I fired off a dozen questions, but Blackie doesn’t do Email interviews (he believes they’re impersonal), so we woke Rob from Paragon Music Magazine up from his nap to do a phoner with the man who wrote such unforgettable classics as Kill Fuck Die and Fuck Like A Beast… Blackie Lawless.

Stevec: The Neon God is a concept album about faith, God, and the search for meaning in your life. Is there that much of a demand for hard rock concept albums, or was this more of a catharsis for you?

Blackie Lawless: Well, when I think of cathartic, I think of completion, and I don’t see this as completion of even this idea because quite honestly, when you look at the liner notes, it tells you that this record’s not gonna help you find the things that I was talking about. It’s saying, at best, it’s gonna further the thought process because this is very complicated issue. Going on the idea that it’s necessary for a concept record, I mean, I’m not really approaching it from that point of view whether that is or it isn’t, it’s the thought that you initially said, you know about the journey in life, that search that we all have, that trip we all take. Everything you just said, I view, kinda honestly as window dressing.

Stevec: Writing a DOUBLE concept album about faith, and one's place in the universe is a pretty ambitious process...not to mention one with religious or faith-based undertones. Considering how popular a movie like The Passion of the Christ has become, do you think the success of The Neon God will be helped or hindered by the religious kick this country is on?

Blackie Lawless: Couldn’t tell ya. I really couldn’t say. I’m not with this trying to hammer anything on faith, I’m just trying to get them to think about their lives and where they’re going. Faith is a part of that, for me. But if faith is a part of it for them, then so be it. If it’s not, then it’s not applicable to them because you know what, everyone right now, who they are right now, is not who they are gonna be 5 years from now, 10 years from now, and so on, and you try to write a story that’s viewed on multiple levels that’s going to create scenarios that are going to have different meanings to people at different phases of their lives. Again, I’m not trying to preach. I don’t think I ever have, I’m just trying to present issues to provoke thought.

Stevec: While a lot of artists have embraced the convenience and ease of digital recording, you still record analog, which can almost DOUBLE the price of making a record. Is it really worth the price increase, especially considering how hard it is to recoup at a time when downloading full albums is more prevalent than ever?

Blackie Lawless: It is for me. You want to make an expensive sounding record, there’s only one way to do it. But you know what, at the end of the day, some of things that I’ve found when people talk about convenience and stuff, I really don’t see it. I’ve worked in both worlds. I just did a thing for somebody for the history channel and that was all digital. I watched somebody who was very, very good engineering it, and with everything they’re going through, I don’t see it as any faster or more convenient than what we’re doing but the thing that I do notice is that lack of true depth, that authentic three dimension that you get out of tape that you still can’t get out of digital, I don’t care what anybody tries to tell ya. You’re just not gonna get it. Digital is fatiguing to listen to after a while because everything is right in your face. When it’s done in analog, you get that true three-dimensional sound to it that’s much more soothing and pleasant to listen to. So to me, regardless of the marketing campaign that’s being waged against the music industry, they’re selling them a bill of goods that, ‘if you don’t do this you’re gonna get behind on the learning curve, and you’re gonna be obsolete. They’ve done a remarkable marketing job selling this to the music industry.

Paragon Rob: With what’s been going on recently with downloading, it must be hard to recoup the extra money spent…

Blackie Lawless: Oh yea, it is, but that’s not why I do it. I look at those things as little time capsules, you know, they’re like little golden nuggets, especially if it’s something you believe in greatly, you know, I gotta do it for me, because I believe a record like this will be around for while.

Paragon Rob: Tell me honestly, how many full albums have you downloaded?

Blackie Lawless: Never, not once.

Stevec: How do you feel about the troubles the record labels are having now (consolidation, laying off hundreds, if not thousands of their employees... bands getting dropped like crazy)?

Blackie Lawless: Well that’s all by-products of their own makings.

Stevec: Do you think the labels got what they deserved, or do you sympathize?

