18 and Life on Skid Row

by Sebastian Bach

  “18 and Life” changed all of our lives. Once that video came out on MTV, around the globe, we were bona fide superstars. We watched the video, for the first time, in the back of the bus on the road somewhere in Middle America. Nobody could believe how powerful it was. Fred Saunders looked at me after he watched it, and just said, “Baz, you are about to become very, very famous.” “Youth Gone Wild” was big. But “18 and Life” became an actual top-five Gold Single on the Billboard chart, selling more than 500,000 copies in the USA alone. Just that song itself.

  Record sales of the first album were, and continue to be, phenomenal. The album has sold over 6 million copies in the United States, as of this writing, and over 10 million copies worldwide. Someone at Atlantic Records once told me that the first Skid Row album went Gold in just Orange County, California, alone. Meaning that the album had sold over 500,000 copies in just one county in just one state. Those are days gone by, as much as I hate to use that term, but there is no way we will ever see music sales like that again. The album currently is in the top 10 selling albums in Atlantic Records’ history, up there with Led Zeppelin’s IV, AC/DC’s Back in Black, and Foreigner’s 4.

  1989

  Johnstown, Pennsylvania

  It was a day like any other on our first arena tour. Just years before, when I was in Kid Wikkid, I would watch soap operas like Another World before I would go to rehearsal, in the cold winter of Canada. I would wake up in the morning (afternoon) and have a grilled cheese and some tomato soup, perhaps, and a coffee. Just a few short years later, I would do the same. Only now I would have my tomato soup and coffee in a tour bus in the middle of an arena parking lot, surrounded by people straining for a glimpse of us through the tour bus window. I would turn on the TV and watch Another World at 2:00 p.m. (followed by Santa Barbara at 3:00 p.m., which was a place I always dreamed of going) after waking up from driving all night from the last show. I was still the same. But things were very different.

  I remember this day just like all the other days on the tour. Like every time, before the show I locked myself in the back of the bus, as I do every single show night, doing my vocal warm-ups and drinking as much water as I possibly can, in order to sing properly and remain hydrated during the performance. I always have the biggest bottles of Evian water with me, all day. Literally drinking as much water as humanly possible. My bus driver Kenny Barnes used to say, “Where in the Hell do you put all that water, boy?” It was funny, because I was actually as skinny as the bottle of water itself. It really did look like I had nowhere to put it. I was literally a walking “tall drink of water.”

  As I finished my warm-up, I grabbed a half-empty bottle of Evian water and walked out of the bus door. My security guard, whom I had lovingly nicknamed “Shat,” was with me, as we ventured out of the parking lot into thousands of Bon Jovi and Skid Row fans jammed into the adjacent street, teeming and overflowing into the surrounding city itself. It was another sold-out show. Twenty thousand fans a night or so, that tour, was typical. Shat cleared the way for me to get backstage as I clutched my water bottle and drank copious amounts in preparation for the vocal histrionics that were about to ensue. We rustled through the crowd. Everybody yelling and screaming, grabbing at us, as we made our way to the backstage gate. About ten cops, Johnstown’s local Finest, were standing there at the gate with the security guards from the venue.

  The policeman stopped us. Shat said to them, “Let us through. This is the lead singer!”

  They said “Yeah, right. What you got in the bottle, boy?” I looked at them, incredulously. I told the police officer the truth. I told them, “It’s water. I am the singer of the band about to play. We have to get onstage right now.” It was true. My vocal warm-up is timed exactly one hour before the show. It ends exactly one half hour before I am due to sing. This is what was taught to me in the Bel Canto Vocal Method by vocal coach extraordinaire Don Lawrence.

  I told the police officer again, “Please let us through right now . . . I have to get on the stage.” As the opening band, you cannot be late or go over time. The headliner, crew, and local unions are all depending on the opener to be onstage, and off, precisely on time as to not affect the headline set.

  The police officer said, “Yeah, sure. That’s not water!! That’s vodka!! That’s vodka in your hands, boy!!” Without even checking what was in the bottle, all of a sudden, without warning, the policeman reached into his utility belt and pulled out a stun gun. Something I had never even seen in person before.

