I had an eight ball of potent, high-powered cocaine that night. When we were done with our set, I dug in and the party was on. Duff McKagan invited me to sit under the stage next to his bass rig and watch the show from there. I crouched under the awning, and was actually sitting cross-legged, so the crowd wouldn’t see me. I chopped up lines of coke, on a handheld mirror, as Duff would run over between songs to take snorts of blow off the mirror.
The crowd went wild.
I was guzzling Jack Daniel’s. Duff was hammering Vodka and Cranberrys the whole show, while snorting blow at the same time. It was already becoming a crazy evening and we hadn’t even got backstage yet.
All of a sudden some guy I don’t know staggers up to me. He’s obviously drunk, like everyone else. He crouches down, to my level, and leans into my face.
“Hey! Sebastian Bach!! Is that you?” the man slurs.
I go, “Yeah. What’s happening??”
“Because you’re a fucking faggot. You’re a pretty-boy faggot!!!! You know that, right? Fag boy?”
And with that, as he uttered the words, spitting into my face at the same time, I stood up, cocked back my arm, and punched this motherfucker right in the face. As hard as I could.
I always chuckle when people think that they can come up to me and talk to me in this way. Maybe because I was sitting down, he didn’t realize that I am in fact six foot four, as well as way drunker and higher than he was anyway. I had no idea who he was. He went flying, from the backstage area, straight onto the side of the stage. He was lying on his back as the security guard John Reese picked him up and took him out of harm’s way. Out of my way.
I sat back down and chopped out some more lines.
Near the end of the show, the same security guards that hauled off this drunken dude picked me up, by the scruff of my neck. From the side of the stage, they took me off to a remote backstage room. One guard on each of my arms. I was saying, “What the fuck??” the whole time.
“What’s going on?”
I could not understand why I was in trouble. After all, if some guy called me a pretty-boy faggot, it was my sworn rock ’n’ roll duty to punch him in the nose. I should be receiving a round of applause, not being reprimanded. For this?
There was just one problem.
This guy wasn’t just some dude.
The guy that I had punched, in the face, turned out to be Izzy Stradlin’s brother.
Izzy Stradlin.
I had punched out the guitar player for Guns N’ Roses’ brother, on the first night of our tour opening for Guns N’ Roses.
Not a good way to start the tour. Not exactly a wonderful way for an opening act to ingratiate themselves to the headliner.
I was in some seriously deep shit. Here I was, again, being held up to the wall by security guards. Much as I was on the Bon Jovi tour. Only that was at the end of the tour. This was the first night.
Izzy Stradlin entered the room. He was not happy. Followed by GNR manager Doug Goldstein, he addressed me as my arms were pinned to the wall. He had dark black shades on. It was about 1:00 in the morning.
“Sebastian. Why did you do that?”
“I didn’t know it was your brother, dude. He called me a pretty-boy faggot. He was drunk off his ass.” Then, unexpectedly, he shrugged and said, “I know.”
Izzy didn’t really say much more after that. Doug Goldstein did the talking.
“Well, we really know don’t know what to do with you, Sebastian. You’re a loose cannon. We can’t have any more incidents like this, obviously.”
Izzy kind of shuffled around the room. He looked like he had been through stuff like this before. He left.
“No more of this kind of shit, okay?” And then everybody split. I went back to my dressing room and chopped out some more lines.
The tour had just begun.
When the album Slave to the Grind was released, in June 1991, none of us could have been ready for the reception it received.
We were on the road with Guns N’ Roses the day it happened. Since both bands had been out together for a month now, neither with a new record to promote, the demand for any new music from this tour was unprecedented. Guns N’ Roses were so big they didn’t need a new album to tour. We sold out Wembley Stadium, two nights. Nine Inch Nails opened the shows. We did multiple dates in the biggest arenas all over the planet. This was rock ’n’ roll on a bigger scale than we had ever seen.
