Singer shares showbiz secrets

Entertainer directs professionals and serious amateurs

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With a name like David Sebastian Bach, along with growing up in a musical family, he didn't have much of a chance of not becoming engrossed in music.

"I was raised in a very musical family," Bach said. "And I got the bug pretty early on."

Bach, 59, was a widely-recognized musician in Europe, Asia and Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. He now lives in the southwest part of the valley and devotes much of his time to helping young entertainers hone their musical and entertainment business skills through his business, David S. Bach Enterprises.

"I used to have a school, then I went into private teaching," Bach said. "Now I do private consulting and coaching mostly with professionals and very serious amateurs. I work mostly by word of mouth now."

Bach began singing at the age of 5 and his more than 50 years in the entertainment business has included time spent working in radio, television, theater, films and touring as a singer. The Canadian-born entertainer compares "the business" to a religious calling.

"It's like the priesthood," he said. "(Show business) has to be a true calling or it's not going to work out."

Bach got into teaching because he remembered how grateful he was to his many mentors, and he felt that every young performer needs a little guidance, and who better to provide that guidance than someone who knows what it takes to succeed, he said.

"When I was young I had a lot of people take me under their wing and I learned a lot," he said. "Nowadays it's tough, where do you go to learn? And the thinking is different, too. We are living in an age where everybody believes they are a star. People used to be mesmerized by what the person on stage was doing, now people see someone perform and they think, 'I can do that.' Talent is still in a minority of the people but with karaoke and community theater and 'American Idol' everyone thinks they have what it takes. They don't. I paid my dues, that's part of it, you can't skip that."

Brock Powell, 17, has been taking lessons with Bach for about one year.

"He's is an overly qualified teacher," said Powell, who has just finished his junior year at Faith Lutheran High School. "He's an amazing person and he's easy to work with and easy to talk to. He can take you from a lukewarm 6 to an 11, if we were speaking in numbers."

While walking past his "wall of shame," the photo of Bach and Roy Orbison was pointed out and he reminisced that he and Orbison became friends because the two often toured in the same cities at the same time.

"He was a great guy, genuine," Bach said of Orbison. "I was friends with a lot of those guys, but I'm at the age where a lot of my contemporaries are gone now, unfortunately."

Beth Luther-Bach, Bach's wife, said she's his biggest fan.

"He still has a beautiful voice," she said as her husband prepared to play one of the songs he wrote to benefit the Muscular Dystrophy Foundation. "It's a voice that touches your heart."

The song he wrote for the group, "What Can We Do," is about how some children suffering from the disease see it.

"It's based on the fact that young children think that they must have done something wrong to be dying," he said emotionally. "It's such a terrible thing, but they die. That's a truth. That's why I wrote this song."

A far cry from many of the topics in current popular music, he said.

"The sad thing is we're losing respect for the (entertainment) business," he said. "A lot of people don't show their intelligence anymore. They've lost respect for their audience. I work with rappers, but when it's about murdering and killing cops and raping, I mean come on. Just stop, create something without the bad images and words. That's what we need to get back to."