18 and Life on Skid Row

by Sebastian Bach

  “Hey babe! I’m home!”

  “Where’s the car, honey?”

  “Oh, it’s out front, in the snow. I smashed it!”

  My wife went out and looked into the front yard. There was the Jaguar. Wrecked. Smoking. Broken. In the snow. In the woods.

  But, we have got a great song out of this. Me and The Ace. So, destroying my Jaguar really didn’t matter to me. I got to make a song with my hero. And that’s what I had always intended to do.

  1993–1997

  The time after my dismissal from Skid Row was fraught with disappointment. Sadness. Pain. An extreme sense of loss. An unbelievable amount of stress. For the future. For my family. Guilt. For letting down millions of fans. For letting down ourselves. I literally had no idea what to do when I got kicked out of the band that we had taken over the world with.

  Nobody really understands why we broke up. Anyone you ask, band members included, gives a wildly different and always extremely vague account of what they think happened back in 1996. At the time of this writing, we’re talking twenty years ago. Or should I say, not talking. It’s all a bit hazy, talking about something that happened two decades ago. Events that happened that long ago are all but meaningless today. I will try to explain it from my side as best as I can. It still makes no sense to me.

  My whole frustration with the breakup of Skid Row really boils down to the fact of letting down all of our fans. All those who supported us. Who made our dreams come true. Who paid for our family’s hospital bills, our children to go to school. Everything that the five members of Skid Row ever got was because of the fans. Nobody else. Letting them down is the ultimate dream killer of all. How can it be? A whole generation related to our music. “Hey! We were just joking!”? This will haunt me till the day I die.

  Decades later, it’s amazing to realize what success can do to people. In the case of Skid Row, our success tended to isolate us from each other. When we first started the band, I lived at Rachel’s house. We were close friends for all those years. Sharing dinner together. Weddings. With our families. Dave “the Snake” is the godfather of my first child. It has to be said that, the first couple of years after the breakup, “the Snake” would continue to send his godson birthday cards. A very religious guy, Snake may or may not have been my best friend in the band. I was impressed that he would try and honor his role as godfather. After a couple years these cards stopped as well.

  Any contact I have had with him since then has been merely by chance.

  All of the friendship, and most of the good memories, pretty much are all based on the time before we made it. Once we all started making money, the first thing each of us did was buy a big huge house of our own. Although we were only twenty minutes or so from one another, we might as well have lived on opposite sides of the world. I hardly ever saw those guys after we all bought our own homes. Before we had success, we were undeniably best friends. Once we each got our own places, the walls of our homes became walls in between one another.

  We came off the road. Took a couple months off. Then, missing my friends, I would want to hang out again. Calling them, wanting to write songs, get together, just to see each other. It rarely happened. I never understood why.

  I guess I should’ve taken it as a sign, when on the Slave to the Grind tour with Pantera, that the band decided that I would have my own bus. With my security guard “Big Val” Bichekas, I spent much of the Slave tour alone, while the rest of the band hung out and whooped it up on their bus together. Phil Anselmo would ride with me sometimes, but for much of that tour, I was pretty much alone or riding with a couple crew members. Not my own band.

  Although we were not getting along as good as we used to, we really did still enjoy making music together. After this latest tour ended in Australia in January 1993, it would be well over a year before we would even start to talk about making new music again.

  We entered the studio in 1994 for what would be our last album, sUBHUMAN rACE. Recorded in Vancouver, with Bob Rock in the producer’s chair and Randy Staub at the engineer’s helm, there are some great songs on this record. Lauded with much frequency, and passion, by Eddie Trunk on That Metal Show, sUBHUMAN rACE remains a fan favorite. However, to my ears, although I do enjoy some of the songs on the record, it doesn’t sound as “Skid Row” to me as it could have. A lot of the production and musical choices on this record sound more like decisions made by Bob Rock, not Skid Row. “My Enemy,” “Beat Yourself Blind,” and the ballad “Breakin’ Down” I think are very good representations of the band. “Breakin’ Down” ended up as the theme song to the Christopher Walken movie The Prophecy. I still perform this song live from time to time, to this day.

