With the excellent news that W.A.S.P is coming back to the UK in 2025 (see here) for a very special celebratory tour‘ to mark the 40th anniversary of the release of their first album, we searched our archives to find this interview with the amazing Blackie Lawless from Issue 31 by Dawn Irwin.
You know, playing this thing in its entirety is the one thing that for me has almost been like being a fan. I didn’t realise the impact it was going to have on me until I got into rehearsals to do it.
It was an offer I couldn’t refuse – an interview with my hero Blackie Lawless during the UK leg of the tour in support of the 15th Anniversary of my favourite WASP album, ‘The Crimson Idol’. Being an impetuous sort, of course I said yes straight away, then thought about the consequences afterwards. I’d read enough about the man over the years to know that he doesn’t suffer fools gladly and hates it when people get their facts wrong (at least we had two things in common). This, with the knowledge that he had turned down every other UK interview except Fireworks, advice from the record company to keep him engaged with interesting questions and their good luck wishes that he would be having a “good day” meant that for a full week my soon-to-be sleepless life completely revolved around WASP. Every fact and statistic was so thoroughly checked that I could’ve done a PhD in WASP! The day of the show arrived, and as I was led through the rabbit warren that is the backstage area of the Astoria, I realised that I was doing what I’d done 15 years earlier at Donington Monsters of Rock when I’d met Blackie for the first time – shaking like a leaf whilst desperately feigning calm. Introductions over, chairs arranged and nervous babble in check, we sat down to what was, for me at least, a highly entertaining 20 minutes in the company of a warm, friendly, articulate and highly intelligent guy who is absolutely passionate about this project, and has a deliciously dry sense of humour to boot.
Crimson Idol is not only one of my all-time favourite albums, but a truly iconic release, and now you’re performing it in its entirety as a fifteenth-anniversary event. How did the show and the whole tour come together?
It was really a self-indulgence. I was just sitting around thinking it’s the fifteenth anniversary and if I don’t do it now, when am I ever going to do it? I had the footage for the film, but I knew it was going to be like climbing Mount Everest to edit it, and believe me it was. I would get up every morning at 8 o’clock, and get home again at midnight when I’d go to sleep, get up the next morning and back to the editing suite again. This went on for weeks. It’s funny because when I sit and watch it now, I know every frame of that film going on up there, and a whole lot of stuff that didn’t make it that you’ll never see. The most interesting thing about the whole process is that I got a little desensitised after watching it every day. The problem with editing is that for every two seconds of film, you need to look at probably 30 different pieces of film and choose one. If we got through half of a four-and-a-half-minute song a day, we considered we were doing well, so it was a really slow tedious process. So after a while, it became difficult for me to see it, not dissimilar to becoming desensitised over the course of making a record.
How did it feel going into rehearsals for the first time?
You know, playing this thing in its entirety is the one thing that for me has almost been like being a fan. I didn’t realise the impact it was going to have on me until I got into rehearsals to do it. During the whole process, we went back and dug everything off the album, because there are parts where there are fifty instruments going on at one time, and obviously four people aren’t going to be able to do that. So we went back and sampled everything that we couldn’t do live to make it sound exactly like the record. We’ve done songs live from the album before, but we’ve always approached it like a four-piece band, we’ve never reproduced them like the album proper. But this is really a theatrical event – it’s a movie. We’ve used films ourselves in the past, and other bands use film or videotapes, but I don’t know if anyone’s ever tried taking a movie out, so I thought we’d approach it as if it’s a play, and we’d do everything in our power to make this record come alive. Getting those tracks off, mixing them properly and getting them ready to go was also an arduous process. But the very first day we were in a proper rehearsal and we could hear it play back, I literally got high. I’ve never experienced anything like that before – the hairs literally stood up on the back of my neck. I never thought that anything I would be part of would do that to me, because you just get so desensitised over the course of making something that you don’t ever get the full impact. I remember David Gilmore said that as great as ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ was, he never got the benefit of hearing it for the first time, and it’s true. If you work on something yourself you are robbed of that opportunity. So this was as close to that experience that I was ever going to get. Besides that, being able to stand in the middle of it and hear it all around you, as big as it is, is a pretty amazing process, and out of everything I’ve achieved so far, I would say that right now this is the most rewarding thing I have ever done. I don’t know if people are going to accept it - I hope they do. I don’t know if it’s going to make any money either. My accountant called me before we left LA and said you’ve got to stop the bleeding at some point, this is costing a fortune. But I told him I don’t care what it costs, we’re doing it. The thing is I’m doing it for my- self, and I hope people will like it, but if not, like I said, I’m pretty happy with it, and I can live with that.
