Matt Wardlaw of Ultimate Classic Rock reports:
W.A.S.P. frontman 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.
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…”
As for which area covered in the book was a particular “challenge” for him to write about, Lawless said, “Childhood. Because that too is where you start going down these rabbit holes and things that you think… It reminds me of the old Peter Gabriel song, ‘Digging in the dirt to find the places where we got hurt.’ My dad was in the construction business, and we traveled a lot when I was a kid. I ended up going to 13 different schools by the time I graduated. So I was constantly the new kid. And it’s hard to make friends. And the friends you do make, as soon as you make them, you’re gone again. And that ended up having quite a bit more of an impact on me growing up than even I gave it credit for. And as men, or as boys, we were constantly being tested by the older kids and stuff like that. So there was a lot of brutality that went on with it. But I would say in a word, childhood.”
Ambitious as ever, the singer and guitarist hopes to complete the book here in 2026.
Read more at Ambitious as ever, the singer and guitarist hopes to complete the book here in 2026.