Blackie Lawless made the Washington Post

[WentEast]

For some reason. Slow news day?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertai ... asp-trump/

[daveg]

Thought this would be some kinda joke.

Very random.

[LAglamrocker]

Important people in charge - these awesome things happen

No sh*t Papa Roach singer interview #lastResortDoucheBag

[Psychobolia.com]

Free speech lol

Gotta pay to read an article about free speech.

Howzabout copying the text here so us poors can read it?

[Danzig in the Dark]

Freedom ain't free, dude.

[HueyRamone]

I ran it through a paywall remover. Not the nicest formatting, but ya get wht ya get




Basically, he's a registered republican and he likes Trump for his commitment to.... checks notes.... free speech.

So, yeah, Blackie is a fucking moron.






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For Blackie Lawless, free speech is more than an exploding codpiece
Best known for mock-torturing women on stage, the heavy metal front man of W.A.S.P. is on the road again — with some thoughts about Trump and free speech.
Today at 5:00 a.m. EDT
15 min
Blackie Lawless of the band W.A.S.P. at New York's Limelight nightclub in 1985. (Mark Weiss)
By Geoff Edgers
Pamela Manning remembers meeting Blackie Lawless for the first time. It was 1982, and he invited her to his apartment in Los Angeles.
She was in her 20s, working as a model and a boxer, and found Lawless, the lead singer of a new band called W.A.S.P., at his place with his friend Nikki Sixx, the bassist for a new band named Motley Crue. They were hanging out and playing Beatles songs. Very chill. Then Blackie pulled her aside.
“I got something for you, but I can’t tell you about it,” she recalls him saying. “You’ve just got to come and see us because I don’t want you to get scared.”
He reassuringly added: “Just think Alice Cooper” — the goth-glam-heavy metal pioneer notorious for a bit of concert theater in which he bludgeoned bloodied baby dolls.
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To prepare, Lawless measured her wrists for leather straps. He slipped a hood over her head. On a September night at Los Angeles’s famed Troubadour, a stagehand rolled Manning out on the “torture rack.” She doesn’t remember whether she was topless or wearing pasties. Manning does remember screaming, as instructed, while Lawless, with a saw blade, simulated slicing her neck open. Fake blood spurted across the stage.
“I was definitely freaked out,” she remembers. “But he was so nice and it was like a whole different vibe. He even offered to pay me some money, which I was like, okay.”
Next came the meat.
Lawless sent a roadie to buy a raw slab from a local butcher. As the band played, he tore off the bloody strands and threw them into the crowd.
Follow Trump’s first 100 Days
“I met my first girlfriend getting meat thrown at her,” says Armored Saint singer John Bush. “It was crazy. It was wild. It was like, what’s going on here?”
Lawless performs at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago in 1987. (Paul Natkin/Getty Images)
During the 1980s, as metal of all varieties rose up the charts, W.A.S.P. stood apart. They were never arena stars, on the level of Bon Jovi, Motley Crue or Guns N’ Roses. But in 1985, they did make one top-10 ranking that helped seal their reputation.
Their single, “Animal (F**k Like a Beast),” got the attention of the Parents Music Resource Center, a group co-founded by Tipper Gore to monitor and label music. “Animal” didn’t get much time on MTV. But it landed at No. 9 on the PMRC’s “Filthy Fifteen.”
These days, W.A.S.P. occupies a fuzzy area on the nostalgia meter. They’re not remotely as big as Metallica but they are popular enough to sell 1,000 tickets in big cities. Lawless has a pair of gold records, a stack of Kerrang! covers and just turned 70, according to public records. There would be no shame in hanging up his codpiece and calling it a career. But that’s not how he operates. For Lawless, there’s a new boss in the White House, so gas up the bus, boys. It’s time for the Album One Alive Tour. And is it any surprise that a man who made his name taking a circular saw to a woman onstage has some thoughts about free speech?
“I mean, this thing going back to McCarthyism, back in the ’50s, every 20 years it rears its ugly head,” Lawless says after a recent show. “I don’t care if you’re a Democrat or Republican, independent or whatever. I can’t think of anything that’s more dear. Because if you can control speech, you can control thought.”
From left, Steve Riley, Chris Holmes, Randy Piper and Blackie Lawless of W.A.S.P. at the Limelight in 1984. (Mark Weiss)
The ’80s were the golden age of hair metal. On the West Coast, the Sunset Strip spawned Ratt, Warrant and GNR. On the East Coast, Bon Jovi, Cinderella and Skid Row rose from Jersey and Philly. And then there was W.A.S.P., which hailed from L.A. but didn’t quite fit in anywhere. They had big hair, but they weren’t hair metal. They sounded like they’d listened to the New York Dolls and Kiss, yet they weren’t glam or punk.