Has it turned out anything like you imagined?
When you see it, it takes on a whole new dimension. I remember when we were shooting the film, I visualised things in my head, dreamed up ideas. But more often than not in life if you envision something, when it comes to reality it never really ends up being what you saw in your head. However, this film is exactly how I saw it in my head, so I’m really satisfied with it, with the editing and the way the story goes. It’s hard to describe, but there are some parts of it that are almost animated. The way Chainsaw Charlie is acted has almost an animated feel to it. There are parts that are surreal, and more often than not it’s a drama. The first reaction from most people that have seen it is well, we thought it was going to be good, but we had no idea it was going to be this good. It can be very brutal in parts. It’s a pathetic story, it really is... and then to portray it on film... I think that subconsciously one of the reasons I waited so long to do it is that in the back of my mind I didn’t want to run the risk of the visual being not as good as the record. How many times have you read a book that you like, then you see the film and it ruins it? I did not want to tarnish the legacy of that record, and that’s why I was so painstaking about the whole process.
How has it been received in the few shows you’ve played so far?
It’s funny because the first two nights last week we were in Greece, and we’d talked about it in rehearsal and wondered how people were going to react. You have to remember that most performing bands are used to going on stage and trying to keep the intensity level on ten all night long. We knew this was going to be different, but even knowing it and talking about it doesn’t really prepare you for the parts where the audience just doesn’t respond, be- cause they’re listening with their eyes and not their ears. It wasn’t until we got to the end of the film in Greece that the place exploded, and we could tell that we’d hit the mark. When we edited the album we took out a seven or eight second piece of sound just before ‘I Am One’, but everything else is exactly like the record. So while the pace of listening to a record is one thing, when you’re watching it, it’s another. When we got into rehearsal, the thing I was a little afraid of was that the pacing of the film matched the album identically, and I wondered what would happen in the gaps when we did it live. When you’re at home with your headphones on and listening to a record, especially one like this, it takes you to a place where time and space don’t really matter as much, but when you’re watching it as a movie, especially if there is a gap in between the audience’s response, that ten seconds sometimes feels like an eternity to a performer on stage, because you’re not used to those gaps. You feel naked, like something’s not right up here. But to the viewer who’s never seen it before, they are so preoccupied watching that they don’t realise they’re not responding, because it’s having precisely the effect that you want, which is to engross them and take them to a place they haven’t been to before. So it’s definitely working in that sense. It’s been a real trip, you know (smiles).
Back to the album itself, the prologue doesn’t actually appear on the original version. It was included as a track on the reissue, and it was only really then when I heard it narrated in its entirety that I realised just how sad the whole story is...
Well, it’s in the liner notes on the album, but because it’s a seventeen-minute piece there wasn’t enough time to put it on the actual CD because there wasn’t enough room. The actual album is around 57 minutes and at the time you could only put 65 minutes of audio on a CD, so it had to be left off, even though I didn’t like doing it. I wanted everyone to have the complete package, but it just couldn’t work out. So I figured that if people have it in the liner notes they can use their own imagination, and that’s one of the great things about reading... it allows you to use your own imagination and you form your own ideas. I don’t know how people are going to react to the characters because in my mind’s eye, they look and act exactly like they thought they would, but how will someone react who has had a completely different vision? I hope it doesn’t disappoint them.
Between The Idol and Hold Onto My Heart, there is an audio of the crowd chanting “Jon-a- than”. As a piece of trivia, was that sampled from Rollerball - I know you are a huge sports fan?
No, but the idea was taken from that film.
