DEDICATION
To my Mom Kathleen
for Inspiring me to Live
To my Wife Suzanne
for Inspiring me to Love
To all my Kids
for Inspiring me to Laugh
To Rick & his Team
for Inspiring me to Rule
To Dad
for Inspiring me to Dare
To Dream
CONTENTS
DEDICATION
PROLOGUE: YOUTH GONE WILD
1 LET’S BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING
2 GROWING UP SEBASTIAN
- Bach in America: Pancratius on Tour
- Lifelong Obsessions
- Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk
- “Gloria In Excelsis Deo”: I Fell in Love with Singing at an Early Age
- Breaking Up Is Hard to Do
- The Demons of Rock
- Winning a Ticket to the Rock ’n’ Roll Lottery
- Mens Sana in Corpore Insane-O
- Moons Over My Hammy: Suspended Animation
3 BACH FORMATIONS
- Acid, Arcades, and Aerosmith
- I Lost My Virginity at the Age of Thirteen
4 FROM PARK AVENUE TO SKID ROW
5 PRETTY BAD BOYS
- Bon Jovi/Skid Row Tour 1989: Young, Dumb, and Fulla Cum
- No Need for Speed
- No Rings, No Strings
- End-of-Tour High Jinx: Sinister Turn
6 ROCK IT TO RUSSIA
- Bach in the USSR
- Make A Different Drink Foundation
- Let the Games Begin
7 FEELGOOD, AND THEN FEEL BETTER
- No Milk and Cookie Jokes
- Even in Rock Circles, Considered Crude and Disgusting
- Weird Dreams
8 BACH THIS WAY
- Watch Out for the AeroCops
- Pretenders to Mah Throne
- Let the Mayhem Begin
9 BUNCH OF BOOZE, MOUNTAIN OF BLOW, QUAALUDES, AND TENNIS: MY TIME WITH METALLICA
- Never Had Nothing to Do
10 LOSE YOUR ILLUSION!
- Wine, Women, Song, and Duct Tape
11 EVERYBODY IS MAD AT ME. ALL OF THE TIME.
- I Like to Run
- Saturday Night Live 1991: Heavy Metal ABCs
- My Voice Has a Life All Its Own
- Pantera
- Beware the Satanic Death Metal Telemarketer
- What the Fuck’s a Shortfall?
12 JUST JOKIN’: END OF THE ROW
- Dude, Where’s My Car?
- Under Attack: “You Don’t Have a Band Anymore”
- One Shout Too Many Devils
- Only the Nose Knows
13 FROM SKID ROW TO SAVILE ROW: BACH ON BROADWAY
- Escape from New York
14 JESUS CHRIST: OH THE HORROR
- Let’s Do the Time Warp, Again
- Forever Wild
- Jesus Christ Superstar
- Road Warp
- Gilmore Girls
- SuperGroup. Well, It’s a Group . . .
- Celebrity Fat Club
- Trailer Park Boys
15 BACH IN THE SADDLE
- The Return of the Redheaded Stranger
- Making Metal Dreams Come True
- Not an Anomaly
- I Lost My Home in a Fucking Hurricane
- Biblical in Proportions
- Adventures in Couch Surfing
16 THE LAST FRONTIER
- Bach to the Future: Thank My Lucky Stars
- You Are the Rock Star
- Peace Amongst the Chaos
EPILOGUE: HEY DUDE? WHEN ARE YOU GETTING THE BAND BACK TOGETHER?
SELECTED BACHOGRAPHY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PHOTO SECTION
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PHOTO CREDITS
CREDITS
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
PROLOGUE
YOUTH GONE WILD
December 27, 1989
Springfield, Massachusetts
I touch my fingers to my lips. I stand. Bathed in sweat. In the center of the stage. The taste is salty to the tongue. I look at the ground.
I see a glass bottle under my gaze. Lying askew atop the metal grid. I feel the red liquid all over my hand. I touch the crimson substance to my mouth.