Blackie Lawless: No, not at all. You go back and look historically at what’s happened in the music industry for years and years and years, think about the evolution and the constant turnover that you see. Smaller labels have always acted as if they were the farm systems for major-league music, if you like. And they do well, you know, a smaller independent does, major comes along, gobbles them up, or takes a lot of their artists. So think about what we would have not heard had it not been for a little label that Frank Sinatra had in mid-60’s called Reprise, which after he had had his initial run with Capitol, he leaves, starts Reprise, which ends up being a subsidiary of Warner Bros. They sign a guy called Jimmy Hendrix, who could have never been put on a major label at that point. So you understand where I’m going with this, that if it’s not for those things, for those small ones, the majors really wouldn’t have existed, or have existed the way they did. You gotta remember that even Capitol, my old label, was forced to take The Beatles. They didn’t want them. It seems like they’re successful sometimes in spite of themselves, but it’s a very cyclical thing, where it goes around, there will become a lot of independents. Sanctuary is right in the middle of doing this right now. We looked at what was happening in the marketplace, and, pardon my arrogance, but we felt that we could do better. Sanctuary is now the fastest-growing record company in the world because you’ve got music people there, you don’t have just people running around just counting beans all over the place.

Stevec: Darrell Roberts was your partner in crime for the recording and mixing of The Neon God... how much easier/different is it working with Darrell than it is working with Chris Holmes?

Blackie Lawless: Huge, because he’s probably had more input working on this record than any other musician I’ve ever worked with in making a record. He’s been that helpful. He ran the machines for every line, for every word that I sang on this record. He wasn’t just sitting there in the room, he was running the tape machine punching in and out for me, as I do for him when he’s doing leads or any over-dubs or anything like that. So it’s quite a collaborative effort.

Stevec:  What kind of crowds does W.A.S.P. play in front of in 2004? Obviously, you’re not filling huge venues anymore, but is it a struggle to get a thousand kids to show up every night... or are the crowds still ravenous and loyal, or is the percentage of drunken indifferent hillbillies increasing every night?

Blackie Lawless: Man, I tell ya, we’ve been incredibly blessed for a long, long time to have an audience that we have. It’s pretty hard to put into words. You gotta understand that no, we’re not gonna play 10,000 seaters, well at least not here in America. We’re headlining the Rockwave Festival in Greece, you’re talking about 75,000 people. So it also depends on what part of the world you’re in too. That’s all parcel to radio, video, and all that sort of stuff. But you know what, I don’t in all honestly particularly look at it as numbers, I’m looking at it from the loyalty of that fan base and we’ve been incredibly blessed for a long, long time.

Stevec: As a guy who frequently lights things on fire on stage, how did the events in Rhode Island at the Station Nightclub on February 20th, 2003 affect the decision making process when it comes to your stage show?

Blackie Lawless: Quite honestly, it didn’t because you gotta remember that with The Neon God, as it was with The Crimson Idol, when we did that tour, we had made a conscious decision that we would do very little theatrics and no pyro at that time because I was frustrated with the whole idea of what we had become as a band and the whole idea that the audience, many times, were listening with their eyes and not their ears. So when the decision was made a couple years back to really start working on this record, I said that’s it, I just became belligerent again and said that’s it, people are gonna listen with their ears and not their eyes. To do that, you strip that show down. There’ll still be theatrics in what we’re doing that will go along with some of the songs, but the vast majority of it we had determined would be that way, so quite honestly, it won’t affect what we’re doing, as tragic as that thing was.

Paragon Rob: You have a codpiece that used to shoot out about 20 feet of flames from your crotch, have there ever been any near disasters with that?

Blackie Lawless: No, never had that experience.

Paragon Rob: That would’ve been a pretty interesting story, don’t you think?

Blackie Lawless: Yeah, especially for a lawyer. Set me on fire, big boy...

Stevec: I've heard that you're not too crazy about either presidential candidate running in 2004.

Blackie Lawless: Is anybody?

Stevec:If you must choose for one of these gentlemen to lead this country for the next four years, who will you vote for, and why?

Blackie Lawless: Oh, I hate you. Oh, boy… that’s unfair.

Paragon Rob: Just to let you know, I didn’t write that question.

Blackie Lawless: If I had a crystal ball, I could see that John Kerry was gonna take John McCain, and in that crystal ball I could see that, not by death or anyting like that, but something happened where Kerry could not continue like after the first day of office ::laughs:: then I’d vote for him. How do you like that answer?

