HE SOLD 22 MILLION RECORDS BY THE TIME HE HIT his early 20s. He was the tortured screech behind such late-'80s cigarette-lighter classics as "I Remember You" and "18 and Life." He had, arguably, the best hair in pre-grunge rockdom. So how much of a stretch was it for former Skid Row frontman Sebastian Bach, 32, to morph into the crotch-grabbing, needle-toting star of the Broadway musical Jekyll & Hyde? Lazing in a white bathrobe in his midtown-hotel suite, the gangly rocker told EW what it's like to be Bach on a different stage. —Clarissa Cruz and Ann Limpert

On the magic of the theater: "I love the gorgeous clothes, I love the sets—it's just so classy. It's so classy when I beat the priest to death with a billy club and slit the hooker's throat."

On playing out Jekyll& Hyde's erotic scenes: "At the beginning, it was very hard. And it's still hard sometimes. I just said to [my costar Coleen Sexton], 'Listen, there's something straight I gotta get between you and me.' But now that I've done 20 or 30 shows, it's not so hard."

On Method acting: "The whole play is like a parallel of my life—the whole drug thing, the whole castigated-from-society thing, the sex thing."

On role models: "When I first saw Jekyll & Hyde, I didn't know if it was schmaltzy or Barry Manilow or something—I had no idea. But when I watched [predecessor] Jack Wagner play the part, I believed in him the same way I believe in, like, Sean Penn. He made me see how cool Broadway could be."