Former W.A.S.P. guitarist Chris Holmes has spoken out about losing his songwriting credits and publishing rights — reportedly worth $7 million — in an interview shared on Cassius Morris Official. He placed the blame squarely on bandmate Blackie Lawless.
Holmes was asked directly about who was responsible for altering his songwriting credits and who has been collecting the publishing money he believes he is owed.
“Well, he (Blackie) knew what he was doing from day one, but I didn’t,” Holmes said. “I trusted him to make sure that I got my publishing. I didn’t get, you know, I still to this day I’ve never gotten a penny in my publishing from W.A.S.P.”
Holmes went on to describe how his name was quietly removed from the credits on more recent releases without his knowledge.
“And I wrote a lot of the material but the newer albums that have come out if you look at them my name’s taken off on the newer label and behind my back and somewhere else they wrote me in as a session player and I didn’t know really,” he continued. “I don’t get any of the credit. I don’t get any of the publishing. And I can’t go in and look at the publishing. They don’t tell you who gets it. You only see the publishing on the records.”
Holmes also explained how he believes Lawless structured the catalog deals to his own benefit over the long term.
“Blackie went in and changed it because he made sure when they did the records years ago that when they go out of print after 20 30 years, he gets the catalog back and he’s gone and he gets to go to another label,” Holmes said. “It’s the way it’s the way people are, you know. … If you go on Wikipedia, it says I’m worth $7 million. So, that’s probably the way I look at it. That’s probably what they got from me. Something like that or whatever.”
Holmes acknowledged that his own lack of business awareness played a role in the situation. “I don’t really I got I don’t know the business. I was kept in the dark of what was going on all the time. I was more happy drinking, you know, doing my own things,” he admitted.
Holmes has not indicated any legal action at this time. His comments mark one of his most direct public statements on the matter.
The dispute is not a new one — it has been simmering for years and has become a defining point of contention between the two former bandmates. Holmes has made clear that any possibility of a reunion hinges entirely on the resolution of this issue.
As reported by Ultimate Metal, Holmes stated that he would never consider returning to W.A.S.P. unless Lawless agreed to pay him the publishing royalties he claims are owed to him. The guitarist joined the band in 1982, remained until 1990, returned in 1996, and stayed until 2001. That tenure spans the band’s most commercially significant era, making the credit-and-royalty question all the more consequential.
Lawless, for his part, has pushed back firmly against Holmes’s accusations. Blabbermouth reported that Lawless directly denied Holmes’s claim that the guitarist was “screwed” out of royalties, stating flatly, “That is not true.” He rejected the assertion that Holmes was owed any unpaid royalties for the albums he performed on, offering a starkly different account of the financial arrangements within the band.
Holmes has also described consulting a lawyer around 2006–2007 to look into his publishing situation. The Metal Voice noted that the review reportedly revealed Holmes had been listed as a session player rather than a credited songwriter — a distinction that carries significant financial implications. In the music industry, being classified as a performer rather than a co-author means a musician can appear on a hit album and still receive little to no publishing income. Publishing rights govern royalties from streaming, licensing, and public performance.
The broader context of the dispute reflects a well-documented pattern in rock music, where the line between performance credits and songwriting ownership has long been a source of conflict. Holmes’s complaint is essentially that his contributions were treated as performance-only work rather than co-authorship, stripping him of the long-term income that publishing rights provide. A 2025 podcast episode showed that Holmes has continued to cite these unresolved publishing rights issues — alongside his personal conflict with Lawless — as the primary reasons he has no interest in rejoining the band. No lawsuit has been confirmed, and the dispute remains a public war of words with no resolution in sight.
