Sebastian Bach

Skid Row needed a singer in 1987. Sebastian Bierk, born in Freeport in the Bahamas and performing as Sebastian Bach, got the job by the least likely route available: Jon Bon Jovi's parents heard him sing at a photographer's wedding and told him to call their son's friend Dave Sabo, who was hunting for a frontman. Bach, wary of joining another American band after a short spell in Detroit's Madam X, listened to the demos, flew to New Jersey, auditioned, and fronted the group through its commercial peak and out the other side, until 1996.

The screen career that followed is unusual in that almost none of it is acting. Run down the credits and he is billed as himself over and over: a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony, a celebrity cooking competition, a celebrity weight-loss show, a countdown clip show, a heightened Sebastian Bach on Trailer Park Boys. He seems entirely comfortable with the joke, which is rarer among rock singers than it sounds.

The exception is the one people quote. On Gilmore Girls he was Gil, the guitarist, and the part works precisely because he refuses to play it as a rock star: he is the eager older guy in a band of twenty-somethings, and he never once asks for the scene. He has also worked on Broadway, he continues to record, and since 2026 he has fronted Twisted Sister.