And then it hit me.
Oh.
My.
God.
This is it!!!!!!!
THIS IS THE SONG I WROTE WITH ACE FREHLEY!!!!!!!!!!
FINALLY!!!! OH MY GOD!!! You can’t be serious.
“You Make It Hard for ME”!!!!! Holy FUCK!!! Anton was right!! The song sounds incredible. I cannot believe it!!! And there it is!!! My melody line. The main guitar riff, the music in the chorus, even the cowbell on Anton Fig’s drums. The power chords. The down strokes I told him to do, just like Johnny Ramone. Everything is there. The only difference, fifteen years later, was that “You Make It Hard for Me” had now been changed to “Foxy and Free.” Other than that, it was the same song I have on my microcassette from the Acement back in the mid-’90s. And here we are fifteen years later. The song had finally made it onto a CD. The opening song on the new record, no less! I could not believe the world was to hear what we had created, so many years before.
I shout screams of joy into the air as I was driving down the road. It sounds so great. Just the way I had intended it. Especially the riff in the chorus. It felt like it could have been off the album Slave to the Grind. The song had the feel of Slave, especially “Creepshow,” with the cowbell behind the beat of the chorus. It kicked total fucking ass, even in the car, fifteen years down the line.
With my right hand, I grab the CD packaging from the passenger seat of the car. Excited to see my name, along with Ace Frehley’s. This song was going to show the whole world The Ace was back. I couldn’t wait to show my friends!
I open the CD packaging excitedly. Go to the first song. Look at the credits.
Song written by: Ace Frehley.
My name is nowhere to be found.
What? How can this be? There’s no way.
And yet there it is. Song written by Ace Frehley. And Ace Frehley alone.
My name appears nowhere on the packaging.
Two songs later is a cover of a Sweet song, with the guys from Sweet’s names prominently displayed in the credits. The album is dedicated to Dimebag Darrell, the Pantera guitarist Snake had introduced him to. I had written the opening song to the record together with Ace, and yet my name was nowhere to be found.
I pull the car over. Pressed stop on the CD player. And cry.
I held my head in my hands and cried for a while. I shook in rage later, but crying was the first response. It was a childhood reaction. Based on childhood feelings. Staring at the wall of the KISS posters, imagining what it would be like to be in the band myself. Getting to not only meet my heroes, but make music with them as well. To be left off for my songwriting, and my publishing, was unfortunately not something new to me. Other guys like to paint themselves as songwriters, while painting me as the ubiquitous front man, only there to prance around the stage and do interviews and photos and talk between the songs. While they take care of all the serious work. But this has never, ever been reality. You can hear it for yourself. My records can all pretty much be identified by the way they sound. Can other musicians honestly say the same? If you listen to the first song on Anomaly, you will have no doubt that what I am saying is true.
When I tell this story to my friends, they say, “Well, why don’t you solve this in court?” Because it’s like taking Santa Claus to court. I love Ace Frehley. I have all my life. And I always will. So I’ve never even brought it up with Ace. And as disappointing as this is, I will not let it take away my love for Ace and KISS and rock ’n’ roll. I never expected to make it in rock ’n’ roll. I never expected rock ’n’ roll to be easy. Or kind. This situation just reiterated what I already knew. Rock ’n’ roll is, and always will be, a vicious game. As I wept in my car, I had to laugh at the same time. This is all Ace ever knew. To get screwed around by the music industry. This is all he knew. Bad contracts. Shitty deals. Getting ripped off. Underpaid. It’s a long way to the top, if you want to rock ’n’ roll. Rock ’n’ roll will chew you up and spit you out. Rock ’n’ roll is not for the weak. Rock ’n’ roll is not for the faint of fucking heart, either. So get the fuck over it.
Why would I write about this in the book? The story is already out there on some KISS fan sites, and now I want my fans to know the actual truth of the situation. I love KISS and rock ’n’ roll, but that is my song. As much as it is Ace’s. I wrote it with my heart and my soul. For the guitar player that I loved. And always will love. I will not let the rock ’n’ roll “music business” take away my actual love for rock ’n’ roll music.