  As I stood there in absolute disbelief, he jammed the stun gun, with as much force as he could muster, straight into my abdomen and pulled the trigger. The fans surrounding us let out a gasp of complete shock. Which was nothing compared to the electric shock that was coursing through my body. As I got zapped, down to the ground, in front of hundreds of fans, who were all paying to watch me sing. In about fifteen minutes.

  Even my security guard could not believe the situation. From my vantage point on the ground, poor Shat looked like he had actually shat his pants.

  The police all surrounded me, convinced that my bottle of Evian water was actually a bottle of Evian “vodka.” I was being electrocuted in front of my fans in the middle of the street for drinking water during my vocal warm-up. I couldn’t believe what was happening. The fans all yelled at the officers, “Stop it! You’re killing him! You’re killing Sebastian Bach!” I remember lying there on my back on the pavement hearing one fan specifically scream, “Quit shooting Sebastian! He is the singer of the band!”

  I saw the fans freaking out and literally rushing the cops, as they proceeded to stun me a few minutes before I was to sing onstage in front of the whole city. “You’re drinking vodka! You’re drinking vodka!” the police kept on repeating. Isn’t it ironic? Don’t you think? I have never got drunk before the show in my career. I cannot believe they were so quick to use a stun gun without even checking if I was in fact drinking vodka or not. Which I was not. I actually hate the taste of vodka.

  Bon Jovi’s security crew ran over to the scene and verified to the police that I was in fact the singer of the opening band. “Let them through. Let him up. He’s okay!” As the fans just stood there, still freaking out, I was helped up to my feet and escorted through the police, and into the backstage area. My head was in a daze from being stunned with the stun gun. I was trying to concentrate on my performance, which was going to happen very soon.

  But soon I was dealing with a burning cauldron of rage inside me, which was just starting to surface. When I get mad, or actually even when I get happy, I’m like the Incredible Hulk. I get excited or enraged and I literally feel like Bruce Banner turning into Ol’ Green Skin. Instead, it’s not gamma rays for me. This time, anyway, it was a stun gun. Same principle.

  As I entered my backstage dressing room, I was so pissed off at the cops that I was ready to let them know how I felt. Where it counted. On the stage. In front of their city. In front of their coworkers. In front of the very people who pay their paycheck. Their peers. Their kids. Their friends.

  My fans.

  At this stage of my career, I loved to do “raps” to get the crowd going. I was in my early twenties, full of piss and vinegar, among other more nefarious substances. My friend Jon Bon Jovi knew this about me. All of a sudden there was Jon, standing in the doorway of the backstage dressing room. Just me and him in the room. He looked at me very clearly, straight into my eyes, and said, in a very succinct way, “Sebastian. Don’t do it.”

  I knew what he was talking about. “Don’t do it, dude,” Jon said again. The room was quiet. I sat on the couch and held my head in my hands. I dropped my hands to my knees and shook my head. I said, “Fuck this, man! This is bullshit! How can they shoot me with a stun gun for drinking water??”

  Jon reiterated, “Don’t do it. The police are pissed off. They have told me that if you say anything, you will go to jail.” In the tradition of my father’s hero, Jim Morrison, I just thought about what garbage it was for a
cop to use a stun gun, when all I was trying to do is make my voice work, for the thousands of people who were paying money to come hear me sing. I looked at Jon. I really did appreciate the opportunity to tour with him that he was giving us. His guidance.

  I said, “Okay, I understand, man. You don’t want any trouble. You don’t want the opening act to cause a hassle. I totally get that. I will go do the show. Everything will be fine.” But the fact is, sometimes I am not in control. Of myself. Sometimes things happen to me, or because of me, that are out of my control. Maybe it’s that crazy whack-ass Bahama-mama voodoo shit. But I digress.

  We hit the stage. It was an outdoor show. The sky was overcast.

  We always went on around 7:00 p.m. or 7:30 p.m., so the sun was setting. There was a feeling of tension in the air. No doubt fueled by what had just happened between me and the local boys in blue. I remember looking at the crowd and just feeling a sense of a bad attitude. I sensed that the crowd felt this way, too. Was it all just in my head?

