W.A.S.P. mastermind Blackie Lawless has been working on his memoir for over five years now. He’s finally ready to share some more information about the project, which he hopes will be finished later this year.
Tales From the Square Mile is what he’s calling the upcoming book. “What it’s about is that square mile that I was living in in Hollywood at the time, and the influences that the town itself would have on not just me, but the music industry,” he explains in a new conversation with UCR that you can listen to below. “Overall, we are all tied to it, whether we know it or not. You know, because of the way the movie studio systems were set up in the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s, [it] had a direct influence on what the record companies would be later.”
What Fans Can Expect From the Book
Lawless says the research process has been exhausting. “It’s really consumed most of my time and it’s been way more work than I ever thought it was going to be,” he shares. “It’s easily as much work as making a record, but probably more because I’ve been working on this now for five years. Since we came home last November, I have really, really buckled down and started working on this.”
“I’m probably halfway done now, but the amount of research that it took to get a lot of these stories correct is really time-consuming,” he adds. “I find that there will be times where it’ll take me six or seven hours to write two paragraphs because of the amount of research that’s going on. Because when I first started this, like probably everybody else, I would have thought it would have been my singular story. That seemed reasonable at the time, but the more I got into it, the more I realized it was not just my story.”
Listen to Blackie Lawless on the ‘UCR Podcast’
‘It’s Not Going to Be Your Typical Rock and Roll Book’
Those are words that shouldn’t surprise any W.A.S.P. fan, when Lawless shares that his memoir is not going to be your usual rock read. He’s happy that he’s gone so deep into the research process, when he sees what has come out as a result of his hard work. “Uncovering a lot of what I’ve been doing has just taken an enormous amount of time,” he admits.
“But the little nuggets that I’ve discovered that I think people will find interesting, for me, were fascinating when when I would uncover them,” he says. “There’s a lot of goofy coincidences that have happened in the things that have been uncovered. I think it’s going to be an interesting read when people see it.”
Watch W.A.S.P.’s ‘Blind in Texas’ Video
When Will Fans Get to Read Blackie’s Memoir?
That part is unclear. Lawless has a few festival dates for W.A.S.P. in June and July. In September, he’ll start an expansive run of shows here in the U.S. under the banner of 1984 to Headless. KK’s Priest will open the outing, which is set to highlight the hard rock group’s first four albums from 1984’s W.A.S.P. through 1989’s The Headless Children.
It’s a time period which found the band unleashing a string of future fan favorites including “Animal (F–k Like a Beast),” “I Wanna Be Somebody,” “Blind in Texas,” “Wild Child” and many others.
“Playing those songs from those first four albums in a combined package like this is something we’ve never attempted before,” Lawless said at the time the trek was announced. “In addition to the songs, the entire stage show will look like the album covers from those records [and] will come alive … right before your eyes!”
READ MORE: W.A.S.P. Announces ‘1984 to Headless’ Tour With KK’s Priest
Ambitious as ever, the singer and guitarist hopes to complete the book here in 2026. “I’ve got my fingers crossed with this, I’m hoping it’s done before the year’s out,” he confirms. “We’ve got a lot of stuff.”
“Again, the first five years of me doing this book was doing a lot of research. Now I’m at a point where I feel like I can start to sprint with it,” he says. “A lot of the things that I did that took all the time to uncover the research, that’s been done now. So now I can just, you know, get into the daily process of writing, and it’s starting to go pretty quick now.”
Top 11 Hair Metal Debut Albums
Many of the scene’s biggest bands caught lightning in a bottle on their first try.
Gallery Credit: Bryan Rolli