Billboard magazine had recently announced plans to change their system of ranking album sales. Before 1991, I was incredulous when I would hear my manager say things like, “Oh, we talked to Whitney Houston’s manager this week. We’re going to take number 20 on the Top 200, and they’re going to take number 18.” I am paraphrasing. But I did hear discussions, on Skid Row’s first album, of managers speaking with other managers, bartering chart positions. This is the way the record industry worked back then.
The new system was to be called SoundScan. We were putting out our second record the second week the system would be implemented. This was all brand new. SoundScan required a device to be installed, on every record store counter in the country, which would register each individual sale in America. For the first time in the music industry, this would be a true tally of what album sold the most that week in America. We were the guinea pigs. Nobody knew what was going to happen.
What happened was we sold over 100,000 copies of Slave to the Grind in the first week of release. Skid Row became the first hard rock band ever to debut at number one on the Billboard chart. Ours was the first record to debut at number one since Michael Jackson’s Bad, four years previously, in 1987.
On the bus, going to play the Capital Centre, in Landover, Maryland. Masa Ito, the celebrated Japanese heavy metal journalist, was on the bus with us, covering the tour. I come into the front lounge. Masa goes, “Baz-U!” As they call me in Japan. “Guess what-are your album comes out to????” He can’t contain his excitement, even through his broken English. “Number-o ONE!!! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!” I go, “What? Number One what?” “You are-eh Number ONE!!! Yeah!!” Masa repeated, many times. I could not believe what he was saying.
To say this was a feat, to say this was unexpected, would be severely understating the case. Quite simply, no one on the planet Earth ever expected Skid Row to ever have a number-one album. Except, possibly, Ahmet Ertegun. I was at Atlantic Records’ office a week or so before the record came out. Ahmet said, “Well, Sebastian. It sure looks like we’re going to sell a lot of records. At the beginning, anyway.” A backhanded compliment, but he was right. We were at number one for all of one week. Like N.W.A. was, for one week before us. But, we had defeated the sophomore jinx. No one could mess with us now.
For the album cover, we asked my father to do the art. This was very kind of Rachel and Snake. For them to realize Dad’s talent, and to have him do art for the band, was very cool and something that meant a lot to my whole family.
He modeled an image after a Caravaggio painting, and the result was a three-panel foldout CD package designed by Bob Defrin. Especially with the now defunct long-box format, it looked quite unique next to other CD artwork on the shelf. On the day it came out, I was in a record store somewhere in Middle America. The people in front of me all had copies of Slave. I was standing right behind them in line. I smiled, and looked over their shoulders. “Hey, that’s a good one!” It felt amazing to be there and see people holding my dad’s art, with a CD of our band. This is something I will never forget.
After Masa Ito told me that we had the number-one album in America, the bus pulled into the parking lot. I ran into the Cap Center for sound check. Excited beyond belief. There was my buddy Duff McKagan on the stage. I ran up to him.
“Guess where our album came out!!!!!”
“Where is that, Baz?”
“Number ONE!!” Duff was visibly shaken. He stopped playing the bass, and put his hand up to his chin, looked at me, and raised his eyebrow.
“You debuted at number one?? On
the Billboard chart?” He spoke for the whole world. It was the surprise of the year.
When my father passed away, in 2002, on his deathbed, I held him.
“Dad. We had a Number One Album!!!!” In his opiate-induced haze, he burst into tears and held me close. These words made a dying man laugh with joy. We smiled through the tears. It was one of the pinnacles of my life, and my father’s life. He knew that his art would live on, forever, on the cover of that record. What a feeling. To die with. Perhaps, even a sense of immortality.
What beauty art and music can bring to this world.
I thank the Skid Row fans, and rock ’n’ roll in general, for making this happen in our lives.
