18 and Life on Skid Row

by Sebastian Bach

  Although, in reality, it could have been only a minute or two.

  Kingswood Music Theatre

  Canada’s Wonderland

  July 9, 1984

  Aerosmith played Canada’s Wonderland, an amusement park outside of Toronto, on the Back in the Saddle tour. Me and another buddy decided this would be a great time to take a bunch of acid, go ride the roller coasters, and then see our heroes in concert. The perfect night out!

  My memories of this day are obviously somewhat hazy. I do recall ripping up the blotter page, and dropping more than one hit onto my tongue sometime in the afternoon. We hit every roller coaster and laughed the whole time. Aerosmith went on early. We had pretty good seats, close to the stage. Under the shed roof, as opposed to being on the lawn. Somewhere near the soundboard. I can remember a couple things about the concert. How wild Steven Tyler seemed that night. The roof over where we were sitting . . . was moving. Undulating, back and forth, up and down. I listened to the concert and let the lights swathe over me. Stared at the roof of the shed. Marveled at how it seemed to be almost liquid-like in its texture. At the end of the concert, Steven Tyler got into it with the local police. Having us all shout, “Hell no, we won’t go!! Aerosmith Rocks!!!! Kingswood SUCKS!!”

  Or something along those lines. Don’t quote me on that. I was high at the time.

  We got back home about six in the morning. We made a bunch of noise stumbling up the porch. I opened the front door.

  My mother stood at the top of the stairs. She was decidedly not amused. Understandably, Mom had had enough of this.

  “Where in the HELL were you?”

  Perhaps I had not even told her I was going to Toronto that night. It was two hours away from Peterborough, with traffic. No son should treat his mother like this.

  I think I told her that I had been to Canada’s Wonderland to see Aerosmith, but I have no idea what I actually said. I might have told her I was from the planet Xenon for all I know.

  “Well, I’ve had enough, mister!! Get to your room RIGHT NOW. We will talk about this in the morning!! This bullshit has GOT TO STOP.”

  I didn’t mean to hurt Mom at all. I was just being a goofy teenager. I guess being a teenager in 1984 was not exactly Leave It to Beaver anymore.

  The next day Dad came over, unexpectedly. I had started to grow my hair long at this point. Dad glared up at me, outside on the lawn. I stood on the porch.

  “YOU, young man, will cut your hair NOW!”

  Of course this was hilarious, coming from a man who had long hair most of his adult life. I laughed, shut the door, and vowed to myself that I would grow my hair down to my ass. I would have long hair for the rest of my life. I am still working on that, sitting here, as we speak.

  My buddy Curtis came over to crank tunes and hang out. He told me there was a band near him, in Toronto, that was trying out lead singers. As we rocked out to the heavy metal records in my room, he said, “Hey! You should go try out!”

  There was only one problem. I was so young, there was no way this was going to work. Even if I got the gig, that would mean I would have to move to Toronto. At my young age? That would be impossible. Besides, I wouldn’t get the gig anyway. They were all at least five or ten years older than me. So what the hell? I might as well go give it a shot. Besides, it was something to do, other than jumping off a bridge, high on LSD.

  I took the bus up to Toronto on a Saturday morning. Met up with Curtis. Went over to this rehearsal room. In the back alley of a strip mall. I went downstairs and the room was filled with hopeful lead vocalists, all far older than I was. One guy was the lead singer of a well-known band called Moxy that was influential in the ’70s. I couldn’t believe I was sitting there about to sing in front of all these old dudes.

  The drummer sized me up.

  “Hey kid. Think you can sing, huh? How many octaves do you have?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, about eight I think.”

  The older guys in the room chuckled and laughed. I had no clue what I was talking about.

  Everyone took a turn at the mike. Next it was time for me to step up and sing. Curtis was friends with Ande Ryche, the guitar player, who said to the other guys, “Come on, give the kid a chance. Let’s at least check him out.” I took a deep breath and stood behind the mic. I asked them to do a song by Judas Priest called “Bloodstone.”

