10 THINGS EVERY ARTIST CAN LEARN FROM BLACKIE LAWLESS

I was a 13 year-old adolescent in 1989. I was in the process of discovering my own musical tastes as I was slowly moving towards the rock bands of the era. In those days all we had was cassette tapes and the first rock album that I bought was Bon Jovi’s “New Jersey”. I was head over heels for Jon Bon Jovi, dreaming about him in my room while salivating over his pictures in glossy youth magazines and playing their rock ballads like “I’ll Be There For You” over and over again while crying my eyes out. I was so intensely moved by these newly discovered emotions evoked by rock music.

Then came the “Long Cold Winter” album by Cinderella, and I was equally moved by them as well. What particularly struck me about Cinderella was their imagery and sound which to me was a bit different than the rest of the long-haired rock musicians of the time. I remember watching “Long Cold Winter” on MTV (still one of my top 3 favorite songs of all time) and being mesmerized by the deeply touching bluesy song and the beauty of four men playing in the snow in the American wilderness. To me they somehow represented the fragility and untamed beauty of the Native American Indians in their land, which I found fascinating.

I was exploring new and different bands each day and going for slightly heavier sounding bands. When I saw W.A.S.P. on MTV for the first time, I think it was “I Wanna Be Somebody”. I had seen photos of Blackie Lawless in rock magazines who struck me as a crazy Native Indian type with jet black hair and piercing blue eyes (I didn’t know that he actually had native Indian heritage in him at the time). I think I was drawn to that wild imagery and I never saw it as threatening or intimidating even as a 13-year old kid. I actually found it amusing and refreshing to see someone who dared to be so bold and over the top with so much confidence. I couldn’t put my finger on it, I couldn’t explain what it was, but I knew that there was something that attracted me to it.

As a side note to explain my fascination with the Native Indians, here’s a back story. In 1990 the movie “Dances With Wolves” had come out and in 1992 “The Last of the Mohicans” came out. I felt a strong connection by watching those movies to the Native Indian culture. I started devouring books on them, I put up posters of Red Cloud, Geronimo and other famous Indian tribe leaders on my wall. I even went so far as to tell my family that I believed to be one of their descendants at one point, which of course wasn’t received well by my mother to say the least. I was moved by their free warrior spirit, and how much they fought to keep their native lands and natural way of life. They were the true rock stars of their time and what I saw in these guys like Blackie Lawless and Tom Keifer was a little bit of that wild spirit.

When the album “The Headless Children” came out, I was hooked from the get go and that’s when I became a true W.A.S.P. fan. I finally put up a poster or two of Blackie on my wall. Their fiery antics with meat, blood and saw blades were long gone by then, so I had the advantage of not being put off by them. Which was a good thing, because it allowed me to take them seriously for their music from the beginning. In other words, I was able to see “The Real W.A.S.P.”

As much as the image of a band was important in those days, I can’t say I’ve ever let that take away from or surpass the music itself. To me music (as a combination of melody, harmony and rhythm) always came first and lyrics later. If I liked the music, I didn’t care what the lyrics said. If I liked both the music and the lyrics, then it was a bonus. I cannot remember a single song by any artist where I liked the lyrics and not the music. By the same token there wasn’t a band that I liked just for the sake of how good or cool they looked either. I understand the importance of image and appearance for marketing reasons but if a musician or a band cares too much about their image to the point where it overtakes their music, to me it just means that their music is not good enough to speak for itself. It is rather a commercial commodity than an artistic product.

Growing up as fast as we did in the late 80’s, we quickly rolled into the 90’s and the grunge movement took hold of the whole music scene. I found myself being drawn to the grunge bands of the time like Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Mudhoney, Mother Love Bone and Temple of the Dog. Even though it was Nirvana that kind of kick-started the movement, I’ve never felt a deep connection to their music.

From that time onwards, I’ve never looked back and continued mainly listening to the grunge bands that came out in that period. I lost track of W.A.S.P. during that time and never cared to check out their new material after the Headless album. The world of music had changed, my musical tastes had changed and life was moving on at a fast and unforgiving pace.

Fast forward to 34 years later, I am now 47 years old, still mostly listening to my favorite bands from the 90’s. My all time favorites have remained the same: Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Jeff Buckley, The Afghan Whigs, Blind Melon, Faith No More, etc. A couple of weeks ago as I was driving, my playlist started playing a randomly selected song, which happened to be “Sleeping in the Fire” by W.A.S.P. I hadn’t heard that song since I was 15. I got chills down my spine and started playing it in repeat realizing what a fantastic song it was.

