W.A.S.P. are back in the forefront of the hard rock/heavy metal scene with their new album “Babylon” which has received some great reviews from the heavy metal press worldwide. On this occasion and looking forward to their upcoming live shows on Greek ground in Athens and Thessaloniki, we discuss with the band’s mastermind Blackie Lawless, who is on the other end of the line (and of the Atlantic, in California in particular). Cheery, talkative, straightforward, realistic and at the same time passionate, Blackie Lawless shares with us his aspects, worries and hope for society, politics, faith and of course music…

Solid Rock: Hello Blackie, how are you doing?

Blackie Lawless: I’m great!

Solid Rock: So, obviously you’re very happy about the new album, “Babylon”, right?

Blackie Lawless: I’ll be honest with you. You know, when I make a record I can’t tell, it takes me a year or too to get away from a record and I have to remove myself from it in order to say. Or else I can just say that it’s the best record that we’ve done…

Solid Rock: How long did it take you to write and record “Babylon”?

Blackie Lawless: About six months.

Solid Rock: And is this finally a concept album?

Blackie Lawless: No, it’s not. It all started with one idea which was the song “Babylon’s Burning” and I think a lot of people thought because of that that it is a concept album but it’s not.

Solid Rock: Also, in which was does “Babylon” connect to the “Four Horsemen”?

Blackie Lawless: Well, about a year ago I was watching some of the EU leaders in Brussels and they were talking about this global financial crisis, as they’re calling it, and the same thing was going on here in America. One thing I’ve learnt is that whenever politicians are using the word ‘crisis’, it’s usually an excuse to try to take some sort of freedom away from you. So, I was listening to all these guys talk and I heard one of them say that he thought maybe it was time for a one-world system or a one-world government, then I heard another guy say that he thought it was time that we have a one-world currency. But the one that really got me the most was when one of them said that he believed by the year 2018 that they can have all the people in the EU micro-chipped. I listened to that with my mouth open. You know what that means, right? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. And I’m thinking to myself: “Do these men not understand what they’re saying?” This is direct biblical prophecy, I mean, this is precisely what the Bible talks about. So I went back and did a pretty detailed study of the book of Revelation, which I think you guys call The Apocalypse, and I also looked at some other books in the Bible, like “Daniel”, and I was astonished how accurate they were describing what these men were saying. It also talks about the rise of the new Roman Empire, many people now believe that that Roman Empire is the EU. In Revelation when it talks about the new Babylon, it talks about the city on the seven hills and there’s only one city that fits that description and that’s Rome. I was looking at all these and, as I said, I was amazed on how accurate this was. I thought about when I wrote “The Headless Children” 20 years ago, there is a lyric in the song that says: “Four horsemen sit high up in the saddle and waiting and ride the bloody trail of no return”, and I’m listening to these guys in Brussels talk and I’m thinking “are we closer to the Apocalypse now than we were even 20 years ago?” So I just thought it was a really interesting idea. Like all the records that I make, I’m trying to get people to think to themselves, to think about the world that they’re living in, to think about politics and understand the politicians that they vote for. You know, elections have consequences. In America now, people are very unhappy with Obama. Look at what happened in Washington DC some time ago. There was a demonstration, one hundred thousand people protesting Obama outside of the White House (!), that’s incredible! And this same thing is happening in every big city in the United States as much as in Washington. This happened faster than for any other president of the United States because people are beginning to understand what they voted for is not what they thought they were voting for. It’s important for people to understand that freedom is a responsibility and once we take that responsibility, that responsibility will be taken from us. It’s very important to remember that elections have consequences and you’d better understand who you’re voting for before you give this guy power because some times it’s too late. And I’m thinking about the people in the European community, that they should be very careful about these people that they’re voting for, because these guys are talking about some very dangerous things. The EU has been a good thing but at the same time the individual countries lose freedom and that’s a bad thing. A lot of your customs and a lot of the things you grew up with get changed because somebody in Brussels or somewhere thinks it’s a good idea. For Greece, to become a part of the EU, you have to give up some of your freedom to be able to be a part of that and I don’t know if that’s a good thing.

Solid Rock: The near future will show that I guess…

Blackie Lawless: Yes, but then it will be too late…

Solid Rock: So, you explained to us what inspired you to write “Babylon”. What kinds of things usually inspire you to write?

Blackie Lawless: Passion, whatever you’re passionate about, something that moves you. I’m a very average person. I like the same music, the same movies, the same food that everybody likes. If I see something on TV that upsets me or makes me angry, there’s probably a lot of other people that are gonna feel the same way. That’s really all about justice. As I said, I’m driven by that passion, whatever that may be.

