The ’80s era produced a massive list of big names when it came to Rock-n-Roll vocalists, but perhaps none is more distinctive than Sebastian Bach. The voice of Skid Row during their most commercially successful period, Bach is a triple threat as a leading man with astounding range, exceptional power, and a ton of energy in each song he sings. Wowing audiences with performances on pretty much anything he has recorded, some standout moments from the Skid Row years would have to include “18 and Life,” “Youth Gone Wild,” “Monkey Business,” and “Wasted Time.” However, this is not where the story ends for Bach because he has sustained a particular level of excellence through his solo years, and this would include efforts such as 2007’s Angel Down, leading to 2014’s Give ’em Hell.
Truly an elite Rock-n-Roll singer, in 2024, he is preparing to release a brand new solo album entitled Child Within The Man. What will be his first solo studio album in a decade, an inspired Sebastian Bach took some time to chat about the work put into it, his unwavering dedication to giving it his all, preserving the human element of music, plus more.
Cryptic Rock – You have built yourself a pretty amazing career in music. First, with Skid Row and all the success you found there, then onto your work on Broadway, as well as a lengthy solo career. Jumping forward, you are now set to release your first solo album in a decade called Child Within The Man. What led to the decision to put out an album now?
Sebastian Bach – In my experience, it’s impossible to have success without a team. I have a team. Part of the reason my album took a couple of years longer to come out was because the business side of it was not in place. The thing about the internet, YouTube and everything, is it allows anybody to put out anything at any time. There’s so much of it coming your way every day that you have to figure out a way to cut through the clutter of everything. Somehow, with the first song, “What Do I Got To Lose?,” we definitely cut through the clutter because we’ve got over 1 million views… which I did not know was possible anymore. By the way, “Everybody Bleeds” had over 100,000 views in the first three days! We’re right on target to be another million there too. When you’re talking about millions… I am astonished that I’m saying millions in 2024… and the record’s not even out. I’m just blown away. That’s the result of having a team, honestly.
Cryptic Rock – That is great to hear. The new album is due out on May 10th, but obviously people are already enjoying the few tracks you have put out already. As a whole, the record is heavy, very energetic, and inspiring.
Sebastian Bach – Wow. Thank you so much. I really have to say thank you to the producer, Elvis Baskette, who had the vision to get me out of my house in 2021 when we recorded it. I didn’t even know that you could leave your house then because we were all freaked out.
It was recorded in the old way of everybody being in the room, looking each other in the eye. None of this was recorded on our laptops, sending files back and forth. It was not like that; this was old-school recording to the point that Elvis’ recording console is a 1974 Neve 8048, and many other bands recorded albums on it.
The mastering engineer is Robert Ludwig, the ultimate mastering engineer of all time who did Steely Dan, Kiss Alive! (1975), Led Zeppelin II (1969), Jimi Hendrix’s The Cry of Love (1971). That’s insane! Since my album has been done, Robert has retired. One of the last albums he ever worked on was Child Within The Man by me! So, I’m a fan of my own album.
Cryptic Rock – As you should be, because it sounds excellent. You had a great team behind you with the making of the album and it shows. You mentioned recording on older equipment. So, this is all real and there is no studio magic in there… like a lot of things we hear nowadays.
Sebastian Bach – No. If I get really technical, I think that we recorded it analog and then bounced it to digital for mastering. You’d have to ask Elvis Baskette that.
The thing is, if you’re a vinyl collector and you collect records, you know that if you see the name Robert Ludwig on the back of an album, that album’s going to sound like butter on your system. My album totally has that quality of a really dynamic sound. There’s no brick-walling here. It’s all the old kind of sound.
I can’t listen to the way music is mastered these days, which is just as loud as possible. I don’t enjoy the way that sounds. I enjoy the way KISS’s Rock and Roll Over (1976) sounds, or “Spirit of Radio” from Rush’s Permanent Waves (1980). Those are some of my favorite albums. There’s no Pro Tooling with Rock and Roll Over (1976). That’s for sure.
Cryptic Rock – Exactly. A record has to have dynamics. You should be able to turn it up and enjoy it without your ears bleeding. This technique in recording seems to be a lost art.
Sebastian Bach – I don’t know of any newer albums that are dynamic… maybe because I’m not listening. If you know of any albums that sound like that, let me know, dude.
Cryptic Rock – There are a few Rock bands that are still putting out stuff that is a little more dynamic. For example, Rival Sons’ record, organically and on older equipment.
Sebastian Bach – Well, that’s what we’re doing. We’re recording a band. We’re not recording individuals and putting it together. We’re recording an individual band. That’s way different. Another album I recorded in that way was Angel Down (2007), which we did at Sound City, the studio where Dave Grohl made that movie.
