18 and Life on Skid Row

by Sebastian Bach

  My mom and her sister would make french fries and dance and sing to Jimi Hendrix’s “Fire” while I would be standing there, at knee height. Taking it all in. The joy. The laughter. The excitement. Music was always about fun to me.

  Perhaps my very first memory of singing involves Donny Osmond’s song “Puppy Love.” Mom would call her friends over from around the block, make me stand on the kitchen table, and have me sing this song. One day as I was singing “Puppy Love,” we looked out the window and saw a fire blazing down the street in a distant house. We all flipped out, ran out of the house to watch the fire, and then came back, where I got back up on the kitchen table and started singing again. My mom would cry when I sang this song to her.

  Then there was the song “Emotional Rescue” by The Rolling Stones. In the backseat of Mom’s car, I would vamp out on Mick Jagger’s breakdown:

  I will be your knight in shining armor

  Coming to your emotional rescue

  You will be mine, you will be mine, all mine

  Driving down the street, Mom and her friends would turn around and say, “Sebastian!! Sing it again! Sing it again! Sing it again!”

  Laughing and carrying on, as if I were Mick Jagger himself in the backseat of the car. That’s the way they made me feel.

  But what really made me fall in love with singing?

  The church.

  I know. Go figure.

  I was eight years old, living on Donegal Street in Peterborough. I would spend my days after school playing with my friends, or more likely riding my bicycle around the suburban streets, popping wheelies and doing skids.

  I was on the road in front of my house when my friend Dickson Davidson peeled up to me on his bicycle.

  “Hey!! I’m in the church choir!! And if I get you to join, I get an extra three bucks! PLUS they will pay YOU a monthly stipend!! If you pass the audition!!”

  What the fuck is a stipend?

  One of my vivid memories occurred right then. I turned to my left. Looked up at the sky. Around the street. Thought to myself exactly this:

  Whaaaaat? Someone is going to pay me?? To sing?!?

  Dickson was like, “Yeah!! Come on!! Let’s go!! Right now!!”

  Incredulous, I followed Dickson as we took off down the street on our bicycles. Baseball cards affixed to the spokes. So it sounded like we had real engines.

  In a very real way, I was now on my way.

  We raced down the blocks of the suburban Canadian town to All Saints’ Anglican Church. Dickson took me down the steps from the parking lot, into the basement of the church, where the choir rehearsed. An all-male choir. Soprano, Alto, Tenor, and Baritone sections. The choirmaster was Mr. Brian Snell.

  Dickson took me over to the piano, where Mr. Snell was playing, auditioning other young boys to sing in the choir. When it came to my turn, I walked up to the right of the piano. Mr. Snell was intrigued.

  “Okay Sebastian, let’s go up the keys and see how far we get. Let’s see if you can sing.”

  I remembered Mom’s kitchen table, and Donny Osmond. I remembered the backseat of the car, where I would sing Rolling Stones songs to her and her friends.

  Mr. Snell proceeded to take me up the keys of the piano.

  We kept going. And going.

  We didn’t stop.

  As my voice travelled up the scale, higher and higher, the choirmaster looked at me. My voice was not slowing down. We got almost to the top of the piano before he smiled and said the words.

  “Yes, Sebastian. You are in the choir.”

  I was not ready to stop singing.

  I couldn’t believe it. I was to be paid a monthly stipend of over three dollars. For an eight-year-old boy in 1976, this was quite a sum to receive each and every month. At the time, KISS posters were about $1.75. It was my mission in life to collect KISS posters and put them on my wall. I calculated that I could buy two brand-new KISS posters a month if I joined the church choir now. Oh, hell yeah.

  Where do I sign up for this?

  This was a real gig.

