 Welcome to the metal voice today on this show for the first time The one the only blackie lawless from wasp. Yeah, lucky a pleasure to have you Hi guys, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it We want to know right off the top. How are you doing these days and how are you feeling? Getting there, you know, it's it's it's been a long long road. It's You know when you start dealing with compound injuries, which I mean, I've had over the years doing what we do It's it's fairly common. I mean, I've had the same orthopedic guy for over 30 years and you know And I'm not joking at the end of every tour. I Crawl up on his table and say fix me You know because any band that that does a lot on stage it you know runs around is it's pretty active You know any band any athlete a dancer, you're all gonna have injuries, you know, and it happens and this is just You know part of it, but it's the first time I've had a compound situation like this and it's It's been an eye-opening experience and it's it really It's been a struggle, you know, there's no two ways about it But I've got probably the best people in the country working on me and I don't say that lightly I mean these guys they're fantastic and we're getting where we need to go So all things considered we're doing good. What kind of road to recovery do you have like? What do you foresee you're back back in business? Let's say in 12 months from now six months from now No, it's the I've had two surgeries and the first one was in mid-August and then the second one was two weeks later and And so then you know, you have a Preliminary healing period you have to go through Which you know is about four weeks and then you go into physical therapy and then that's when the real fun begins Because it's I don't know of any other way to put it But you know anybody it's ever been through serious rehab before it's It's challenging because I've you know, I've been a gym rat my whole life You know, I've constantly lived in a gym But there's a difference between doing this and doing what you do in a gym because when you're in a gym You're usually concentrating on repetitions This is not that this is a combination of yoga pilates and what you would normally do in a gym and the movements are considerably slower and it's designed to target specific muscles and You've heard the expression, you know, you're using muscles. You didn't even know you have That is really what this is and especially, you know You know for someone who's been in a gym so much in their life to start using them in ways You've never used before it's It's an eye-opening experience to say the least and it's it's frustrating in a lot of ways because you're trying to to do things that Had at one time, you know You didn't even think about it and then you got to try to do it now And it's like there's there's certain things that just won't work and the trick is They keep one of the things they emphasize to me when we first started was this concept of turning the muscles on Because what happens when you've had injuries? The muscles literally want to go to sleep and so the trick is to to turn them on without them feeling like they're being assaulted and Like I said the guys I'm working with They're the best in the country as a matter of fact It was interesting because I was watching Monday night football about six weeks ago when Aaron Rogers tore his Achilles 48 hours later, they had him in the same hospital down at Marina Del Rey where I was at same doctors Working on him and I saw about 10-12 days ago. He's on TV. He's thrown a football already off his back foot So the science of sports medicine is so much more advanced than regular medicine And and it has to be because you know you got players, you know our performers that The whole object is because of the amount of income they generate whatever you got to get these guys back out on the field and so The the science of what sports medicine is is I mean pardon the pun but it is a literally cutting edge and There's Anybody that's had injuries or anything like that. I highly recommend going that route as opposed to to go through traditional medicine And you just walk us through because you know we had our tickets for the 40th Anniversary we're following you in Europe and it seemed like you tried everything humanly possible just to keep the shows going But the first thing that happened is I got it I was doing our seeing chai practice and they were could literally they were coming to the shows this To give you the full scope of it ten years ago. I broke my right femur and I broke it really bad It was I got knocked out of the back of a truck and fell into a pile of bricks And I was like falling into Jagged knives and the femur snapped on the right side about two inches below the hip and It's split lengthwise all the way down to the knee. I mean it was a nasty nasty break I've got an 18 inch titanium rod in there right now. It's gonna be with me for the duration But the problem that came after that took about a year for that to heal I War a quarter of an inch lift in my left or excuse me in my right shoe for nine years after that Well, we went and did a CT scan last summer and the two legs were less than a millimeter Difference from each other. So it was determined. I didn't need that lift anymore. So on a doctor's advice I took that lift out which was a major mistake because what had happened in those nine years The body will compensate for anything foreign that you you try to to use it to make adjustments with and in this case My pelvis rotated forward, you know from wearing that lift and Then when I took the lift out The body doesn't know what to do and it's trying to readjust and so what it did is as my back kept going out And I'm seeing chai practice for it We get to