When you listen to something like “American Metalhead,” that was the producer, Roy Z. It was the same thing there; all of us in a room together looking at each other, out for blood, trying to just rock the shit! Being in the same room, and looking at each other, it’s just a different vibe. It’s different than when you’re in your house singing to your computer. It’s different when you’re looking at your drummer right deep in his eyes, saying, “Come on, man. Let’s do this.” It’s just different.
Cryptic Rock – Completely agreed. Going back to what you said about your passion for the physical format and recording in a room with a band… both aspects seem to be something lost in the modern world. It seems like music is becoming so sanitized with the advent of AI, etc. In fact, a good portion of people do not even know what is real or not anymore! That is why it is great that artists like yourself are still doing things the right way. All this said, where do you think music in general is going?
Sebastian Bach – Well, thank you for saying that. I always will do that. When you say, we can’t tell if it’s AI or not… I can tell. My digital team just made a Facebook banner of my album cover, but it was AI on the other side of it. It was the size of the banner, but it was AI. It was unsettling to me because this is a painting my dad did in ’78. Then I saw this AI version of that and it just weirded me out. There’s no other way for me to put it. I did not approve it, and you’re not going to see that because I don’t think my dad would like that if I did that. It looked pretty similar, but you could tell it was not real.
I don’t think that a computer could ever give you the passion of a human being creating music. I might be wrong, but if you put on 1978’s Powerage from AC/DC, “TNT,” and it is Bon Scott and the lads. I don’t think a computer could ever do that. The first Van Halen album, with David Lee Roth and Eddie whooping it up… I don’t think AI could capture that real human spirit. I could be wrong, but I haven’t seen that yet. I can tell when it’s AI. That’s all I’m saying.
Cryptic Rock – You are right. That is the thing about music… it is a human experience. It is about the human beings behind the music, and you can feel it. Sometimes, the less-than-perfect aspects of music are what make it more endearing as well.
Sebastian Bach – Absolutely. yes. Unfortunately, everybody in the world has the technology in their pocket to film every show… the whole thing. Toto’s Steve Lukather said, “Nobody jams anymore.” He describes this on Instagram. No musician wants to jam anymore; because everybody goes, “Oh, wait. Oh, this is going to be on YouTube and analyzed.” People are like, “Fuck it. I’m not making a video here for everybody to watch tomorrow morning over breakfast.” That aspect has taken that away.
Talking about the human element. If you’re at a bar watching your friend’s band play, it’s one in the morning, and everybody there has had more than a couple of drinks. In the ’80s and the ’90s, before the internet, we’d all jump up there, jam, have a good time, have fun, and whoop it up. We did that all the time. Now, nobody wants to do that because nobody wants to have the video of all that. Now, when I go on stage, I say to myself, “Don’t move around too much. Don’t jump around so much because you want to sing perfectly.” The real human being element is… not everybody’s perfect.
There’s something to be said for fronting the band; like David Lee Roth jumping off the drum riser and touching his feet parallel to the ground, 30 feet in the air. Who the fuck does that shit? Nobody! It’s like superhero shit right there. There’s something to be said for that. Of course, David doing a jump like that doesn’t help his singing voice. That’s like some Olympic athletics type thing. There’s something to be said for that as well though.
Cryptic Rock – Yes, that is part of the showmanship and fun of a live performance.
Sebastian Bach – Yes. The point I’m trying to make is in this day and age, a guy like me, I have to walk a fine line between showmanship and recording an album up there. Everything is being videoed.
Cryptic Rock – Right. We are all under constant surveillance.
Sebastian Bach – Yeah. In ’89 with Skid Row, before we took the stage, we would all put our hands in a circle, and we’d look at each other. We’d go, “Let’s go fucking insane up there. Let’s go crazy up there.” We didn’t think about anything. We went nuts.
Cryptic Rock – That is what makes it memorable. Those early years with Skid Row were quite busy for you, too. Those first three records that you did with them hit really hard and were different from what others were doing at the time.
Sebastian Bach – You could say the same about Child Within The Man. I’m not going to toot my own horn or anything. Of course, those Skid Row records were an effort of all five guys on that album. I don’t ever put my name on something that I think sucks. If I say, “Here’s my new album,” you better believe I tried as hard as I could to make an amazing album that started with the first Skid Row album and came up to Child Within the Man.
I know the other guys do the same thing, but we’re not together. When I look at Ozzy Osbourne, his solo career – Blizzard of Ozz (1980), Diary of a Madman (1981) – that is my ultimate inspiration for what I do to make Sebastian records that fit with the first Skid Row records. That’s what I’m trying to do. You can kick the man out of the band, but you can’t kick the band out of the man!
Cryptic Rock – (Laughs) Right. You have accomplished that with each of your solo records as well. So, being that it has been some time since you have released any new music, did you have a bunch of material that you were sitting on for a while?