I went home and immediately started digging up W.A.S.P. and Blackie Lawless videos. I came across a recent Youtube video where they were interviewing a now 67 year-old Blackie Lawless by chance and I couldn’t believe that he was still around and kicking ass with his voice intact the same way he did back in the day!

The next thing I did was to put on the Headless Album for the first time in 34 years. It felt like I was teleported back to my childhood and I remember exactly how I felt listening to the album back then. This led me down a rabbit hole of searching for every W.A.S.P. and Blackie Lawless video on Youtube I could get my hands on. After watching a few of them, I’ve realized that I knew nothing about the man himself. I hadn’t watched any interviews of him back when I was young so I didn’t know anything about him beyond his wild stage persona. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that he is one of the most focused, well-spoken and intelligent men that I have ever seen in music and I couldn’t help but develop a new appreciation for him and his dedication to his art.

He was always so playful (and flirtatious in the presence of ladies), smart, confident and ahead of time during interviews when he was younger and as he grew older he traded some of his playfulness with a lot of wisdom and a deep understanding of the music business and the world around him. I started binging on all of his videos and in every video he was full of new and interesting stories to tell, never skipping a beat, never at a loss for words. What I enjoyed most was his sense of humor and how he was able to self-reflect as he traveled the world. He was able to grow and allow himself to mature from these experiences as a musician and a human being without losing himself to fame and all the distractions that came along with it. He even went as far as writing a whole concept album “The Crimson Idol” about the rise and fall of a rock star to warn others about the pitfalls of the music industry, which I had no idea about. He was genuine and eloquent in his meet and greet sessions with fans and was quite philosophical in his approach to telling stories and answering questions.

I have to admit, I had never seen him in this light before and I feel sad and a little bit guilty for not having followed him in all these years to appreciate what he kept offering musically, lyrically and emotionally. I listened to the Crimson Idol record for the first time the other day and I can’t believe I have missed out on “The Idol” all these years. I feel like someone who has broken up with her first love only to run into him by chance on the street years later and falling in love with him again.

I was also excited to learn that he has been working on a memoir for some time, and I can’t wait to read it when it comes out. He must have a million juicy stories to tell.

I’m not saying that the man is a saint. He must have too many skeletons in his closet. I’ve read that he has hurt many people along the way and has had an enlarged ego. He was overbearing, difficult, dominant, and sexist (as well as being sexy). He had a rocky relationship with Chris Holmes which the fans are still upset about. He has written about and performed questionable sex acts on and off stage and has probably treated women as sex objects for a good period of his life. I am sure that there is some truth to all of these stories. But as we all know, this was the inevitable result of being a rock star in the 80’s. It will be interesting to read about his reflections on these experiences in his book.

Putting the shenanigans aside, I felt inspired by watching his interviews and have gathered very valuable lessons from them. I saw a man who has not mindlessly lived through the sex, booze and rock’n’roll as most rock stars of the era continued to do, but a man taking lessons from his mistakes and growing from his experiences. Here’s what I came up with:

1) Be aware of your gift:

In almost all of his interviews, Blackie mentions how blessed he feels to be doing what he wants to do and how grateful he is for the opportunities he’s had. He has realized early on that he had a gift, and he says humbly that it wasn’t the talent of singing or writing songs, but it was the ability to communicate with people. He had the opportunity to go up on a stage or on a record and say things that made people listen to him. He understood the unique vantage point that it gave him and it made him realize that he not only had a responsibility, he also had an obligation to the fans. He had to think twice about what lyrics he wanted to write about, and what he wanted the fans to sing back to him.

2) Be honest with yourself:

Blackie realized that the only way to connect with people was to come from an honest place. He likens that to writing a diary. He tells the interviewers that his job is no different than their jobs, which is reporting what happens around them. He says “Rock’n’roll is supposed to be about revolution and anarchy and when you see something wrong, you should say something about it. All art is designed to make you think”. Starting with “The Headless Children” he writes about issues that bother him like the nuclear war and drug abuse and continues that trend going into more personal themes in other records. He gets his inspiration from Marvin Gaye and he focuses on doing records that honestly reflect who he was at the moment of making them.

3) Find Your Passion:

Even though he admits that his initial motivation to make music was “to get lucky with ladies” to put it mildly, music has always been crucial to him. He was exposed to Beatles and Elvis as a child growing up and his mother has been influential in developing his love for music. Music was “part of his DNA” as he puts it and that obsession kept him going for so long. He asks fans “What turns you on? What makes you get up in the morning?” before adding “The greatest thing anybody can be blessed with is an obsession, because it moves you, it makes you do things.”

