David Lee Roth and Sebastian Bach once sat next to each other on a very long plane flight and it turned out to be pretty much everything you’d expect it to be.
During a recent appearance on The Paltrocast, Bach shared the story, which took place in 2013. Bach had just played the Stone Music Festival in Sydney, Australia as a member of the supergroup Kings Of Chaos, who were on the same bill as Aerosmith and Van Halen.
“On the way home from the gig, I get on my plane flight from Sydney, Australia to Los Angeles. It’s an extremely long flight and I looked behind me and two rows behind me is Diamond David Lee Roth in a seat all by himself,” Bach told host Darren Paltrowitz. “And I started watching movies. I was so nervous and freaked out because I’m such a fan of Dave. And I remember I watched the story of Pentagram, the band Pentagram [laughs]. There was a documentary and I watched that on the plane and when that was over I said to myself, I go, ‘Fuck it, man.’ I go, ‘I can’t do this. I can’t pretend that David Lee Roth is not sitting behind me.’ So I stood up and I went I go, ‘Hey Dave. Please, man, can you…can we…’ He goes, ‘Hey Baz! What’s up man?! Have a seat, man! Have a seat right here Sebastian!’
“Dave was reading a book by Tom Clancy. Some spy novel,” continued Bach. “He was sitting there with a paperback by Tom Clancy, ‘cuz I’m taking all this in, and that was going to keep him company for the whole plane flight. So when I sat down, we ordered coffee. I ordered coffee and we spent the whole flight talking and laughing. We got a little too loud. Dave’s laughter is loud. He’s like, ‘AH, HA! HA! HA! HEY BAZ!!!’ And then I started getting loud and me and David Lee Roth together got so loud that the stewardess came over and said, ‘Could you guys pipe it down a little bit?’ And that happened. I mean imagine me and Dave together. There’s a picture on my Instagram somewhere from that plane flight of me and Dave.”
Bach had hoped that this would be the beginning of a new friendship but it wasn’t to be.
“There’s a part in David Lee Roth’s book where he tells a story of being bullied at school and he tells the story of going home and being so hurt that he’s on his porch and he says, ‘I’m never going to have a real friend ever again.’ That’s in his book, that he made that choice when he was like 13 or 12 and I wanted to be Dave’s friend. Because he treated me like that. He was my bud, like, he was always so nice and funny to me and cool and he gave me his cell phone number. And as soon as I got home from that plane flight I was texting him, ‘Let’s hang out man! I’ll be your buddy!’ And I never really heard back from him so, I guess. I don’t know. But when he gave me his phone number, I had it in my brain that we were going to be best buddies. [laughs] So, Dave, if you’re reading this interview, give me a call man. Let’s hang out. Let’s smoke a joint, listen to some vinyl records. I know you would like that.”