  The riff kicked in. I started up on the verse. Everything was going well. When it came time to hit the chorus note “BLOOOOOODStoooooone,” I turned to my left and looked at Ande. He was looking at drummer Brian Williams and the other guitar players in the band. They were all laughing. After the song was over, everybody seemed to be in a good mood.

  Courtesy of Ron Boudreau.

  The older guy, from the band Moxy, was also an accomplished session musician. He stood up in exasperation and started out the door.

  “Hey Sebastian, you be careful with those eight octaves, okay?” he snidely remarked as he walked out the door. Well, how did that work out for you?

  I got the gig.

  I had a meeting with my father at our favorite restaurant, Mother’s Pizzeria in downtown Peterborough. The conversation went something like this.

  “Hey, Dad. I’m moving to Toronto. To become a rock star.”

  “Hey, Sebastian. No, you’re not.”

  After I explained to Dad that this was actually going to happen, he finally relented. He realized there was no changing my mind. He said to me, “Sebastian. You can go to Toronto, with my blessing, under one condition. That you take vocal lessons once a week, in order to learn how to sing properly, and also how to protect your voice. I will pay for these lessons, as long as you show up to every single one.”

  Dad made good on his promise. Every Wednesday I would show up on Eglinton Avenue, a little west of Yonge Street. Gwenlynn Little Vocal Studios. She would work with me on my singing. Taught me a lot. Like, to bend my knees really quick if there was a note I couldn’t get. She told me it would take my mind off not hitting the note, and would allow me to hit it correctly. I tried it and it worked. One day she said, “You know what, Sebastian? You sound a lot like Neil Diamond.” That was the first and only time I ever heard that. I thank my dad for looking out for my pipes at such an early age.

  Courtesy of Ron Boudreau.

  Playing in this band was actually a great opportunity. We were out to get signed to a talent agency, and do some real gigs. Paying gigs. Or at least that was the plan.

  Courtesy of Ron Boudreau.

  Someone came up with the ridiculous name of Herrenvolk. I was told it was German for men who look like women. I’m serious. It was that silly of a scene at that time.

  On the subway, on the way to Safor Rehearsal Studios, south of Jane and Finch in Northern Toronto, I saw a wall of graffiti out the window as I zoomed past. It was signed Kid Wicked. I said that to myself a couple times. Being in my mid-teens, I thought it might be a cool name for a rock band.

  I told the guys and they thought it was a good name as well. I changed the spelling to Kid Wikkid since I was a kid. See what I did there? And so, Kid Wikkid was born. I moved into a room at my aunt Leslie’s boyfriend Jay’s house, who owned a printing press. We printed up fliers for each show and plastered them all over town. I played my very first Headline Rock Show at Larry’s Hideaway, in November 1984. Several years under the legal drinking age, I should’ve been arrested for even being in the place. But I was six foot seven with my hair teased to the roof, and had on more makeup than Tammy Faye Bakker. So nobody was the wiser.

  Courtesy of Mark Weiss.

  We went on tour. Got crabs in Sudbury. Drank beers in Brockville. Smoked hash in Québec. Playing three sets a night, at places such as Sainte-Anselme. Sherbrooke. Le Papillon, outside Ottawa, in Hull. Drinking age was eighteen at the time. I was still underage, headlining these clubs. Standing on the tables, careful not to kick off the lines of cocaine the Montréal bikers laid out, rocking all night long to Kid Wikkid.

  This is whe
re I started to learn to do what I do. Touring Québec and Ontario, in the back of a station wagon, set the standard for many decades to come.

  Around this time I met a guy by the name of Rich Chycki. Richard has since gone on to be the producer of many Rush albums. He is now regarded as one of the industry’s top sound technicians. Producer of countless albums, 5.1 surround sound, he has even remixed and remastered some of the world’s favorite Rush records. He is one of the best in the world at what he does.

