18 and Life on Skid Row

by Sebastian Bach

  I held my dad’s hand, slightly alarmed at the situation, and looked up to him for reassurance.

  “Daddy! Is that man up on the stage allowed to say that????”

  Pops just looked down at me and laughed.

  Hearing bad words through a large PA system. Lifelong obsession, check number three.

  August 4, 1979

  Toronto, Ontario, Canada

  Having KISS come to Toronto, on the Dynasty Tour, changed my life. Forever.

  Mom, my sister, and myself had moved out of our house we shared with Dad on Donegal Street. Into a multi-family townhouse on Rubidge Street. This place was far different than anywhere we had lived before. I had not seen Dad and Mom in the same room together since the night they told us Dad was moving out. The night I trashed my bedroom with a ball-peen hammer.

  My parents fully understood how much KISS meant to me since they had divorced. The band had given me a very real psychological outlet for my frustrations. My fears, my uncertainty, my longing. For my dad. For fun times. KISS, in a very real way, countered the very real pain of divorce I felt in my heart. So, Dad made an incredible decision, that looking back, meant so much to me that it never fails to put a tear into my eye when I tell the story.

  My father decided that he would reunite with my mother. One last time.

  For one night only.

  To take me, my mother, and my sister, to go see KISS. Live in concert.

  I repeat. My mom and dad were going to reunite our family. They were about to give me a memory that would change my personality. Alter my life. Forever.

  It is hard to describe what it meant to me, to see Dad walk down that sidewalk, back into our lives. He showed up at our townhouse that day in the de rigueur “Canadian Tuxedo.” Blue jeans, jean jacket, white cutoff T-shirt. Red bandana tied to his head. As he strode down Rubidge Street with the biggest smile on his face I had ever seen, he exclaimed to me, “Heyyyyyy BASS!!!!!”

  As he used to call me.

  I ran down the steps, off the porch, and jumped back up into my dad’s arms. We laughed. He gave me a big hug. I turned around. Saw my sister laughing, through tears of joy. With Mom behind her. Ready to rock. Our family was back together!!!!!

  We are going to see KISS!!!!!! TONIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!

  What this correlation of events did to my eleven-year-old mind is the very essence of who I am. How I became to be. This night explains the origins of my deep, unending love for rock ’n’ roll. Combined with bittersweet loss. Of love. Of family.

  Escapism. Fantasy. Theatrics. I have told this story to a few therapists over the years. They always look at me with an expression that says, “Well, that explains that. It’s really no wonder why you do this for a living.” Well, they are right.

  We all piled into Dad’s car together, for the first time any of us could recall. It was a beautiful summer day. To Toronto from Peterborough is about a two-hour journey, that we had each made many times. But never to go see the hottest band in the land. In the middle of the drive, listening to CHUM FM on the radio dial, the DJ announced that Gene Simmons would be coming on for an interview after the next commercial. I was so excited I was going to vomit out the window as Gene came on the air and hyped the show. I listened to his low, serious voice, describing to our reunited family, in our car, how KISS were going to blow the whole town apart in only a couple hours’ time. I will be there, I thought to myself. I cannot believe this is happening to me.

  We got closer and closer to the hallowed halls of Maple Leaf Gardens. Parked the car. Getting out, we were surrounded by fans dressed up as KISS. Complete, elaborate look-alikes, with boots, makeup, costumes, everything. I was in complete heaven.

  Up the street to the McDonald’s at College and Yonge for dinner. As we waited in line for the ultimate pre-KISS Happy Meal, we were surrounded by more KISS look-alikes. Faux-Ace had stopped by for a McShake and Peter Pseudo-Criss was sporting a CAT Diesel Power trucker cap. This was going to be the best night of my life.

  As we made it into the arena, it became evident that our seats were not all that great. We were kind of in the rafters, near the back of the hall, up pretty high. We’re quite far away from the stage, I thought. It didn’t much matter to me. As we watched the opening band, New England, I was happy just looking at the crowd. My surroundings. This was my world. The feeling of excitement was palpable. As the saying goes, I was more than happy to just be there. Little did I know . . . my father had other plans.

