Blackie Lawless is everything and nothing you’d expect him to be. As the buzzsaw-codpieced frontman and driving force behind WASP since their inception, he was Pied Piper to millions of 80s metal fans, and bête noire to the PMRC thanks to such brilliant controversy bait as the band’s debut single Animal (Fuck Like A Beast) and a wilfully OTT stage show involving raw meat tossed into the audience.
But there’s 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 before moving across America to LA, where he played a pivotal part in putting the Sunset Strip scene 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.
“It’s been interesting looking back,” says Lawless, who is currently writing his autobiography. “Would I change anything? Not a thing.”
Blackie Lawless is a combination of Zorro and Dracula
Those were my two childhood heroes. When I moved out to LA I was sleeping on people’s 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’d known that, I would have been putting flowers on his doorstep.
I made my peace with death early on
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: “Son, you’ll see things like this throughout your life where it will come in waves sometimes.” 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.
Baseball is just as corrupt as showbiz
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’t bother me. I saw sports as pure. It really soured me. That’s when I said: “Okay, music is going to be the one.” I never looked back.
Learn from other people’s mistakes
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: “You’re screwing that up, why don’t you do it this way?”
He looked down at me and said, very theatrically: “Son, you benefit from my mistakes so you can become a better man.” 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.
The New York Dolls showed me what to do wrong
That’s a textbook example of learning from other people’s mistakes. Here were five guys all trying to be Jim Morrison and succeeding. Little did I know, being nineteen years old, that it would be the worst thing I’d ever encounter. I was thinking about this at the gym just last night – how far that band could have gone had they wanted to, if they didn’t have the addictive personalities they had and really understood the value of trying to succeed. Funny what goes through your head when you’re working out.
Kiss showed me exactly what to do right
I knew Ace Frehley and I saw Kiss 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 Öyster Cult to Blue Öyster Cult opening for them. Then nobody was laughing any more.
Music is a competition against yourself
It’s not a competition against the other guy. It’s like a race - you don’t run the race to beat the guy next to you. What if he has an injury, or just isn’t any good? What have you accomplished? You run to beat yourself: “I did good yesterday, I can do it again better today.” That’s the way I see competition – it’s all internalised.
Addiction was never my thing
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: “I don’t need this.” 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.
Then I woke up one morning – December twenty-seven, I’ll never forget it – and I knew it was over. Don’t 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.
LA in the early 80s was a world of its own
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 Beatle or whoever, and it just became normal. The electricity was so thick you could cut it with a knife.
First impressions matter
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: “If we can make them stare here, we can make them stare anywhere.” He was right.
I brought East Coast attitude to the Sunset Strip
That attitude didn’t exist in California. The whole surf culture was alive and well when I first came here. Somebody says: “How are ya?” and it’s that New York attitude of: “What’s it to you?” That’s 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’t walk away. When you hear musicians talking about how they should be either dead or in jail, they’re usually talking about drugs. I should be either dead or in jail, but mine was for totally different reasons. Mine was an anger issue.
Fame can eat you alive
Everybody thinks they want to be as famous as The Beatles 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’t want it. People only see the fantasy side. But Elvis died at forty-two because of that. George Harrison 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.
Death threats are no fun
Was the controversy worth it? From the perspective of being able to do the things I’ve 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 – it’s a miracle I wasn’t killed. I got shot at twice.
Think you know how you’ll react when someone pulls a gun on you? You don’t
I always thought that if somebody pulled a gun on me, I’d run. That’s 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.
Muhammed Ali taught me humility
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 – 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’d eat then he’d go into the kitchen and thank all the chefs, take photos with everything. That wasn’t the way I normally did stuff, but that humility left a lasting impression on me.
I spent years mad at god. I was wrong
It’s 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’t mad at God, I was mad at man for the indoctrination.
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 said: “Give me some truth.” For me, that was what it was all about.
People won’t believe me, but I’m an introvert
A lot of guys who have done what I’ve done use their stage persona as one part of their personality, but when they don’t have a guitar strapped on they’re fairly quiet. I’m the same. I live in a very remote area about an hour and a half north of LA, and I have for years. There’s more cows and horses than people. I like it that way.
Hollywood isn’t the dream factory any more
The movies are gone, the music is certainly gone. The window on rock’n’roll is closing. Whether it will survive or not, we’re all going to need a crystal ball to see.
But music still matters
It’s the most mysterious of the arts. I know it sounds corny and clichéd, but it has an effect that can bring people to tears. It’s like a magic trick: they don’t know how musicians do it. Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret: neither do we.