Paragon Rob: That’s good, that’s perfect.

Stevec: Let's say, hypothetically... Now that you've created this masterpiece, you go out on tour to promote The Neon God... you tour your ass off, sing and play your ass off... and it sells fifteen thousand copies worldwide. Will that dissuade you from doing another concept record?

Blackie Lawless: No. The only thing that would dissuade me from doing that would be the amount of work that’s in it. You gotta remember that this thing was 10 years in the making. I mean, even the first real song that you hear on the record, "Wishing Well,” was written 8 years ago and it was recorded almost 5 years ago. So this thing was being put together in bits and pieces quite a bit along the way and it’s a lot of work. So when you tell people that, they think, oh wow sounds like a long time, they don’t realize how much work goes into something like this. I approached it from the point of view of a movie, you know I story boarded the whole thing and then worked backwards to create the music. The Crimson Idol, as near and dear as that record is to me, is a short story. This is not that, this is a lot more involved. I would say quite honestly that at point, I mean, if you asked me this question a year from now I might give you a different answer, but at this point I don’t know if I would ever do another one. They take a huge piece of your soul.

Stevec: In one of the most telling segments of Decline of Western Civilization Part 2: The Metal Years... your former band mate Chris Holmes was filmed drinking copious amounts of vodka in a pool chair... in a pool. Even though most bands were living excessively back then, at what point (if not THAT point...in the pool) did you look at your cohort and say, Hey man... I think you might have a problem?

Blackie Lawless: That was a flea on a dog compared to some of the things I saw. You would have had to have been there, that movie was nothing.

Paragon Rob: Anything that you saw that stuck out that you wanna share?

Blackie Lawless: I don’t like doing stuff like that. If the other individual wants to talk about that sorta stuff, they can, but I always viewed that stuff as sorta talking out of turn. Swell-looking pig head you got there, Blackie...

Paragon Rob: Now, a quick question about music videos, is there, or will there be, a video for any of the songs off the new album?

Blackie Lawless: Don’t know yet because there’s some things cooking, from what I understand, at VH1 as far as new shows that they’re working on and that’s gonna have a tremendous impact not just on us, but other bands as well, as to what they will and won’t do. Because the problem is not that the bands don’t want to spend the money to do it anymore, it’s that there aren’t the outlets out there to make it worthwhile. So if some of the things we’ve heard about are gonna happen, it’s gonna change things greatly.

Paragon Rob: Do you think the return that you got on a video, the exposure, is worth the extreme amount of money put into it nowadays?

Blackie Lawless: If you can get decent rotation on it. If you can’t, then you’re better off putting the money somewhere else.

Paragon Rob: Back in the 80’s before downloading was such a problem, a video would be a huge help.

Blackie Lawless: Absolutely.

Paragon Rob: Now they can download the video too if they wanted to.

Blackie Lawless: Yea, it’s a marketing tool, and it should be thought of as such.

Paragon Rob: In the video for "Blind in Texas” you cut out the part of the song where you argue with the bartender, right?

Blackie Lawless: It shouldn’t have been, I mean, all the versions I ever saw had that in it. As a matter of fact, that guy’s my best friend.

Paragon Rob: I had seen the video actually not too long ago and saw that that scene wasn’t in there anymore and was wondering if it was supposed to be in there or if it was an edited version.

Blackie Lawless: Really? If that is, I’ve never seen that.

Paragon Rob: Did the story of that particular song ever actually happen to you?

Blackie Lawless: Oh man, are you kidding? We spent 3 days in Houston, Texas, there was a guy there that had a record shop called Texas Records and Tapes and the thing was the size of a Wal-Mart, I’m not kidding you, it was unbelievable. Biggest record store I ever saw and he had this huge ranch outside the area, outside of Houston, and we went there for a couple days after it was all said and done, and it was all paganism and debauchery it was unbelievable. I was never so glad to get out of place in my life, it was killing me. Well, it left a big enough impression that a couple weeks later, during the middle of a blinding snowstorm in Minnesota I wrote that song, so what’s that tell ya?

Paragon Rob: You ever have to ride a horse back home to LA?

