The following is taken from an interview with W.A.S.P. frontman BLACKIE LAWLESS conducted by Newt Briggs for the alternative weekly magazine Las Vegas Mercury. The subject of discussion: the sham that was and is the P.M.R.C. , who came down on W.A.S.P. in the mid-'80's for so-called "objectionable" song lyrics. "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," Lawless said. "I don't know if that's true, but that's the story I've been told. "You wanna talk about sensationalism? 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. You don't have to be Nostradamus to see what's going on with young people these days," Lawless continued. "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."
Found via my good mates at Hard News. No doubt he will get pilloried by some of the right-on music community for suggesting that people have to take responsability for their actions. May have to include him in the next version of my Libertarian Alliance pamphlet on the link between some metal/hard rock bands and libertarianism.
Article comments
1 - TDavid
Tear 'em up, Blackie! That buzzsaw wrisband will do the trick.
2 - JR
The story most of us heard was that Prince's "Darling Nikki" inspired the PMRC.
I'm curious what Blackie Lawless thinks the PMRC's political interest really was if not "censorship", and why anybody who didn't have such an allegedly central role should give a shit 20 years later.