Sebastian Bach @ The Gov, Adelaide 25/11/2025

‘Remember yesterday, walking hand in hand. Love letters in the sand, I remember you’ sings Sebastian Bach. The crowd, lightening up the room, chorus the imperious frontman while embracing a loved one. This isn’t 1989 and Skid Row, this is 100% Sebastian, and he is Bach.

Playing the entirety of his former band’s debut album, with a couple of extras thrown in across his journey, Bach returns after a number of years, older, possibly wiser but certainly just as beguiling.

Bach has always stalked the stage like a praying mantis, and the tight confines of The Gov do little to hold him back as he and his crew land on stage to a raucous What Do I Got To Lose, fist pumping and roaring.

The guitar rumble of Slave To The Grind starts and Bach is mic swinging like a cowboy. Bach is sounding and looking great, he is fifty seven after all, but those pipes are as strong as ever.

Here I Am stamps in what the deal is tonight. It’s going incite the crowd to sing, clap and fist pump while Bach orchestrates the party, wailing, snarling and landing those notes that made his voice so distinct and famous.

Big Guns really are shooting at my heart as Bach’s band, including his own son on drums, are true to the originals swagger and strut.

Controversy is sidestepped during Sweet Little Sister as that lyric is changed, but don’t worry, Bach, outspoken as ever, doesn’t miss the opportunity to remind people that his show actually turns up to play in Australia. Unlike some other band who always seem to cancel.

18 & Life, the MTV breakthrough hit, has the room alight with cameras as Bach stands back and admires the crowd, who take up the whole first verse and chorus. The room awash with magic.

Throughout the night, Bach drops some of his own turns which to be frank, are actually some of the hardest hitting rocking songs of the night. Freedom and Adelaide’s own Orianthi flavoured Future Of Youth are tight leather pants, ball squeezing good.

However, most of this crowd are wanting to be taken back to a time when the men had the highest hair and heels, and Bach delivers with Makin’ A Mess and a roaring Piece Of Me.

If there is one slight disappointment, that solo in Piece Of Me rips yet it’s missing that second guitar that underpins the filthy riff underneath however if that is my own grip from a fifty seven year old’s whirlwind show that plays for one hour and forty five minutes, then I need to take a good look at myself.

‘Monkey Business’ becomes an eleven-minute epic jam with Bach getting the crowd to chant ‘Ozzy’ before switching into the now departed legends I Don’t Know.

Not to be forgotten, Dio is given a nod with a small rendition of Heaven & Hell before mothers embrace their children, partners their loved ones and single people their beers for I Remember You.

There’s time for a still riotous Youth Gone Wild, Bach, drenched in sweat, still hitting those notes like thirty five years ago. He truly is the last of the last great frontmen and rockstars.

Bach, still cracking jokes and interacting with the crowd , finishes with Rose Tattoo’s We Can’t Be Beaten – a wise choice in Australia – and the banned in the UK Get The Fuck Out, a cheeky way to tell everyone the show is actually done.

Pretending to be dragged offstage, the show was a feel-good reminder that the 80’s was a great time regardless of what has been re-written by so called musical historians since.

To quote Bach’s line in ‘I Remember You’, ‘Adelaide, I Love You’, well Mr Bach, Adelaide loves you.

Live Review By Iain McCallum