Blackie Lawless: No, but I’ll tell ya what, I got in the horse business not long after that. I got into dealing and breeding Arabians and stuff like that.

Paragon Rob: Did you ever make any sales while completely drunk off your ass?

Blackie Lawless: Probably.

Stevec: A big issue with the media right now is censorship. How does the man who wrote "Fuck Like A Beast" and "Kill Fuck Die" feel about the government's pursuit to censor radio shows and entertainment outlets for promoting indecency?

Blackie Lawless: Well you gotta remember that the Constitution is a very, very fragile document. The Constitution is the encapsulation of the spirit, and when that starts getting rocked, it can be extremely fragile, vulnerable, and it was Thomas Jefferson, one of the guys that was the father of that thing, said that a patriot must be willing to take up arms against this government at any moment, you know, so that tells me right there that, if it’s true that the guys that offered those things were political geniuses, they were also smart enough to know that anything could eventually be corrupted. So it’s a pretty broad question you’re asking but at the end of the day I would say, at least from what I’ve seen this time around, that it seems to be a little different, and I could be wrong about this, but it seems to be a little different this time than it was 20 years ago. I think what I’m seeing now is not just political, but probably equally social, where there wasn’t that before. And I think that politics being what it is, or politicians being what they are, they are opportunistic, as we all know, and will seize public sentiment, and would decapitalize on that. So what I’m getting at is the whole Janet Jackson thing. She does that and it’s like, ‘alright, everybody outta the pool.’ It’s like it’s all over for a while. But it’s not just from politicians I’m hearing it this time. You even alluded to it yourself in I think the first couple of questions you asked about the overtones of the country at this point. So I think that there’s probably a little more going on right now than just you’re typical 'politician 101' sorta situation.

No Mr. Lawless, you can't be President... Oh, alright...what the hey!

Paragon Rob: I’m sure you know George Carlin. He’s been quoted more than once, even in the past, that when something like this happens, this instant surge of censorship comes about, he doesn’t worry about it, even though every one else gets scared of their rights taken away. But he says to just sit back and watch and laugh because that’s what happens and then it goes away again.

Blackie Lawless: Well, he’s right, to a degree. Well, no, I’d say he’s been absolutely right the entire time. The only thing that bothers me about, maybe, taking that point of view, is the whole idea about Thomas Jefferson about a patriot being willing to take up arms. I think it’s OK to take it with a grain of salt, I agree absolutely, I mean, if you go back and you look at the whole PMRC thing, that was not really a gigantic government trying to come down on its people, it was one man, or an organization shall I say, seeking profile to create a political platform, and it was making big news, and the reason they came after us was because we were making big news. So what better way to get attention than go after an attention-getter? Makes sense, right? So I mean, they weren’t doing anything that wasn’t tried and true, whether it was McCarthyism in the 50’s or Nixon’s communist witch hunts, or even Walter Winchell in Hollywood before that. These things, as he’s saying, yes they do rear their ugly heads from time to time, but I also think at the same time, although we may be taking it with a grain of salt, I like to keep an eye on it at the same time.

Paragon Rob: Anything for our readers?

Blackie Lawless: I’m pretty punchy right now, :laughs:: probably moreso than I’ve been in my entire career, I’m serious when I say that. This record has been a long time in the making, but it does look like we may be doing the biggest world tour that we’ve ever done so it’s gonna be good to get out there and see some faces we ain’t seen in a long time, and see some places we ain’t seen in a long time, and I know that may not be the big bang that you’re looking for to wrap this up, ::laughs:: but like I said, when you go around bumping into walls like we’ve been doing for the last couple years, it’s kinda understandable how an artist can get like that.

Geez, this guy sure can talk, can't he? Thanks to Blackie for taking the time to answer our goofy...and not-so-goofy questions. Also, thanks to Rob from Paragon Music Magazine for doing the phoner for us...and of course, thanks to Lisa from Paragon for transcribing the sucker.

If you haven't checked out The Neon God yet, do yourself a favor and pick it up. It's definitely one of the better W.A.S.P. releases.

The band is currently on tour in Europe, but they'll hit the States in July. CLICK HERE FOR TOUR DATES.

As long as we're linking shit up, here's another link to the band's official website, WASPNATION.com