W.A.S.P.‘s frontman argues the mid-1980s campaign against rock lyrics was built on political ambition, and says being made a household name changed nothing about his band’s standing with fans.
Blackie Lawless has spent four decades attached to a list he never asked to be on. Asked by Rock At Night magazine what the Parents Music Resource Center did to him and to W.A.S.P., he answered that the damage was mostly theatre.
“Well, honestly, after it was all said and done, more was said than done. It really didn’t change things for us one way or the other. They wanted attention, and what better way to get attention than to go after an attention-getter? So they chose us, and they chose the bands that were in that list that they came up with,” Lawless said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
He then set out what he believes was actually behind the campaign.
He continued: “They were trying to put a man [Al Gore, U.S. senator and later vice president and then-husband of PMRC co-founder Tipper Gore] in the White House, and it didn’t work. You got a guy that had a personality that was like watching paint dry. And he wonders why he couldn’t get elected. So, they became… What’s the word I’m looking for? Victims. And I wouldn’t say of their own success — of their own diabolical plots of the things that they tried to put together. ‘Cause after it was all said and done, and the truth came out, it was all about them trying to put a man in the White House. It was not about censoring records. They could have cared less. They made us a household word, I’ll admit that. But when you make somebody a household word, somebody’s grandmother in Wyoming — I don’t mean to pick on Wyoming this evening; could be anywhere, Iowa, you name it — they don’t buy the records anyway, so what difference does it make whether they know who you are or not? So it really didn’t make any difference. Like I said, it makes you a household word, but so what? It really doesn’t change anything as far as what the relationship with the fans are.”
The PMRC was formed in May 1985 by four women with senior Washington connections, a group the press nicknamed the Washington Wives: Tipper Gore, Susan Baker, Pam Howar and Sally Nevius. The organisation pressed for lyrics to be printed on album sleeves and for a labelling system it compared to film ratings, and consistently rejected the charge that it wanted material banned. Tipper Gore said at the time that she was a strong believer in the First Amendment.
Its most durable creation was the Filthy Fifteen, a list of songs the group held up as the worst offenders, each tagged with the theme it was said to promote. Prince‘s “Darling Nikki” topped it, followed by Sheena Easton‘s “Sugar Walls“, Judas Priest‘s “Eat Me Alive“, Vanity‘s “Strap On ‘Robbie Baby’“, Mötley Crüe‘s “Bastard“, AC/DC‘s “Let Me Put My Love Into You“, Twisted Sister‘s “We’re Not Gonna Take It“, Madonna‘s “Dress You Up“, W.A.S.P.‘s “Animal (F**k Like A Beast)“, Def Leppard‘s “High ‘n’ Dry“, Mercyful Fate‘s “Into The Coven“, Black Sabbath‘s “Trashed“, the Mary Jane Girls‘ “In My House“, Venom‘s “Possessed” and Cyndi Lauper‘s “She Bop“.
The campaign reached a Senate Commerce Committee hearing in September 1985, where Dee Snider of Twisted Sister, Frank Zappa and John Denver all testified against it. That November the Recording Industry Association of America agreed to apply Parental Advisory stickers to selected releases at its own discretion.
On the electoral question, Al Gore served as vice president from 1993 to 2001 and won the popular vote in the 2000 presidential election while losing in the electoral college. Tipper Gore stepped down from the PMRC in 1992, when her husband took the vice presidency.
Lawless has not always described the episode as something that made no difference. At a VIP question-and-answer session before W.A.S.P.‘s November 2022 concert at The Paramount Theater in Huntington, New York, he gave a different account of the cost.
“It changed my life. It made me more of a recluse. Yeah, a couple of thousand death threats and bomb scares and getting shot at a couple of times usually has a tendency to alter your outlook on life a little. But also, we were exposed to extreme fame very early, and fame is kind of like this — if this table is a smorgasbord, it’s like an evil genie stands down at the end of the smorgasbord and [says], ‘You can take anything you want, but if you take one thing, you take it all. You do not get to pick and choose. So all the good stuff that you like in the smorgasbord, that’s wonderful, but you’ve gotta take the bad stuff too.’ So it ends up being a life-altering experience, one I don’t think you can ever really go back from — at least I haven’t been able to,” he said at the time.
Speaking to the Las Vegas Mercury in 2004, Lawless offered an origin story for the campaign that he flagged as second-hand.
“As the story goes, [PMRC founding member] Tipper [Gore] was walking down the hall in her house and her 12-year-old son had [W.A.S.P.‘s] ‘F**k Like A Beast‘ playing on his stereo, and she lost her mind. I don’t know if that’s true, but that’s the story I’ve been told.”
Gore‘s own published account differs. In her book “Raising PG Kids In An X-Rated Society“, she wrote that she bought the Purple Rain soundtrack for her 11-year-old daughter Karenna and was stopped by the lyrics of Prince‘s “Darling Nikki“, which she said embarrassed them both and then made her angry. That track, not the W.A.S.P. song, is generally cited as the trigger for the campaign.
In the same 2004 interview, Lawless made his argument about motive in blunter terms.
“You wanna talk about sensationalism?” Lawless continued. “This was an organization that was seeking a platform that would help serve its own political interests. They didn’t give a damn about censorship. I’ve spent the better part of my career trying to get people to understand that. This really is not what you think it is. They come to you like the wolf in sheep’s clothing and then use you to create a frenzy — not unlike what McCarthy did with the communists and Bob Dole did with rap. This is nothing new.”
He extended the point to parenting.
“You don’t have to be Nostradamus to see what’s going on with young people these days,” Lawless added. “Parents just don’t get involved with their kids as much as they used to. Are you going to tell me that these parents at Columbine didn’t know that anything was going on with their kids? Hey, my mother knew what I was doing 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But parents now, they don’t want to take any responsibility for their children. They bring something into this world, and then when something goes wrong, they want to blame everybody else for it.”
W.A.S.P. open the “1984 To Headless” North American run on September 10 at The Magnolia in El Cajon, California, playing The Wiltern in Los Angeles the following night and finishing October 31 in Anaheim.
The set draws on the band’s first four albums, the 1984 self-titled debut, The Last Command in 1985, Inside The Electric Circus in 1986 and The Headless Children in 1989. Lawless has said the staging will be built to make those album covers appear onstage.
KK’s Priest are very special guests throughout. K.K. Downing put the scale of it at more than 40 shows: “Great news! KK’s Priest is going to be returning to the US and Canada this September and October 2026. With over 40 shows, this is going to be an epic metal and steel tour featuring lots of Priest classics.”
VIP packages include a meeting with Lawless, a photograph, autographs, a Q&A session and access to the band’s travelling museum, which has new pieces added since the last American run. They are sold through waspnation.myshopify.com.
The tour reaches Europe and other territories in 2027.