Why is there red liquid all over me?
I wipe my brow. I discover that my face is completely covered in what I am assuming is tomato juice.
Why would somebody throw a glass bottle of tomato juice at me while I’m on stage?
To my shock, horror, and amazement, my face is not covered in tomato juice. My face is completely covered in my own blood. In front of 20,000 people. Opening up for my heroes, Aerosmith.
I am standing on stage in front of a packed arena with my face and hands covered in my own blood.
I see red. Not from the blood in my eyes, but from the anger in my heart.
General admission crowds are by nature, crazy.
When there are no chairs at a concert, and thousands of people crush together into one sweaty, rocking crowd, things can get out of control all too easily. I look into the seething mass of highly charged rock ’n’ rollers on the arena floor in front of me. I start to utter the infamous rap, as viewed millions of times now on YouTube.
“Who in the fuck threw that?”
About ten guys circle around one guy. They’re all pointing at him. They’re all shouting at me.
“It was him, it was him!!”
“Was it you, cocksucker?”
The man in the middle of the other ten says nothing. He looks straight at me, and extends his middle finger, in the gesture commonly known as “Fuck You.”
What happens next is the first chink in the armor. Of Skid Row. Of stardom. This is the exact moment when my childhood dream shows the first sign of an adult nightmare.
I had spent at least seven or eight years previous to this moment playing in clubs. Bars. Saloons. Playing three sets a night. Cover tunes. To drunk rock ’n’ rollers in Quebec and Northern Ontario. Fighting was just a part of the scene that I had been in for years now. I did not know any other way to respond.
But this was not a club.
This was a packed arena. Full of approximately 20,000 people. Not a place where I could act in the only way I had known how to act previously. My life had changed. But I was not mature enough at the time to realize that I had to change with it.
I say into the mic, “Everybody, get the fuck back.”
I motion with my hands for everybody to move out of the way of this guy. Whose ass, I most certainly intend to kick.
I pick the glass bottle up off the stage. I walk as far back to the drum riser as I can, to get a good run at my nemesis. The song we are about to play is called “Piece of Me.” Never could I have realized that the song would be taken literally. By a deranged fan. By me. By myself.
I stare into the man’s face as he tells me again to fuck off. I am completely enraged and am not about to let him win this fight.
I then do the unthinkable.
I throw the glass bottle back into the crowd at the man with his middle finger raised in the air. Problem is, this is a general admission crowd, and although I did not know this at the time, I would later learn that the bottle . . . did not . . . hit its intended target.
I run with all of my power toward the lip of the stage. I jump off the stage, flying through the air, and plant my Cuban-heeled Beatle boot straight into the man’s jaw. Breaking it immediately.
I start flailing my fists at the man whose jaw I just broke. I am standing on an arena floor, packed with 10,000 people, and I am literally trying to fight all of them.
After a minute or two, I am dragged off the man by security, back onto the stage, to the incredulous stares of my fellow bandmates. We once again attempt to launch into the song “Piece of Me.”
Sleazin’ in the city
Well, I’m lookin’ for a fight
I’m on my heels and lookin’ pretty
On a Saturday night night night
I wail into the microphone, in my heels, in the city, lookin’ for a fight. Some may even have called me “pretty.” I headbang and spray blood and sweat all over the front row. We finish the show, with my face covered in blood, pouring from the open wound in my head.
Convinced that all is well, happy with our literally ass-kicking performance, the band proceeds with our nightly ritual of drinking and smoking. But tonight will prove to be different than the other nights.
We make a hasty retreat to the bus as soon as the show is over. Management wants us out of the building as soon as possible. More precisely, they want us out of the state as soon as possible. We know why, but dude, that dude deserved it, dude.
I sit in the front lounge, and continue to bleed all over myself. The gash in my scalp is far bigger than I realized while onstage. It’s a good inch or more long on top of my head. On the top of my scalp. My hair and face are caked in blood. Dave “The Snake” Sabo sits across from me. He pours us both a drink. He tries to cheer me up. I begin to cry.
