18 and Life on Skid Row

by Sebastian Bach

  Courtesy of Mark Weiss.

  I told this story to Dee Snider once. He said, “Well, Sebastian, that’s awesome. On 9/11 you took your car and drove it straight from the World Trade Center site, right to the Flight 93 crash site. Way to go! Some pretty good family planning there, dude!!”

  I laughed when I realized this.

  14

  JESUS CHRIST:

  OH THE HORROR

  2001

  Let’s Do the Time Warp, Again

  New Jersey/New York City

  It was about a week after 9/11 that I was on the Jersey shore, drinking more Molson Ice. With my toes in the sand at Donovan’s Reef, my favorite haunt near my New Jersey home. It was my favorite place to hang out because they would actually let you drink beer and swim in the ocean at the same time. Right in front of their bar, exclusively. A unique feature of this fine establishment. One that I utilized with great frequency.

  Barbara Skydel called on the phone.

  “Sebastian. Broadway is in deep, deep trouble. Everybody is scared to come to a Broadway show. The bridge-and-tunnel crowd is not coming to Broadway because everybody’s scared of the bridges and tunnels blowing up. They have reached out to artists that have been successful in past shows. The Rocky Horror Show wants you to come in. After Joan Jett. They want you be the next rocker in the show.”

  There was only one problem. As much as I enjoyed Broadway, the reason I believed that Jekyll & Hyde: The Musical was so successful, was due to the role itself. It really felt like I was living my life in a more exaggerated way on the Broadway stage during the Jekyll & Hyde production.

  The Rocky Horror Show? Ummmmm, not so much.

  I had seen the movie, and enjoyed it. The play had wanted me to play the lead role of Frank N. Furtur. But my singing voice is in a much higher register than the main song from that character, “Sweet Transvestite.” I really loved this song. But this production, unlike Jekyll & Hyde, was not willing to change the keys in order to suit my vocal range. There was one song in the play, however, that was in my vocal register. The character Riff Raff, originated by the show’s creator, Richard O’Brien, sang the song “Time Warp.” This was the role I felt I could pull off.

  This was a song right in my vocal range. So, Riff Raff I was.

  I have never been a fan so much of straight-up comedy mixed with rock ’n’ roll. Other than This Is Spinal Tap, I really don’t enjoy “comedy bands” whose main purpose is to make you laugh. If this means maybe I’m from another time, so be it. I like my performers to hit the stage serious. As a heart attack. David Lee Roth was funny as hell onstage. Dee Snider would make me laugh so hard I got tears in my eyes. Ted Nugent could cause such fits of hilarity my cheeks would hurt from smiling too hard. But all these dudes were serious about their humor. And cool. Diamond David Lee Roth never made fun of rock ’n’ roll. He embodied the talent, dedication, and spirit of being the best you can be on a rock ’n’ roll stage. Jekyll & Hyde was that for me on Broadway. I wasn’t really looking forward to going on stage eight times a week trying to make people laugh.

  “Sebastian. I want you to do the show. But Riff Raff really only sings one song per night.”

  This was another reason I wasn’t excited to do the play. For all the effort it took, to get psyched up to do a show eight times a week? Doing only one song per show seemed like a lot of effort for not much payoff. For myself. And my fans.

  Barbara presented me with the offer. I said, “You know what? I really don’t want to do this play. I’m gonna tell them, ‘No.’ ” But then I thought about it. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful to the Broadway community itself. After all, actors would give anything to be offered the roles I was being asked to do. So I came up with a plan. I thought this was a surefire way of getting out of doing the play.

  I told Barbara that I would do the play, if they would double the offer they have made, to do the show. Surely they wouldn’t, no questions asked.

  Barbara was a little pissed off, but said, “Okay Sebastian, I’ll let them know. You have a great day at the beach.”

  She called back about a half hour later.

  “Well, I can’t believe this. Guess what? They just doubled the offer. You will now be appearing in The Rocky Horror Show on Broadway.”

  Dammit, I thought. Fucking right on! another part of my brain thought, at the same time.

