“Rock used to be fun, man.” It’s not just a complaint—it’s a mission statement. Sebastian Bach is back with Child Within a Man, his first solo album in a decade, and the former Skid Row frontman is hellbent on restoring joy to rock and roll. “I want to put a smile on people’s face when everything is so f***ing miserable,” he tells me. “I’m trying to bring back the fun. That’s it.”
It’s not that the album doesn’t get heavy. Quite the opposite. “Everybody Bleeds,” “Future of Youth,” and especially “Hard Darkness” tackle climate change, despair, and post-pandemic isolation with venom and urgency. But Bach’s instinct is to wrap the message in thunderous riffs, arena-sized hooks, and the kind of charisma that made him an MTV staple in the first place. “Rock is supposed to be about coming together,” he says. “Now it’s all clickbait and fighting. And nobody jams anymore!”
Even his protest songs come with punchlines. “The second video’s about my house getting destroyed in a hurricane,” he tells me, “and I still made it fun. I made it about the f***ing Maxell tape commercial. Remember that guy in the chair getting blown back by the speakers? That’s me now.”
Bach doesn’t shy away from the darker stuff. He wrote “Child Within the Man” for Greta Thunberg. “She doesn’t want to live on a planet that’s uninhabitable. That song’s for her.” He’s haunted by what the world will look like for his kids. And yes, he lost a house to flooding, too. “Still had to pay the mortgage,” he growls. “You want to know why I wrote these songs? That’s why. What the f*** else am I supposed to do?”
Despite all that, Child Within a Man feels like a celebration—of youth, of vinyl, of big dumb rock glory. “The first song, I just wanted F-U-N,” he says. “Like Van Halen, like Ratt, like Whitesnake. Videos where the band ends up in jail. That’s what I grew up on. That’s what I want to do again.”
And he still sounds like 1989. That’s not just nostalgia—it’s muscle memory. “I didn’t take it as an insult when Duff said I couldn’t be in Velvet Revolver because I sound like Skid Row. It’s just true,” he shrugs. “That’s my voice.”
Bach credits producer Elvis Basett and mastering legend Robert Ludwig (on what turned out to be one of Ludwig’s final records before retiring) with helping capture that sound. “We did this on a 1974 Neve console that Queen used. You can hear that. It’s not compressed or autotuned. It’s a dirty rock record.”
And don’t expect him to waste stage time on cover songs—even if he did play Gil on Gilmore Girls and deliver a mean “Milkshake” on The Masked Singer. “I’m not interested in covers. I’ve got too much of my own stuff to play,” he says. “But yeah, I’ll still quote ‘Milkshake’ on stage. The crowd goes mental.”
So what’s next? Touring, of course. Maybe more videos—he just finished two. But mostly, he’s thinking long term. “You’re gonna be interviewing me when I’m 91,” he says. “I’ll still have long hair, I’ll be on the tour bus, and I’ll have a joint in my hand.”
No doubt about it: the child within the man is still very much alive.
Watch the interview above and then check out the video below.