The bus driver, a great man by the name of Kenny Barnes, is under instructions from our managers Doc and Scott McGhee to get us over state lines as quick as possible. We speed through town, sipping our drinks and ready to do it all again in the next town, on the next night. We try to tell ourselves, Hey man!! This is rock ’n’ roll!
We don’t make it too far.
We suddenly realize we are being followed by several Massachusetts State Troopers. Silently. Behind our bus. Many of them. Kenny the bus driver is freaking out. As are we all. Especially me.
Our bus ride comes to an abrupt end. The State Troopers put on their cherry lights and sound the sirens. We are pulled over into the parking lot of a strip mall. Just short of the State Line, if I recall correctly.
The bus is in the middle of a parking lot. The State Troopers have us completely surrounded. They are spread out in a wide circle, equidistant between one another. Each cruiser has its high beams on, sirens flashing, with all of the headlights pointed directly at us. The lights are shining through the tour bus, making the interior of the bus bright white, not unlike the scene with the little boy in the house from the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
This, however, was a close encounter of the worst kind.
After about an hour or so, the Law comes onto the bus. For me. I am handcuffed and led off of my plush leather couch into the harsh glare of ten or so Massachusetts State Trooper cruisers.
I am completely unaware of the full weight of what had happened tonight. I get into the back of the police car, joking around with the State Troopers. I remain handcuffed, bleeding, and slightly buzzed.
The Troopers are not amused.
“Why’d you do it?” they ask me.
“Do what?” I reply. Surely these cops were like other policemen I have known. Most of them are rock ’n’ roll fans, like everyone else I seem to meet. Surely these boys in blue would have my back, dude. How could I not go whoop sum ass on the guy who pitched a glass bottle at me? Couldn’t they see the blood in my hair? The open wound on the top of my head?
“What’s the problem, Officers?” I say, not ready for their answer.
“How could you do it, man?”
“What?”
“She’s hurt. The girl in the crowd. The girl whose nose you broke.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah, you fucking asshole. You whipped a bottle off the stage, and hit her in the face. You broke her nose. You broke a guy’s jaw, too. How in the fuck could you do that? Hurt a girl?”
I slumped into the back of the police car. I could not believe what I was hearing.
I could not believe what I had done. The damage I had caused.
I had hurt an innocent girl in the melee. A fan of rock ’n’ roll. The thing I held most dear to my heart.
Rock ’n’ roll is supposed to be fun. The most fun you ever had. Rock ’n’ roll is what you listen to, to get away from all of the bad stuff. It’s not supposed to be the bad stuff. All this pain, all of this destruction, was because of my fucked-up behavior. Yeah, there is no doubt, I was indeed a total asshole that night.
As I thought of a bottle crushing into a fan’s face, thrown by me, I hung my bloody head in shame in the back of the police car. And wept.
All I have ever wanted to do is entertain people with music. With singing. With my voice. I have never in my life, ever tried to be a “bad boy.” All I have ever tried to be, is good.
The doors on my jail cell clinked shut that night, with a resounding thud. I sat in my cell and pondered the severity of my actions. The irony of my circumstance.
We Are the Youth Gone Wild. Indeed.
But at what cost?
1
LET’S BEGIN
AT THE BEGINNING
ca. 1970
Freeport, Bahamas
It’s hot. The sun is shining brightly in my eyes, behind my father’s head. I squint from the bright light of the Freeport, Bahamas, sun, but when I stare into my father’s eyes, my own eyes relax. If I just look into my dad’s smiling face, I realize, I don’t have to squint.
This is the first ever memory of my whole life.
I figured I would start at the very beginning.
