SEBASTIAN BACH On His Split From SKID ROW - “I Was 100% Fired From The Band”
January 28, 2012, 12 years ago
Legendary Rock Interviews recently conducted an interview with SEBASTIAN BACH. In the interview Bach talked about his stint on Spongebob Squarepants, trying to get his music played on the radio, and more. Excerpts from the interview are below:
Legendary Rock Interviews: I am still as psyched as ever whenever your name pops up and feel exactly like I did as a 15-year-old kid skipping school to go see you at Alpine Valley when SKID ROW opened for the USE YOUR ILLUSIONS tour and SLAVE TO THE GRIND came out. I really, really do not want to talk about those guys though it’s almost unavoidable. There’s a lyric on your new album on the song TUNNEL VISION which says “You can’t hear a single word I say if I don’t sound the same as yesterday.”
Sebastian Bach: “Yeah, and that’s so true. It’s ironic I guess that I have a new record and people really like it and it’s gotten good reviews but that line is there on THAT song BECAUSE it’s so true. It’s something I’ve run into all the time since the old days and maybe that perception is finally starting to change which is awesome. It’s hard for a guy like me to get on radio with a new song because there are like 1700 radio stations in the U.S. and 65 of them play rock. The ones that play rock music only play rock music from 20 years ago. They will play ‘18 and Life’, ‘Youth Gone Wild’ and ‘I Remember You’ until the end of time but trying to get them to play a song from Kicking & Screaming is practically like repeatedly bashing your head against a wall and it’s fucked up. If you tune into a channel like Hair Nation on Sirius they will play one of those three songs every hour on the hour, you can literally hear those songs played on radio 20 times a day but it’s the same fucking songs over and over and I just don’t understand. Then there will be cool new rock stations on regular radio or Liquid Metal on Sirius XM and I will be considered too retro for that format. Then to play new music on the classic channels is considered ‘too progressive’ so the whole situation is totally fucked up. All these radio programmers are complete fuckin’ pussies, they’re not real rockers they are all just salesmen trying to peddle the same old same old and play it 100% safe. They are so scared to take a chance that they will just play ‘I Remember You’ until your fuckin’ ears bleed. It’s stupid and it’s frustrating but I only have one life and I thank God that I am so blessed that I have fans who actually listen to albums and play them and come see us live and hear the new material.”
Legendary Rock Interviews: I’m not going to ask you about recording “Wasted Time” or “Big Guns” but I want to clear up a misconception which is amazingly still reported as fact all these years later and that’s the fact that some people still say you LEFT SKID ROW. That pisses me off because I am a huge fan of KISS and SKID ROW and have heard the story of how you got into it with them over Rachel not wanting to do the KISS Alive/Worldwide tour in 1996. Then they turned around of course and did the Farewell tour with KISS which had to be even more frustrating.
Sebastian Bach: “It was. Of course it was, and the reason they did that tour without me is because Doc works for KISS and Snake works for Doc and that’s their whole scene but I was 100% fired from the band. They sent me some new music and I told them straight up that I didn’t like it and I wanted us to write some more because I wasn’t going to sing those songs. They got all mad and Doc called me and said ‘Well, you have to sing it because you’re the singer in the band Sebastian’ to which I said ‘Well, if you like it then YOU sing it, I didn’t get into this business to sing music that I DON’T like just to put something out’. I told those guys ‘I don’t know about YOU Mr. Rock Band guitarist and bassist but I didn’t get into this rock and roll band to play songs that SUCK’.”
Read the entire interview here.
As previously reported, Bach and STEVE STEVENS are currently in the middle of a a three night stand at the Iridium Jazz Club in New York City which kicked off on January 27th.
There will be live webcast tonight, January 28th at 8:00PM and 10:00PM. Go to www.iridiumlive.net for details and to tune in.
Bach's upcoming Kicking & Screaming & Touring 2012 dates are as follows:
February
1 - Ziggy's - Winston Salem, NC2 - Ram's Head Live - Baltimore, MD
3 - The Omni - Toledo, OH
4 - Emerald Theatre - Mt Clemens, MI
7 - Peabody's Cleveland, OH
8 - Cubby Bear - Chicago, IL
10 - The Venue At The Hub - Fargo, ND
11 - Deerfoot Inn and Casino - Calgary, AB
April
12 - Teatro Caupolican - Santiago, Chile13 - Teatro Flores - Buenos Aires, Argentina
14 - Carioca Club - São Paulo, Brazil
15 - Opiniao Porto - Alegre, Brazil
June
7 - Sweden Rock Festival - Norje, Sweden