  Dad then did the most unexpected thing. After New England’s set, we sat in our shitty seats, laughing, looking around, as a family, together again. We had hot dogs and Cokes from the concession stand. My dad never uttered a word about what he was planning to do. I realize now that he just didn’t want security to spot him where we were sitting. Because only Dad knew the truth. We were not going to be in the cheap seats much longer.

  The lights go dark. After the intermission.

  KISS were about to destroy the city.

  My father grabs me. Picks me up in his arms. In the black of the arena, all eyes are focused on the stage. The intro music, a low, demonic bass rumble, erupts from the speakers as the screaming of the crowd reaches unparalleled decibels.

  “We’re not sitting HERE!!!” my dad shouts at me over the din of mayhem. I had no idea what was going on.

  Then, carrying his eleven-year-old child, my dad springs over the railing of the hockey rink seats, and onto the concert floor itself. He holds me just like he used to tell me how to hold a football. Like a loaf of bread. Under his arm. We are near the back of the concert hall. Dad sprints toward the front of the stage as fast as he can. Ducking and weaving, out of the view of the security guards, who were all too busy watching KISS explode upon the stage anyhow.

  We reach the very front of the 10,000-plus throng on the floor, into the first row of the concert. I could not believe what was happening. Crushed into other fans, Dad picks me up from under his right arm. Hoists me up onto his shoulders. I was now level with, and only feet away from, my heroes. KISS!!!!!!!

  We were so close to the stage, that when the flame pods shot out molten fire into the Canadian night, I could actually feel the waves of heat bake my skin. It was hot. It made me sweat. Mine was literally a rock ’n’ roll baptism by fire.

  By the time KISS got to the song “Calling Dr. Love,” I was crying on top of my dad’s shoulders. Much like the footage of girls weeping at early Beatles concerts, I was experiencing a mix of many different emotions. Excitement, wonder, fright, elation, terror. All rolled up into one blubbering mess. I had never experienced anything remotely like this before.

  Dad, armed with his omnipresent Leica-lensed camera, took picture after picture. Thank God he did. KISS had some new stunts on the Dynasty tour that they did not have before. Our collective jaws hit the floor when Gene Simmons lifted up his bat-wings and flew into the sky, up through the air, onto the rafters above. Ace did his solo, shooting flaming rockets out of his guitar, exploding the smoking sunburst Les Paul he had played only moments before. Near the end of the show, Ace took a drink out of a Styrofoam cup, and threw the cup right to me, which I caught, brought home from the show, and treasured for years to come. During my own concerts, decades later, I still remember the impact that had. If I myself ever see a little kid near the front of the stage, I always try to give him a bottle of water. I never forgot how special that made me feel, to receive something straight from Ace Frehley himself.

  These concerts captured my imagination, as well as many others’ my age. It’s hard for me to understand when the members of KISS themselves sometimes talk about how the Dynasty tour was somehow disappointing for them, because there were so many “kids” in the audience. I was one of those kids. Along with my friends Vinnie Paul and Dimebag Darrel (RIP) of Pantera, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, and so many others. Even though some of us may have been “kids” coming to see this tour, KISS was like a gateway drug to all other kinds of rock ’n’ roll music. Some of us
even grew up to be rock stars ourselves. I thank the band KISS for giving my generation such a passion, and appreciation, for showmanship. For fun. Attitude. Most importantly, for cool songs. That made you wanna “Rock and Roll All Nite.” And party every day.

  As the last strains of “Black Diamond” rang out, into the confetti storm blizzard inside the whole of Maple Leaf Gardens, I was changed. Forever. We packed up the car and drove straight back home after the concert. It was late. It was time for us to go to bed.

  I never saw my family alone together ever again.

  Mens Sana in Corpore Insane-O

  1980–1982

  Lakefield, Ontario, Canada

  After Dad remarried, I was thrust into a completely new situation entirely. Sent away, to live at Lakefield College School for the next three years. At the all-boys’ private boarding school, I roomed in a dormitory with four other boys. Dad leaving Mom was enough of a change. But now, leaving all of my family put together, to go and live with complete strangers, really blew my mind.