Sebastian Bach – Yes. It is just the way I write all the time. I like to start with a title… that gives me a concept of what I’m writing the verses and the chorus about, obviously. I have probably thousands of titles, definitely hundreds. Over the years, I have just a file on my computer and phone of text that has just titles and verse ideas.
Then I’ll say to a guy like Devin Bronson (who I wrote a lot with on this album and 2014’s Give ’em Hell), John 5, or whoever it is, “You got any riffs lying around?” Guys will send me just the riffs. They don’t have to finish the whole song because I change it around a lot. I collect riffs. Then, if I hear something that I like that I can sing over, I’ll go to my list of titles and lyric ideas. I’ll try to fit the riff with a lyric idea, and then I will expand upon that.
My inspiration for that is really Judas Priest. I always marveled at the way a song like “Desert Plains” sounded like Rob on a motorcycle in the desert on the plains, or “Solar Angels,” which sounded like alien solar angels coming down from space. Maybe that’s just me. To me, his lyrics always fit perfectly with his riffs and the music.
I try to say, “What does this riff feel like to me?” For example, when I heard the song “Everybody Bleeds,” it was so dark and heavy. I just thought of losing my home in a hurricane. I said, “Well, nothing could be darker than that. I’m going to write about that.” I never thought it would be a video, a single, or anything like that. You can only write about what you feel… so that’s what I do.
Cryptic Rock – The best material comes from the heart. With the new album due out, you also have shows lined up going into and throughout the summer. Armed with new music to play, how excited are you for this?
Sebastian Bach – The vinyl collector fan in me wants to get it out to the fans. I hope to do in-stores at record stores. I don’t know if I’ll be doing that on the tour, but that would be really fun for me to sign albums. Maybe I’ll have albums, CDs, and cassettes at the gigs. I don’t know. Nobody really wants to carry a record around at the gig. (Laughs)
When I put out my book, they put me on a two-week press tour. I went to bookstores all over the country, met the fans, and signed books. I would love to do that for this record: go around to record stores, meet the fans, and sign the albums.
Cryptic Rock – That would be great. Plus, you would get out there and receive feedback about the new material.
Sebastian Bach – Yeah. Also, to support mom-and-pop record stores, they’re carrying my variant glow-in-the-dark vinyl copy. I would love to say, “Thank you for stocking this. I’m here. Let’s sign this shit.” To me, a record store is like a sacred place that soothes my heart. It is like a library where I can spend so much time and be interested in things. So, I would love to support local record stores.
Cryptic Rock – Absolutely. That is extremely important, especially since a lot of them seem to be dying out sadly.
Sebastian Bach – Not on the West Coast, they’re not. There might be more than you think. When I’m on the road, me and my guitar player, Brent Woods, put in Yelp “vinyl record stores.” We always find some hole-in-the-wall spot that we spend our days off at and come home with tons of rare vinyl off the road.
Cryptic Rock – You have to search, and honestly, that is the best part! So, we have talked about 40 years of your career and how it has been a really amazing ride with all the things you have accomplished… but here is another big question. What do you think is the most important thing you have learned from all these experiences?
Sebastian Bach – Wow. Oh, man. The biggest thing I’ve learned, holy jeez. Gosh, dude, these are philosophical questions. For me, I would say it was something that my dad taught me when I was a little boy. He was an art teacher. He tried to explain to me the difference between form and content.
We live in a world now where a promoter will just get a logo of a band and say, “Oh, this will be a good show,” and “There are no original members,” or “They haven’t made an album in 20 years,” or whatever. People don’t care. That’s the form of something. The logo is the form of something. The content is the actual music that was made that cannot be replicated or copied. Nobody can take away the content that you create. The form, anybody can impersonate that or slap a logo on something. Including AI, nobody or nothing can take away the content that you create.
So, what did I learn? I was taught that by my art teacher dad when I was about nine. I tried to understand what he was explaining to me. That is the source of when people say, “Oh, you’re hard to work with or something.” Well, I have to make something that I’m proud of, that is important to me, and that I want you to hear. That’s Child Within The Man. I would say concentrate on the content. Don’t worry about the form.
Cryptic Rock – That is a great lesson to learn. This is especially important in today’s day and age, where it seems that it is all about instant gratification through a social media world where everyone’s just out for clicks. The truth is that ideology is empty; it is about actual artistic integrity. It is inspiring to hear you reflect this sentiment.
Sebastian Bach – That’s what lasts the test of time. If you’re looking to create something, make sure that you love it yourself. That’s the trick. That’s the key. You can’t do art by a committee. People telling you, “Do this or do that.” You don’t let the audience tell you what to do. You show the audience what you are making and what you are capable of. There’s a big difference there.
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