  One day we were lying on the beach in Toronto. It was hot. My friends and I went to the corner beer store, at Woodbine and Queen, and bought a two-four. Two-four is Canadian for a case of beer that contains twenty-four beers. That should do, for the two of us this afternoon. Of course we were underage. I don’t remember how we even got it. We hoisted the two-four up onto our shoulders. All we had, other than beer, was a Frisbee. That was all we needed.

  Courtesy of Ron Boudreau.

  Immediately upon finding our spot on the beach, we dug a hole in the sand. Buried the case of beer. Besides being not of legal drinking age, it was completely illegal to drink alcohol on the beach. Not that we gave a shit. We took our shirts off, grabbed a couple of brews, poured them into cups, and started firing the Frisbee around.

  All of a sudden this Adonis dude with crazy blond hair came up to me. “Hey, how are you guys???” he asked me.

  “Hi, my name is Sebastian.” I proceeded to tell him I was a singer. We exchanged numbers after having a ton of laughs that afternoon. He invited me over to his place to check out his tunes.

  After I sang for him, he played me some songs. I liked what I heard and agreed to meet him in the studio. We cut a song called “You Should Know Me.” A plaintive ballad that had my voice in a register kind of around the song “Sara” by Jefferson Starship. I had never been recorded this professionally before. This was the first time I ever heard my voice played back through the speakers the way it was to sound on the Skid Row records, years later.

  I played the tape for a concert promoter in Toronto named Shawn Pilot. He was a guy responsible for bringing Hanoi Rocks to the El Mocambo, and other glam rock shows. Loving what he heard, he sent the tape to a band he had booked called Madam X, out of Detroit, Michigan. Along with a picture from Metallion magazine, which was being made into buttons and being sold on Yonge Street now, much to my amazement.

  Madam X liked what they heard. They wanted me to come down to Detroit and try out for their band. I could not believe this was happening. I was so happy in Kid Wikkid. They were my friends. We had even built up somewhat of a following in Ontario and were working somewhat steadily. But I knew that making it in America was where it was at. If you made it big in Canada, that was one thing. But if you made it in the USA, you would have an international career as well. I had to take a shot at this, at least.

  The phone call I had to make to Brian of Kid Wikkid to let him know I was quitting the band was the saddest moment I’d had in music yet. Our voices choked up as I told him the news. We had been through a lot. I really liked these guys. We were both crying. As I hung up on my friend, I grabbed a pillow, buried my head in it, and cried some more. But this was the path I had to take.

  On the day I had to go to Detroit, I knew what I had to do. I showed up at the border in my full stage gear. Hair teased up to the sky. A pinstriped suit jacket. Snakeskin boots, makeup, shades. This would definitely get me in the band, I was convinced.

  This definitely ensured I did not make it across the border.

  The bass player, named Godzilla, and the guitar player, Maxine Petrucci, had showed up at the Windsor/Detroit border to pick me up from my six-hour bus ride from Toronto. I was seven feet tall and my hair look like a pineapple. U.S. Border Patrol took one look at me and laughed. “Turn around, son. Go back home. You’re not getting into the States today.”

  For fuck’s sake.

  Godzilla came up with a brilliant idea. Since we were about the same height, same hair, we looked not dissimilar. He came up with the plan that we were cousins. He was coming to pick me up to go to an amusement park. He was going to take me back home afterwards—honest, officer.

  Sounded good to me.

  He drove up to Toronto, from Detroit. I was under strict orders to dress as conservatively as possible. Which I did. Hair tied back. No guyliner.

  We drove the car to Sarnia. Surely they would not catch on to our plan. To become huge rock stars and take over the planet. “Hey, this is my cousin Sebastian. We’re going to go on a roller coaster ride.”

  I’ll say.

  My time in Madam X was a trial by fire. They were ten years older. We played paying gigs across the United States. After forming the band in Detroit, we packed it up and moved to Phoenix, Arizona. The band had been signed to Jet Records and released an album called We Reserve the Right (to Rock). A friend in Phoenix would let us rehearse at his bar Rockers, on Indian School Road, for free. The stipulation being, we could only rehearse when there was nothing else going on in the bar. Which meant our rehearsal hours were from 7:00 to 9:00 in the morning. Not the ideal time for a singer to vocalize. Especially a singer who was seventeen years old.