I Lost My Home in a Fucking Hurricane
Yes, that’s right. It’s true. Think of the fucking irony. Most musicians/entertainers who make it big eventually are forced to move from the big mansions they bought when they first “made it.” It’s the nature of the business. Usually, they say, a typical life span for an entertainer is somewhere around seven years. People get into you, they dig your whole scene, then they get tired of you, and move on to the next thing.
Never had that problem.
When I got kicked out of Skid Row in 1996, I was like a fish out of water. I did not know what to do. I had been in the band since 1987, so Skid Row was, is, and always will be, the “best” years of my life. My “prime” years. Ages twenty to twenty-seven or something. When I was no longer in the group, I literally had no idea what to do with myself.
But through my solo band, more television shows than I can remember, and Broadway, I was indeed able to support myself quite well, thank you very much. While my bandmates from Skid Row all moved out of their New Jersey mansions that we each bought, in 1990, I had been happily ensconced in my home for over twenty years. My real home. The only real home I ever really knew. Since my family moved to three different countries by the time I was eight, I made a promise to myself as a little boy that when I grew up, I would move as little as possible. I kept that promise to myself.
Fate had other plans.
In the summer of 2011, I was playing concerts. One of these shows was the Colorado Rock Jam, with Godsmack and Twisted Sister.
I knew there was supposed to be a storm hitting New Jersey that day. No big deal, I thought. I had lived in the same house for over twenty years. We had never had a drop of water, nary a trace of moisture, in the basement. The whole time we had lived there. My basement was beautiful. After Jesus Christ Superstar, I had earned enough money to completely finish the basement into the ultimate rock ’n’ roll man cave. I called it “the Basement that Jesus Bought.” The whole basement had hardwood floors. A full rehearsal studio, with full PA and monitors. A full recording studio. A guest bedroom. Soundproofed walls. A media center. All of my rock ’n’ roll memorabilia, one-of-a-kind KISS and of course Skid Row items that only I possessed. We wrote and rehearsed the Skid Row album Slave to the Grind in this very basement.
Then Hurricane Irene happened. She took everything away. From me. From my family. From my past.
I have not healed from this whole experience yet. At all. My home was crucial to me. It’s where I could shut everything out. Where the noise of the crowd, the glare of the spotlight, the stares of strangers all ceased to exist. I remember back in the early ’90s, I wanted to move to Hollywood. I have always wanted to live in California, ever since I was a little boy and my dad would fly me and my sister to visit our grandma in Walnut Creek. Years later, I told Slash that I wanted to move to LA, and he said, “Baz, that’s a bad idea. You can’t move to LA. You belong on the East Coast. That’s what grounds you.” Part of me was hurt when he said that. It was like he didn’t want to hang out with me or something. But, after thinking about it, I knew what he was saying was exactly true.
[[-Axl shipping me out of LA story?]]
Biblical in Proportions
2010–2014
Adventures in Couch Surfing
Los Angeles
Getting divorced, in 2010, was a trauma that I do not wish upon anyone. After I swore to myself when I was ten years old that I would never do that to a child of my own, to have my family br
eak up was soul crushing.
There are so many reasons why this happened. I don’t really feel like writing about it this book, because it’s so much of a bummer. After having three kids, and having been married for almost twenty years, I was faced with an uncertain future to be sure. My wife was divorcing me and Dad would not be there for the kids anymore. Just like my dad before me, and his dad before him.
All of this happened just a couple of months before our home was destroyed by Hurricane Irene. It’s overwhelming to contemplate. The ramifications of all these occurrences, happening sequentially, were for my life truly biblical in proportions.
I had to run. I had to get away from New Jersey. I tried to have another house there. To be there for my kids, an hour or two after school, a couple of days a week. Most days I would sit in this little house, completely alone. I have never been a suicidal person. I’m too good at having fun for that. But sitting alone, in an empty house, in New Jersey, with no family, and no future that I was aware of, was the closest I have ever been to having no hope whatsoever. I simply had no idea what to do. I just wanted to spend time with my daughter, be there for her as she grew up. I was so ready for that. After all the mayhem and the craziness of my life, I finally had a beautiful little girl to call my own.