  This was the first time I can remember saying flat-out “No” to an offer someone had made me. I was always so excited just to sing, just to be onstage. This was a good example of learning that saying “no,” first, is usually a great business tactic. One that my future manager Rick Sales, in years to come, would really illustrate for me. In many instances.

  I learned really quick that no two Broadway productions are the same. The experience of doing Jekyll & Hyde: The Musical was completely different than doing The Rocky Horror Show on Broadway. I had some fun doing The Rocky Horror Show, worked with some very talented people. But it had none of the gravitas, or personal meaning, that I had experienced in the previous production.

  Things were getting seriously worse with my dad around this time. A constant presence, at Jekyll & Hyde, only a year before, I fully expected dear old Dad to be at my debut Rocky Horror Show. When he couldn’t make it, incredibly to me now, I felt mad. I could not process the seriousness, or the simple fact, that my dad was dying. I let fantasy take over from reality because it felt much better that way.

  I didn’t want my dad to die.

  My stepmother Liz and I talked on the phone.

  “What do you mean he’s not coming? He seriously is not coming to my Broadway show? You guys are not coming down?”

  “Dearie.” As she used to call me. “Believe me, we would love nothing better in the world, than to come down to see your Broadway show right now.”

  It was starting to sink in. Dad’s days were getting numbered.

  Aunt Janine and Uncle Bob came and saw the show near the start of the run. I bitched and moaned after the performance, that my dad wasn’t coming to see me. My uncle Bob just sat there, quietly shaking his head. Aunt Janine, a nurse, said this to me: “Sebastian, I don’t think you realize how sick your dad really is.” That shut me up quick. And made me think. If Dad wasn’t even coming to see me on Broadway, this was way more serious than I ever even allowed myself to realize.

  One of my best friends during The Rocky Horror Show was Matthew Morrison. The actor who went on to star in the TV show Glee was part of the cast of Rocky Horror when I was in the show. He was more stocky, more muscular, with more curly locks of hair than the Matthew Morrison I see on TV today. He was a super cool guy. We had a great time onstage and we hung out offstage as well.

  Working with Daphne Rubin-Vega, Terrence Mann, Sally Jessy Raphael, Dick Cavett, Penn & Teller, and others in The Rocky Horror Show on Broadway showed more to me about stagecraft. Doing the show eight times a week for three months, I never missed a gig.

  I truly felt at home on the stage.

  Forever Wild

  Right around this time, after Rocky Horror, I was given my own television show on VH1. Forever Wild was an hour-long heavy metal rock show that played every Friday night. We filmed ten or eleven episodes, I think. It was a completely crazy show. I got a lot of vintage videos played, which made me very happy. We shot a bunch of skits. Some better than others. But all of this came at a challenging time for me personally. My dad was in his dying days, and it was a challenge to be happy and crazy and wild all the time on TV when I was filled with anything but that, deep inside.

  As they say, the show must go on.

  Each week we would have a special guest and shoot some crazy segments with them. Our guests included Rob Halford, Slash, Vince Neil, Ted Nugent. We had an episode near the end of the series scheduled with Gene Simmons in Las Vegas. During this particular episode, I was scheduled to jump out of a flying plane and parachute down to the earth below while announcing the next Nickelback video coming up after the commercial break.
They told me the news for this while I was in Peterborough, spending time at Dad’s house, watching him die of leukemia and bone marrow cancer. I was in Dad’s living room after spending all day with him. VH1 told me they had this episode set up, but they were not going to do it. They were compassionate and knew I couldn’t leave my family at this time. I tried to keep a brave face on. Being the KISS fan that I am, I was very excited to shoot a television show with Gene. But I could not deny what Greg, the producer, was saying to me over the telephone line. I was in no emotional shape to jump out of a plane, or even shoot the show that week. It was impossible for me to argue otherwise.

  One of the last episodes of Forever Wild was with Vince Neil and Tommy Lee, down in Florida. Other guests on this episode included Meatloaf and Alice Cooper. I was drinking heavily at the time to blot out my family situation. This worked out great shooting a television show with Vince Neil.

