up my pants in terror. She glared at me with a look that said, “You are going to be completely destroyed for doing this.”

  We all shot to our seats in horror, completely aware of what was about to happen next. Someone was going to get an insane amount of penalty drill for this. And we all knew who that someone was.

  As a result, I did not get PD only for mooning the teacher. I got suspended from school. Summoned into the Headmaster’s Office, he ripped into a vicious personal attack that really showed how much he considered me to be a waste of flesh. I ran out of his office and across the soccer field back to Wadsworth House. Crying all the way, confused as to why I was being suspended for doing what all the other guys were doing too.

  Dad came and picked me up. Took me back home for a couple of days. Great. On the way home, he said, “Maybe you shouldn’t be going here anymore.” I was relieved. As much as I loved going to Lakefield, after three years the thought of going to a normal school very much appealed to me. Now that I had played in a rock band, my mind was consumed by music, and the prospect of kicking some ass. That’s what I knew I had to do. And I couldn’t do it here.

  I finished up that school year and went home for this summer. Then started a new life at Peterborough Collegiate Vocational School. The new kids I met would not be from private schools. The new kids I was hanging out with hung out at the arcade, and did purple microdot acid.

  Let the video games begin.

  3

  BACH FORMATIONS

  Acid, Arcades, and Aerosmith

  1982–1985

  The transition from private school back to public could not have been more marked. Gone were the gray flannel slacks and green suit jackets. The cassock and gown had now been replaced by Accept Balls to the Wall and Twisted Sister You Can’t Stop Rock ’n’ Roll concert T-shirts. I had a jean jacket, on the back of which I painstakingly detailed the Twisted Sister and Queensrÿche logos. In white Liquid Paper. I was nothing if not resourceful.

  I could now go to every single show I could afford. From the dormitory at Lakefield back to Mom’s house in Peterborough, I started rocking immediately. The alienation and frustration I felt from being suspended from LCS worked wonderfully in my pursuit of singing heavy metal rock ’n’ roll. I released my frustrations vocally in my bedroom every single day, practicing my voice. Much to the chagrin of my mother. I would attempt to sing Queensrÿche’s “Queen of the Reich” and Judas Priest’s Unleashed in the East, attempting to hit supersonic high notes that were possible only in my wildest dreams. I sang hours upon hours behind my locked bedroom door. The music absolutely consumed me.

  When my buddy showed me the album Unleashed in the East, it changed my life. He dropped the needle on the song “Victim of Changes.” “Listen to this.” When Rob Halford hit the high note in the second verse, I told my friend, “That’s not a human voice.” I thought it was, in fact, a guitar. It sounded that foreign to me. I could not believe anyone’s vocal cords could be capable of such a sound.

  One day my buddy Rick came over. We were both trying to sing Rob Halford songs to my stereo. All of a sudden we saw the most incredible sight. Of my mother kicking down my bedroom door.

  A huge crashing sound startled us as we turned around. There was my mom’s tanned leather Frye boot heel, destroying my bedroom door as she flattened it to the floor.

  “Turn that shit down right now!!”

  Mom stood on top of the dust and debris of the wreckage she had just hooved in. She looked like a character from the Robert Crumb comic my dad had given me a week earlier.

  Right around this time, video games were invented. On high school lunch hour we would go down to Western World arcade and play Asteroids, Poll Position, Galaga, Centipede, Robotron, Scramble, and the like. The exact same time these video games were brought into the world, someone gave me a hit of purple m
icrodot LSD. Some of my more adventurous friends and I would drop acid and destroy aliens in that little Canadian town north of Toronto. None of us knew there was anything wrong with it.

  But the suburbs have no charms to soothe

  the restless dreams of youth.

  Subdivisions.

  Be cool or be cast out.

  It’s amazing how the Rush song “Subdivisions” captured the restlessness I was feeling back then, and the video completely looks like my time at Peterborough Collegiate Vocational School. I had the same exact haircut as that dude. And I swear that was me on Yonge Street in those shots from the video.

  Lit up like a fire fly

  just to feel the living night.

  On hot summer nights we would go swimming. The balmy, thick, humid air of the Canadian early morning. Inverlea Park. Hours after the arcades closed, coming down from acid. As the sun came up. Up the top of the bridge, over Lake Otonabee, we jump off. Hit the water forty feet below. Seems a lot higher when you’re flying on LSD. Swim around, laugh and marvel at the incredible beauty. The cool mist rising off the placid waters up into the new day’s sun. The feeling of being immersed in the fresh water as we walked around and felt the riverbed beneath our feet.

  There was nothing in us that would give us a bad trip at that point. We were just kids goofing off at the beach.

  My most vivid memory of doing acid is laughter, to the point of paralysis. Me and a buddy were at Mac’s Milk, across the street from Kenner Collegiate, where my dad used to teach art. We were high on ’sids, as we used to call acid back then. Roaming the aisles of the variety store, the drug hit us hard. Overwhelmingly hard. We picked up magazines, bottles of ketchup, loaves of bread, what have you. Staring at these ordinary household items, feeling them, touching them, we would laugh to the point of being on our backs, in the middle of the aisle, kicking our feet up into the air and holding our stomachs. We would look at a bottle of mayonnaise and laugh so hard that tears streamed out of our eyes. We could not breathe. I remember being in that variety store for an insane amount of time, hours. Our friends even came over to hang out with us in the store and see what we were laughing about. It seemed like we were there all night.