  I had committed to being at choir practice after school every Tuesday and Thursday night. On Sunday mornings, I would report to the church at 7:30 in my white cassock, blue gown, dress shoes, and gray slacks. Ready for the show. In the choir, we all depended on each other, just like I learned later that a real rock band does. We were all professionals. We took what we did very seriously. Singing psalms, in Latin, and classic English hymns is not exactly like singing Christmas carols you hear at the mall. It was challenging vocal music, and the choirmasters were taskmasters, to be sure. We were expected to never miss a rehearsal, or a church service. We were expected to sing, and sing well. Which we did.

  I first went on the road when I was eight years old with this church choir. More than once. We would travel to distant churches in Ontario. Sing on Sunday morning for congregations in other towns. We even took the bus all the way into upper New York. Mom helped me pack my bag; I got on the bus, and traveled a day or so from Canada into another country. Went over the border and everything. We stayed at the house of a pastor in upstate New York. I slept in a sleeping bag in the pastor’s attic, with other choir members. Then, on Sunday morning, with the sun blasting through the church windows, we were up early. Singing our hearts out for the Lord. Afterwards, a nice big lunch. Then, back onto the bus, headed north, for the return journey home. Seems hard to believe now. But it’s no wonder I am used to being on the road at this point.

  The exact single moment that I really fell in love with singing will forever remain permanently etched upon my mind. It was Christmas Eve, circa 1976. For our Christmas midnight mass, we were singing all of the classic English hymns such as “Land of Hope and Glory,” Latin psalms with verses “Requiem In Eternat,” and the like. The congregation was packed for the midnight mass. It was very rare for me at the age of eight to stay up past midnight, and I remember the service starting at 11:30 p.m. It seemed as if the whole city had shown up to celebrate with us. Outside the church, the snow was falling. All I could see were Christmas lights, snow, and a full congregation of excited and jubilant Christmas revelers.

  We sang to the heavens that night. Mom was there, along with other members of my family, to sing along with me. As I hit the high harmony in the hymn “Gloria In Excelsis Deo,” the whole soprano section reached a musical crescendo that I experienced in every part of my body, mind, and soul. The simple elation of hitting those high harmonies, in the soprano section of that song, was a feeling of exultation that I had never felt before in my young life. I looked around at the choir, the choirmaster, and the congregation. We were all one. Everyone was in such a state of musical and spiritual joy that it was mind-blowing for me to process at that early age.

  I only knew one thing. And I knew it for certain.

  I love to sing.

  I am going to sing for the rest of my life.

  This leads me to another lifelong obsession.

  Ladies and gentlemen, the hottest band in the world: KISS!!!!

  KISS were comic books, horror movies, Saturday morning cartoons, and rock ’n’ roll, all rolled up into one. Much has been written about the influence of this band on people of my generation. Particularly, boys my age. As a loyal card-carrying member of the KISS Army, let me tell you how it was to be ten years old in 1978.

  At the crux of the matter, it cannot be overstated today what it was like to have four masked men marauding around the planet belching blood and fire. Who kept their identities a complete secret. It may not seem like a big deal to you, reading in this day and age. But to a kid my age, in the mid to late 1970s, it was completely fantastic in every way. A complete mind-fuck to not know what these guys actually looked like. In many ways, their commitment to mystery really did make them seem like true-to-life superheroes.

  We would try to draw pictures of what KISS might look like behind the makeup. It was the stuff of pure imagination. When the album Double Platinum came out, the inner gatefold sleeve contained em
bossed silver Mylar pictures of the four band members. We went and got trace paper and pencils, tracing only their eyes, nose, and mouth. Not the makeup. We were desperate to see what Bruce Wayne looked like behind the Batman cowl.

  My father did everything to foster my immersion in the fantasy world of comic books and rock ’n’ roll. He even took me to the Marvel Comics offices, in Manhattan, when I was no more than eight or nine years old. We were staying at my cousins David and Michelle Neely’s house, with Uncle Bob and Aunt Janine, in Madison, Connecticut. My dad had business in New York City. As he would oftentimes do in Canada, he asked me to come with him.

