{"id":877244,"date":"2026-10-10T08:10:23","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T08:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/877244\/"},"modified":"2026-10-10T08:10:23","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T08:10:23","slug":"wasps-blackie-lawless-what-ive-learned-in-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/877244\/","title":{"rendered":"WASP’s Blackie Lawless: What I’ve learned in life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blackie Lawless is everything and nothing you\u2019d expect him to be. As the buzzsaw-codpieced frontman and driving force behind WASP<\/a> since their inception, he was Pied Piper to millions of 80s metal fans, and b\u00eate noire to the PMRC thanks to such brilliant controversy bait as the band\u2019s debut single Animal (Fuck Like A Beast) and a wilfully OTT stage show involving raw meat tossed into the audience.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s always been a fierce intellect behind the provocation, not to mention some supreme songwriting skills. He got his break as a kid briefly playing guitar in the final 70s incarnation of the New York Dolls<\/a> before moving across America to LA, where he played a pivotal part in putting the Sunset Strip scene<\/a> on the map. He channelled the controversy WASP whipped up into sales, before pivoting to a more grown-up approach of social commentary, concept albums and, most surprisingly, a rediscovery of his childhood Christianity.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been interesting looking back,\u201d says Lawless, who is currently writing his autobiography. \u201cWould I change anything? Not a thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"Lightning\n<\/p>\n

Blackie Lawless is a combination of Zorro and Dracula<\/p>\n

Those were my two childhood heroes. When I moved out to LA I was sleeping on people\u2019s floors for a year, then I moved into this closet. When he died, [horror film star] Bela Lugosi lived maybe seventy-five feet away from that closet. If I\u2019d known that, I would have been putting flowers on his doorstep.<\/p>\n

I made my peace with death early on<\/p>\n

When I was about ten years old, we lost four or five people we knew in our family, and it seemed like the world was coming to an end. I asked my dad what was happening, and he said: \u201cSon, you\u2019ll see things like this throughout your life where it will come in waves sometimes.\u201d His words were very comforting to me. I went the rest of my life without seeing a wave like that again, until five or six years ago, when he passed and I lost eleven people in my life in an eighteen-month period.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

Baseball is just as corrupt as showbiz<\/p>\n

I became really enamoured with baseball as a kid. When I turned seventeen,I realised I had to choose between becoming a professional baseball player and becoming a musician. The closer I got to baseball, the more I started to see how corrupt it was. I knew showbiz was corrupt, but that didn\u2019t bother me. I saw sports as pure. It really soured me. That\u2019s when I said: \u201cOkay, music is going to be the one.\u201d I never looked back.<\/p>\n

Learn from other people\u2019s mistakes<\/p>\n

My dad was one of my great heroes. He could be very theatrical, which I guess is where I got it from. One day he was up a ladder changing a light outside our house. I was watching what he was doing, and I said: \u201cYou\u2019re screwing that up, why don\u2019t you do it this way?\u201d<\/p>\n

Sign up below to get the latest from Classic Rock, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox!<\/p>\n

He looked down at me and said, very theatrically: \u201cSon, you benefit from my mistakes so you can become a better man.\u201d He got this smart-ass grin on his face and went back to what he was doing, which was actually correct. But that smart-ass remark stayed with me. It ended up becoming a focal point of my life.<\/p>\n

\n

\"WASP\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Ross Halfin\/Idols)The New York Dolls showed me what to do wrong<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a textbook example of learning from other people\u2019s mistakes. Here were five guys all trying to be Jim Morrison<\/a> and succeeding. Little did I know, being nineteen years old, that it would be the worst thing I\u2019d ever encounter. I was thinking about this at the gym just last night \u2013 how far that band could have gone had they wanted to, if they didn\u2019t have the addictive personalities they had and really understood the value of trying to succeed. Funny what goes through your head when you\u2019re working out.<\/p>\n

Kiss showed me exactly what to do right<\/p>\n

I knew Ace Frehley<\/a> and I saw Kiss<\/a> being born. They were a hundred and eighty degrees from what the Dolls were, and I identified far more with what was going on in that camp. They had discipline and the desire to succeed. When Kiss first started playing around Manhattan, they were a joke. All the local bands made fun of them because of the make-up. Then they finally got that record deal and went out on tour. Six months later they went from opening for Blue \u00d6yster Cult<\/a> to Blue \u00d6yster Cult opening for them. Then nobody was laughing any more.<\/p>\n

What to read next<\/p>\n

Music is a competition against yourself<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a competition against the other guy. It\u2019s like a race – you don\u2019t run the race to beat the guy next to you. What if he has an injury, or just isn\u2019t any good? What have you accomplished? You run to beat yourself: \u201cI did good yesterday, I can do it again better today.\u201d That\u2019s the way I see competition \u2013 it\u2019s all internalised.<\/p>\n

Addiction was never my thing<\/p>\n

I was too focused on the goal. I had what I call my Summer Of Drugs in 1973, where I had a couple of really bad experiences, and that cured me right there. I said: \u201cI don\u2019t need this.\u201d My mom died in 1980, and I drank a fifth of vodka every single night for nine months. I was hurting. I was in such pain that the only way I could carry on a decent conversation with myself was to get loaded.<\/p>\n

