W.A.S.P. frontman Blackie Lawless reveals that he contracted Covid back in January 2020

W.A.S.P. frontman Blackie Lawless reveals that he contracted Covid back in January 2020

W.A.S.P.‘s founder and long-time frontman Blackie Lawless was recently interviewed by Eddie Trunk to promote the group’s 40th Anniversary World Tour.

Lawless was asked whether the last two years, which have been filled with restrictions caused by the Covid pandemic, have been a good time for him to work on new material, to which he replied (as transcribed by Sleaze Roxx):

“It is but at the same time i was of the first people that contracted this stuff and it was kind of a bizarre thing because James Hetfield was having a showing at the Peterson Museum here in L.A. for his cars. And I hadn’t been anywhere in quite some time so I thought, ‘OK, I am a car guy’ so we went down and seen the cars. What we weren’t anticipating when we got there is that — we found out later it was the single largest event in the history of the Peterson Museum. There was like a 1,000 people there and a lot of fans. As soon as we walked in the door, it turns a little bit into an in-store appearance so people want photos and you know, just say ‘Hello’ and things like that. Well, when you’re taking photos and all that, everybody gets up close and everybody is breathing on everybody else. So, we go to the show. Everything is fine.

A week later, I start feeling kind of tough and I thought, a couple of days into it, ‘Well, I got the flu.’ Well, about four days in, normally you would start feeling better. I wasn’t. So I thought, ‘Well, tomorrow, I’ll feel better.’ The next day, I get up and I’m worse and I thought, ‘Well, this is a bad one. I’ll feel better tomorrow.’ And the next day, I was even worse than that! This goes on for about seven or eight days, and [laughs] I’m getting to the end of my rope. I’m thinking, ‘What the hell is this?’ And then I lose my taste, and smell and all that. That went on for two more weeks after that but we don’t know what this is because there is no name for it yet. I mean, this is still — it was the end of January in 2020. So, I start getting better. It goes on for weeks and weeks and we didn’t know what it was. Then we start hearing this rumbling that there’s something out there with this funny name on it. About three months into — the better part of three months — you know. After that time, I then decided to, you know, start working a little bit, and got basically to where we are now. And I’ve got quite a bit of material that we’ve been working on diligently actually.”