SEBASTIAN BACH Says He 'Hates' A.I.: 'I Will Always Give You Real Stupidity Instead Of Artificial Intelligence'

In a new interview with Elizabeth Zharoff of the popular YouTube channel The Charismatic Voice, former SKID ROW singer Sebastian Bach commented on bands who rely heavily on pre-recorded tracks during their live performances. He said  (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I think that the situation with all these bands having taped vocals is just ridiculous. It's like the verses sound one way and then the chorus starts and it's, like… Who's up there doing that? Nobody. And it's every chorus. And these bands — you can watch it on YouTube or whatever, and you watch these giant bands that we've loved for a million years on stage, and you can tell every time the chorus comes in that it's a complete joke. And I don't understand why musicians think that that's okay, 'cause, to me, I couldn't imagine being on a click track and having to do it the same exact way every night, and then you wait for the chorus to come and here comes the background. To me, it sucks. To me, it's just terrible… But there's also a part of me that feels like a dinosaur for not doing it. If everybody else is doing it, why am I the only one not doing it? Part of me feels stupid. 'Well, I'm gonna go warm up for an hour and a half.' Well, a lot of these guys don't have to do that, do they? They can do other things with their day, because it's all on a track. But that's not what I do for a living."

During the same chat, Bach weighed in on a debate about people using an A.I. (artificial intelligence) music generator as a tool to create melodies, harmonies and rhymes based on artificial intelligence (A.I.) algorithms and machine learning (M.L.) models. He said: "I can guarantee you this, anybody watching this, you have to understand: I hate A.I. I hate it. Every time I see it in my feed, I unfollow the person. Just the other day, somebody posted this old VAN HALEN footage from Fresno, California, in '78, David Lee Roth live on stage, and it was one of the coolest Instagram posts I'd ever seen, old VAN HALEN, so I followed this person. The next post they did was David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar with their arms around each other, and it was A.I. And I'm, like, unfollow.

"I'm telling you right now, people. If you post stuff, 'Here's Sebastian at the age of 19 morphing into the age of now' — unfollow, goodbye," he continued.

"All this A.I. garbage — you have my word that you've known me for 40 years almost now, I will never use that in any way. It will always be just me and my band getting stuff together.

"I can't believe I have to say this, but I think I do," Bach added. "The only way you could know if something's not A.I. is if you trust the person that's making the art. I'm telling you right now, I'm telling you, you'll never get that from me, 'cause, number one, I hate it. Number two, I don't know how to use it ,and I have no interest in using it. So I will always give you real stupidity instead of artificial intelligence… I mean, just the word 'artificial' — that should turn off most people. Artificial — no thanks. How about real? I'm not into artificial anything, really."

Sebastian previously talked about the use of A.I. in music last September in an interview with Adam Richmond of the "Surviving Rocklahoma" podcast. He said at the time: "I've gotta address this, especially in the last three months or so, we're entering this A.I. world, where musicians are getting very scared because now it seems like anybody can just say into an A.I. prompt, 'Give me a '70s rock song about partying and chicks,' and there you go; you get one. But all I can tell you is this, you've known me for almost 40 years, and I'm just giving you my guarantee and my word that I'll never do that. I will never give you any A.I. I won't even give you 'I', and I certainly won't give you 'A'. What I'm saying is I'd rather have a real human mistake than a perfect artificial intelligence. Fuck artificial, number one. How about real? That's what you're gonna get from me till the day that I stop doing this. And I don't know how to use that stuff, and I won't work with any producers that use that. You're just gonna get some knucklehead musicians in the studio making music, and that's what you're gonna get from me. Like Neil Young or Willie Nelson or Gregg Allman, that's what you're gonna get from me till the day I stop doing this. And so I don't have to worry about A.I., because if you believe what I'm telling you, then what you're gonna get from me is just me. Love it or leave it."

Asked if he feels like music is going away or is under threat of losing its soul, Sebastian said: "No. I can only speak for myself, and I did 91 cities last year — 91. So with travel days and days off, that's, like, 225 days that I'm gone playing rock and roll. So I get more than enough rock in my life. So I can only speak for me. I have such a schedule of concerts coming up that I am overwhelmed. And so I don't know how to answer that other than I'm gonna be playing all over America. We're going to Australia. We've got gigs booked into 2026 already. So it just keeps rolling. And I've gotta answer this by, when we lose a guy like Ozzy Osbourne, and so many of our heroes are leaving us — I mean, I look around and there's not many guys that do what I do. There's not."

Asked if he thinks musicians "have it easier today" than he did when he first started out nearly four decades ago, Bach said: "Well, yeah. One of the reasons — I remember when Neil Peart of RUSH passed on. It really hit me so hard, and I was like, 'Why?' Well, I knew, 'cause I'm a RUSH fanatic and I'm Canadian, number one, so it's part of my DNA, but really what it came down to, I think why I was so sad was because I don't think we're ever gonna see a drummer on that level ever again because none of them are gonna put in the time to practice that much as Neil Peart did, because he didn't have the benefit or the crutch of technology to rely upon, which all these kids are having click tracks and all this stuff in their head. And I don't think we're gonna see a drummer the level of Neil Peart from RUSH ever again. Maybe we will, but he didn't have any other choice in the '70s other than to lock himself in a room and pound the fuck out of those fucking drums. And he was the best."

Circling back to the use of artificial intelligence in music, Sebastian said: "Why did we, as humans, why did we invent this A.I. shit that has the potential to take us out? Why invent that? I guess it's good for medical purposes, maybe curing cancer or something, but we don't need them to write songs for us. That's stupid. We don't need to have a meme of Michael Jackson and Ozzy and Dimebag Darrell in heaven having a drink. Fuck all that weird shit. That just gives me the creeps when I see that. It's, like, 'Get that off the screen.' It's like from hell or something. [Laughs]"

Bach's current touring band includes his son Paris Bach on drums, "Bruiser" Brody DeRozie on guitar, and Fede Delfino on bass.