  We stayed at the golf resort for a couple days or so, and shot the show. Vince would call my hotel room and simply bark, like a dog. He would not say a word. I would check my voicemail in my hotel room, and just hear, “Ruff.” “Ruff, ruff, howwwwlll” would be my sign to come out, find Vince, and get into some serious drinking.

  One morning at the golf course, on a day off from shooting, the phone rang. Early.

  “Ruff, ruff, ruff. Hey, you got any pot?” Vince was on the line, barking like a dog.

  Yeah, of course I did.

  “Because I know someone who wants some. Judd Nelson.” He was talking about Judd Nelson the actor, who was looking for some weed. So Vince called me. “Hey dude, we’re down at the pool. Come on down. We got beers.” It was 9:45 in the morning.

  I will always be a huge Mötley Crüe fan. Recently, Nikki Sixx and myself disagreed over whether I was asked to join Mötley Crüe back in 1991. No matter if Nikki is mad at me or not, I will always love the band Mötley Crüe. I was excited to hear Vince bark like a dog on my voicemail. I ran down to the pool with my weed for Judd Nelson.

  When I got to the pool, Vince had already started. There was a full case of ice-cold Heinekens in between my chaise lounge and his. This is going to be a fun day. Party with the Crüe! I thought to myself. I cracked open a Heineken and began to get shit-faced with my hero, who was sitting next to me.

  Me and Vince sat next to the pool drinking beers and getting a tan. We went out for dinner at the Fontainebleau, took a limo. By this time we’ve been drinking for hours. We sang along to Scorpions and Journey songs on the radio at the top of our lungs, with our buddy Bob Hewko. By the time he got to the Fontainebleau, we were pretty fucked up.

  Anybody that has ever hung out with Vince will tell you that he is the nicest guy when he’s not too drunk. Funny and fun to be around. But then, he has just one too many, and his personality changes, just like Mr. Hyde. This was one of those times.

  Vince was making fun of me because I had done an episode of Forever Wild where I had my dog on it.

  “Hey dude!! Did you interview your dog? That was heavy!!!! What the fuck, man??!?! You know what to do!!! You know what, dude? You DID interview your dog!! Maybe I will have to punch you out after all!!!” And he laughs.

  Vince thinks it’s funny to punch people out.

  “Fuck yoooooooouuuuu!!!! Shout at the devil!!!!” Like that.

  We got into a limousine and went to a VH1 party. But since we had started drinking at 9:00 a.m., we were kind of early for the opening of this particular event. We stumbled out of the limo. Vince pounded on the door of the venue. The woman handling the guest list was none other than Darius Rucker’s wife. She informed us that we were early for the event and it wasn’t set up yet. They were still setting up the tables. The venue wasn’t even open yet. We were that early. Vince absolutely freaked out, and must not have known who she was. “Fuck you!!!! FUCK YOU!!!! What the fuck? We’re coming in RIGHT fucking now!!!!” She would not listen, because there was nowhere set up for us to hang out. Vince let her have it as hard as he could. “Fuck you and you know what?? Fuck VH1! Fuck YOU, VH1!!!!!”

  No matter how loud Vince would scream “Fuck you,” they would not let us into this place. So I went back in the limousine to smoke a joint. Vince sat by himself on the curb in front of the venue. Talking to himself, over and over, repeating the words “Fuck VH1. Fuck you, VH1! Fuck you, VH1, anyhow!” he said, to nobody at all. It was hilarious.

  Then we split.

  We got back to the hotel and there was a party in the resort bar. Alice Cooper was there. Sober. We were there. Not.

  Bad look! It’s Alice Cooper. Help.

  “Hi, Alice!!” I slurred my words.

  Now, Alice can be the nicest guy in the whole world. But I will never forget the look he gave me and Vince right then and there. A look of absolute disgust. Condemnation. “Hey! How are you doing?” Alice looked at us and turned away. But in that millisecond, he let me know how grossed out he was by how drunk off our asses we were. I don’t think Vince even realized, or cared. “Right on, dude!” We just kept on drinking.