  I have been called a visceral performer. The first time I read that description, I had to look up what the word meant. Years later, one of my reviews of Jekyll & Hyde on Broadway would say, “Whatever Sebastian is feeling onstage, the crowd feels too.” It was the same on this night, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Decades before.

  As we got through the set, my anger only increased. I was feeling the inherent power of a general admission crowd pressed up against the stage. It started to rain. Rain, and sweat, that pressed the T-shirts the girls were wearing tightly against their teen tops. It was a sea of teenage Bon Jovi and Skid Row fans, teenage girls in wet T-shirts on the shoulders of their boyfriends, reaching off into the horizon, singing every word, with their fists in the air. As I strutted up and down the boards, in leather pants, with my shirt off, in high-heeled boots, like a heavy metal Peter Pan gone wild. But I have always felt more like Godzilla than Peter Pan.

  I noticed the heavy police presence on the sides of the stage. This only made me rock harder. I was rocking in defiance of their authority. Yes, they were police officers. But this was my stage. And nobody was ever going to tell me what to do on my fucking stage. Not the police. Not Bon Jovi. Not anybody. We got to the last song, “Youth Gone Wild.” I looked at the crowd. I looked at the police. Behind the police, I can see Jon Bon Jovi, his band, and his security team checking me out. Seeing what I would do.

  After “I Remember You,” I started into my rap, which prefaced “Youth Gone Wild.” I just decided to tell the crowd what had happened to me. That was all. That was enough. This is rock ’n’ roll.

  “You wanna know what the FUCK just happened to me, Johnstown, Pennsylvania???” Now, all the crowd of 20,000 scream back at my every nuance. My every inflection. My every word. I loved it. I love the power.

  Never fuck with the guy holding the microphone. “YEEEEAHHHHHHH” shout back the 20,000 or so in attendance.

  “Well, I was walking to the stage, and some fuckin’ boy in blue here”—as I pointed to the police who were now extremely agitated on the side of the stage—“decides to reach in and fuckin’ SHOOT me with a fuckin’ STUN gun!!! Right before the show, mothertruckers!!!”

  The crowd roars back in disbelief, and aggravation, towards the police on the side of the stage. The mood in the venue is becoming black. “Yeah, this motherfuckin’ boy in blue, decides to use the stun gun! On me! Right before the show!! What you think of that shit, Johnstown, Pennsylvania???”

  “Boooo,” the crowd moans.

  “And what is it that you want to say to these boys in blue, Johnstown, Pennsylvania???”

  “FUCK YOU!!!”

  I lead the crowd of 20,000 people in a chant of “FUCK YOU” aimed straight at the cops on the side of the stage. “Fuck You!!” We say it together again. “Fuck You!!” It was loud. It was dark. Simple. It was joyous. It was glorious.

  Then comes “Youth Gone Wild.” The crowd goes absolutely mental. No harm, no foul, I thought. It’s just a rock ’n’ roll concert, after all. Just words. I would soon find out that the local police felt differently.

  I walked off the stage, and the police immediately grabbed my arms and put them behind my back. Slapped on the handcuffs and wound ’em tight. I was led through the backstage area. I looked into Jon’s face as he shook his head in disappointment. I did feel bad for letting Jon down. But this wasn’t about him. It was about the power of saying what I wanted to say, in front of the people who were there to hear me say it. If there is an injustice done, I should be able to say it on the stage. I was brought straight to the Johnstown, Pennsylvania jail.

  The judge on duty that night was not impressed with me. “We don’t like your kind here, boy.” I can clearly remember him using those words. “We don’t like what you say. We don’t like what you look like. We don’t like what you dress like.” It was really like stories I had read about Jerry Lee Lewis, or Little Richard, or The Rolling Stones on tour in America in the ’60s. This was 1989, but I was still pretty much an alien to this judge in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. I was arrested that night. For inciting a riot. But at my new job?

  Just another day at the office.