At the end of the ‘Crimson Idol’ Jonathan is at the height of his debauchery and the depths of his despair. You then wrote ‘Still Not Black Enough’ and you said it was the continuation not of a suicidal icon but of yourself. What are the similarities and differences between you and Jonathan?
Well, when we first did the record, I remember telling people about ten percent of me was in it, and that I took the character from a number of different people that I know and put them all together, and he is not just one person. But over the years, I realised that when I said ten percent, there was actually more – I just didn’t realise it at the time. Maybe back then I was turning a blind eye to some of the things I didn’t like or that I was afraid of. When I say more than ten percent, it’s not to say that the other people that I used to help create the character weren’t part of it any more.The main difference is that I had more in common with them than I thought I did, so it was an overlapping situation. Maybe I didn’t need as many of those people as I thought I did to begin with. I’d say, looking back on it, maybe thirty percent. Ask me again in another fifteen years and I’ll probably give you a different answer (laughs).
So where does Jonathan live now?
Well, I’ll save that because there’s something at the end of the film tonight that will answer that question for you.
That might knock out the next question, too, but I’ll ask it anyway. With hindsight, had you ever thought that Jonathan as a character could be developed?
Well, when we first shot this stuff, it was to be used for promotional videos. I don’t know if you ever saw any of them, but there is film playing behind us while we’re performing. We did ‘The Idol’, ‘Hold Onto My Heart’ and ‘Arena of Pleasure’, and the original idea at the time was to make a full feature film out of it. When I was writing it, the first person that I wanted to play the part was Matt Dillon, but by the time I got it finished, I thought he was too old, and Johnny Depp was the guy that I wanted. This was in 1992 and he wasn’t a superstar yet, so we probably could have got him to do it for not a lot of money. He was on a TV show in America called 21 Jump Street, but he was by no means a big star. I just thought he was perfect for the character.
Was moving onto ‘Still Not Black Enough’ ultimately cathartic or did it actually drive you into an even darker, more brutal place with ‘Kill Fuck Die’?
No, I don’t think the records had anything to do with it. I think it was more of a personal experience. I was in a bad relationship; I just derailed and imploded, and that’s life, you know, it happens.
I was in a bad relationship; I just derailed and imploded, and that’s life, you know, it happens.
I guess that was around the same time that Chris (Holmes) and Lita (Ford) got divorced?
Yes, and we were licking each other’s wounds - “yeah, man, she was horrible” that kind of thing.
Do you ever think the Neon God or the Crimson Idol would be something you would envisage as a stage musical, for example, the Queen story We Will Rock You?
Well, what you’re going to see tonight isn’t far from that at all.
As a performer, you’ve obviously covered a lot of ground from the original psychodrama concept to the pure musical performance on the Idol. Are there any areas of performance you’d like to explore, maybe some of the more theatrical traditions in stage performances and so forth?
(Considers his answer for a long time) I don’t know. There were times living in LA when I thought if the right film came along... Actually there was a time where I was pursuing that pretty actively, maybe fifteen years ago, but I kept getting offered axe murderer parts, and I didn’t want that. I guess the most famous story was when Schwarzenegger’s people called me up. We had just started ‘The Idol’ and they were get- ting ready to do Terminator 2. He’d seen a video that we’d done, thought I’d be perfect for the role, and wanted me to come down and read for it. I had been to a couple of parties with him and I knew he wasn’t that tall, and was pretty sensitive about his height so I called them up about it an hour later and asked “does he realise how tall I am?” There was a pause on the phone then the question “how tall are you?” I said “Six four” and they called back about half an hour later and said no, there’s no need to come down. I ran into Robert Patrick about a year after the film was done, and said you should thank me, because that role was originally for me. He looked at me – he had seen the original script, and it was for someone who was more barbaric looking, with the long hair and stuff, nothing like what the character ended up being like. But because they couldn’t find the person they wanted, they went in a totally different direction for the character. He looked at me and said, “you son of a bitch, you do look like the original character”!
Your songwriting has ranged from the basics as in ‘Dirty Balls’ to the sophistication of ‘Crimson Idol’ and ‘Neon God’ and the zeitgeist anger of ‘Dominator’. What’s firing your musical imagination at the moment?