4) Have a vision:

No passion could survive without a vision. Blackie has always been a visionary. There have been times when he felt lost and directionless but he has had a long-term vision about what he wanted to do and had an action plan of how to get there from very early on. He talks about the difficulty of doing that in the early days when after recording an album and touring the world for a year, how lost he has felt and he didn’t know who he was or where he was going anymore. When that happened he took a step back to evaluate himself and his goals and eventually found a new way to move ahead. He was full of ideas about not only his music but life in general and he was passionate about them. He even talked about being a Senator some day (later changing his mind because he didn’t want to compromise his beliefs).

5) Have focus:

In one interview, a fan asks him how he was able to get through the sex, drugs and rock’n’roll days in one piece. His answer is short but quick: “Focus”. No doubt there was a lot of debauchery going on after they found fame, and as a young and charming man -offstage- he would have enjoyed the attention of the ladies and the rocker lifestyle as long as he did. But Blackie quickly found out that there was more to life than just that. He talks about losing many friends to drugs and the craziness and he wrote the Crimson Idol to showcase how isolating it can be if you don’t have focus to begin with. Going overseas and experiencing different lifestyles and backgrounds as well as his personal experiences must have opened his eyes to another, more real world out there and he managed to successfully incorporate all this new information back to his world view and his music.

6) Have confidence:

One thing that Blackie is blessed with, apart from his talent and what he calls his “gift” is his self-confidence that is evident in all his interviews. He believes in himself and what he does and you can tell this from his posture and the way he carries himself before he even opens his mouth. He is always calm and collected, he never gets aggressive and his biggest weapon is his razor-sharp intelligence and sense of humor. His confidence doesn’t come from a position of superiority but from introspection and believing what you say and do to be true to yourself (I’m sure being 6’4’’ wouldn’t hurt either). When your self-value comes from within, you are not influenced easily by outside voices. In one interview, he talks about how rock music should have a little “pizzazz and oomph” to it to be interesting and he is definitely oomph personified with a magnetic charisma oozing from him.

7) Enjoy the ride:

Celebrating W.A.S.P.’s 40th anniversary in 2023, one can’t help but appreciate the longevity of Blackie’s career. In one interview he describes the meaning of success: “Having a true career is being able to ride the high points as well as the lows”. He sees the ride as a rollercoaster where “nobody is on top forever and nobody stays down forever”. It’s important to be resilient and not give up easily and to continue on your chosen path through ups and downs.

8) Pay The Price:

When Blackie wrote the Crimson Idol album, his main goal was to show fans, who wanted to be like him, that the show business was not for the faint-hearted. People may be attracted to the glamorous lifestyle which usually includes wealth, reckless living, fame, sex, alcohol and drugs but once you lose your head with these distractions, you may not ever recover from it. People even end up losing their life if they don’t have their feet on the ground. Blackie was smart enough to witness people around him paying the high price of fame, having indulged in it himself for a while, and then decide to regain his control and focus and go back to his main passion, making music. He asks us “How bad do you want it? Are you ready to pay the price? If the answer is yes, then be my guest. If no, then find something else to do”. He adds that even if somebody had warned him about the dangers of fame, he still would have done it, because he was in it for the music. It’s a bit like the scene in Whiplash where Andrew asks Terence Fletcher if there is a line where you push somebody too far that you end up discouraging him. Fletcher says that Charlie Parker would never be discouraged.

9) Listen to Your Fans:

Blackie often mentions in his interviews that you need to open up your soul to your fans and let them live inside your head in order to connect with them. I saw him paying attention to the questions and giving well-thought and deep answers to them in his meet and greets. He mentions that fans have saved him twice, once when he first decided to disband W.A.S.P. and tried to go as a solo artist but then when he saw the “violent” fan mail coming to him advising him not to do it, he accepted the idea and went on to publish the next record as a W.A.S.P. album. The fans had convinced him that it was not about the people in the band per se, but the idea of W.A.S.P. that they loved.

10) Embrace the change:

Life is constantly changing and nothing stays the same. Blackie experienced this first-hand in the early 90’s when the grunge scene took over and most of the metal bands from the 80’s had to lay low and watch the world transform to another era. It must have been a blow to these musicians to suddenly go from being super successful world-touring rock starts to being yesterday’s news and most bands could not survive any longer and ended up breaking up. The ones who stood standing went on to have solo careers with some success but they were few and far between. Blackie was one of these, not letting the changing times put him down. With the unwavering support of his die-hard fans he continued to make records. He says in one interview that he decided at one point to make records for himself, not caring about whether they would be received well. His persistence has certainly paid off. Long live Blackie Lawless and W.A.S.P.!