W.A.S.P.'s BLACKIE LAWLESS Says Kids Today Believe Music Has 'No Inherent Value': 'I Feel Really Sorry For Them'

During a "VIP Experience" question-and-answer session before W.A.S.P.'s December 13 concert at The Warfield in San Francisco, California, W.A.S.P. frontman Blackie Lawless spoke about how he thinks the technology will evolve in the next few years in terms of the way people consume music. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "In my business, in show business, it reinvents itself about every 20 years. We go back and we look at, let's say, vaudeville in the 1900s. Vaudeville was king — I mean, it was absolute king — because people didn't have any other means of entertainment. So fast forward a little bit, radio comes out [and it] puts a dent in vaudeville. Then silent movies come out a few years after that, [and it] puts a bigger dent in vaudeville. Talkies comes out seven years later, [and it] destroys vaudeville. If you're in vaudeville and you cannot make the transition to talkies, your career is over. Fast forward to television. Television does the same thing that talkies have done to vaudeville 20 years before that.

"So, fast forward to where we are now," he continued. "The digital revolution destroyed music as we know it. Because most people, and I would assume it's the same where you were when you grew up, but everybody in this room here pretty much experienced the same thing. If you wanted a record when you were a kid, you had to save your lunch money or go cut somebody's grass, you had to do whatever to get enough money to go to a record store and buy that record you wanted. But the problem is, once you got there, there were 10 records you wanted, but you could only afford one. Now, today, for 10 dollars, a kid can get an unlimited supply of music. It's like going to a water faucet and turning the water on. There's no end to it. There's no inherent value to the music to them anymore. For us, when we were doing it growing up, we traded our sweat equity for the artist's sweat equity. That doesn't exist now. So they're never gonna understand the joy. You get that record for the first time, you take it home and you put it on. You study every word, every photo while you're listening to it. They don't do that now. They've been robbed of that. And I feel really sorry for them. Because they're never going to get to experience what everybody in this room knows what I'm talking about right now. So that's a really, really sad thing.

"If technology is able to reinvent itself and the people who are doing it now can adapt and move into that next phase, they'll survive. Those that don't, won't. Common expression, you've gotta build a better mousetrap to survive.

"Can I give you an answer [as to where the technology will go from here]? No, I can't. Because I don't see any technology that will do the things that we're talking about that would then reintroduce that younger generation to a love of music. Because what we're talking about is there's a number of things that have to happen for them to experience what we experienced. Like I said, if we had to work, if we had to save money, if we had to do all of those things, those they don't have to do.

"When you trade money or services or whatever, when you trade something, you put a value on it," Blackie added. "When there is no value on it, it's like oxygen; it doesn't mean anything. So, unless something is developed that reinvents the business, I think you're seeing the last thing. I hope I'm wrong, but as a student of show business history, I think the answer is right in front of us, that that technology does not yet exist.

"A rock band can do right now what it took a hundred-piece orchestra to do two hundred years ago, volume-wise. We don't need two hundred guys on stage to make the volume. We can do it with three or four guys. So the big band era got wiped out when the electric guitar was invented. So, like I said, every time a technology like that happens, it totally rewrites the showbiz history as we know it. And when it comes to other industry, I don't know what to tell you. I mean, I know what I know, but I don't know a whole lot about… But that being said, my experience is that most businesses work the same — the theories and foundations of how they succeed, they're pretty much the same. So, it doesn't matter whether you're making computers or tires for cars or whatever, the theory of how you make a business work is pretty much the same in everything. But, like I said, specifically to ours, I see us in a kind of a no man's land right now, and I don't know where it's going. 'Cause I don't see a technology that will give us the joy of what we used to have. Because the Internet giveth, the Internet taketh away."

As previously reported, W.A.S.P. will perform its classic debut album in its entirety on the spring/summer 2025 European tour, dubbed "Album ONE Alive".

1984 marks the 40th anniversary of the release of W.A.S.P.'s first LP. To celebrate this milestone, W.A.S.P. will, for the first time in 40 years, play the entire album from top to bottom at headline shows across Europe. In addition, W.A.S.P. will appear at a number of European festivals, performing its greatest hits.

W.A.S.P. kicked off the North American leg of the "Album ONE Alive" tour on October 26 at Fremont Theater in San Luis Obispo, California. The 39-city run made stops across North America in Vancouver, British Columbia; Toronto, Ontario; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Dallas, Texas; New York City; Orlando, Florida; and more before wrapping up on Saturday, December 14 at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles, California.

Along with bassist Mike Duda and lead guitarist Doug Blair, whose tenures in the band are 29 and 26 years respectively, W.A.S.P. is joined by longtime drummer extraordinaire Aquiles Priester.

Because of the extensive back injuries Lawless suffered during the European leg of W.A.S.P.'s 40th-anniversary tour, the band's previously announced 2023 U.S. tour was canceled.

W.A.S.P.'s massive European leg of the 40th-anniversary world tour wrapped on May 18, 2023 in Sofia, Bulgaria at Universidada Sports Hall.

W.A.S.P. wrapped up its first U.S. tour in 10 years with a sold-out show on December 11, 2022 at The Wiltern in Los Angeles. This marked the 18th sold-out shows for the U.S. tour, which kicked off in late October 2022. W.A.S.P.'s performances included the return of the band's classic song "Animal (Fuck Like a Beast)", which hadn't been played live in over 15 years.

W.A.S.P.'s latest release was "ReIdolized (The Soundtrack To The Crimson Idol)", which came out in February 2018. It was a new version of the band's classic 1992 album "The Crimson Idol", which was re-recorded to accompany the movie of the same name to mark the 25th anniversary of the original LP's release. The re-recorded version also features four songs missing from the original album.

W.A.S.P.'s most recent studio album of all-new original material was 2015's "Golgotha".