Bach’s drugged-out night on Sunset Strip

I remember bits: Sebastian Bach

Sebastian Bach has recalled one of his earliest experiences of being a rock star – and it has all the trappings of 1980s Sunset Strip excess.

His big night on the town saw him downing quaaludes with Guns n’Roses bassist Duff McKagan, while Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich tried to take advantage of their wasted state by selling photo opportunities to passing fans.

Like many of the greatest stories in West Hollywood, events unfolded in the Rainbow Bar and Grill.

Bach tells the New York Times of an evening that took place around 1989, soon after Skid Row had released their single Eighteen And Life. He’d hired a white Corvette and felt like the Pied Piper: “I walked from the Hyatt Riot House over to the Rainbow and by the time I got there, there were 300 people behind me going, ‘Is that him? That’s him!’”

He says of his next memory: “I always heard of quaaludes, reading Circus magazine and Creem in the seventies when I was a kid, but I’d never encountered them.

“One night me, Duff and Lars were at the Rainbow and someone had a big bag of them. I was like, ‘Finally – where have you been all my life?’

“Me and Duff, being the adventuresome pleasure-seeking fellows that we were, decided to do some quaaludes. All of a sudden we lose control of the muscles in our face, our lips start drooping and we start drooling on each other.

“We were like, ‘We better sit down.’ So we got to a booth, getting spit on each other’s leather jackets – and Lars comes up with the brilliant idea of charging fans $5 to get a picture taken with us.

“He’s like, ‘Here’s your heroes, Guns n’Roses and Skid Row – get a picture!’ We’re going, ‘Hey, man, Lars, that’s not cool…’”

The NY Times notes that both McKagan and Ulrich say they don’t remember such an event – although the drummer admits: “That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

Looking back, Bach asserts: “I am the man who put the hair in hair metal.” But he adds: “I headlined Broadway musicals, I acted in millions of TV shows. I didn’t get to star because of my haircut – my voice has gotten me everything in life, not my hair.”