Obsessive, that's Blackie Lawless. The WASP king is gonna accomplish what he desires, and when the band's magnus conceptus "The Crimson Idol" turned 25, he wanted to redeliver it as originally imagined -- cinematically, and with three additional brooding, raging, self-scarifying songs. Why didn't he do that in 1992? Because the project had already taken two and a half years and landed him in the St. James Infirmary with near-terminal stress.
The fact that Lawless could not acquire a license to use his own recordings with the long-promised visuals did not deter him; he simply dropped half a million bucks to make the whole thing all over again with the musicians who've been staffing the WASP machine for a decade or more. The leap was less than you might think, since current guitarist Doug Blair was already cloning Bob Kulick's parts when the '92 "Idol" promo tour hit the road. Still, the exacting Mr. L demanded that the remake duplicate its template closely, meaning that Mike Dupke would even have to match the near-impossible drum rolls of Frankie Banali, who had risen to the unimaginable challenge of hybridizing chaotic Keith Moon energy with aircraft-engine precision. In service to authenticity, Lawless even recorded the basic tracks on auldtime 2-inch tape.
And damn if it didn't work. The music on "Re-Idolized" rocks with elemental passion, differing only in a mature roundness of tone, a heightened sensuality and a depth of sonic field. Ballads such as "Miss You" and "Hold on to My Heart" benefit most from the revisitation, but headlong rockers such as "Chainsaw Charlie" and the epic "The Great Misconceptions of Me" lose nothing except a sense of fresh arrival. And that's no fault, as Lawless has never downplayed his role as a bearer of hard-rock tradition, from the Who to Humble Pie. His chords, other than the few he steals from Pete Townshend, are the ones he always uses. His theme of a wayward youth in crisis, torn between an idealized father and an iconic mother, goes back further than Oedipus. Blackie is remaking the remade, remaking himself. And he still screams like his tail's on fire.
You'll want to absorb the visuals, especially the Blu-Ray. Directed by Ralph Ziman, the presentation looks like some old black & white silent film, the action developing within an illuminated center surrounded by darkness, like a campfire in a cave. While the music tells the story, actors mime the alienation and conflict in a visual atmosphere choked with a gritty overlay -- stop a frame here and there, and see if you don't make out the vague shapes of bats and skulls. Pretty durn artistic, for a band that used to spray its audience with raw chuck.
We feel the pain of the striving outcast rock star, and wonder why his young life must be sacrificed. The story's about Blackie, of course. Except Blackie, hey, he's a survivor.