  I flew home the next day. Was totally furious at my ex-wife. She had been completely pissed off at me the whole time I was in Florida with Mötley Crüe. She was a huge Mötley Crüe fan and thought I was out drinking and fucking chicks with the Crüe. Yes, I was completely drunk the whole time. But I did not fuck any chicks. I came home to her, and her alone. We were fighting so much about this trip that I did not even want to go home when I got back to Newark. I called my wife on the limo ride home. “So what do you want to fucking fight? Or what?”

  “Fuck you,” was her answer. So I told the limo driver, “Fuck this. Let’s go to Manhattan.” I checked myself into a suite and called out some drinking buddies. To continue drinking.

  [[-continue this story? i end up in jail.]]

  Jesus Christ Superstar

  It was after Forever Wild when I got the call from my stepmother.

  “You’re going to have to stop what you’re doing and come up and say goodbye to your father. It’s time.”

  None of us wanted to believe it. Our father seemed invincible to us growing up. Omnipresent. All-powerful. Imagining life without him was unfathomable to all eight of us children. I drove up to Peterborough with my family from New Jersey. It was obvious. It was time to say goodbye.

  Seeing him in the hospital in the last days of his life was like a horror movie. He had lost the function of speech, yet did not realize this. So he would hold his hands out and try to tell us things that were obviously very, very important to him. But since he could not speak, all that came out of his mouth was gibberish. It was heartbreaking, and scary at the same time.

  Dad died on August 28, 2002. I was set to start in the leading role as Jesus Christ Superstar in October 2002. Rehearsals started in September. This left me with around two weeks to mourn the death of my father. It also gave me a lot to sing about.

  Once again, singing became my refuge. My solace. As it had always been.

  The role of Jesus Christ Superstar is about Jesus singing to his father in heaven. He becomes wildly popular, and then is brought down to Earth and massacred on the cross as he pleads to his father in the sky to save him. The inverse of the Jekyll & Hyde plot. And the only possible part I could have played, only days after my own father’s demise.

  One thing certainly happened during the course of my run in Jesus Christ Superstar: I was reacquainted with the high range of my voice. During the mid-1990s, I felt like people didn’t necessarily want to hear the clean, high tenor tone that I sang in. The style in the mid-’90s was all grunge, screaming, shouting. Screamo was actually a musical term at one point. I felt silly, in the mid-1990s, trying to sing well. The lone exception being Jeff Buckley, on his album Grace, I didn’t feel like anybody else was even trying to sing good.

  Jesus Christ Superstar changed all that. I learned the original score, sung by Ian Gillan of Deep Purple, on the original album by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. Then, I learned the movie, featuring Ted Neeley as Jesus, who hit
some unbelievably high Rob Halford–esque type screams during his run in the show. I had not hit notes this high in years. I had not even tried to. But now I was forced to, learning the part of Jesus.

  It was really, really fun for me to scream properly once again. Not just yell as hard as I could, from the throat, like a grunge singer. To place a note, properly, on my vocal palate. Hit the note clean, and then put in a little dirty at the end after the vibrato kicks in. Place it correctly, and nail it. I started warming up again to Journey. Judas Priest. After a couple weeks, I could scream the notes as best I could. We did eight shows a week. I lasted exactly six months in the play. I did not miss one single performance.

  Also in the play, as in the original 1973 movie, as Judas, was the incomparable Mr. Carl Anderson.

  Carl was the type of singer I had never seen nor heard the likes of before. Carl Anderson, in one word, was all about one thing: soul. Carl sang with such heart and soul that he marveled anyone whoever had the pleasure of hearing him sing. His energy was completely electric. I have always been told that I have a lot of energy onstage. It took all of my thirty-two-year-old energy to keep up with Carl Anderson’s fifty-six-year-old energy. The man hit stage with everything he got. Every show. He took all of us to school.

  Carl could, at times, have a giant-sized ego to match his voice and presence. That is what it takes to be successful as a singer on a stage. Carl and I had what is known as a favored nations contract. Whatever I got, he got, and vice versa. I was coming into the play after successful runs in Jekyll & Hyde and The Rocky Horror Show.