EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Blackie Lawless Interview, by Don Adkins

I had the chance to have a few minutes with Blackie Lawless, the lead singer and creator of WASP . This was my first conversation with Blackie in decades. I first met him in the early 80’s and he was good to me, I got to see and experience precious rare moments that included his group Circus Circus performing in a full-showcase set-up at his rehearsal studio, then saw his brief tenure in London (one studio photoshoot and one show), then right after that the very start of WASP. I did the first-ever photoshoot in my living room in Cerritos, California. Over the next couple of years WASP hit their stride and became a big deal in the metal world. On my end I veered into the corporate world where I stayed for decades. So here we are over 40 years we picked-up where we left off as Blackie gets ready to embark on the upcoming tour “WASP, 1984 to Headless”. This tour starts on Sept 10^th in SoCal and traverses the US and Canada and then finishes up again in SoCal on Oct 31^st, Halloween night. In essence this show will focus on the first 4 albums that were epic cornerstones of 80’s rock. Here are some highlights from that interview.

SLR: Before all that a little known fact that you could’ve had a whole different career in sports that most people don’t know about.
- Blackie:“The closer I got to it the more disillusioned I became with it. A lot of who you know. I had a feeling I could’ve made it but longevity is not as strong as the path I took. I would’ve been long gone by now in baseball”.
  - Note: Blackie in high school was a 90+ mph pitcher and was on track to go to a minor league farm team before then instead veering into rock.
SLR: Still have the baseball passion? Who’s your baseball team in this day & age?
- Blackie: “The Yankees – being from Staten Island it’s been lifelong for me”.
SLR: We saw influences from your Circus Circus days into your 40^th Anniversary Tour in 2022 where you had custom artisan hand painted circus banners and all as the backdrop for the stage. Then in 2024 we saw you going full-blown metallic again. What shall we expect this time around with this US & Canada tour?
- Blackie:“Kill Hitler, I’m not joking”. “Antisemitism is berserk. In the The Headless Children song you’ll see him come alive with the whole 2^nd world war and a trial will take place and you’ll see him electrocuted. We tried out this part of the show yesterday, it’s still coming together but will be a big part of the show. We’ve always done things no one has done before” and this tour will be no different. Things like video, we were one of the first after seeing it first done by Pink Floyd in their shows. It’s easier now but back in the day we did 124 shows with video and it came off without a hitch we would to hold our breath that it would all come out okay”.
  - Note: The Headless Children song is a track from their fourth album of the same name that speaks to a society that experiences societal decay and the loss of morality. As for video in concerts it’s mainstream now but back in the day it was tricky.
  - SLR: Blackie also touched on the early days with their notorious flaming WASP sign that would shoot flames across the venue.
  - Blackie: We got away with murder in those days with the things we did, we took the regulators off the propane tanks. There’s still burn marks on the rafters at the Troubadour still to this day!”

SLR: Your tour schedule is back-to-back crazy, how do you keep it together & how do you recharge?
- Blackie: “We hate days off, we’d rather play. There are places we’d love to hangout like New York City, New Jersey, Connecticut & Boston but all those places are really close together we’re busy with dates there. But they’re looking forward to an East Coast date where they’ll have a day off and do War Games. We try to build it in but there are cities where we’ll have time but then there’s nothing to do. So we just prefer to work”.
SLR: Unlike some other groups you don’t go down the crazy high register path so you’re able to pull it off.
- Blackie: “Well there’s stuff that’s pretty high end and I’m a natural baritone so when I’m singing high notes it doesn’t sound like high notes but there’s some high stuff in there. Go back and listen to songs like The Flame from the first album and you gotta get on your horse and ride every night!”
SLR: Oh yeah, good point. And, you have one heck of an opener with KK’s Priest. What’s your history with them and how did this come about?