Solid Rock: There’s a cover of Deep Purple’s “Burn” and also a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Promised Land” in the album. How did this choice come up, which I think is not just a coincidence…?

Blackie Lawless: No, it’s not. We recorded about 15 songs for the album, and when the album was close to being finished I looked at all the song titles and, it was pretty funny, because you know when you’re working on an individual song you’re not thinking about the other songs, you’re only thinking about the one that you’re working on at the time, and when I put all the song titles together the first thing I realized was “Wow, there’s a lot of fire on there!”. I wasn’t aware of that, probably subconsciously I was but not consciously. So, I looked at all the titles and, well, the “Promised Land” was the first song that we recorded for the album and we didn’t really think it was gonna go on the record, we just hadn’t been in the studio for a while and we wanted to do something easy let’s say just to get going and I didn’t really take it so seriously. But when I looked at all the song titles together, I thought that this album takes you to a very dark place and I don’t wanna leave you in a dark place. I wanna take you to a dark place but when it’s finished I wanna take you to a promised land.

Solid Rock: So, a happy end?

Blackie Lawless: Exactly. Because that’s hope. For me it was perfect and I didn’t care who wrote the song, I just thought that the idea was so good that I could not refuse it.

Solid Rock: Both “Babylon” and your previous album, “Dominator’, are in my opinion closer to the old W.A.S.P. albums music wise, but certainly more sophisticated and dark lyric wise. Do you agree and what do you think about that?

Blackie Lawless: That’s been happening for almost 20 years, since “The Headless Children”. I really try to do lyrics like you said that it’s more like art. In the very beginning, on our first album, in the show that we were doing, that show I believed was abstract art. You know it was trying to make a special comment, but one of the things I quickly found was that when you do a show that’s that powerful, people listen with their eyes and not their ears. It was a big problem and I thought that if I want the lyrics to have the message we need to simplify the idea of what we were doing visually. Once I did that, then people were able to better understand the lyrics and that was the reason why “The Headless Children” was so different when it came out, because I knew that I really wanted to say something. And to do that you can’t have the element to distract people, I wish you could do both but you can’t.

Solid Rock: You are a very creative person, we have seen it in your songwriting and performances throughout the years, and it gets better and better…Is there a secret about this or is it just the passion that you mentioned earlier and the rest just comes out naturally?

Blackie Lawless: I know it sounds simple but it’s really the truth.

Solid Rock: Bands come and go, every day a new band is born and an old one dies. You said passion is a driving force for you, so how much does passion on the one hand and discipline on the other have to do with success and with your success in particular?

Blackie Lawless: Discipline is a huge part but the passion makes it easier. You know it’s like in your life, when you really want to do something the passion that drives you makes it easier and it’s not like a job that it’s boring and you don’t want to be there and do that. But if it’s something you really feel strongly about, it doesn’t feel like work, even though it is a lot of work and can be tiring. We have an expression here in America that goes “if you do what you love, you never work a day in your life” and I feel that I’ve been blessed to be able to do that.

Solid Rock: Have you seen major changes in the way the music industry works nowadays?

Blackie Lawless: The music industry has been completely destroyed. It’s nothing like it used to be, those days are over. Some people think it’s a good thing but I have mixed emotions for that. We used to call the record companies as the ‘evil empire’, they ripped the bands off, they ripped the fans off, they ripped everybody off…But you know what, they did provide a service for us which gave us the music. The problem is that, that industry, the ‘machinery’ that was able to deliver the music doesn’t exist anymore. Somebody asked me recently “Where are all the great frontmen, where did they go?” and I said “There are no more, they don’t exist!” If you wanna see Bruce Dickinson you gotta buy a ticket to go and see Iron Maiden, if you wanna see Geoff Tate you gotta buy a ticket to go and see Queensryche, because when these guys are gone, it’s over, it’s never coming back because they’re the last generation of those great frontmen, those great performers, because the industry doesn’t exist anymore to allow them, to really nurture them to get better. Think, if a band like AC/DC came around today you would never hear them because AC/DC was given four-five records to develop themselves, while a band ain’t be given a chance now or you get maybe one chance and if it doesn’t work you’re gone. If that was the case and AC/DC came out today, you would never hear the album “Back In Black”, it would be never given the chance to be made. Think about all the great music that you’re never going to hear now because that evil empire doesn’t exist anymore. If someone said to me “would you rather have the record companies back or would you rather not have them back”, as much as I disliked them I think that I would rather have them back. I was reading something that Perry Farrell from Jane’s Addiction was saying the other day, and he was really and painfully honest, he was talking about the fans and he said that if you turn on the radio today people complain because they don’t hear any music, he said you have noone to blame but yourself because you stole the music and when you stole the music you put the record companies out of business and now you have no music and you’re complaining…? I tell people, all those great bands that you love now, any band that can headline a festival or any band that can fill a stadium, you better go see them right now because when those bands are gone you’ll never see that again, those days will be over. Not trying to scare you, I’m telling the truth.

