We briefly present a relationship between General Relativity coupled to certain spin-0 and spin-2 field theories and higher derivatives metric theories of gravity. In a special case, described by the Einstein--Bach equations, the spin-0 field drops out from the theory and we obtain a consistent spin-two field theory interacting gravitationally, which overcomes a well known inconsistency of the theory for a linear spin-two field coupled to the Einstein's gravity. Then we discuss basic properties of static spherically symmetric solutions of the Einstein--Bach equations.

PACS numbers: 04.20.--q, 04.20.Jb