Then I woke up one morning \u2013 December twenty-seven, I\u2019ll never forget it \u2013 and I knew it was over. Don\u2019t ask me why or how, but the only time I ever touched a drop after that was because I wanted to, not because I had to.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Blackie\n<\/p>\n

Blackie Lawless in 1989 (Image credit: \u00a0Krasner\/Trebitz\/Redferns)LA in the early 80s was a world of its own<\/p>\n

It was total electricity; you could feel it. It was everything it was cracked up to be, and the Sunset Strip was too. It was a time where bands could come to town, go to places like the Rainbow and not be bothered. It became a place people frequented. On any given night, you could go in there and see someone from the Rolling Stones<\/a>, a Beatle or whoever, and it just became normal. The electricity was so thick you could cut it with a knife.<\/p>\n

First impressions matter<\/p>\n

I remember something Arthur [Kane, ex-New York Dolls bassist] said during the first couple of nights we were here. We were standing in front of the Roxy on Sunset Strip, and people would drive by, honking their horns at us, calling us faggots and shit like that. Arthur said: \u201cIf we can make them stare here, we can make them stare anywhere.\u201d He was right.<\/p>\n

I brought East Coast attitude to the Sunset Strip<\/p>\n

That attitude didn\u2019t exist in California. The whole surf culture was alive and well when I first came here. Somebody says: \u201cHow are ya?\u201d and it\u2019s that New York attitude of: \u201cWhat\u2019s it to you?\u201d That\u2019s the attitude I bought with me. I was hostile, because I was pissed off at the world. I was never looking for trouble, never, but if it came to me I didn\u2019t walk away. When you hear musicians talking about how they should be either dead or in jail, they\u2019re usually talking about drugs. I should be either dead or in jail, but mine was for totally different reasons. Mine was an anger issue.<\/p>\n

Fame can eat you alive<\/p>\n

Everybody thinks they want to be as famous as The Beatles<\/a> or Elvis. Trust me, you do not want that. I got a little glimpse of what that was like for about a three- or four-year period, and you don\u2019t want it. People only see the fantasy side. But Elvis died at forty-two because of that. George Harrison<\/a> always said that he donated his nervous system to The Beatles. It was a joke, but it was heartbreaking and horrifying at the same time.<\/p>\n

Death threats are no fun<\/p>\n

Was the controversy worth it? From the perspective of being able to do the things I\u2019ve wanted to do, yes. But there is a dark side. When that whole thing started getting hot and heavy, especially when the Washington Wives and the PMRC took over, people started getting influenced by what they saw on TV. I had thousands and thousands of death threats. Somebody tampered with the wheels on my car and I nearly crashed on the freeway \u2013 it\u2019s a miracle I wasn\u2019t killed. I got shot at twice.<\/p>\n

W.A.S.P. – Animal (F…. Like a Beast), live in London 1984 *4K* – YouTube
\n\"W.A.S.P.<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a>
\nThink you know how you\u2019ll react when someone pulls a gun on you? You don\u2019t<\/p>\n

I always thought that if somebody pulled a gun on me, I\u2019d run. That\u2019s a logical response, right? But both times it happened to me, I went after the guy because it pissed me off so bad. Would I do it now? No.<\/p>\n

Muhammed Ali taught me humility<\/p>\n

His agent was one of my best friends, so not only did I get to meet him, I got to know him a little bit too. He was the most famous person on the planet \u2013 people in China knew who he was, people in Africa. He was in love with people and loved what he got off them. In a restaurant, he\u2019d eat then he\u2019d go into the kitchen and thank all the chefs, take photos with everything. That wasn\u2019t the way I normally did stuff, but that humility left a lasting impression on me.<\/p>\n

I spent years mad at god. I was wrong<\/p>\n

It\u2019s impossible to escape your upbringing. My father was a Sunday school superintendent, my grandfather was a deacon in the church, my uncle was a preacher, so religion was always there. But as I got into my later teens I started to withdraw. I saw it as indoctrination, and I had a real problem with it. But I realised I wasn\u2019t mad at God, I was mad at man for the indoctrination.<\/p>\n

So I decided I was going to sit down and read the Bible for six months. I went into it with as open a mind as possible. It was like John Lennon<\/a> said: \u201cGive me some truth.\u201d For me, that was what it was all about.<\/p>\n

People won\u2019t believe me, but I\u2019m an introvert<\/p>\n

A lot of guys who have done what I\u2019ve done use their stage persona as one part of their personality, but when they don\u2019t have a guitar strapped on they\u2019re fairly quiet. I\u2019m the same. I live in a very remote area about an hour and a half north of LA, and I have for years. There\u2019s more cows and horses than people. I like it that way.<\/p>\n

Hollywood isn\u2019t the dream factory any more<\/p>\n

The movies are gone, the music is certainly gone. The window on rock\u2019n\u2019roll is closing. Whether it will survive or not, we\u2019re all going to need a crystal ball to see.<\/p>\n

But music still matters<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the most mysterious of the arts. I know it sounds corny and clich\u00e9d, but it has an effect that can bring people to tears. It\u2019s like a magic trick: they don\u2019t know how musicians do it. Well, I\u2019ll let you in on a little secret: neither do we.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Blackie Lawless is everything and nothing you\u2019d expect him to be. As the buzzsaw-codpieced frontman and driving force…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":877245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88],"class_list":["post-877244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=877244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/877245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=877244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=877244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=877244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}