Solid Rock: Everybody agrees that the music industry has been completely destroyed, but don’t you think that there’s a new blood that can continue from where the older great bands left off? There are many musicians who believe in the ‘new blood’…

Blackie Lawless: How can the new bands make it? The reason that some people say they believe that the new bands will carry on, it’s because they want to believe that. I’m telling you what the reality is, it’s not what I want it to be. Think about that industrial machinery that the major record companies had, they did one thing and they did it better than anybody could do it and what they did was they were able to take large numbers of people and point them at a direction. You can say we have the internet today, that’s true, but noone can take the power of the internet and move it in one direction. And until something that is created like that again to be able to move all these people in a similar direction, you will never see this again in your lifetime. I would love to agree with those who believe that the new bands can make it but believing doesn’t make it reality. And I’m telling you reality and that’s the bad part about it. I’m not making this up, it’s just a fact.

Solid Rock: So, how important is in your opinion the social, political, economical situation for an artist whatever kind of art he represents and how important is it for you personally?

Blackie Lawless: For me it’s really important and the lyrics they speak for themselves. The one thing that I’m doing, I’m just trying to help people and I have found my purpose in life. I’m trying to state things that are gonna make people’s lives better. If I can get them just to think then I have succeeded, because even if I say something to them that maybe they don’t agree with I get them to think about it. I don’t want anybody to believe anything that I’m saying, what I’m telling them is ‘find out your own answers, you’ll find out for yourselves’. And when I said earlier all these things about the record companies and stuff, nobody has to believe me, go do your own homework and you will find the answers because the truth of anything is the most important thing.

Solid Rock: When you don’t have the pressure of a tour or recordings, you’re the kind of person who watches the world news daily?

Blackie Lawless: Yup, you’re correct. Yesterday it was Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela, I listened to the garbage coming out of his mouth, before that it was Ahmadinejad and Moammar Kaddafi and I’m thinking to myself “what do they even allow these guys to speak?” There is nothing but just garbage coming out of them and I’m looking at it and I wanna do like Elvis and get a gun and shoot the TV.

Solid Rock: So, is the world financial crisis, that they have been talking to us about, worse than the illegal downloading for the music business?

Blackie Lawless: You know, as far as the downloading, there is an expression that says “the genie is out of the bottle”, it’s over, and we have to accept that. If we accept that idea, then I guess the next most important thing would be the financial crisis. There is only one good thing has happened through all of this. For the bands like ourselves and there’s probably around 15 bands that have really survived, those bands are bigger now than they were 20 years ago. The only way to see those bands is that you have to go to their show, so that’s one positive thing, because I don’t think that any live shows will ever be replaced. It’s the same way when movies happened 80 years ago, the theatre people were afraid that it would kill the theatre but it didn’t, because they’re two completely different things. If you look at the history and I’m really trying to study the history of this industry, music records were made back in the 1920 but nobody really understood how to put it together until Ahmet Ertegun, who was president of Atlantic Records here in America, he was the first guy back in the 50’s to really understand how to be a business model for selling records. And we used his business model all of us, all the record companies used that model for the next 50 years. And then, when the internet happened, that business model was destroyed but it took him 40 years before he developed what he did prior to him creating that business model. So, if we were in a position like that now, if it’s gonna take another 40 years for someone to figure out how to put together, to consolidate all the power of the internet and give a direction, there’s good and bad things that go with it but at the same time you got to remember something: that when we look at rock ‘n’ roll, if we look at records that were made in the 20’s, in the 30’s, in the 50’s, in the 70’s, to the present day, heavy rock exploded in the 80’s and the reason it exploded was television. If you go back and look at rock ‘n’ roll in the 50’s and 60’s, other than a band like the Beatles, which was a phenomenon and something unique to itself, but if you look at all the other bands they were playing theatres, that’s where rock ‘n’ roll is supposed to be, it’s supposed to be in a 2000-seat environment, it was never designed to be in stadium, and they didn’t even release albums, they released singles. So, we have come back to a place where I think it is really supposed to be, it’s about the live experience, which is what those things are about. I think what happened in the 80’s was completely abnormal, it was not supposed to be that way. But a phenomenon happened and we all experienced that phenomenon and although we thought it would always be like that, we find out now that no, it’s not.