Well, I’m not even thinking about that. I’m just all consumed with this right now. I’m having a lot of fun with it, and it’s the first time in my life I’ve ever really experienced anything like this, so I’m just going to ride it as long as I can.
Do you have a favourite album from your back catalogue, or is that too obvious a question?
Well, it might be, but there wouldn’t be anything that has the experience of what this is. When I’m on the stage standing in the middle of it, hearing that record come alive, and I turn around and get a glimpse of the film over my shoulder, it’s a whole lot bigger than I am. It’s almost like being in the middle of a giant orchestra and I’m just happy being part of it. It’s almost like somebody else created the whole thing and asked me to be part of it, because I’ve been removed from it now, so it’s cool in that sense. What Dave Gilmore was talking about - never having the chance to hear something for the first time – right now, I’m probably the closest I’ll ever be to that.
You’ve had some label issues in the past, with Sanctuary the Metal IS, then SPV. Is everything on an even keel now with Demolition?
Well, up until just recently labels were inherently evil designed to create a slave-type environment for the artist, and that’s exactly what they did. But when you have more of a partnership going on with a label, then it works, so I think that mould is changing. As much as nobody wants to admit it, the internet has actually brought that about, because it’s taken the labels down off their high and mighty throne to realise they’ve got to get real.
Do you own your back catalogue now, after the Sanctuary situation?
That’s something that’s in discussion right now, so I’ll just leave that one (smiles)
I always wanted to know how your microphone stand evolved?
A doorstop, you know the spring type? When I saw the little white tip on the end of it springing from side to side I just started laughing, similar to the first time with the sawblade thing. I was at a friend’s workshop and he had a sawblade on the table leaning up against the wall. I just looked at it and started laughing and when he asked what was so funny I just said I had the craziest idea you could ever imagine. The stand has a name, you know – Elvis.
Have you ever had any scary moments when you’ve been swinging off it?
Oh yeah, when it was first completed. It wasn’t the original incarnation, but there was an incarnation of the one just before the one we have now that had a different head on it. The original head had horns coming out of it, and the guys brought it up to the studio one night. The studio is about 200 yards from my house, and it’s soundproofed, so if anything happened in there, nobody would know about it. So they set it on the floor, and even though I knew it needed weights, I also knew I could get up on top if I didn’t move it very much, and I wouldn’t need the weights. I sent the crew home, telling them I’d just play around with it for a while to see what it could do, and there was no need for them to be there. They left, and I climbed up on top of it and was just sitting there, feeling it out because I really didn’t know what I could do with it, so I was being pretty cautious. So I’m just sitting there looking around, and all of a sudden I got the sensation that I was moving. I can’t remember if I was looking up or down or whatever, but I was definitely moving and suddenly the floor was coming at me fast. Anyway, I realised I was going over, and I was sitting on top of it, so I tried to push off but I couldn’t get a good grip with my feet. It was a hardwood floor and when I landed the head landed right next to me and stuck in the floor missing me by about this much (shows a gap of around six inches). You know what - that thing would have killed me; no one would have known I was in the studio, I’d have bled to death before anybody got to me, and the more bizarre thing is that somebody would have come in the next day and seen me lying there and think it had attacked me!
We were laughing like drains at the story, when the door opened, signalling that my time was up. Blackie was happy to sign my hockey jersey, and we exchanged some small talk about the New York Yankees before he retired to his dressing room to pre- pare for the show. There is a review of the show at a much smaller venue (Liverpool’s Cavern Club) elsewhere in this issue, but suffice to say, at the Astoria it was everything that Blackie had said it would be. They played ‘The Crimson Idol’ in its entirety in low lighting to a packed audience, most of whom were singing along to every word. At the end of the film, I was literally stunned into silence, tears streaming down my face.
So I’m just sitting there looking around, and all of a sudden I got the sensation that I was moving. I can’t remember if I was looking up or down or whatever, but I was definitely moving and suddenly the floor was coming at me fast.
YESTERVIEW
W.A.S.P
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