Madrid in Spain and I get a chai practice that comes in and this kid was I mean, he was unbelievably strong. I thought honestly I thought a gorilla had all of me and he didn't speak any English and I'm trying to get this kid to stop And I'm literally I had to start fighting him, you know to get him to lay off He ruptured one of the discs in my back and so now And I'd never had a rupture disc before and I didn't know what nerve pain was about I'd heard about it But until you've gone through it, you can't imagine what it's like and the pain goes from your lower back all the way down your leg into your ankle and Imagine I mean the best way I could describe it would be Imagine the worst toothache you've ever had But it goes all the way from your lower back down your leg into your ankle and you can't get it to stop and it's It's just it's excruciating beyond belief. So we found Another sports medicine place in Berlin and they started treating me and they started giving me epidurals Over the course of the tour. I had eight epidurals to get me through that tour but they recommended that I stopped the tour and I really didn't want to do that. I mean you have people that the buy tickets I mean not just similar to what you guys are saying people wait a long time a lot of them make travel plans You know, they fly they do all kinds of things You want to do your best to not disrupt that if you don't have to not to mention, you know, it's 40th anniversary tour I'm only gonna get one time to do this in my life and Then we had all had you know in the COVID situation, you know, we all had three years where nothing happened You know, so and quite honestly, I got about 30 families that are dependent on me You know between the band and the road crew and you know office workers and things like that So how do you go to people and say, you know what my back hurts? A lot of pressure That's that's uh, you can't really do that So they advised me in Berlin to stop the tour and I said well, how bad can it be? I said you do your thing and I'll do my thing and you know I'll kind of cool it on the movement and you just keep me going and they said no You don't understand this is gonna get worse if you don't stop And I thought well, you know, that's they're just being you know overly cautious. Well, what happened? I ended up rupturing a second disc and I ended up breaking my back And so we we got through the tour except for the last five shows and I literally had to sit in a chair the last five shows to get through because it couldn't stand up anymore we get home from the tour and And immediately, you know, I go in you know with the orthopedic guys and they told me I said you got to do this and you got to do this now because if you don't you're gonna be in a wheelchair in a month and so within the span of two weeks I had had two major surgeries and You know that brings us pretty much to the point where we are now So getting it all straightened out is is a good thing, you know that like I said the doctors That have worked on me the best in the country So I'm really really thankful for that, but you know, I've been through physical therapy before and It's it's a tough road, you know, because like I said, it's gonna hurt There's no two ways about it But you have to do it to get back to where you need to go to get your body right Part of the problem that we had was when I took that lift out I really needed to go back to physical therapy then but no one told me that You know, so I let the body, you know It was literally shocked into adjustment at that point and that's what the body does and it rebelled You know because it's trying to protect itself So that leads us to where we are right now and you know, ironically, you know, none of this is age-related You know, we did bone density studies on me all kinds of stuff everything is where it should be you know, this was just a series of Unfortunate events that just felt like dominoes, you know, blacky people have committed suicide over back pains You know, it's funny you say that because they warned me about that in Berlin. Yeah, because I mean hold on to your hat But to get through that tour and I'm not bellyache in here I'm just I'm gonna give you know, this is the facts any anybody that might you know hear this interview It could be of help to them because one of the things they warned me They said people commit suicide over this. It's so bad and until you've been through it, which I never had been you can't understand the excruciating is That's one word to describe it, but it's worse than that. It's just it's something you can't escape And it's like I've broken all kinds of bones and had all kinds of injuries Nothing compares to this over the course of that tour. I took 340 opium tablets. Oh get me through it And there were times I was taking five a night and what happens is I do shows and I get the back You know that nerve would get all Irritated again and there would be times I couldn't sleep until noon the next day and That was that was a fairly common occurrence and it's just like there's no position you can get in that stops it and You're laying there and it's like the pains off the charts and you're listening or in your head You're hearing what those doctors are saying about people committing suicide over this and you start to understand because What got me through it was I knew that eventually I would get better But if it was a situation where someone had no hope and that that's what it was going to be I don't think you could live your life like that It just it wouldn't be worth it and I'm somebody that's a great lover of life But when you're dealing with something like that that's inescapable I can I could certainly understand how somebody would would look at the alternative I'm just trying to think