My bare feet are almost burning from the heat. We are in our backyard. I am beyond puzzled. I just cannot figure it out. There is a large star on the ground. I do not understand what it is. I remember pointing at it, saying, “Dad, what is that?” He explained to me that it was, in fact, a fish. That it was breathing. That it came from the ocean. It had somehow gotten into our backyard, onto our blazing patio. He said that it belonged in the water, because that is where its starfish home was. I was wide-eyed and wondrous. How could a starfish become so out of its element, a fish out of water, out of breath, out of time? Would it die if it got too hot?
Or could we return it, to where it belonged, and save its starfish life?
What the hell is this thing doing in our backyard?
This is my first ever memory.
Second memory:
I am asleep.
The warm, sultry Bahamian air breezes through our screen porch. I remember the screened-in veranda of our home in Freeport. It ran along the side of the house. The screen was there to keep the island bugs and critters out.
Or so we thought.
I am on my side. My arm hangs down over the mattress, toward the floor below. I doze off to sleep with my mom and dad across the room, in the dining area of the simple island abode. An open floor plan, my bed (crib?) was in the corner of the house, right next to the screened-in porch.
I remember dreaming that something was tickling my hand. I slowly open my eyes out of my slumber and see my parents sitting around the dining room table, laughing and talking. There is a single light on above them, while the rest of the room, where I slept, was dark.
The dream continued on for a long time. It seemed so real. I remember thinking, Wow, this really feels like something is tickling my hand. I open my eyes again. I look under the bed.
The whole side of the bed, and the floor below, is covered in bright red blood. My hand had been dangling over the bed, and at the end of my wrist, where my hand started, is a gigantic rat.
The rat was eating my hand.
I froze. I was slowly realizing that this was not a dream. This was actually happening. A rat was chewing on my flesh.
I was fascinated. I did not scream right away. I just looked at all of the blood and watched the rat gnaw on me. I remember thinking, Wow, this doesn’t even really hurt. I couldn’t believe how much blood there was. The rat’s face had my blood all over it.
The creature kept on nibbling at the open wound on my bloody arm.
Then, I screamed. My mom jumped up from the table and screamed too, while rushing over to me and picking me up into her arms. Mom and Dad rushed me to hospital.
That’s where the memory ends.
In my third memory, it is still hot. We are still in the Bahamas.
We are now living in an apartment complex, with a pool in the middle of the courtyard. My father and I are swimming. It is raining. It feels amazing, swimming in the cool water, in the tropical heat of the early evening, with the rain coming down, creating rivulets of water on the pool’s surface.
Dad says, “We have to go in now.”
“Why?” I say.
“Because if lightning strikes the pool, we will both get electrocuted and die.” Umm, okay, Dad! Time to go inside.
This next, fourth memory I can recall of my life, was told by my father, to all assembled, at my first wedding. To the shock of many friends and family who were present that day.
My mom and dad had gone out for the evening. They had left me in the care of an elderly Bahamian woman. I only have flashes of memory of this particular night.
I can remember being in a crib. After my mom and dad left, the lady had brought over some of her friends, unbeknownst to my parents. I can remember them looking down at me in the crib.
My dad remembered the story in detail.
Upon my parents’ return to the apartment, Dad looked through the window into a shocking scene inside our home.
He opened the door, and what he saw can only be described as disturbing.
The elderly Bahamian babysitter had brought over two other women to our house. The three of them did not notice my parents returning home. When Mom and Dad entered the room, the three ladies were dancing around my crib. Chanting some sort of unknown incantation, in unison. When my parents looked at me, their baby child, in my crib, they were horrified at what they saw.
The babysitter had taped two long wooden sticks to my forehead. An infant child, with, artificial “horns” affixed to my innocent skull. Some sort of symbol. Of what, no one knows but the women there that night. They were performing a ritual of unknown origin. Of unknown intent. The women were chanting, who knows what exactly, but evidently the two sticks were taped on my head as some sort of antennae. To another world, perhaps? What exactly was going on in that room that night, so long ago, is still a mystery, to this day. Why these Bahamian women would do this, to me, is also completely unknown.
18 and Life on Skid Row Page 1