SEBASTIAN BACH: 'It's My Mission To Bring Back The Fun Of Rock And Roll'

In a new interview with Kyle Meredith, ex-SKID ROW singer Sebastian Bach was asked if he wanted to give the fans what they want on his new solo album, "Child Within The Man", by incorporating sounds that harken back to his former band. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Well, the sound of my voice harkens back. I was gonna be the singer of VELVET REVOLVER before Scott Weiland. You can Google interviews with Duff [McKagan, VELVET REVOLVER bassist] and he'll tell you, 'We wanted Sebastian, but the problem with Sebastian is that you just think of SKID ROW when you hear his voice.' And I didn't take that as an insult, 'cause it's true. That's the way it is.

"But do you give them what they want? I don't think the audience knows what they want," he continued. "I give the audience what I want [laughs], and I'm a son of a bitch, getting stuff the way I want to get it. And for 'What Do I Got To Lose?', the first song and video, I wanted fun. I wanted F-U-N. I wanted a video like WHITESNAKE or VAN HALEN or RATT where Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee play the cops and Bobby Blotzer arrests them and throws them in jail. That's, to me, fun. I wanna put a smile on people's face when everything is so fucking miserable. I want people to laugh and have fun, and that's what I want. Even the second video, which is a tough subject, because I wrote it about losing my home in a hurricane, and then the record company [said], 'But we want a video.' And I was, like, 'That's not very fun.' [Laughs] But I turned it around and I made it about the Maxell tape commercial, which is fun. And in the end, I'm watching all the footage of my house being destroyed and climate change, and I turn off the news and I put on my new record and start rocking out. And so that's still fun."

Bach added: "It's my mission to bring back the fun of rock and roll, which I find sorely lacking. I can't find fun on the Internet. No matter how hard I try, I can't find it. It's all negative fighting. This guy said this about this guy. That's not rock. Rock is supposed to be coming together, and that's what it always was before it all went to the Internet and now it's all clickbait and fighting and bickering. So I'm trying to just bring back the fun. That's it. That's all I'm trying to do."

"Child Within The Man" is being released today (Friday, May 10) via Reigning Phoenix Music. The LP was recorded in Orlando, Florida; produced and mixed by Michael "Elvis" Baskette; engineered by Jef Moll, assistant engineered by Josh Saldate and mastered by Robert Ludwig of Gateway Mastering. Bach wrote or co-wrote all the album's 11 tracks and sang all lead and backing vocals.

"Child Within The Man" features guest appearances from John 5 (MÖTLEY CRÜE, ROB ZOMBIE, MARILYN MANSON),Steve Stevens (BILLY IDOL) and Orianthi (ALICE COOPER, MICHAEL JACKSON) — who all co-wrote their respective tracks with Bach — and two tracks co-written with ALTER BRIDGE's Myles Kennedy ("What Do I Got to Lose?" and "To Live Again"). Devin Bronson (guitars),Todd Kerns (bass) and Jeremy Colson (drums) round out the players on the album. The album is available on jewelcase CD, cassette, and double LP in a variety of color options.

In an interview with "Whiplash", the KLOS radio show hosted by Full Metal Jackie, Sebastian spoke about the inspiration for the "Child Within The Man" title. He said: "Well, my wife calls me man-child. That's kind of been a theme for me my whole career. I bring a youthful energy to the stage when I get up there. People are smiling and excited and hooting and hollering. But the line 'child within the man' is a line of one of the songs on the record. And I scream it like bloody murder. And it kept haunting me. "

Sebastian also talked about the "Child Within The Man" artwork, which holds special meaning since it was designed by Bach's father, noted visual artist David Bierk.

"I have a lot of my dad's artwork," Bach said. "He's no longer alive. And we all, all of his kids, we got a lot of his art when he passed away. And I unrolled a roll of paintings that I knew had the SKID ROW 'Subhuman Race' painting in it, and I wanna take care of it and make sure it's preserved. But in that roll was this painting that I remember my dad doing of me when I was 10 in a field next to this beat-up old Cadillac car in the field and then behind the car, it's Jesus ascending into heaven, and I'm running next to the car. It looks like an album cover. And then he also did a painting of me from Circus magazine, the first centerfold of me on stage at Giants Stadium. He did a gigantic painting of that, like 12 feet high. And so the cover is gonna be me running as a child into me on stage as a man, and it's child within the man. And it just reminds me of the '70s, like child in time, and it just reminds me of a good '70s album cover. And the fact that I can bring back a painting from the year 1978 and make it into artwork in 2023, 2024, that's really mind-blowing to me."

Bach's "What Do I Got To Lose?" tour is a mix of solo gigs and festival appearances. The stateside tour gets underway May 10 in Jefferson, Louisiana before wrapping June 29 in San Diego, California.

Bach performed "What Do I Got To Lose?" live for the first time during his February 24 concert at Palace Theatre in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Bach released the official music video for "What Do I Got To Lose?" in December. The clip was directed by Jim Louvau and Tony Aguilera. For the video, which shows Bach cruising through the desert in a convertible and performing with a full band, Sebastian was joined by his former SKID ROW bandmate, drummer Rob Affuso. The clip also features an appearance by actor and comedian Craig Gass and Sebastian's wife Suzanne, who plays a scantily clad car wash attendant.

Prior to the arrival of "Child Within The Man", Bach hadn't released a full-length disc since "Give 'Em Hell", which came out in March 2014. Like its predecessor, 2011's "Kicking & Screaming", the disc was released through Frontiers Music Srl, the Italian label which specializes in what's commonly called AOR, a term that once signified a popular radio format ("album-oriented rock") but nowadays applies to acts whose airplay is marginal.