Phone me as soon as you can, I've got something you might be interested in was the voicemail I got at around 3.30 pm on Monday 21^st July. Further investigation revealed that an interview with multi-talented singer, songwriter, actor and entertainer Sebastian Bach was on the cards if I was up for it.

Well, I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, and I'm a huge fan of the guy anyway, so despite the minimum amount of notice, and the slight feeling of panic as in "where do I start", by 7 pm I had a list of questions that I knew would far exceed the twenty minute time slot allocated, but at least I had plenty of back ups if he dried up; mind you, Sebastian Bach drying up in an interview is as likely as bacon sandwiches appearing at a Bar Mitzvah picnic.

At 7.30 on the dot the phone rang, and after a short pause I was put through to Sebastian.

With pleasantries duly exchanged, he began by telling me where he was at the time. "I'm in Savannah Georgia. I just drove about 800 miles from Kentucky all night. I haven't been in a bed that hasn't been going at 75 miles an hour down the highway in at least four days now."

Well, that would go some way to explaining why he sounded genuinely tired (and he still had plenty more interviews to do that day). We got down to the business of talking about the killer new album, released November 2007, with a special edition released in the UK on the day the interview took place. ‘Angel Down' is his first original solo recording since his days fronting Skid Row, and features Axl Rose on three of the album tracks including first single '(Love Is A) Bitchslap' and a cover of the Aerosmith classic ‘Back In The Saddle'.

These tracks are the first official Axl recordings to be released since 1993's ‘The Spaghetti Incident'. Sebastian nonchalantly mentioned that he was pleased with the reviews that the album had received so far, and then there was the tiniest of pregnant pauses where images of synagogues full of bacon sandwiches wormed their way into my brain (maybe he had read the review on this site), so I switched tack completely.

As to what followed .... well, as you'll read for yourself, I had nothing to fear after all.

What was it like working with Roy Z?

It was a lot of fun working with Roy mainly because we're only about 3 weeks apart in age. That might sound trivial, but we grew up on the same stuff, the same music, the same TV shows, the same concert tours and we both had the same goals, which was to make a high energy incredible sounding rock album with killer screams and great riffs, great grooves and great songs. I think we really achieved that. It's so ironic that the first meeting that I had with Roy was at the Rainbow in Hollywood with Bobby Jarzombek (drummer in Bach's band). That's when we first talked about working together and Roy said "Dude I want to make a record that has the fucking feel of ‘Appetite for Destruction' by Guns ‘n Roses. I said "that'd be great". Not only did we do that, but we got Axl Rose to sing on it (laughs). Me and Roy were laughing when Axl showed up at the studio because we both couldn't believe that we were talking about our favourite albums of all time - ‘Appetite' was like number 1, really - and then to have Axl actually sing on the record ... like ... WOW, that's pretty amazing.

I was going to ask you a question about Axl anyway, and it's one I'm sure you're fed up answering, but how did you get him on board?

Well, I didn't need to persuade him at all. I sent a text saying "when are you going to sing on my record?" and he texted me back one word "When". That was it. I've told this story a billion times, and it still blows me away. Whenever I hear the record, I just hold my head in my hands because I love it so much, I love the sound of it, and to hear him singing on it is astonishing to me, because I'm a fan, too. I like putting new Axl into my IPod and can't believe it's on my record! He's singing better than ever. I did two years on the road with him in 2006 and 2007 and he sounded incredible on tour too.

With Axl in such obvious good form, it always begs the question why ‘Chinese Democracy' hasn't been released as of yet?

It's coming. Everyone's going to feel really dumb when they finally get it. The whole world is going to go "God, why did we care so much?" He's just making it the best that it can be. He's got his own time frame, and it's his record. That's the biggest thing we laugh about together, because it's so funny to hear that people are mad at him because he doesn't put out his record. It's his fuckin' record (laughs). Make your' own record if you want one!

You obviously have a good relationship with him.... I get a feeling that he has difficulty trusting people?

Well, I've spent about three years of my life on the road with him and that's a lot of gigs. I know he doesn't do too many interviews, at least I haven't read too many with him. There was something on his website www.gunsnroses.com that I knew he had written, where he talked about ‘Angel Down'. I was just staring at my computer screen and couldn't believe what I was reading. I'm thinking "how can this be true!" It was just incredible.

Back to the album, is there any significance in the title?

Well, I started writing it in 2000 and then all the 9/11 stuff happened, and the war in Iraq and I have a 19 year old son myself. Of course as a father in the USA or Britain for that matter, you're thinking about your kids going to war, you're wondering what it's for and all this stuff. Any soldier's family knows what Angel Down is. It's what people have to deal with ... the perversion of religion, like people flying planes into buildings in the name of religion which is just crazy. There are a lot of meanings to it.

