As of a few days ago, W.A.S.P. just wrapped up their 40th-anniversary tour. During that tour, the band was holding meet and greets for their fans, and apparently, this was the first time the band had ever done such a thing.
It was during a “VIP Experience” Q&A that took place before the band’s last show of the tour where vocalist Blackie Lawless was asked about his feelings regarding W.A.S.P. holding meet and greets.
Funny enough, since the band had never done meet and greets before, Lawless says they had to look around at what other bands were offering (via their websites) and try to figure out the experience for themselves. However, when it comes to meet and greets, there is one subject that Lawless stands firm on – and that’s not charging fans to sign autographs. This is everything Lawless had to say about this specific matter (as transcribed by Blabbermouth):
“Quite honestly, the idea of charging people money to sign autographs, I detest that. Now, I’m not gonna tell you that it’s wrong for everybody to do. If that’s what somebody wants to do, and they’re happy with it, that’s their business. I just don’t like the idea of it personally. For me to wanna do this, I had to have something else that motivated me. So we came up with the idea of doing this. When we sat down here, the first thing I said to you guys was, ‘This is the fun part’ — for me at least… Because we didn’t know what anybody else was doing. We thought, ‘Okay, let’s try to humanize this as much as we can.’
“One of the things we have heard over and over and over, which was news to us, ‘This is the best meet-and-greet we’ve ever done,’ ’cause no one has ever taken the time to do this. But we didn’t know that. So we were doing what we thought you should do. So the ignorance on our part ended up being a really good thing, I guess, because we didn’t have any preconceived notions of what they should be.
“Look, [when] a bunch of people [are] coming up to you on the street, you can’t address them, and that’s frustrating. But this is organized, and we can have some dialogue back and forth, which, for me, is what it’s all about. So to not be able to have that dialogue is frustrating to me.”
What do you make of Blackie Lawless’ points? You can check out the full Q&A with Lawless below.
W.A.S.P. Singer Talks Real-Life Incident Involving The Late Cliff Burton That Reflects A Scene From The Spinal Tap Movie