Wine, Women, Song, and Duct Tape
Your basic stadium backstage. Always real consistent. Shower stalls. Where the football teams live. Where the hockey players change their gear. Gray, concrete, sterile environment with shower rooms designed for full football teams. Not a plush, extravagant rock-star entourage. This is why most bands lug around drapes, and lighting, and other creature comforts to transform the drab walls into something more appropriate for a backstage party.
Backstage at one show, our guitar player Dave Sabo and myself decided it would be a good idea to drop some acid. Now, in the late ’80s and early ’90s, this was not a usual occurrence. I never ever saw Dave, Rachel, or Scotti even touch coke. So when Dave and I decided to do some acid, it was a very unique circumstance. And a very unique situation in which we soon found ourselves.
The party continued into the other band’s dressing room. I remember being very, very high and laughing a lot. All of a sudden a girl came into the room in high stiletto heels. I don’t remember who, but somebody said the immortal line: “Let’s wrap her in duct tape!”
It sounded like a good idea at the time.
One of the road crew members proceeded to procure a roll of silver duct tape and a roll of black duct tape. Two substances that are never far from reach in the midst of any rock ’n’ roll concert tour. Duct tape has many uses. We were just about to discover how versatile duct tape can really be.
We proceeded to apply the duct tape.
We kept on partying, laughing, drinking, smoking, snorting, doing whatever the fuck we wanted to. We were rock stars playing stadiums with a girl wrapped in duct tape teetering around in stiletto-heeled boots with her naked ass and tits in our face. As we enjoyed exchanging regalia of the tour, and the night’s show.
Somehow, we moved the party from the backstage greeting area into the shower stalls themselves. Well, some of us did. Actually, it was me and the leader of the other band, the girl wrapped in duct tape, and some other guys standing around watching what was about to unfold.
Suddenly we tumbled down into the middle of the shower stall. I was on the bottom, on my back, with the girl on her front lying on top of me. Grinding and writhing around in the shower stall. All of a sudden the leader of the other band got on top of her. She was in the middle of us. The guy from the other band’s face turned flush.
High on acid, seeing the walls of the shower appear to move in on the scene that was happening on the ground, with the girl wrapped in duct tape writhing on top of me with a guy from another band on top of her. It was fucking crazy.
The girl was perched back up onto her heels. Identity unknown. Not able to speak, or move. Stiletto heels remained on, throughout.
The next thing I remember is leading her back into the backstage room. Us going back to our drinking, smoking, and carousing. All of a sudden, management burst into the room and exclaimed, “What the fuck is going on in here??”
The leader of the other band exclaimed, “I know what to do!!!! Let’s shave her head!!”
The room erupted into laughter.
Management said, “Absolutely not!! The party’s over, boys!!” And with that, the girl was teeter-tottered out of the room. Never to be seen again. At least she left with the hair on her own head intact.
Just barely.
[[—st Louis
—eating pussy w matt
—chicks in Scandinavia
—too high to fuck in Germany
—stage diving in Germany, asked to sing Nuremberg
—too tired to be in November rain
—slash’s house nude boxing
—smoking coke believe in me Wembley curses under door
—Ecstacy first time too much carried out of party too high
—Iceland getting in fight coming down from ecstasy fighting on Jack
—PANTERA TOUR
—SOUNDGARDEN]]
11
EVERYBODY IS MAD AT ME.
ALL OF THE TIME.
Seriously. Did you ever feel like that? That no matter how hard you try, no matter how good you try to be, somehow, sometimes . . . it just comes out . . . well, . . . bad.
So many instances of this.
One that comes to mind quickly is that nobody really understands what it truly takes for me to do what I do. To live up to people’s expectations of me. To live up to my expectations of myself.
A typical day for me is this: I usually wake up and have interviews to do. I am lucky to do them. But those close to me sometimes can’t believe that I sometimes spend four or five hours a day on the phone talking about myself. Answering the same questions over and over again, ad infinitum. The first day or so of this is like a novelty. But those closest to me often tire of listening to me waffle on and on about me me me, for hours on end. I want to hang out with those I love, and they want to spend time with me. Usually halfway through the interviews of the day, I get a look that says, “Are you done yet? Can we do something?” No, I am not. No, we can’t.