  Being a total heavy metal freak, coming into a prestigious preparatory facility was like feeding a square peg into a round hole. Unlike Dad and Mom, being hippies of the age, my new stepfamily was conservative in nature and this meant that private schools were the norm for them. Dad got me an application, and I went and took a series of tests. There were only seven or eight students in my seventh-grade class when I started there in September 1980. An exclusive and expensive school. I took the entrance exams and was accepted on a scholarship based on my test scores. To all of our surprise, I was accepted into the student body.

  It meant something in those days to attend LCS. Just three years before Sebastian Bach was enrolled, none other than Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, spent a year there, as an exchange student from Gordonstoun, in the UK. Now there is some trivia for you. Us two? At the same school? Who knew?

  Lakefield was a great school. It helped shaped me into the man I became, for better or worse. The school motto was Mens Sana in Corpore Sano, which translated from Latin means “Sound Mind, Sound Body.” This meant each student taking a sport every single season, every single day. Each morning we would be up at 7:00 a.m., showered and changed into our green-crested lapeled suit, tie, gray flannel pants with black dress shoes. Any variations on this wardrobe would be grounds for punishment. By 7:50 a.m. we would all be in chapel, singing church hymns, every single morning, every single day. Again, all of this church singing was joyous to me. I looked forward to it.

  There is a book out recently whose thesis states that all boys who ever even attended an all-boys’ private school were, emotionally if not physically, abused in some way. What I witnessed firsthand was a situation of all males where the older males would prey upon the young. Walking down the hallways to the next class, when there was no teacher present, older students would grab a younger student, pushing him against the lockers, and punch his arms till they were black and blue. Everybody else laughed and cheered. This is the way it was at an all-boys private school in the early 1980s. Lakefield went co-ed decades after I attended.

  I received plenty of punches and charley horses myself. After dinner, some kids would be assigned to Study Hall at night, before bed. Yes, it was a full day. A senior prefect I thought was so cool was in charge that night. I said something I thought was funny to try and get his attention. He came over, grabbed me by the hair, and started smashing my forehead into the desk cubicle to which I was assigned. Everybody laughed.

  But I was always a big boy for my age. So many received it far worse than I. For me, the stress came in the form of being away from my recently divorced family. I continued to escape into my music. When I moved into Upper Colebrook House, I brought along my full stereo system that I had worked all summer for previously. The vinyl I brought included Cheap Trick and Rush. The very first second I came in the dorm I put KISS posters on the wall around my upper bunk. The other guys walked in and dug it. This was the way I made friends when I was in grade seven. I liked to make people laugh.

  Perhaps due to the fact that I had been put in kindergarten twice, once to be babysat in the Bahamas and then again two years later in Peterborough, school up to this point had always been easy. I was a straight-A student and taller than the other kids. About halfway through the seventh grade, the decision was made by the school to skip me up a grade. So, in the middle of the seventh grade, I was put directly into the middle of the eighth grade. Leaving all the friends I had just made only months before. But I was used to that kind of scene now.

  At the time, I was the first and only student at Lakefield College School to ever skip. I don’t know if that has changed, but immediately upon my arrival into the next grade, I sensed that this was somehow a mistake. The first day I walked into the eighth grade, I sat down in my assigned seat. A couple of minutes later, the teacher left the room for a minute or two. When she shut the door, I was alone with the rest of my new classmates. They turned around and stared at me. This one kid ripped into me.

  “Oh Sebastian, you’re so fucking smart, oh my God, you’re so smart, oh wow, we can’t believe how smart you are, oh wow, how did you get so smart.” The rest of the class guffawed. As I harrumphed.

  The teacher came back in the room. Class resumed.

  Oh wow. This is really gonna suck.

