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Sebastian Bach's New Album to Feature Axl Rose
Posted on 2007-08-21 18:13:28
Artist/band(s): Guns N Roses [FB], Skid Row [FB]

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Source: http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/blabbermouth.net/news.aspx?mode=Article&newsitemID=79104

Former SKID ROW frontman Sebastian Bach is set to release "Angel Down" on November 20, his first solo album in eight years. The 14-song "Angel Down" was produced by Roy Z , and was recorded in July and August 2006 at Sound City studios in Hollywood, CA. The CD will be released via a joint venture between Merovingian Music, Ltd. (MRV) and Bach's Get Off My Bach Productions, and distributed worldwide through Caroline/EMI Music Group.

Blabbermouth was granted an opportunity to conduct an exclusive interview with Bach this past Friday (August 17) about his upcoming CD and his collaboration with GUNS N' ROSES frontman Axl Rose on two of the album's cuts — first single "(Love Is) A Bitchslap" and a cover of AEROSMITH's "Back in the Saddle". The following is a transcript of that conversation:

Q: I understand that you recently did some work in the studio with Axl Rose on one of your new songs [Note: Before the interview being conducted, BLABBERMOUTH.NET was informed that Axl had only recorded a guest appearance on "(Love Is) A Bitchslap"]. Is that still being worked on right now or are you already done with all the recordings?

Sebastian: It's already done, dude. It's in the can.

Q: Wasn't the single already submitted to radio a couple of weeks ago?

Sebastian: That's an early version. I wasn't finished [with] the record, but the roughs that I did [are] really amazing. [Laughs]

The CD that I made that got me the record with Jason Flom [former A&R rep at Atlantic Records, now Chairman and CEO of Capitol Music Group] and Jack Ponti [CEO of Merovingian Music, Ltd. (MRV)] is a really good CD, but it wasn't finished. The one song, "(Love Is) A Bitchslap", premiered in the "Trailer Park Boys" in Canada, but then they did put it out to radio, but it wasn't completed. That's one version of the song that's at radio now that still kicks ass, but we've worked on it even harder.

Basically, the collaboration with me and Axl started when he asked me last December to sing on… I was at his house and he was playing me the new "Chinese Democracy" album — actually, there's more than one; there's, like, four — but he was playing a song called "Sorry", which is a very heavy, grinding kind of riff and we were partying and stuff and I started singing a high harmony on the chorus of this song and he flipped out, and he goes, "That sounds great." He goes, "I want you to sing that on the record." So in January, I went to Electric Lady [studios in New York City], and I sang the chorus of this song "Sorry", and it came out really, really amazing. So now that I'm finishing my record, just for the fun of it, when I got to L.A., I just texted Axl, I go, "Hey, dude, when are you gonna come and sing on my record?" I was just joking. [Laughs] I didn't think he would do that. But he never ceases to amaze me. And his response was, "When? Where? What time? Where is the studio? What time do you want me there?" I was, like, "You've gotta be fucking kidding me." I go, "Pinch me, I'm dreaming." So he came down on Tuesday night, I think, or Wednesday, and he sang… He sings two songs on the record. I don't wanna say which songs, really — I don't know if I should or not — but he sings two songs.

Q: Well, I was told that he's on "(Love Is) A Bitchslap".

Sebastian: Oh, you were already told that? OK, well, that's' one. [Laughs] He sings on that, yes, and it's unbelievable — his voice is like a razor; it just really cuts, and it's an amazing thing for me. It's kind of like a duet — he's not just in the background, it's more of a prominent sound. And there's another song that he sings on, too. [But] I'll leave that to your imagination. But he's in fact on two songs on the record.