Then she was gone, too.
During the show Celebrity Fit Club, we all got prizes and extravagant rewards when our team won the challenge. Each one of us got no less than five trips, vacations at various exotic resorts around the world. My ex-wife and I were divorcing when I was rewarded these trips. To Cancún, different resorts in California, Puerto Vallarta, Aruba. How ironic that I could not find a girl to go with me to any of these. I was stuck with all these tickets and passes to resorts around the world. With nobody to go with. I said, “Fuck it, I’ll go by myself.” What did I have to lose?
Got on a plane. Went out to LA. Lined up three resorts in a row to go to. San Diego, Ojai, another one. When I got to LAX by myself, I rented a car by myself. Got in it by myself. Started driving down the highway to San Diego by myself. More alone than I had ever been in my life. What the fuck was I doing? I started crying so hard, it was almost impossible to drive. I was driving by myself to an empty hotel room? For what? This was fucking insane. Was this what my life had come to? Why?
I checked into a hotel on the beach. Went immediately to the bar. Started drinking. Of course people were like, “What in the fuck is Sebastian Bach doing here?”
I met a bunch of people and we partied. Big surprise. After goofing off in downtown San Diego that night, me and a bunch of other people I had just met went to the beach after the bars closed. I told this guy Jordan that my wife left me, and my kids were gone, and I would never see my daughter grow up. I was inconsolable.
“Well,” he said, “I don’t give a fuck what anybody says. Nobody in the world should ever be this hurt.” I listened to what this dude said. He was right. Nobody should feel the way I was feeling. I had to figure out a way for me to even want to keep going.
California had always been the happiest place in the world to me. Whereas I had moved from country to country as a little boy, I had always gone to California on vacation. So in a way, California was the one constant in my home life. It never changed. It was always there. It was always beautiful. I always had a smile on my face when I was in California.
If there was one thing I needed desperately, it was a smile on my face. So I really had no other option. If I was going to start over, after losing my family, my home, my band, my dog, even my bird, California was the place to be. Beverly Hills. Swimming pools. Movie stars. Always dug that theme song.
My manager, Rick Sales, helped me immeasurably in this time period. He was always there for me. As a friend, talking as if he were family himself. The popular image of a rock ’n’ roll manager is the cigar-chomping, big-wheel, head honcho. The unfeeling, uncaring megalomaniac. But I can say that Rick Sales honestly cares about the musicians he works with. He talks to you as a family member as well as a business associate. Which is just what I needed, going through all of this crazy crap. Rick knew what I was going through from life experience. I did not. All of this rotten life stuff was new to me.
I had nowhere to live. I had miles saved, from decades of travel. I cashed them all in for hotel rooms in LA, car rentals, and the like. I would have to send money back to my ex-wife in Jersey, which made it even harder to start over again. Stay in hotels, fly back to Jersey, come back here, back to Jersey again. Trying to stay in Jersey to see my kids. But I would never get to see them. They would rarely come over to the house and see me. There was literally zero point to me being there.
My last night in New Jersey was spent with my daughter at a restaurant. Just me and her, by ourselves, as it always was when I lived there. We went to eat dinner. I stared at my phone for a text that would never come. Absentmindedly watch the TV on the wall. I love my daughter so much. But a kid needs a mom and a dad to feel right. I don’t know what to do to be happy. Us having dinner together two or three times a week does not make me happy. It’s just not enough.
I needed to make a change. For myself. For her, too. I needed my daughter to know her father as a happy man. Not the sad dude she was talking to now.
Once again, rock ’n’ roll comes along and saves my world. My friend Rita Haney, Dimebag Darrell’s love of his life. We had been through so much together with Pantera. Taking them on tour. Them taking me on tour in my solo band. I made a Facebook post saying, “Hey. I’m looking for a place to stay in California.” Rita read this and messaged me right away, saying, “Hey dude. You can stay at my house!!” I couldn’t believe what I was reading. How rare is that in rock ’n’ roll? Lots of people can talk the talk. But very few in show business actually Walk the Walk.