“It’s edgy pop,” says Lita Ford, the former Runaways guitarist who broke out as a solo artist back then and was married to former W.A.S.P. guitarist Chris Holmes for two years. “They’ve got those great big hooky choruses, and they sort of reel you in. Even though the look of them is shock rock, their music is really poppy.”
Lawless was W.A.S.P.’s undeniable leader, a 6-foot-4 singer with a knack for high-camp theatrics. Born Steven Duren, he grew up in what he describes as a Florida “swamp.” Duren was raised Baptist, with a grandfather who served as a church deacon and a father who taught Sunday school. But he abandoned the Bible as a teenager for a new religion: heavy metal. He picked up a guitar, headed to California, and joined a series of rock bands in the 1970s, including Arthur “Killer” Kane’s post-New York Dolls combo before meeting up with a group of like-minded musicians working along the Strip.
W.A.S.P.’s 1984 debut single was “Animal,” and its full X-rated title was no exercise in metaphor.
“It was just about trying to get as many girls as you can get,” says Lawless. “It’s no more complicated than that. I was living in a place that was 9-by-22. It had a loft upstairs. I couldn’t put a whole bed in there. Just a mattress. And the guy that was in there before me had Playboy centerfolds all over the walls in there. And so I went up there and looked around. ‘I got pictures of naked ladies lying on their beds.’ John Lennon said you just write down what you feel, put a backbeat to it. That’s what I was doing.”
W.A.S.P.’s outrageous stage show emerged simply from a desire to stand out from other bands. A Doors fan, Lawless remembered reading about an experimental theater group that Jim Morrison joined at UCLA.
W.A.S.P. fans at a 1985 concert. (Mark Weiss)
“They would literally walk out into the audience and engage the audience, and I thought, well, how could we adapt something like that?” he says. “There’s a magic barrier between the edge of the stage and the audience. It’s this invisible barrier that never gets broken. How do we break that barrier?”
Which is where the raw meat came in.
“So the idea of the meat, is it crude? Absolutely. Did it accomplish the effect that we wanted? In spades,” he says. “If you could have seen the looks on their faces. It worked better than I even imagined it could.”
Except that W.A.S.P.’s shock rock managed to shock all too well.
Almost as soon as they arrived, they would be thrust into the culture wars, the battle between indecency and the First Amendment that had brought other free speech cases — comedian George Carlin and his “seven dirty words” as well as Hustler magazine’s Larry Flynt’s fight with Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr. — as far as the Supreme Court.
Tipper Gore, left, and Susan Baker testify at a Parents Music Resource Center committee hearing in Washington on Sept. 19, 1985. (Lana Harris/AP)
Sen. Paula Hawkins (R-Florida) presents the cover to W.A.S.P.'s “Animal” single at a hearing in 1985. (Wally McNamee/Corbis/Getty Images)
Capitol Records tried to dodge controversy by cutting “Animal” from W.A.S.P.’s 1984 self-titled debut and releasing it as a single. But a year later, during congressional hearings inspired by Gore’s PMRC, Sen. Paula Hawkins (R-Florida) brandished that very single, with its comically rendered saw-bladed codpiece, before the cameras to highlight her disgust with vulgar rock lyrics. W.A.S.P. Judas Priest. Ozzy Osbourne. They would all be targets.
By the end of the decade, a federal judge in Florida deemed an album by rap group 2 Live Crew obscene, and members were arrested for performing the songs. They were later acquitted by a jury, but a record store owner was convicted and fined $1,000 for selling it. His sentence, and the obscenity ruling, were eventually overturned by an appeals court.
W.A.S.P., though, was already breaking apart. Holmes would leave after 1989’s “The Headless Children.” The band’s 1992 record, “The Crimson Idol,” wouldn’t even crack the top 100.
“I don’t care if you’re a Democrat or Republican, independent or whatever. I can’t think of anything that’s more dear,” Lawless says of free speech. “Because if you can control speech, you can control thought.” (Brian Rasic/Getty Images)
In the good days, W.A.S.P. had a manager and a record company behind them. Now, Lawless runs the show. His security guy, a retired law enforcement officer he met back home in California, volunteers his services free. Lawless’s publicist, Michael Brandvold, mainly focuses on online marketing. He has no manager.
Lawless occupies a small world, with interviews limited to publications like Metal Edge or Decibel magazine. As the only remaining member of the original W.A.S.P. lineup, he doesn’t allow his current bandmates (guitarist Doug Blair, bassist Mike Duda, and drummer Aquiles Priester) to speak to the press. And when The Washington Post assigned a photographer to capture the scene at a gig — a standard move for a feature profile — Lawless, who had already participated in an interview for this story, balked.
