W.A.S.P. Frontman Blackie Lawless on Suing PMRC Co-Founder Tipper Gore: “I don’t usually take any notice of these Bible-bashers” – Rock History 666

Posted by On June 04, 2022 0 Comment

W.A.S.P.: 

THE £32,000 WASP STING – WASP singer Blackie Lawless is suing the wife of US senator for £32,000 damages. The band-whose sordid stage act features a hooded, topless girl strung up on a rack-are furious they have been branded an evil influence on teenagers.

Blackie, 31, claims Tipper Gore has libeled the band in her book, Bringing Up PG Children in an X-Rated Society. And he has demanded that Mrs. Gore, wife of Tennessee Senator Albert Gore, hands him a written apology on TV.

Blackie says: “I don’t usually take any notice of these Bible-bashers. They use us to get political attention.

“But this woman has printed our lyrics without permission and changed them to suit her purposes.”


In a 2010 interview with Bryan Reesman, Blackie said:

What better way for them to get attention than to go after an attention getter. Joe McCarthy and Nixon both did it with their communist witch hunts in the 1950s. Champion a cause and reap the votes, it’s a tried-and-true formula, although history shows it does not always yield the desired results. This all became abundantly clear to me when a defector from Susan Baker’s office played me a tape of a group meeting of the PMRC members, and on it was Tipper Gore (Democrat) and Susan Baker (Republican) telling the others the plan of how to elevate their profile. It was stunning!”

On the outcome of the lawsuit:

We gave her (Tipper Gore) an ultimatum, either a public apology or a lawsuit. She came out to L.A. sometime later and did a press conference and apologized to the whole record industry, so we let it go. Truth be told, she apologized because of the negative publicity the PMRC was putting on Al in his bid to become President.”