It's kind of like… I have this one BOB DYLAN record called "Nashville Skyline" where Johnny Cash sings a lot on the record with Bob Dylan. I know it's not Blabbermouth territory, but it's a really good album and it's an amazing thing. I've always wondered how it would be [having] two singers in the band, like THE ALLMAN BROTHERS have two drummers. Me and Axl going back and forth, and he takes a line and I then I take a line and then we do harmonies, it's really cool to hear. It's really an amazing thing for my record. To have him come in and do that, it's mind-blowing. And there's actually another song that he wants to sing on called "Stuck Inside" that he loves, and I'm gonna get him a CD of that, so he might be on three [songs], but right now he's on two. And I am the luckiest guy in the world, for him to come and put his voice on my record. And then I asked him yesterday, "Can I talk about this and everything?" And he was like, "Yes." He goes, "Tell everybody, tell the whole fucking world." I'm like, "Cool. OK." [Laughs]

Q: Did he actually choose the songs [to sing on] then?

Sebastian: Yes. Absolutely. He came into the studio, I played him my whole record, and he chose "Bitchslap" and there's another song. I don't wanna give it all away quite yet 'cause the album is not out 'till November 20.

Q: It's not the AEROSMITH cover, is it?

Sebastian: Who told you this?

Q: No one told me but it seemed kind of like an obvious choice, perhaps.

Sebastian: What AEROSMITH cover? What are you talking about?

Q: Isn't "Back in the Saddle" on the record?

Sebastian [apparently unaware that a press release had been issued that morning containing details of his new CD]: Who told you..? Can I just ask you who told you this?

Q: There was a press release that was put out this morning with some of this information. It didn't include any information about Axl, but it included a lot of the details about the record, including most of the songtitles and information about, like, songwriting credits and things like that. So I was aware of the fact that the AEROSMITH cover was on there. So is that the other song [that Axl sings on]? [Laughs]

Sebastian: I'm not gonna say… [Changing subject] Yesterday I shot the TV show "L.A. Ink" and Kat Von D tattooed my new album cover on my arm, which you'll see on TV. And then that's an amazing thing, too. The album cover was done by my dad.

Q: Is that the artwork that was being sold as a T-shirt — like, a bunch of guys carrying what looks like a painting — is that the one?

Sebastian: That is the image, yup. Of course, on an album cover it's gonna look a lot more detailed and covers are different than on a T-shirt. We just did the whole sold-out Australia/New Zealand tour, and I want people to start getting into the new record and I did look at that as the prefect time to debut that image.

You know, one thing I always loved about IRON MAIDEN is that all their albums have Eddie on it and it's really a unifying kind of look. When you get a MAIDEN album it's like all the MAIDEN albums are like one body of work because of the artwork, really — that has a lot to do with it. And when my father, David Bierk, did the "Slave to the Grind" cover [from SKID ROW], I really wanted to carry that on, and now that he's no longer with us, it takes an even heavier meaning to me. So the album is called "Angel Down" and my dad did this cover called "David Watching" — he painted it back in 1990, [and] it's a statue of David looking down on a painting of a Jesus and nobody's paying attention to Jesus in the content of this painting. And the thing is, a lot of the lyrics of the record have to do with the war, and to me, we've perverted what religion is about. To kill each other over religion is completely the opposite message of what Jesus was trying to say, which was "Love each other." Any parent with a soldier who lost his life [in the war], they're obviously angels. And the thing is, my dad's painting is "David Watching" but his name was [also] David. So it's really that that's the title of the painting 'cause he can't be here anymore but he's on the album cover and he is watching. And that's really, really heavy. And it does have the same feel as the "Slave to the Grind" cover. And I'm not gonna say I will always use his art, but I probably will. [Laughs] I like the unified look of album covers — you know, kind of, what the music's gonna sound like when you see the cover. And this album is definitely a heavy rock album with some straight-up rock tunes, some ballads and I'm very, very proud of it.

Q: A lot of people that regularly visit Blabbermouth will probably remember that a lot of the recording for your new album was actually done back in July and August of last year at Sound City in Los Angeles. How much recording have you done since then and how different is the new record in its current form to what you completed back then?