  It was on the sUBHUMAN rACE 1995 sUBHUMAN bEINGS oN tOUR where we noticed a decline in the popularity of the band. After an extremely successful tour of Europe and Japan, we even made it to Seoul, Korea, to play for the first time ever. By the time we got to Korea, we had spent three weeks touring just in Japan, an unusually long tour for any Western group. From Narita, we headed straight to Taipei, Taiwan, then to Bangkok, Thailand, and lastly our Headline Show in Seoul. We toured this area in the monsoon season. After all this time in the rain, I was being seriously seasonally affected by the gray skies and no sun for a month long in Asia. On the flight to Korea, I remember the airplane briefly breaking through the clouds in the sky. Like a man starving for water, I placed my face up against the window of the airplane. Felt the sun’s rays hit my skin for the first time in a month. The vitamin D soaking into my skin felt like the most powerful drug I had ever taken. I longed to be sitting outside in the sun, somewhere, anywhere, instead of flying to yet another foreign country in the rain.

  We landed the plane, got into the limo, and went straight to the ubiquitous lonely hotel room in a foreign country where none of us spoke the language.

  God, I miss my family.

  The morning after we get there, I am recuperating from the travel all day before, which we had spent totally drunk, flying, and then in the hotel lobby when we arrived. My sleep is so completely fucked from all the touring, by this time, that just falling asleep, in and of itself, is a miracle. It was on this tour where I first encountered problems sleeping. Mostly due to my father being diagnosed with leukemia and bone marrow cancer. I also could not deny another dying member of my family: Skid Row was on life support as much as anyone with a terminal diagnosis. No wonder I couldn’t sleep.

  Poor Sandy Rizzo at McGhee Entertainment. The Korea trip was her first on the road with us. Very few bands had played in Korea in 1995 and it was quite groundbreaking for the music industry to make inroads into the Korean market. Doc McGhee sent Sandy over to coordinate the press and general overall proceedings.

  After checking into the hotel room, I flick on the TV in an attempt to wind down. Of course there is no English television in Seoul, Korea, in 1995. The Internet was not available for the public. And no one had cell phones. Calling home, from a hotel room in Korea, to New Jersey, would cost thousands of dollars. So I sit, drink beer, and stare at the walls. Daydream of being on a beach somewhere.

  Morning happens. No sleep at all.

  Knock at the door. Sandy Rizzo from Management.

  “Time to go to the press conference!”

  There’s only one problem.

  I am so tired I cannot form a sentence.

  I try to explain this to Sandy. From behind a closed hotel room door.

  “But, Sandy! You don’t understand! I haven’t slept in days! I can’t speak!!”

  “Sebastian, you have to come. It will be a serious loss of face if you don’t. They take this shit very seriously here in Korea!! We have to save face, go down to the lobby right now, and do the press conference.”

  “Okay. So should I go like this???”

  I swing the door open.

  Naked as the day I was born, I look at her, as if to emphasize my point.

  “There is no FUCKING WAY I am going downstairs right now!! I am FUCKED UP!! I
have no clothes on! I can’t sleep!! I’m drunk!” Looking me up and down, in a state of shock, Sandy glances over her shoulder at the housekeeping staff and other hotel guests, who are straining to see what all the commotion was about. I back into my room. She has nothing more to say.

  I slam the door. Crack open another Budweiser from the minibar. Suck it back. Finally, I go to sleep.

  Sorry, Korea. Dennis Rodman I’m not.

  Returning back to America, in 1995, it was quite evident to see. Heavy metal, or hard rock, whatever you want to call us, was no longer in fashion like it was on our previous tours. We attempted to headline the sUBHUMAN bEINGS oN tOUR in America, with disastrous results. Pulling into four-thousand-seat arenas, in the Midwest, to play for less than a thousand people. Something that no band ever wants to see happen.