  I noticed things began to subtly change as the weeks rolled into months on the road. The very first time that we outsold Bon Jovi in T-shirts at a show, there was a vibe in the air like we had done something wrong, like people were mad at us. Again, this was completely out of control. The band was taking off. Nobody, especially us, expected things to get as big as they did, as quick as they did.

  My swearing became an issue. One night we were summoned into Bon Jovi’s dressing room. Dave Bryan, the keyboard player, was mad. As was Jon. Dave explained to us that the parents in the crowd were mad that I was swearing onstage, and that I needed to stop. I was then summoned into Jon’s room, by myself, alone with him. He stared me down and said the words, “I’ll fucking own you.”

  No Need for Speed

  1989

  One night on the Bon Jovi Tour, Dave Bryan, the keyboard player, asked me if I wanted to do a bump. I was like, “Sure.” He cut out these tiny little lines. I was used to doing rails of coke the size of your forearm. But these were the smallest lines I had ever seen. I did one. Then another.

  It burned my nose. Way more than any coke I had ever done. I knew it wasn’t coke. I asked Bryan, “What is this shit, dude?” He said, “It’s speed, bro! Bikers do this shit!” I had never done speed before. And I would never want to do it again.

  As the drug began to course through my bloodstream, it hit me in the weirdest way. All I wanted to do was tell people how much I loved them. It doesn’t sound bad, does it? But after an hour or two of me repeating “I love you” in your face, over and over again, ad nauseam, you would realize, too, that speed is a drug that Sebastian Bach should definitely not take.

  I was once again in the bathroom in the front lounge of the bus. I had somehow cornered Snake in there while I was high on speed. And drunk on Jack at the same time. What a joy it must’ve been for all present.

  For hours, I would not let Snake out of the bathroom. I kept explaining to him, over and over, and over again, “You are my Keith, dude. I am your Mick. You’re my Keith! I’m your Mick. You don’t understand, though!!!! You’re my Keith. I am your MICK!!! We are meant to be together. I love you, man!!! You’re my brother!!!”

  At first, he just started laughing and agreed with me. Nodding his head, laughing, and saying, “I know, bro! I know, bro! I know, bro.” But he was not high on speed. I was.

  As we raced down the highway, Snake began to tire of my repetitive drug-induced rambling. He tried to get out of the bathroom, to no avail. I would just grab the door and slam it shut so he could not escape. I would not stop telling him that he was my Keith and I was his Mick. After a while it just became boring. But I wouldn’t stop. This is what speed does.

  A couple of hours later, about 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning, I made Kenny Barnes, our bus driver, pull over onto the side of the road. This was the days befor
e cell phones. I needed him to stop at a phone booth. And I needed him to do it now.

  The sun was just about to come up.

  I locked myself in the phone booth, as my teeth rattled from the amphetamine speeding through my body.

  I needed to call my dad. I didn’t care what time it was—I needed to call my dad and tell him I loved him, that is all I needed to do and I needed to do it right now and that was what I was going to do.

  I dialed the number to my dad in Canada. We were somewhere in the middle of America. The sun was starting to rise. My stepmother, Liz, answered the phone, out of a deep sleep. “Hello?” she said.

  “Hi Liz!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It’s Sebastian!!!!!!!! Is Dad there?”

  Silence on the other end of the line. Then Liz moans into the phone, “It’s five in the morning. Oh my God, don’t you know we are sleeping right now?”

  “Please put Dad on the line I have to talk to him it’s extremely important!” At least it was to me.

  “Hey Dad! It’s Bass. How are you doing, dude?”

  Dad woke himself up from his sleep, and at first was excited to hear his son on the other end of the line. “Hey Bass! How are you doing? How’s it going out there on the road, son?”

  I addressed my dad in the same way I had cornered Snake in the bathroom earlier, for hours. Like a drug-crazed, rabid wolf. Who loves his dad. A lot. And he better let me tell him all about it.

  “But you don’t understand, Dad. I love you, man. I love you so much. I miss you and I love you and I really want you to know that I love you. You’re my dad, man.”

  Dad put his hand over the phone and turned to his wife Liz, with pride. “He’s just calling me to tell me he loves me, honey. He really loves me.”