“This is over,” he told Brandvold to relay to this reporter, making it clear that “he is not doing anything more.” After that, the publicist stopped responding to requests.
Even within his industry, Lawless remains a polarizing figure.
“He’s brilliant,” says Spencer Proffer, who produced W.A.S.P.’s second album, comparing Lawless to Kiss front man Gene Simmons. “They know how to market. They know how [to] do what they do.”
Lawless performs at the Hammersmith Odeon in London in 1989. (Pete Still/Redferns/Getty Images)
But film director Penelope Spheeris, best known for 1992’s “Wayne’s World,” still grumbles about her attempt to recruit Lawless to participate in her 1988 documentary, “The Decline of Western Civilization, Part II: The Metal Years.”
“Blackie won’t let anybody talk to him, you know,” says Spheeris. “He’s not normal.”
Eventually, Spheeris conducted an interview with Holmes that became one of “Decline’s” most memorable moments. The guitarist, who later quit drinking, is in leather, in a swimming pool, guzzling vodka out of the bottle, with his mom sitting in a chaise next to him.
When Lawless saw the footage, he was furious. The interview didn’t reflect well on the band, he said.
Holmes, reached in France where he now lives, hasn’t talked to Lawless since the most recent breakup in 2001.
“I hate him worse than anybody in the music business,” says Holmes. “I used to hate Gene Simmons because of the way he treats people. But Blackie, he’s worse.”
Though it is one of W.A.S.P.'s most popular songs, Lawless — seen in 1989 — no longer performs “Animal.” (Krasner/Trebitz/Redferns/Getty Images)
Randy Piper, who founded the band with Lawless and played guitar on its first two albums, recently went to see a show in Seattle. He had hoped Lawless would ask him to guest on a song or two. Instead, Lawless wouldn’t even acknowledge Piper in the crowd.
“I mean, look at Metallica and Megadeth,” says Piper. “Dave Mustaine and the guys probably had some bad blood for a long time, but now they’re friends again, you know? I mean, he could have at least given me a shout-out.”
It is not clear how Lawless determines what of his past to embrace and what to avoid. He remains surrounded by the architecture of the band’s heyday onstage, where he still brings out the plastic skulls and bloody tapestries, and continues to play such ditties as “On Your Knees.”
But not “Animal.” Now one of W.A.S.P.’s most popular songs (Capitol eventually added it back to the album for a 1998 reissue), its profane title doesn’t mesh with Lawless’s religious reawakening — a journey he says came after his intense study of the Bible. Same goes for the torture rack and dripping chuck roast.
Lawless performs in Zaragoza, Spain, in 2006. (Jordi Vidal/Redferns/Getty Images)
Still, Lawless gladly signed copies of the “Animal” single brought to him by fans at a pre-show meet-and-greet. And when the lights went down in the hall, he played his part, the longhaired rocker in black tights, white boots and a saw blade near his picking hand.
Backstage, where Lawless has agreed to an interview, he’s nonetheless loath to dive too deeply into introspection or anything personal.
Does he have a family? Has he considered bringing back Holmes or Piper?
Unintentionally, Lawless lets on that he’s been struggling lately. When asked whether he would sit for a follow-up interview back home in California during a break in the tour, he hesitates. Amid a split from a longtime love, he’s got a lot to untangle emotionally.
“I want to go home and figure out who the hell I am right now,” he says.
W.A.S.P. performs in front of a sold-out crowd in Columbus, Ohio, in 2010. (Joey Foley/FilmMagic/Getty Images)
There is one group that Lawless is attentive to: his fans.
On the Album One Alive Tour, which launched last fall and resumes Friday after a hiatus in South America, Lawless offers a special VIP package for $350. Before every show, about 20 people are ushered backstage by Jason Robarts, his volunteer security guy.
First, the fans are brought to the pop-up W.A.S.P. “museum.” It features a mannequin adorned with leather chaps and the codpiece from “Animal.” (This is not the spark-shooting codpiece that malfunctioned during a 1980s gig in Ireland, leaving Lawless with an unfortunately located patch of minor burn marks.) There are rows of magazine covers featuring Lawless, often soaked in fake blood and posing with a maniacal smile, and “Elvis,” the massive metal microphone stand he uses onstage, resembling a skull and cross bones melded to a medieval torture device.
For the main event, Lawless arrives from his tour bus, taking a seat to answer questions, pose for photos and sign autographs. He is gracious toward these diehards.
One fan asks him about his writing process.
“As Mark Twain said, the difference between the right word and the wrong word is lightning and lightning bug,” Lawless says.
Another wants to know where he rides his Harleys.
“I don’t. Everybody that I know, the question is not if you’ve had your accident, [but] when did you have it? Some of them live to tell it, some don’t.”
And another fan, Karen Batten, just leans forward to offer her appreciation.