  As Dad would drive, he would hand me a stack of art magazines—Art in America, Art Magazine, and the like. He would then have me read articles to him, on subjects such as the Duchampian Philosophy, which he had me memorize and dictate to his college classroom in Peterborough one day, much to the hilarity of his students. While he would drive, he always told me I was a great reader. This only made me want to read more.

  On this day in New York City, he surprised me, as he loved to do. We went to the Marvel Comics headquarters. Took the elevator up to the main floor. Marched over to the reception area. Behind the desk were wall-sized murals of The Hulk, Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, all of my heroes. The secretary was so kind to us. She gave us a tour of the whole Marvel Comics offices, introducing us to artists and writers. I will never forget how nice they all were to me and Dad. They comped us Marvel swag—notebooks, T-shirts, pens. Looking back, it’s astonishing a dad would do that for his nine-year-old son.

  After we were done at Marvel, on the way back to Connecticut, we stopped at a variety store. The very first KISS Marvel comic had just come out. Right there on the newsstand, next to the first Creem magazine KISS special. I remember holding the KISS comic in one hand and a chocolate milk in the other. On the front, said the immortal words:

  Printed in real KISS blood.

  I stared at the red ink. In my nine-year-old mind, I 100 percent believed that the red ink I was holding in my hands was actually the blood of the members of the rock band KISS.

  What other band does that?

  You wonder why this band had such an influence on a whole generation? Can you imagine reading stories about your favorite band beating the shit out of Dr. Doom?

  Printed in real blood?

  Now, that kicks ass.

  My world up to 1978 was consumed by comic books and music. And then my world was forever altered. In a way that many children’s worlds were altered in the late ’70s, and continue to be to this day. My own children included.

  In 1978, my mom and dad decided to get a divorce.

  Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

  For the last couple of weeks, I couldn’t help but notice. Dad just wasn’t around.

  I didn’t really think much of it. A couple of months before this, my aunt Leslie had gotten divorced. It seemed unfathomable, unimaginable, to me at the time. Riding in my aunt’s car, I asked her, “Why? How could that happen?”

  “Your uncle told me that he doesn’t really like me anymore, Sebastian. Can you imagine how that feels?”

  Although I was only ten years old, I could not help but feel my aunt Leslie’s pain.

  I was about to learn what pain was all about.

  “Where is Dad?”

  One night, Mom told my sister Heather and I that we were going to have a family meeting. This was the first time we had ever had anything we needed to call a family meeting. This can’t be good, I thought. As dinnertime approached, Dad showed up at the house, for the first time in weeks. Although this made Heather and I both very happy, it seemed to make each of our parents squirm. We sat down to dinner, as we had done many times before. Up until recently.

  An uncomfortable quiet filled the dining room. Years before, when we had lived in Cavan, Dad would bound through the door. Sit down at the dinner table, with his arms covered in paint and turpentine. The acrid smell of turpentine will always remind me of Dad. He would literally explode with enthusiasm, over the daily events of Artspace. The paintings to be painted. The places he had driven. The people he had met. The art shows, by the artists he admired with such passion. I looked up to him from the dinner table one night.

  “Dad? Can we please talk about anything?? Other than art???”

  My parents laughed.

  On this night, however, I would have given anything to hear Dad talk about art.

  To see Mom laugh.

  “Well, kids, we have to tell you something.”

  “What’s that, Mom?”

  The words hit us like a nuclear bomb.

  “Your father and I have decided to get a divorce.”

  Next, an unexpected, strange thing occurred. An early sign of my behavior, in coming years, that could be disconcerting at times. I was only ten years old, but for some reason, what followed next seemed to be a great idea at the time.

  I stood up from the dinner table. Not saying a word, I walked into the kitchen. Opened up the drawer containing tools. Retrieving a ball-peen hammer, I proceed to walk up the stairs. To my bedroom.

  I am having an out-of-body experience. For the first time in my life, it seems as if my actions are not my own. This would not be the last time.