What led you to the decision to use the particular painting by your late father as the album cover?

Well, the easy answer is that I didn't see a better one (laughs). There was no better cover that anybody showed me, so if you want something done right, do it yourself. That's the one that resonated into my eyes. My Dad died at the age of 57 and three weeks after he died I started playing Jesus Christ in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar'. So to me and my family the painting looked as if it was almost like him in heaven looking at the play. He did it as the statue of David looking down at the painting, and his name was David. But this is all too depressing and I don't really like to talk about it, but that's what it is. (I began to thank Sebastian for caring to divulge even this much information, when, true to form, he carried on ....) What is incredible is that now we're on the Poison tour of the USA, every night we put the backdrop up. I made an arena sized backdrop like the size that would fit Wembley stadium - that big. Every night we play in front of it and I look at it right before I go on. Blown up that big, nobody can believe how incredible it looks and it just belongs on the big stage and if he'd seen it that big, my Dad would have freaked out. All the people in the cover are life sized people on the backdrop. It just looks great. I hope to lug it over to the UK next time we play because it looks awesome ... it's beautiful.

I love the cover of ‘Back in the Saddle'. How did you get Messrs Perry and Tyler's blessing for that?

Axl called Steve Tyler while we were recording it. He just goes (does Axl impression) "we gotta call Steven" and he just dialled the number in his cell phone and handed me the phone. I had been screaming all day and my voice was really high and Steven said "Sebastian, at least you haven't lost your high end!" Then he asked "who's on bass for Back in the Saddle?" I thought - who's on bass? Why? Then somebody told me that there are notes in the bass line of ‘Back in the Saddle' that you can't hit on a four string. Steven was very concerned about that, so I told him that our bass player Steve DiGiorgio played a fretless bass on the whole record, and he said "oh, ok, that's good" and he was very pleased about that. But I just thought it was so cool that Steven Tyler's first concern was the bass line ... he was all fired up about the bass (laughs). Then Joey Kramer called me at home and said he'd heard the cover and thought it was absolutely amazing.

I was really impressed with your bassist Rob De Luca last year - have you replaced him?

Rob does the live shows. He does a fabulous job and you can see him on the DVD. By the way, every copy of ‘Angel Down' in the UK comes with a DVD called ‘Roadrage'. It's an hour long hilarious DVD that features five songs live on the Guns ‘n Roses tour and it's incredibly high quality. It also features the making of the CD Angel Down and we're so proud of it. When you see it you'll know why, it's just funny and it's nice to make a new DVD.

If I understand it correctly, the DVD was shot by your wife?

One part of it was. The tour of the studio Sound City in Hollywood CA is shot by my wife, the hostess with the mostest.

I don't want to depress you but attempts were made to pick up a copy today on Oxford Street, and it wasn't available at all.

Oh, that's bullshit, but I have no control over stuff like that. It certainly doesn't make me happy hearing that sort of thing. I've got it, though (laughs). Now we're playing with Poison in front of about 20,000 people per night and we're selling it at the shows and I'm autographing them every night, so it does exist (laughs). That does suck, though. What did the dude at the store say?

He said they hadn't been sent out yet by the distributors, but it's a well known fact that Britain doesn't work.

Well, if I base your comment on Heathrow Airport, then I would agree with you. Heathrow is a fuckin' nightmare (much laughter)

Talking about airports, I believe you had a rough time trying to get to Swedenrock this year. We were disappointed not to have seen you.

Oh, my God, it was a nightmare. There was nothing I could do about it. I have never cancelled a show in my life; I have never missed a show. That was the Swedish government ... when the connecting flights were booked too close to each other, we simply missed the connection because the authorities made us go through customs again and re-check all of our instruments and our backdrop and our wardrobe. The whole tour was in the airport, and they just laughed when they saw all our stuff. They said there's no way you're getting on this flight. That was the Swedish government's fault. But we played at a festival (Sauna Open Air) two days later in Tampere, Finland in front of about 20,000 with Whitesnake, Scorpions, Children of Bodom, Testament, Joe Lynn Turner, Graham Bonnet. It was awesome; totally incredible. You can see some video clips of that on YouTube, and the crowd is out of their minds. So Sweden's loss was Finland's gain.

Well, we know from history that there is a lot of rivalry between the two countries anyway...