of that that flight back from Europe I mean, that's that's a long flight to get to you get get you back home that was murder Well, like I said You know I was I had help. Let's put it that way You know to get me through all that stuff and it's a but you know what sucks about it I I'm not a recreational drug taker. I never have been you know, I'm the kind of person I like my wits about me, you know, and I like to think clearly and you know Just to constantly have to stay doped up because that's what it comes down to You know just to be able to get through it, you know, they told me when I came out of the first surgery They said all the pain is going to be gone and I found that really hard to believe because I've been about three months in that process three months as an eternity when you're going through that and I woke up in recovery and they were right the pain was gone and it was just like wow What a concept to be normal again You know and then the bad news was they came in you know in the recovery and said well You know this surgery went fine, and we're very happy But you're gonna have to have another one, you know, and it's like that's not really what you want to hear While you're in recovery because you think and okay, we're over this hurdle, you know Now we're into recovery and you know in the in the physical therapy and you know, it's downhill from here but you know, but like I said two weeks later they had to go back in and And you know but here we are now. So like I said all things considered I've been pretty blessed. Do you do you see yourself on stage in 12 months from now? Unless you know because I mean the the pace they've got me on right now Well, let's put it this way, I mean They've got me where my left knee and To do this you got to stretch your back considerably my left knee is about 10 inches away from being able to touch my left shoulder They told me that when they're finished with me my left knee will touch my right shoulder And I just laughed and I said well, I couldn't do that before Right, you know, well you've got a contort to get into a position like that and But you know one of the things they said that they were constantly amazed by watching what I was doing in there because They said your flexibility is really good Because as people get older they lose flexibility plus when you're tall because I'm six four You know, you just don't have the flexibility most people have and I attribute that to what we do on stage Because it keeps you limber, you know over this in the period of time Plus, you know when you go into rehab It makes it easier because the muscle memory is there from all the years of doing it and all that so I mean They tell me they're thrilled I mean I get frustrated because I want to run literally, you know before I'm able to do it And there's things I want to do that. I asked them, you know, can we accelerate this and they just shake their head No, you're not ready for that yet And it's like, you know, so I'm chomping at the bit to go and it's like no They're telling me no you got to stay with the program here and you'll get you'll get where you want to go Just trust us. All right on that note. Let's get a little more positive here And that is positive a little more positive That is positive, but let's get positive plus Wasp announces the seven savage deluxe box set eight LPs from 1984 to 1992 from their capital years They're a limited edition right two-entered copies worldwide There were they were released on Friday the 27th of October I let's talk about this. I know there's a lot of positive. You're recovering, but here's even better news. How's that? tell us about this box set why now and What what are people in for in regards to the sound quality? Of this new box set versus what was released in the past Well, to my understanding, it's two thousand copies. It's not two hundred. Oh Okay, sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah, that was my bad my bad. Yeah But you know, they've gone in, you know, obviously they've remastered everything which Can enhance the process. I've heard it before where it's actually hurt Recordings before but if you take your time you do it correctly what it does is it it freshens up the recording and You end up hearing things that maybe you didn't hear, you know on the first pressing plus technologies change now where You know, you can actually if the mixes are correct to begin with You can hear space on them that you just didn't hear before and I know that I'm getting into kind of a technical world here, but For the average person out there what it means is it sounds better and it sounds richer, you know, so, you know That's that's the whole bonus of doing that So this is this is concentrating on your the very first albums and I was just wondering like overall You know, what what were you thinking of? When Chris was in the band, I mean his guitar style and how much does that contribute to the overall wasp sound? Because we've got comments of him touring that I never realized he was so loved and admired as a guitar players There's a lot of the feedback we got a recent year. So Well, when the band started we had three guitar players because I'm a guitar player by trade, right, you know, so when Putting the band together. I did it based on chemistry You know of who I thought Could work and play off of each other because that's what you need to be able to do You need to have guys that can compliment each other having three guitar players You know that can either be a blessing or a curse So I had the the flexibility within the band of having multiple guitar styles So like I said, I think that that really it's worth noting You know who did what on those kind of things because that's what gave us the the flexibility and the versatility You