  We did have some great shows on this tour. The Palladium in Hollywood was a memorable show. But we all knew the truth. We were on the way down. Not on the way up. And that was hard to take.

  All of this just made us more distant. When we went to play the Monsters of Rock Festival, in Brazil, in 1996, none of us knew that this was going to be our last-ever show. We had no idea. Just another show for us at the time, we were put on a bill with thrash metal bands, such as Motörhead, King Diamond, Biohazard, Anthrax, Mercyful Fate, and Iron Maiden. The extreme Brazilian metal crowd did not want to see Skid Row alongside these other, heavier bands. We went out and played to an abysmal reception in São Paulo, Brazil. Dodging rocks, spit, flying bottles of piss, this tour would be the last Skid Row would ever play.

  We have never played again.

  People ask me all the time, why we don’t have a reunion? The press constantly writes about this. No one understands why we are not touring together, this summer, or right this very second. The real reason we are not together, in my mind, is publishing royalties. Publishing is where the real money is in music, and publishing royalties go to a song’s writers. But when I was singing the first album, and rewriting the melodies to suit my vocal range, I did not realize that I should have been asking for co-writer credits on all these songs that would sell so many copies worldwide. I did not understand the monetary implications of getting my name on a song, as much as the other, older guys in the band. This is why it is always such a fight in the industry to get credit. At the time of recording my first Skid Row album, I was nineteen or twenty years old. Never in a million years could anyone foresee 10 million people buying the first Skid Row album. But, they did. My name is not on some of the songs where I, in fact, contributed greatly to the vocal melody of the song. On any given Skid Row song that goes up into the higher vocal register, there is one person who thinks of singing those notes. That person is Sebastian Bach. You’ll know what I mean when you listen to me sing these lines in “18 and Life”:

  Fingers to the bone

  . . .

  Child blew a child away

  And these from “I Remember You”:

  Oh my darling, I love you

  . . .

  Through every endless day

  I am not named as a writer on either of those songs (two of our biggest hits), but these screaming parts of the melodies are what many fans tell me they actually enjoy most. The other guys might disagree that I deserved an official writing credit because they wrote the original versions before I joined the band.

  The final contact the five of us had involved the 1996 KISS Reunion. This was an incredible time for any KISS fan. The reunion of our favorite band!!!

  Snake and I went to a bunch of the shows, including New York City, at Madison Square Garden. After one of those shows, Snake, myself, and our women went to a local bar. On the cab ride over, Snake and I got into quite the verbal brawl, which carried into the bar itself. I was pissed off that he wouldn’t return my phone calls. We never hung out. We never rehearsed. We never wrote songs together anymore. I asked him why.

  “What is taking so long?”

  “Well, you don’t have to write the songs!!!”

  Incredulous, I reminded him that both the albums Slave to the Grind and sUBHUMAN rACE had no less than five songs, each album, that I had co-writes on. There was no reason to change things at this point. But it felt like these guys just would not let me into their club anymore. I still do not understand why some of them personally have a problem with me. I can’t help but think there was jealousy over the attention I had received, and this is what ultimately came between us as people, and altered our friendships.

  The thing that hurt was that I never asked for any more attention than the other guys. I never asked to be treated different than any of them. The individual attention I received was not of my own design. Fame is uncontrollable. You either have fame or you do not. It is impossible to control once you attain the level of fame Skid Row achieved.

  Rachel had started a “side project,” another band, featuring members of our road crew. Instead of recording and playing with Skid Row.

  We were asked to open up the KISS Reunion show, on New Year’s Eve 1996/1997, at the Meadowlands Arena in New Jersey. Our hometown jam. I couldn’t believe that we had the chance to open up for my favorite band. In our hometown!! On New Year’s Eve!!

  Alas, this was not to be.

  I was told that Rachel was “busy with his side project” and that this would make it “impossible for Skid Row to play with KISS on New Year’s Eve in New Jersey.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  Are you fucking kidding me? Really?