Blackie: “We’ve only done one show with them, that was 2 years ago at a festival in Spain. Our trailer was really close to the stage and we could hear them really well and I’m here to tell you they sound exactly like those records. That kid that’s singing for them now, I’m gonna have to get on my horse and ride every night because this guy ain’t taking no prisoners and I definitely look forward to the challenge. When we take an opener out with us sometimes you know them and sometimes you don’t but in this case you’re gonna know every song. It’s going to be a pleasure to listen to them night after night”.
SLR: We’re seeing a lot of you acts from the 80’s still touring. Is there anything with acts in the modern age that gives you hope for the future?
- Blackie: “Where are all the great new frontmen coming from – there ain’t any. The circuits we were allowed to play when we were coming up aren’t there – the whole 10,000 hour thing (in any given field) isn’t there like it used to be. It takes that to learn any craft and without that where do you go to learn it? If you’re born a natural then maybe, the vast majority of us need it — you said it earlier, you saw us go through this in our early days. Bands from the early-80’s, it comes down to the songs. Is there that many left, not a lot – there’s a finite group of us left. Rudy Sarzo and I are two that survived. Blackie then veered into a book he’s working on for the last six years. The working title is “Tales from The Square Mile”, captures the beginnings of WASP where it was living in a closet sized place, rehearsing in a former laundromat after hours and recording in that same square mile. It was Vine and Santa Monica which was ground zero for WASP. So far it’s been all research, going back and discovering this town. Now it’s time to write it. By the way that square mile is where Bela Lugosi (one of Blackie’s early heroes along with Zoro) died. Blackie also noted that for the last tour the final stop was the Palladium in Hollywood, super close to where he lived. For legacy bands that record new albums and play them live it’s those new songs that wind up becoming like the opening act, competing against the legacy”.
SLR: You leaned hard into the shock rock thing but in the end you always had songs with deep and catchy chord progressions and melodies.
- Blackie: “It’s the songs, I don’t care what band it is. In this world of rock all bands basically make their bones the first 5 years they’re together and that’s what this is (this tour), a celebration of that. These great bands from the 80’s all did that and we’re no different. Go through your record collection and you’ll see that all the bands you like all had that in common. After you get past that first five years if you continue to make records you’re now competing against your own legacy. It’s like every record you do now becomes your opening act. Newer records to compete against the older records, the people who’ve had a long time to romance in their head and their hearts, quite frankly those newer records have to be better just to compete, to have a set at the table”.
SLR: This year I traveled to Estonia and saw first-hand their Symphonic Metal scene. I’ve seen in my travels that the most loyal fans are Prog Rock Fans & Metal fans.

Blackie: “Europe is a frame of mind, it’s a way of life – they’re maniacal about it, incredibly loyal. You’re gonna get that in America too and South America, and it all goes back to the songs”.

SLR: Blackie then mentioned how they’re working on new material and he’s working on a book.
- Blackie: “For the book the more I started writing it the more I realized it’s not a singular story, it’s about the town, and that’s why I call it “Tales from The Square Mile”. At then time I was living in a space that was literally a closet, 3ft by 12 ft. The last place we played two years ago on our tour was the Hollywood Palladium and I literally was right across the street, living in that closet. Our recording studio at Santa Monica and Vine was caddy-corner to a laundromat we used to rehearse it, we’d go in after 9 o’clock and set-up in between the washing machines they’d let us go in at night and the gut would let us rehearse there. Nine years later I’m waiting at the light and I’m looking at my new recording studio is where it is and I’m now the proprietor of that and I’m thinking how the heck did I get from that laundromat to here. Blackie Lawless is a combination of Zoro and Dracula, those are my two childhood heroes growing up. What I didn’t realize when I started doing the investigation on this book and what’s taking so long is to really go back and rediscover this town because this town plows over it’s history. Bela Lugosi – where he died was probably 75 feet from that 3X12 closet! These are things I discovered. I asked Bruce Dickinson how long it took to do his book and he said 6 months – well it’s been 6 years now but it’s because of the research on the town. The research is pretty much at an end now it’s just down to the writing part”.
SLR: Blackie mentioned how he got together with Rudy Sarzo a few months back and how they shared similar experiences of moving here from someplace else in pursuit of rock.
- Blackie: “We are a finite group of people left to tell the story”.
SLR:There are things like the Nothing But A Good Time book and 3 part series on Paramount. In this rock doc Blackie is prominently featured are formative in what emerged from the early 80’s Sunset Strip scene.
- Blackie: It’s been talked to death and what I’m doing with the book is a completely different angle that I think no one has done before. It’s like the show we do, what can we do that hasn’t been done before. In the end “this won’t be your typical sex, drugs and rock & roll, there will be some of that but that’s not really what the book is focused on”.
SLR: In the end this was a joyful interview to do, Blackie has always been well-spoken and interesting. Back in the day I found him able to have conversations on a multitude of different subjects and forty years later it’s still the same. We’re looking forward to this tour and SLR Magazine will be there on Halloween night to catch it in its full glory for a feature story. And now we’re also looking forward to this upcoming book!