Sebastian: That's a good question. Basically, we had a window of opportunity last July when we were touring with GUNS N' ROSES all over the world. We booked the studio with Roy Z and Sound City before we got the GUNS N' ROSES tour and we actually had to not do some shows with GUNS because we had the studio booked — which is insane [laughs] — but I was determined to get to work on my record. So we went in, but we ran out of time — we had to go right back. Like, we flew, literally, from Vienna, Austria [where we played the] Novarock festival. We went on at noon, we split after GUNS was over, went right to the airport, went right to L.A., and we were in the studio, like, the next day. And then we spent three weeks recording — or two and a half weeks — and then we flew straight back to England to play with GUNS N' ROSES. So we just literally ran out of time, and if you really wanna know what I've been doing in the last week or two… I'm obsessed with killer drums. We recorded all the music last July or June, or whatever it was, but we didn't have time to implement triggered drum sounds. Bobby Jarzombek is one of the greatest drummers — if not THE greatest — in the world, and he deserves a drum sound that is the best. And the natural sound of the drums is old-school. That's what's on the radio — "Bitchslap", it's without triggered drums. What I've been doing the last week or so out here with Roy is adding the most insane, motherfucking kick and snare in the history of drums. [Laughs] That's the one thing we didn't have time to do. And when you're adding triggered drums, it takes a little bit of time. My favorite drum sound in the last five years is "Supremacy" from HATEBREED and also the album they did before that, "Rise of Brutality". I also love HELLYEAH — I love Vinnie Paul's drum sound. This is not a HATEBREED record or a PANTERA record by any means, but sonically it has that bad-ass, fucking kick-your-fucking-ass sound, which I love, and I was obsessed with giving Bobby the greatest drum sound, 'cause he deserves it. His drumming on this record is… You're just gonna have to hear it. It's like so amazing. This guy has really got his due… He's up there with fucking Neil Peart, Tommy Lee, fucking Alex [Van Halen]… Bobby is up there with those guys, man, and the world's gonna know it when they hear this fucking album.

Q: Yeah, I've always thought he was an amazing drummer. He played with SPASTIC INK, which is completely insane stuff.

Sebastian: Yeah. RIOT, FATES WARNING… He played with FATES WARNING. He played with FATES WARNING [at a recent festival in Europe] with no rehearsal. I'm like, "How do you do that with no rehearsal?" [laughs] But even the intricate stuff he does… What I like even more than that about Bobby is when he plays, like, behind the beat the cool, street, sleazy attitude. That's the stuff you can't teach people. You can't teach someone how to be cool — you're either cool or you're not. Bobby, his whole vibe playing the drums, he's so cool, man. [laughs] He's a pro. So that's, really, what we've been doing — we've been giving him the most incredible drum sound in the history of the planet.

Q: Besides working on the production side of things, are there any songs on the album that were actually recorded from scratch after the sessions from last year?

Sebastian: No. Everything was recorded then… well, except for Axl Rose. We did a couple of vocal touch-ups here and there. 'Cause I've really come to know that the sound of my clean voice is something special, actually, and sometimes I have a tendency to overdo my vocals where if I just lay back a little bit, it gives you this clean, soaring vibe in my voice, which I've always known about, and really, when I concentrate on it, the results are really great-sounding vocals. I do the dirty a lot too, but when I really concentrate on picking where and when to go clean and dirty, it comes out fuckin'… I can't believe it's me. [Laughs]

Q: So is "(Love Is) A Bitchslap" still the first single? I mean, is that the song that's gonna go to radio officially?

Sebastian: I think so. It's a really good vibe. Everybody loves the lyrics, It goes, "Rolling down the avenue, I've got my fist in the air, checking out of the rat race, and I really don't care." People fucking dig that. It's just a good-time rock, party song.

Q: And it's got sort of an old-school GUNS N' ROSES feel to it, so I can see Axl sounding really good on it.

Sebastian: Well, wait 'till you hear him, man. Wait 'till you hear it with real drums too. [Laughs]

====
For the rest of the interview, check out the blabbermouth link.

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