For some unknown reason, Swedenrock insisted that we played at 1 o'clock in the afternoon of the first day. We played there three years ago at 4 or 5 o'clock in the afternoon, and it was one of the biggest attended shows of the festival, so I don't know why they wanted us on so early. If they'd let us go on at 3 pm or something we probably could have made it, but they said (imitates Swedish accent) "this is not possible". I can guarantee you that we'd have had a big crowd.

To take something positive from the experience, you played Norway again, which I know is where your heritage is. I was very impressed last year at Kvinesdal when you did some of your between song announcements in Norwegian.

You were there? (asks excitedly). That was in the middle of nowhere, man!

Yes, I'm just back from this year's festival. It poured again.

Aw shit, but it wasn't raining last year when we were on.

No, but it had rained during the day, and I was worried you would reprise your 1992 Donington stage entrance.

Oh, I remember. That was a very rainy day (laughs). (For the uninitiated, Sebastian executed a power slide entrance that even Tony Hawk would have been proud of.)

Sorry to add fuel to the fire, but I've got to tell you that your childhood heroes Triumph played a killer set in front of a huge appreciative crowd.

Oh, what a bummer, now you're making me jealous (with a groan).

Back to touring - do you think you'll visit us in the UK, even if our country doesn't work?

Well, I get asked that a lot, but the bands don't decide. We need to wait for the promoters to make an offer. We do want to come there definitely ... probably in the Fall, because we're booked in the USA and Canada until September at least. The last time I played the UK was 2006 with Guns n Roses and Bullet for my Valentine and I like to play the big stages - that's the level I want to stay at.

Well, let's hope you get the right amount of promotion so you can still do the big shows. Now to the USA. Ten years ago you said in an interview "Skid Row fans are not Poison fans. I never saw any Poison shirts at Skid Row shows. It's all Pantera, Anthrax, Crue, Kiss, Aerosmith, Guns n' Roses - good rock bands." Now you're going out for 2 months in the US with Poison. Has your opinion changed since then?

Well, number one, I was wrong (laughs). There are definitely the same people that like both bands. That has been made very clear to me over the last month. The real reason I said that wasn't necessarily a personal attack on Poison. Ten years ago was when you heard nothing but "hair bands, 80's rock, Nirvana's killing all your bands, Poison and Skid Row are done for because of grunge, blah blah," I hated answering for 25 or 30 other bands that I didn't even know. It was always the same interview questions, so if you back me into a corner like a wild dog I'll start biting, that's part of my personality. If somebody wants to fuck with me, then I'll say things I don't mean or that I shouldn't say or I'd just get aggressive. That's part of my Norwegian Viking heritage (laughs) Anyway, ten years ago, I'm sure we all said things that we regret, or were not correct about, and that was one of them.

You had a milestone birthday (40) on April 3^rd this year, and yet you show no signs whatever of slowing down. What is in the immediate future for you? I know you're planning on writing some stuff with Jamey Jasta of Hatebreed?

I've got four songs that I'm working on with Jamey; who knows what will happen with that, but I make whatever music I want to make, and when you ask what's in the future, I don't look at other bands for inspiration or whatever. I don't follow trends, I'm not a trendy guy, but the biggest bands right now in 2008 have been doing it their whole lives, like the Rolling Stones, Judas Priest, Heaven and Hell, Ozzy, Van Halen is the biggest band in America now, the Police, Genesis, Aerosmith, Motley Crue for that matter. They've all been doing it way longer than me, and if all those bands I've just mentioned are still rockin', I'm just getting warmed up compared to them (laughs).

If you had a list of things to do before you die, is there anything that you would desperately love to do?

The Green Goblin in the Spiderman musical which is coming to Broadway. Bono and The Edge from U2 are writing the music.

Which leads me nicely to the first of the Broadway questions. Which was your favourite character and why?

Jekyll and Hyde, 100 percent. It was fun to play and it had excellent music.

Was the Broadway period a time of more creativity for you? Did you feel your voice improved for example?

All I can say is there is a version of me doing ‘This is the Moment' from Jekyll and Hyde that is one of my greatest singing moments. (This is the Scene in Act 1 that takes place in Dr Jekyll's Consulting Room on Harley Street where he is to be his own patient to test his formula. Check it out on www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDN0yIeeC2g. I guarantee an attack of the goosebumps).

Just as we were warming to the subject, we were interrupted and politely reminded that our time was up. As we said our goodbyes I expressed the hope that he could get a decent night's sleep that night, and that it wouldn't be too long before we'd see him on tour in the UK. All we need now is the promoters to get their asses in gear! What are the chances in this godforsaken country? Bets being taken now.

- Dawn Irwin

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Name

Email

Website

Title

Comment

smaller | bigger

Subscribe via email (Registered users only)

Write the displayed characters

Add Comment