“Thank you for being real,” she says in a thick Boston accent. “You never sold out. You stayed true to the music, Blackie, and I want to tell you, I love it.”
Lawless in Wales in 2009. (Kevin Nixon/Metal Hammer Magazine/Future/Getty Images)
Did you see what happened last night?” Robarts, the security guy, says with a smile as he walks across the empty floor at Philadelphia’s Franklin Music Hall in mid-November.
No, what? The night before, W.A.S.P. played New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom.
“Just go to YouTube and watch it,” Robarts advises.
And there it is. The show opens like all of them. The Doors’ “The End” washes over the P.A., Lawless takes the stage, and the band launches into “I Wanna Be Somebody,” the opener on W.A.S.P.’s first album. And then, for the encore, a twist.
“You know, it was Shakespeare that said some are born to greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them,” Lawless tells the crowd.
Was he talking about … himself? Or someone else?
The four-and-half-minute speech that follows covered his old censorship battles with Tipper Gore and made reference to George Washington and the First Amendment; it wrapped up with a nod to a powerful political leader who just happened to be less than a mile away, at Madison Square Garden, for a UFC fight with his newfound ally Elon Musk.
This might be a good time to mention that Lawless is a registered Republican.
Lawless in Nottingham, England, in 2023. (Luke Brennan/Getty Images)
“Now I’ve got two things that I’m passionate about the most,” Lawless says. “One of them is that freedom of speech. And the other one is about being a patriot. … I am willing to die for this country. I believe in it that much. And that man next door, he believes in it too.”
Donald Trump has often wrapped himself in the mantle of the First Amendment — blasting what he portrays as liberal efforts to squelch conservative voices and claiming his own rights to free speech were violated when social media networks shut down his accounts in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
But in these early days of Trump 2.0, the president himself has rattled First Amendment advocates with his moves to sue news organizations, arrest foreign students for participating in political protests and ban schools from discussing “gender ideology.”
Lawless doesn’t reference these actions from the stage. And his musings don’t cue up any thought-provoking political songs.
The current iteration of W.A.S.P. — Mike Duda, Lawless, Aquiles Priester and Doug Blair — performs in Oslo last year. (Per Ole Hagen/Redferns/Getty Images)
Instead, W.A.S.P. launches into “Blind in Texas,” a big, barre-chordy song from 1985 about getting stupid drunk in the Lone Star State. As Lawless hits the first chords, stagehands tug on the banners that usually form a skull-and-blood patterned stage backdrop. This time, the backdrops are “Trump 2024” banners. The massive video screen behind Lawless cuts to the indelible image of Candidate Trump moments after the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, last July, his fist defiantly raised.
There are cheers. There are boos. Lawless doesn’t seem to mind. Asked about it later backstage, he betrays no concern about alienating his remaining audience. He is on a mission that transcends politics, he says.
“You know, I’m part Native American, part Jewish. If there is a guy outside wearing a Nazi uniform right now talking about killing all the American Indians, I’d still support his right to say it,” he says.
“There’s a reason for the First Amendment,” Lawless adds. “Without that, I wouldn’t have a job.”
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Geoff Edgers, The Washington Post's national arts reporter, covers everything from fine arts to popular culture. He's the author of "Walk This Way: Run-DMC, Aerosmith, and the Song That Changed American Music Forever."
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[Ozzy Stradlin]

[TravisBicklesMohawk]

Good to know Tipper Gore was 100% correct about him.

And freedom of speech just as long as you're not speaking against Israel?

Schilling for Trump is so fucking lame. Beyond lame. Dude, go back to bed.

[krisholmes]

Whitey "Tipper was right" Lawabiding.

[rockker]

Blackie, like every other musician/ actor/ celebrity should just keep their fucking mouths shut when it comes to politics.
That literal flag waving on stage last year was fucking embarrassing.

[Bono Nettencourt]

Both are equally irrelevant nowadays.

[metalmetalrdu]

I enjoyed the story but I'm not sure it hit the target. I don't feel as though Blackie is relevant enough to deserve that kind of attention.

As an aside: The author of this story attended one of my barbecues last year.

[Love_Industry]

Both are equally irrelevant nowadays.

Lawless/WASP certainly, but Trump? He's a lot of things but irrelevant is not one of them. In fact staying relevant may be his main talent as he managed to reinvent himself successfully so many times - developer, casino owner, reality TV star, politician...

[Bono Nettencourt]

I meant Lawless and the Post.