  LCS instilled certain values upon me that thankfully remain to this day. There was a disciplinary system in place. If a student ever broke any rules, they would be assigned Penalty Drill. PD consisted of being up on Monday mornings at 5:30 a.m., with the rest of the losers, and running up and down a hill for however many demerits we received. Fifteen points equaled fifteen minutes, thirty loser points would have you running thirty minutes, etcetera. I was on this list many times. In Canada, it snows a lot. Many was the morning I would be up before dawn, in my winter ski clothes and boots, running up and down an ice-filled hill outside the cafeteria, in repentance for all the terrible deeds I had done that week.

  In retrospect, PD did an amazing thing. It actually made me enjoy running. I would go on an early-morning penalty drill run, sign some piece of paper on some tree a mile or two away, and then run back. All before the sun came up. This is just when cassette Walkmans had come out. I would listen to Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced?

  not necessarily stoned

  but

  beautiful

  I had never smoked anything yet. But it sure sounded like fun.

  It was at Lakefield that I had my first taste of alcohol. My buddy who lived in Peterborough worked at the local record store. I told my buddies from Toronto this, the rich kids that were in my new grade. I was younger than them and was eager to impress. They told me that if I got them booze, they would dig that. So that’s what I did.

  We would have parties in Toronto at their incredible houses. Far from anything where I had ever lived, or seen. This is where I first saw dudes drinking tons of beer who were having a ton of fun doing it.

  The very first alcohol I ever tasted was Kahlúa. Somehow, we had gotten a bottle. With my buddy Scott Carter, we drank the whole thing. Then proceeded to vomit all over the backyard. I have never wanted a sip of Kahlúa ever again.

  Second time was a bottle of gin. My friend Rick asked me if I needed anything at the liquor store and I didn’t really know what to say. So he came back with a bottle of gin. Which we drank, and once again, puked all over some other person’s backyard. Have never had a sip of gin ever again in my life. The smell and taste of it reminds me of wood.

  But most of the time at Lakefield was indeed in pursuit of a sound mind and sound body. We spent a majority of the days outdoors, in canoes, on portage from park to park, sleeping, camping, cooking outside. Learning to live off the land of the countryside of Northern Ontario was a unique way to spend one’s preteen years. The breathtaking beauty of the Canadian landscape is something that will always soothe me. Canada will always have a precious place in my heart.

  I played lots of sports at Lakefield. Quar
terback on the football team, left defensive end. Downhill skiing in the wintertime. A slalom racer, I developed a lifelong love of skiing. We would get in the school bus after school and get to Devil’s Elbow Ski Slopes for an hour or two every single day. Pretty amazing when you think about it. The lead bowler on the cricket team, I found it very funny that we would play in the rain and mud while wearing completely all-white attire. Which would be black and green after rolling around in a field all day.

  We trained to ski even when there was no snow. We would get to the top of the mountain with prototype tread-skis that have long been taken off the market. For obvious, painful reasons. We would strap our ski boots onto these little tank treads, and zoom down the hill.

  Falling into a rock is a lot harder than falling into snow.

  On the night that John Lennon died, December 8, 1980, I was asleep in my dorm at Upper Colebrook House. Our seventh-grade teacher was an amazing man by the name of Mike Chellew, who I looked up to in every way. Mr. Chellew came and knocked on our door. He stood there in the doorway, in silhouette as we wondered what was going on.

  “Hey guys, sorry to wake you up. But I just have to tell you some bad news. John Lennon, the singer of the Beatles, has just been shot. He died an hour or so ago.”

  And then he shut the door.

  I was absolutely inconsolable. I fell apart. Burst into tears and wailed, as if one of my own family members had died.

  My dad worshiped John Lennon. He even wanted to look like him. The round glasses and everything. Our family dog growing up was a beautiful little Scottish terrier named Lennon. I had grown up listening to John Lennon sing and I was just becoming a genuine fan myself. I loved the record Double Fantasy. “(Just Like) Starting Over,” which he lovingly dedicated to his wife. That inspired me. Not to do what people expected of him. I could feel his love even at my young age. This inspired me many years later, when I met the love of my life, Suzanne, and we got married. She has made my life so much better in every way. I would love to inspire others that yes, indeed it’s true. All you need is love.