  Once in my bedroom, I take the hammer, raise it above my head, and slowly, methodically, precisely start to bash in the walls of my bedroom. I wield the hammer, like Thor’s Mjolnir, and Hulk smash!! the drywall into pieces. As hard as I can. Something is telling me that I must make holes. In walls.

  By Asgaard

  Odin, My Father

  Please

  Don’t leave us

  This was my reaction to the news that my father was leaving my mother, my sister, and me.

  He was leaving us.

  He was leaving me.

  I smashed the drywall into dust. A few months before, Dad had painstakingly painted a giant mural of the Incredible Hulk onto one of my walls. I did not smash that wall. I was not about to let anyone take the Hulk away from me too.

  I stood in the rubble of the destruction of my childhood. I turned and looked into the doorway.

  My dad had opened the door. He had been standing there, watching me do all of this.

  He did not get mad at me.

  He did not say a word.

  The Demons of Rock

  My world after 1978 was consumed by rock ’n’ roll.

  My world after 1978 was consumed by KISS.

  After my parents’ divorce, after the breakup of my family, I made a single, visceral commitment to myself. For the rest of my life. I would never, ever let anybody take rock ’n’ roll away from me.

  I would not let anybody destroy my world . . . of KISS. My family had been taken away. Dad was gone now. So, at the age of ten, I created a brand-new world for myself. A world which I would never want to leave.

  My world consisted of fire belching, blood drooling, guitars shooting out of the sky, levitating drum kits, dry ice, volume, pyro, and smoke. I loved lots of other music too. But KISS was my band. KISS was my life. And nothing, or nobody, would ever come between me and my love for KISS and rock ’n’ roll.

  I began saving up money from choir and my paper route. Started working for Dad whenever I could, to get money to buy CREEM, Rock Scene, Circus, Rocket, Rock, SuperRock, 16, Teen Machine, SuperTeen, all the cool magazines of the day. Like lots of other kids, I cut out pictures, tore out posters, and covered the walls of my bedroom with KISS. Mom moved us into a townhouse at the corner of Charlotte and Rubidge Streets in Peterborough. I would come home from school, escape into my bedroom, where my world was complete. Drop the needle on my favorite record. Fall asleep with the headphones on. Memorize every note. Read every interview. Study every picture. Learn every pose.

  My world excited me.

  Made me feel not alone. Made me feel like there was so much fun to be had. I will forever be thankful to the band KISS for being there when I needed them most. When I needed fun desperately. When I was a
little boy searching for a coin that didn’t roll away.

  I loved other bands as well. Cheap Trick, Van Halen, and Rush came after KISS. But there simply never was, and never will be, another band that captured the imagination, quite like KISS. My relationship with this band, their music, and the impact they have had on my family, and career, is nothing short of a lifelong obsession. That continues. Even to this day.

  My parents had been divorced for around a year when we got the earth-shattering news.

  KISS is coming to town.

  To Maple Leaf Gardens. In Toronto.

  This was not to be my first concert. The first show I ever attended was by a band called The Stampeders, who had a hit song called “Sweet City Woman.” My next-door neighbor’s babysitter Carolanne Heath’s older brother took me to see them at PCVS high school in Peterborough when I was probably eight or something.

  Then, the band Boston came to Maple Leaf Gardens in 1978, when I was ten years old.

  Winning a Ticket to the Rock ’n’ Roll Lottery

  Sammy Hagar opened the show. My dad and his new girlfriend Liz took me to the concert. I could not believe my ears as Sammy Hagar bellowed into the microphone.

  “TORONTO!!!!! We are gonna get FUCKING WILD tonight, motherFUCKERS!!!! ARE YOU READY?????”

  Sammy dropping that F-bomb felt more like an atomic bomb to my brain. Over and over again, into the cavernous halls of the revered Maple Leaf Gardens’ sanctified, conservative Canadian air. Which just so happened to be consumed by a heavy cloud of marijuana smoke that permeated my nostrils as much as the swear words that were coming out of the PA system. Well, since we’re talking about lifelong obsessions . . . I digress . . . (cough cough).