  Obviously, I freaked out. What the hell would you do?

  I was then told that Rachel was so mad at me that this was merely “the last straw.” Of what, I did not know.

  Our fans loved us. I didn’t see what was evidently going wrong. Everybody goes through life’s ups and downs. Why should we be any different?

  “Hi.”

  I called up Snake. As usual, got no answer. Although at this point I was completely used to nobody in the band accepting my calls, it still really pissed me off.

  “I can’t believe you would allow this to happen,” I said to no one, talking into a machine that cannot speak back to me. My anger is building.

  “This is complete BULLSHIT. How in the FUCK can we turn down opening up for KISS??? ON THE REUNION TOUR??? In New FUCKING JERSEY???”

  I left a nasty message on his answering machine. What do these people expect? I voiced my extreme displeasure over the situation.

  How could we as a band turn this down? Obviously we were not thinking of what was best for Skid Row, or the fans, in any way. I found this to be unacceptable.

  After I left this message on Snake’s phone, he called me back and left a message for me.

  “Hey! Nice message you left on my phone. You don’t have a guitar player anymore.” Since Snake and Rachel trademarked the name of the band only to the two of them, this meant I was no longer a member of Skid Row if they didn’t want me to be.

  This was Snake’s way of kicking me out of the band.

  Skid Row breaks up because KISS asks us to play a show? Be careful what you wish for.

  Things were worse than ever.

  What in the fuck am I gonna do now?

  1997

  Phone rings. It’s Ace Frehley.

  KISS has now reunited. It’s the most incredible rock ’n’ roll happening of the century. All Original Four Members. Full makeup. Costumes. Blood. The fire-spitting demons of rock, returning from decades of not rocking. For my buddy The Ace, this was so incredible. We were so happy for him. His solo career was cool, but there was nothing like reuniting the original KISS. It was so surreal to see. With their makeup on, putting all that on their faces, they were the definition of timeless. No band, no entertainer, could have ever been more timeless. All wrinkles, any signs of old age, were impossible to see under layers of clown paint, silver glitter, stars, and whiskers. It was crazy when they came back. Like being transported through time. For us fans, too.

  It came to pass that the inevitable K
ISS reunion record would end up being titled Psycho Circus. The band headed up to Vancouver, to follow the lead of Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, Mötley Crüe, Metallica, and yes, even us goofs in Skid Row before them. They made the album with Bruce Fairbairn, the go-to producer in the go-to studio for hard rock hits. This would turn out to be one of Bruce’s last-ever records.

  Ring. “Sebastian!! It’s The Ace!” I was excited to hear from him. It had been a while.

  “Are you sitting down, man?????” I was now. “Okay, well, you know we’ve been working on the new KISS album.”

  Of course I knew that. I was as die-hard as they come.

  “Well, we just got through playing all the songs for Bruce Fairbairn. And I got just one thing to tell you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re on the new KISS record!!!!!!!”

  Excuse me?

  Think I might have dropped the phone. This was incredible news, for sure. What was he talking about?

  “We played all our demos for Bruce. Do you remember that song we wrote in my basement? ‘You Make It Hard’? ‘For Me’? Bruce loves it. It’s going on the new KISS record.” I couldn’t believe my ears. Yes, it was a cool track. But to be on the KISS Reunion album? It was too insane to be possible. The last I had heard about the song was when I recorded with Anton Fig for his solo record. Anton said, “Hey Sebastian! Your song that you wrote with Ace? We recorded it!! And it’s amazing!! Did you hear it??” No, I had never heard it. I did not even know it was being recorded.

  As it turned out, the song never made the KISS record. Never happened. I got a story later on, from someone at Electric Lady Studios in New York City, that an engineer on the KISS record thought it was horrible, so it didn’t make it. The title, from one of Ace’s old books, was probably shown to Gene and Paul before. I guess they couldn’t have liked it that much either. In any case, our song did not end up making the KISS reunion record. But Ace was right. It would, eventually, make it on to a record.