Solid Rock: Did you feel back then that history was being written?

Blackie Lawless: Well, with anything in life whether it’s music or any kind of history, once a movement can be analyzed it’s over, because you can’t really analyze something until it’s over. So, the thing that we are in any kind of history, we can’t really analyze it till we look at it when it’s finished. In this case, even though music is not finished, that era of the 80’s is over and we can look back and see what happened and why it happened and it happened because of television. Television is not that friendly anymore to music as it used to be and the major record companies are gone so, for all those reasons, that empire has collapsed. The good thing is that the bands that were part of it, a lot of them are still around. So, as I was saying before, if you wanna see Lemmy, you’ve got to go see Motorhead, because when he’s gone, ain’t gonna be no more Lemmy.

Solid Rock: Yes, exactly. For example, do you remember coming to Greece 20 years ago to play a live show?

Blackie Lawless: No, we never came.

Solid Rock: Right. And how many times have you been in Greece during the last years?

Blackie Lawless: Lots!

Solid Rock: So, the people here never had the chance to see you in the 80’s but they have had the chance to see you again and again during the last years.

Blackie Lawless: Well, the biggest reason of that is the promoter there who believed in us and before that none of the promoters would. I remember being asked in some interviews when we are going to come play over there because they thought that the band didn’t want to come. Any band will go anywhere as long as they have a promoter that will bring them there. Greece is now honestly you’re probably my favourite place. You probably take it for granted because you live there, but the history that place has is unbelievable and I love history. Everywhere you look there, is such a special, special place, you’re really lucky you live there. Everytime I’m there I learn something new about the place.

Solid Rock: Religion and faith, what do these words mean to you?

Blackie Lawless: Everything.

Solid Rock: Could you explain that to us?

Blackie Lawless: When I was a kid my uncle was a preacher, my grandfather was a deacon of the church, my father was a Sunday school superintendent, so whenever the doors of the church were open, I was there several times at a week. Nobody made me go, I wanted to go. When I got in my late teens, I started making a lot of questions that I wasn’t getting the answers that I wanted and I started really doubting my faith and I left the church and I left for a long time. When I left the church I went as far away as I could go. After three years I realized that I was changing one organized religion for another organized religion so I left that too. I was angry with the whole idea of, as I thought, that there’s a lot of institutional thinking in the church. If you go back to the New Testament and look at what Christ said, it’s not that much, but men started adding so much into it. Anyway, I went away for 20 years, walking around and I thought I was mad at God, but I realized during these 20 years that I was mad at men and not at God. So I went back and started studying again without the influence of that institutional thinking and I really returned to my faith. What I’m trying to say with that is really what I’m trying to say with every record: “If you wanna know what’s going on, don’t listen to somebody else, do your own homework, find out for yourself”. When I started doing that, I ended up in a better place, I’m happy now, my conscious is clear, I don’t worry about anything like that.

Solid Rock: Back to WA.S.P. now. What can we expect from the upcoming tour and the upcoming shows in Athens and Thessaloniki here in Greece?

Blackie Lawless: We liked the idea of what we did with the Crimson Idol tour, with the big movie screen and stuff, and we were thinking how we could use the movie screen again. Well, we won’t do the Crimson Idol because we’ve already done that, but we thought why not do the movie screen with the old promotional videos and put it behind us? So, when I’m singing “I Wanna Be Somebody” you’re gonna see the video right behind us, nobody has ever done this before and we think it’s gonna be really cool.

Solid Rock: So, has the touring changed comparing to the older days?

Blackie Lawless: I’m in a different place now. Somebody asked me the other day “are you the rock ‘n’ roll preacher?” and I said “no, I’m a messenger”. That’s really what I’m trying to do.

Solid Rock: What about making a live album with newer material from 2000 onwards?

Blackie Lawless: We’ve been talking about that, you know it’s just finding the time to do it. Well, this tour is gonna last a long time, it’s gonna go until Christmas of next year.

Solid Rock: So, do you have any plans on filming some shows or something?

Blackie Lawless: I’m sure we will. There is none right at this minute but I’m sure sometime during next year we’ll probably do it.

Solid Rock: Do you have a last message for the Greek fans?

Blackie Lawless: Well, yes. As I was saying before, we love it every time we come down there because of its history. Greece is one of the most special places in the world and we’ve been everywhere. There is no place like Greece. And we’re gonna bring the new show down there and we’re gonna knock people out when we get there!

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