After interviews, I like to go for a run. I have found through the course of trial and error that my body responds best to a seven-mile run. Five miles doesn’t hurt enough. Eight miles is way too much. So seven it is. This usually takes me about an hour and twenty minutes. It takes me thirty minutes or so to get psyched to actually start the run. And about thirty to forty minutes after the run to recuperate. The more I run, literally, the better I look. People expect rock stars to be “ageless.” We are not. I am supposed to look like the dude in the “18 and Life” video . . . for the rest of my life. The more I run, the more I look like that dude.
After the run, I get on the floor and do push-ups and sit-ups. I am no bodybuilder by any means. But I have a routine of 50 push-ups and about 200 sit-ups a day. If I have shows coming up in the schedule, I have to sing. For hours. Every day. Singing on my own in preparation for tour is a very methodical, somewhat boring exercise. I do a vocal scale called “Bel Canto” which is about thirty minutes long. After that, to get my counter tenor range working, I vocalize to Steve Perry of Journey. Lastly, to work the absolute top register of my voice, I sing to Rob Halford of Judas Priest. In order to get my voice really cranking, I have to sing properly for about an hour a day. To my neighbors in hotel rooms around the world, I must say . . . this is my job. This is what I do.
Many times I have held up reservations at the nicest restaurant in Madrid, Barcelona, Quito . . . because I have to hit the high note at the end of the live version of “Genocide” for the millionth time in my hotel room. Oftentimes we play in cities that are very exotic. Usually restaurants in Belgium, or Germany, or Sweden close no later than 9:00 p.m. I am always racing to finish my routine before there is no dinner left to be had in whatever city we are in. To my band and crew, I say . . .
Sorry, dudes!
People get mad at my sleep schedule. When your job is to be firing on all cylinders at 8:00 p.m. every night, after decades and decades, your body and circadian rhythm becomes acclimated to this. I am built and conditioned to kick ass every night at 8:00 p.m. When the show is done around 10:00 p.m., I am conditioned to party after the show and drive all night to the next town. Where we do it all over again. It’s great work if you can get it. But what happens is when the tour is over, you go home. And then you are expected to wake up in the morning and
go to sleep at night. Like a normal person. But the human body is not designed to work like that. I don’t know about you, but I cannot just will myself to sleep. When I get home, my body doesn’t know the difference between being at home or on the road. So I end up staying up all night, crashing about 4:00 a.m. in the morning, and sleeping till 11:00 a.m. or noon. This pisses people off.
My humblest of apologies.
I can remember one Christmas when my family came from Canada to New Jersey to celebrate the holidays with us. I had just gotten home from a European tour only days before. My mom and sister and brother were so excited to see me.
I was completely exhausted from the road. Wiped out. Destroyed. People have always told me I have “a lot of energy” on stage.
I leave it there.
Coming home from a European tour to Christmas with the family was pretty much fucked for me. Not only was I on show time, I was on European time. Which meant that I was all but useless when I got home to my family expecting me to play Santa. I can remember being completely comatose in my bed. Physically and mentally spent. Unable to move. Not capable of joining any “reindeer games” at this point in time. My sister Heather came into the room and said to me, very sweetly, “We just want you to know that we are really missing you.” It was very nice. But I had no more energy to give. I wanted to. So very badly. But I just couldn’t.
I am sorry.
I remember being asleep, with the water pipe next to my bed. My brother came into the room, trying not to wake me. I blew up at him.
“Get the fuck out of here! I’m tired! I’m sleeping! I can’t believe you would wake me up!” What a dick. My brother, flustered, tries to back out of my room and be nice to me, apologizing and being totally cool. I, however, am a complete prick. To him, I say . . .
18 and Life on Skid Row Page 18