w.a.s.p.
17:28 Friday, 21 July 2023
W.A.S.P. has sadly had to postpone their tour to Spring 2024 due to extensive back injuries suffered by frontman Blackie Lawless. We wish Lawless all the best in his recovery and hope 2024 is a feasible timeline for W.A.S.P. to hit the road once more.
"The extent of the trauma I endured on the 2023 European Tour was far greater than originally diagnosed and surgery will now be needed to correct the problem," wrote Lawless. "In addition to the original herniated disc, as that tour continued, a 2nd disc became herniated. Upon returning home a 2nd MRI also revealed a broken vertebrae to my lower back.
"I've been fortunate to work with the best specialists in the U.S. and I've been in intensive rehab since we got home. It's going well but the damage was pretty extensive and all the Dr.'s agree moving the tour a few months back will be the safest thing. It's all been as the result of an injury that happened several years ago. I'm working my butt off to get ready and I'll be up riding on Elvis… bigger and badder than ever. If the Torture Never Stops, then the 40th Never Stops!"
W.A.S.P. had previously toured Europe earlier this year, though Lawless had made it known that he was in pain and dealing with the injury the whole time.
In a previous interview with Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk (via Blabbermouth), Lawless said of his injury "I have a thing, and they determined this in Berlin — it's called mechanical compression. And what that means is you get vertebrae that start pushing against each other, but they grind against each other at the same time because they start to cramp. Well, when we were doing the show in Zurich, it was cramping really bad and I couldn't get it to stop. And I was literally, literally hanging on to [my mic stand] Elvis while I was trying to sing and play at the same time."
"So we did the new pictures on Monday, and I have a cracked vertebra now in my spine. But as bad as that sounds, it's not the first time it happened. It happened the first time in '92 on The Crimson Idol tour. I got a little too close to the edge of the stage one night and some of the fans pulled me off the stage into the audience, and I ended up upside down in the crowd and they fell on top of me, and I broke a vertebra then. So this is the second time I've been through this. So it'll heal on its own. I start therapy tomorrow — it's a swimming pool thing that I'm gonna have to do to start first. But they say they're gonna have me up to speed in eight weeks to start the tour. So I'll be ready to go."