  I was not in any way ready for this gig. Although I had a pleasant-sounding voice, I did not have the muscles built up in my throat to sing a two-hour show every night, night after night. This takes years to develop. I simply did not have throat muscles to be a professional vocalist at this time. I had a falsetto scream that could split glass. And it actually did, at a place called The Network in Baltimore, Maryland. But every time I hit this high falsetto, it would blow my pipes out for the rest of the set. Once I learned how to sing properly, from the diaphragm, I lost that high freak squeal that was louder than the PA itself.

  To support myself in Detroit, I took a job as a telemarketer. We would pretend to be photocopy ink salesmen and call some poor elderly woman in New Orleans or somewhere, at churches and monasteries across America.

  “Hi, Mrs. Chadsworth! This is Ace Johnson! From the photocopy store, up the street! I see it’s time for another shipment!”

  “Of what, dear?”

  “Well, I see that your maintenance sheet calls for some more blue ink toner cartridges! Don’t worry! I’ll have them delivered by next week!”

  “Why, thank you, son!” The lady would warble on down the line, perplexed. Confused. We would get their credit card numbers and charge them money for printer ink. They probably didn’t even own a printer.

  One of the guys at this telemarketer place told me that I would sell more ink if I did cocaine at lunchtime with him. I thought this to be a good idea at the time. We would snort lines and drink coffee in the Michigan winter, behind snowbanks and minus-10 temperatures.

  Those weren’t the only snowbanks in town.

  One night we were eating dinner at Maxine’s mom’s kitchen. She made incredible homemade pasta, along with homemade wine. I looked forward to having dinner there every single night. Maxine would sometimes talk to Steve Stevens, guitar player for Billy Idol, on the phone in the kitchen. I couldn’t believe it. He was one of my guitar gods. I would never be allowed to speak to him myself, however. I was just a nobody, so that was appropriate. Years later, when I started working with Steve myself, he told me the real reason he was calling Maxine was to get a hold of me. He had seen my picture on a flyer for a Madam X gig. “Who’s the singer? Can I get his info?” We just did an album together, for the first time, called Give ’Em Hell. Who knows what would’ve happened if we had gotten together back in 1985?

  But I digress.

  We played Shreveport, Louisiana, at a place called Circle in the Square. I was discovering around this time that it was necessary to warm up my voice before the show. But I had no idea what this meant. I just thought it meant screaming as loud as I could or something. I couldn’t really do that in my hotel room without getting kicked out. So, I went out into the median in the middle of the highway and sang heavy metal songs at the top of my lungs. Surrounded by the
traffic on either side of the road, I thought this was the only place one could do such a thing.

  We played at a place called the Sports Page in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. These are the days way before in-ear monitors. Standing on a postage-stamp-size stage right next to the drum kit, manned by my buddy Bam Bam McConnell? There was no possible way I could hear myself perfectly every night. Such venues are not exactly designed for their acoustics. In the middle of one song, I am standing in front of the drum riser, trying to rock as hard as I can. Godzilla is staring me in the face. I think I’m doing great. Obviously he thinks otherwise, as he backs up and proceeds to hock a gigantic loogie straight into my face. Onstage. In front of the band, crew, and crowd. Humiliated, not understanding why. Godzilla had to spit in my face to make me stop? Well, he certainly did. As soon as we got back to Detroit I said, “Fuck this shit,” and quit the band.

  Headed back to Toronto and formed a cover band, with the biggest hair in town, called Vo5. Heated up a bottle of VO5 shampoo, peeled off the label, took it to Kinko’s. Made fliers for our shows. It was a cool logo. Got back with Rich Chicki. Recorded some more great music. One of the songs was called “Saved by Love Again.” This was the song I sent to Dave Feld in New Jersey. There was a new band that wanted to check out my pipes.