Re
spect
Are you talking to me?
Me and Rita had fun living together. Although I was drinking heavily at this time. I stained her bedsheets with red wine. I also left the stovetop on, after I made coffee. I am sorry, Rita. I did not mean to do either of those things. I can never thank you enough for giving me a chance at a new life.
Alas, all good things must come to an end, and after a month or so, I needed to find another place to live. I had been jamming with the band Camp Freddy, whose members included Dave Navarro, Donovan Leitch, Chris Chaney, Mark McGrath, and on drums, Matt Sorum. I had been friends with Matt since the Use Your Illusion tour and it was fun to play with him again in Camp Freddy. “Hey Baz, come stay here with us. Until you can get back on your feet.” I was so blown away. I had a great time staying at Matt’s. Although he was sober, along with his awesome wife Ace, he would pour wine for me at night. Cooked breakfast for me in the morning. We went running a couple times, and genuinely got along great. He’s a very nice guy and extremely professional musician.
After about two weeks, Matt came in the room and said, “Hey Baz. Me and Ace got to get our vibe back.” He explained to me that his wife felt inhibited having loud sex, with me in the very next room. I told them to go for it! Fine with me.
I needed my own place to live.
Matt said, “Hey dude, let’s just go walking around and look for a place.” He loved to walk his dogs on the streets around their house. We went on a walk. I took down phone numbers of available apartments. We strolled on down the street together, and saw there was a vacancy. Knocked on the door. A nice lady opened it up, and greeted us cordially. We explained to her that I was looking for a place to live, and she unbelievably said, “Well hey, you can stay here. I have an extra room.” I could not believe what I was hearing. We were just walking around, and found a place without even trying. How does this even happen? I moved into Betsy’s spare room. It was only a block or two away from Matt’s. Betsy explained that when she saw me and Matt walking the dogs, coming towards her house, she thought that we were a gay couple. I laughed my ass off. She thought that Matt and I were a romantic couple, taking a stroll, walking our doggies, looking for cute
apartments to check out. I explained to her that this was not the case. We laughed. I thank Betsy for her hospitality and generosity.
16
THE LAST FRONTIER
For my third studio record, Kicking & Screaming, my manager Rick Sales hooked me up with an incredible producer by the name of Bob Marlette. I have been working with Bob since then, due to the fact that he really helps me put together music I want to hear. And that I want you to hear.
Bob, in turn, hooked me up with the incomparable John 5. The guy that has literally reinvented rock ’n’ roll guitar playing in recent years. The first time I had any contact with John 5 was years before there was a John 5. When he was just called John Lowery, he was a rock fan who waited in line all day to be part of the Skid Row “Piece of Me” video. You can see him jumping off the stage doing a stage dive, plain as day. If you can recognize him, that is.
John sent me a song called “Tunnelvision” that we still play live to this day. I played with other people on Kicking & Screaming. It was very much a snapshot of my life at that time. A confusing time for me, going through a divorce and losing my home. When I listen to Kicking & Screaming I’m very proud of the music on it. It’s so much of a snapshot in time that it’s hard for me to listen to these days. But I stand by the album as a quality piece of music. The songwriting, musicianship, production, and attitude of the record all kick ass. I think the title track and also the last song of the record, the ballad “Wishin’ ” (which I dedicate to my children), are among the best songs I have ever recorded.
For my next studio record, Give ’Em Hell, I was fortunate enough to have the best of the best in the business beside me. Again, I had John 5, for the song “Temptation,” which became the first single off the record. Even more incredibly, I had my longtime buddy Duff McKagan on bass guitar and also rhythm guitar for the first half of the record. I had played in Australia with Matt Sorum’s all-star band, Kings of Chaos, with Duff as well. We played on that day with Van Halen and Aerosmith both. A once-in-a-lifetime bill, I still pinch myself when I think about it.
18 and Life on Skid Row Page 30