Bon Jovi's dad 'threatened to kill' Sebastian Bach

Skid Row with Sebastian Bach, second from left, and Bon Jovi far right (Image credit: Mark Wright)

Sebastian Bach claims that Jon Bon Jovi’s dad once threatened to kill him.

According to the New York Post, Bach recalls in his forthcoming memoir 18 And Life On Skid Row that he’d met Bon Jovi’s parents after singing at the wedding of rock photographer Mark Weiss in 1986. They put him in touch with Jon’s musician friend Dave Sabo to try out for what would become Skid Row.

The frontman says he, his wife and son were welcomed to stay at the Bon Jovi family home and Jon gave him his old stage clothes, adding: “He literally gave me the shirt off his back.”

But Skid Row’s growing popularity when opening for Bon Jovi on their 1989 tour soon caused relations to sour. As Skid Row’s t-shirts began to outsell Bon Jovi’s, the headliners took Bach to task for swearing on stage.

Bach says he was “summoned into Jon’s room,” where, he adds, “Jon stared me down and said the words, ‘I’ll fucking own you.’”

He also recalls heading to the stage in Kentucky’s Rupp Arena when Bon Jovi’s road crew grabbed him, secured his hands and “poured a vat of freezing cold ice milk” over his head. He ran on to the stage and hit out at his tourmate in between songs, calling him “Bon Blow-me.”

After the show, Bach says: “We saw about 60 people coming toward us. Leading the pack was Jon Bon Jovi himself. Flanking him was his dad and his brother Tony. Behind them was the full Bon Jovi road crew.”

According to Bach, Bon Jovi said to him, “I heard what you said on my stage, motherfucker,” and then threw a punch, which Bach ducked. Bach was then marched by the road crew into his dressing room and held against a concrete wall, as Bon Jovi Senior pointed in his face.

Bach writes: “He said, ‘I’ll fucking kill you,’ or something like that.”

Though the pair traded insults in the press through the years, Bach says he eventually encountered Bon Jovi at a London hotel bar with Axl Rose in 2006 and they hugged like old friends. He adds: “Jon took a chance on me and our band. I will always be indebted to him for that.”

Bach’s 18 And Life On Skid Row is released on December 6. Pre-order it on Amazon.

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Former TeamRock news desk member Christina joined our team in late 2015, and although her time working on online rock news was fairly brief, she made a huge impact by contributing close to 1500 stories. Christina also interviewed artists including Deftones frontman Chino Moreno and worked at the Download festival. In late 2016, Christina left rock journalism to pursue a career in current affairs. In 2021, she was named Local Weekly Feature Writer of the Year at the Scottish Press Awards.