The Kid Inside Sebastian Bach
A lively chat with the former Skid Row singer about his fantastic new solo album
When Sebastian Bach calls, he’s in an exuberant mood.
“It’s my birthday!” he tells Rock & Roll Globe, adding that he’s turning 56 years old. Besides celebrating his special day, he’s also in high spirits because he’s about to release his latest album, Child Within the Man, on May 10 (via Reigning Phoenix Music).
It will be the sixth solo album Bach has released since his departure from the hard rock band Skid Row in 1996. But, Bach says, “These new songs have given me so much new energy and new excitement that it feels like the first time.”
“I always focus on the content,” he continues, “and this record, I don’t give a shit that I don’t have the logo of Skid Row. I do the same thing that I did in Skid Row in ’89 that I do now. So if you want that feeling and that excitement and that sound, that’s never going to change.”
He credits producer Elvis Baskette for being the catalyst for making this album.
“It was his vision to do a new Sebastian album, and he’s been a fan since he was a teenager,” Bach says. Baskette also co-wrote several of the tracks.
Bach lived at Baskette’s Orlando home for a month so they could be in the same room as they created these songs.
“I didn’t even know that people still recorded like that – I thought most people sent files back and forth and record on their laptops,” he says. “That is the furthest thing from this record. This record is totally old school. Look at each other in the eye and say, ‘Hey, we’ve got to rock this as hard as we can’ kind of thing. I think you can hear that in the energy of the music.”
Bach also brought in other noteworthy collaborators for this album, including the guitarists John 5, Steve Stevens and Orianthi. He also co-wrote two songs with vocalist/guitarist Myles Kennedy.
The album title comes from a line in the opening song, “Everybody Bleeds.”
“That song basically is me as a dad wanting to leave behind an earth that is better for my child than it is for me as a man – and we’re not on that track at all,” Bach says. “I just always am haunted to think about what kind of world this is going to be in 50 years, in many different ways.” He says that he is particularly worried about the effects of climate change.
“Also, Child Within the Man relates to the fact that rock and roll makes me feel like a kid,” Bach says. “The excitement of rock, the sound of it, the collecting of it, the communal vibe when you have a party or go to a concert – to me, rock and roll when it’s done right, like this album, feels like a magic elixir. Like something you can enjoy that makes you feel like a youth. The spirit of being a little kid. I can’t think of many things that do that in this world.”
Child Within the Man, as a theme, is poignantly captured in the cover art, which consists of two paintings made by his artist father, David Bierk. His father passed away in 2002, which makes using this artwork especially meaningful for Bach.
“Just imagine if your parent died 20 years ago and they were an artist or a painter or a writer, and then you’re an artist, and you bring their art back,” he explains. “It’s glorious. It’s like they’re alive again. That’s really what it feels like, because a true artist puts his heart and life and soul into his art. So it is alive. It is to me, for sure.”
One of the paintings, which Bierk created in 1978, shows a young Sebastian running beside a car. The other, which Bach believes his father painted in 1989 or 1990, was based on a photo of him that had run in Circus magazine.
“When I got on the cover of Circus magazine and then they put me in the centerfold, my dad couldn’t comprehend it,” Bach says, sounding as he’s still astonished by this fact, himself. “If you knew where I grew up, it is un-fucking-believable that I was such a fan of rock, and then I got to do what my heroes did.”
Bach, born Sebastian Bierk, was raised in Peterborough, a town about 80 miles outside of Toronto. Bach describes it as “a tiny snow drift of a town. We had like three TV channels, so I grew up reading rock magazines and comic books.”
Bach says he never considered becoming a visual artist, like his father, because he never could draw that well. But he was very young when he discovered his own true talent: “I was the lead soprano in my church choir when I was eight [years old], and so I fell in love with singing. It was like Christmas music and hymns and psalms. I used to sing in Latin when I was a little kid. Who the hell does that?”
This skill came in handy when, a few years later, local bands started recruiting him as their lead singer – even though, at 12 years old, he was about five years younger than the rest of the band members.
“There was a million guitar players, a million drummers, but zero singers,” he says. “So all these older musicians said, ‘Hey, come sing in my band.’ And so I started singing rock and roll.”
VIDEO: Sebastian Bach “(Hold On) To The Dream”
In 1987, Bach moved to New Jersey, where he joined the hard rock band Skid Row. They immediately had chart success around the world with their very first single, “Youth Gone Wild,” from their 1989 self-titled debut album. That same year, the band also had massive hits with “18 and Life” and “I Remember You.” Their next album, 1991’s Slave to the Grind, yielded more successful singles, including the title track and “Monkey Business.”
Bach promises he’ll play all of those familiar Skid Row hits when he hits the road in May; his tour will bring him across North America, starting from May through June. “I’ll be doing my best songs from my catalog, including from 1989 until now,” he says.
Bach says he’s looking forward to performing the new songs from Child Within the Man for audiences for the first time, too.
“Singing rock ‘n’ roll is all about transferring whatever mood you’re in to the crowd,” he says. “I walk out there and it feels glorious!”
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