Motörhead line-ups may have changed, but Lemmy never did. In 2005, as the band prepared to release their 18th studio album, Kiss Of Death, Metal Hammer were granted an audience with the great man as he smoked cigarettes, swigged Jack Daniels and ponder whether he’d still be doing this when he was 70.
It’s not every day you get to meet a bona-fide, dyed-in-the-wool, there-right-before-your-eyes Living Legend. And it’s not every day he turns out to be A Very Nice Man. This is a relief, because at 60 years of age he probably doesn’t need to worry about making a good impression. As it is, the introduction is unnecessary. He walks into Room 237 of the relatively luxurious Kensington Royal Garden Hotel and it’s immediately apparent that you are in the company of someone special.
This isn’t whatshisface from Arch Enemy, or youknowtheone from 36 Crazyfists, or theguywiththeguitar from Lacuna Coil. This is Ian ‘Lemmy’ Kilmister: baby boomer, rock’n’roller. Indefatigable, indestructible. Even cockroaches take survival tips from Lemmy.
“When will I give up?” he’ll wonder, three quarters of an hour later. “I don’t know. I can’t see myself doing this at 70. That would be a bit extreme.”
Do you want to know something?
“What?”
We can see you doing this at 70.
Lemmy looks down at himself and then out of the window. He affords himself a quick smile. He seems pleased. He thinks about and surmises that, “Yeah, maybe I will still be doing this at 70.”
But first there’s the walk into the room. He’s wearing knee length black boots (don’t call them jack boots, don’t call them jack boots), he’s wearing contact lens-tight black jeans, he’s wearing a black shirt unbuttoned to the top of his (flat) stomach. In his left hand he carries a 20 pack of Marlboro Reds, the kind that cause you to bend double in the morning, hammer your thighs and pray that your lungs will at some point kick into gear. On top of the packet is a Zippo lighter. In his right hand he carries a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, a litre, which is opened and a third drunk. The first thing he will do is get some ice, a glass, a bottle of Coke from the mini bar and make himself a Jack Daniel’s and Coke that is at least one half JD. It is 1.15pm.He walks over and shakes your hand. The warts on his face are enormous. It’s difficult not to look at them. We’re sat at a table on a raised part of the room. To his right are two gigantic windows overlooking the early summer splendour that is Hyde Park. Between us is a glass-topped round table, on top of which are littered various lifestyle magazines. Lemmy picks the magazines up and throws them onto the window sill. “Best place for them,” he says.
Lemmy gets a cheap plastic CD player, puts in a white label CD of the forthcoming Kiss Of Death Motörhead album. He plays a couple of songs, and while they’re playing he talks you through them. When he says that he believes that this is the best Motörhead album, “for ages,” it’s easy to believe him.
It’s easier to believe him when he says that than it is to believe what he does next. As the next track kicks into life, the noise seems all consuming. But it isn’t particularly good quality, not on this Argos special plastic boom box it isn’t. The bass sounds like it’s going to shake the machine apart. The vocals are all treble and high. The drums sound like a gang of mice rattling around a thousand tins of Quality Street. And so Lemmy does the most remarkable thing you could ever imagine.
He fiddles for the volume switch on his cheap plastic CD player And he turns the volume down.
Who wants the volume turning up?” asks Lemmy. It’s three days earlier, and this time his audience is not one person but 85,000 people. It’s quarter to eight in the evening in London’s glorious Hyde Park, and Motörhead are playing their hour long support to the Foo Fighters set. Although the vast majority of these people won’t have seen Motörhead before, they all know the routine: that is, they cheer, loudly. Yes, they all want the volume turning up.
To reward them their patience (the set is nothing if not typically awkward, featuring two songs from the critically mauled ‘Another Perfect Day’, album) Motörhead play ‘Ace Of Spades’, the one song that everyone in the whole wide world likes. The one song with the neatest trick in rock’n’roll: the bit that goes, “You know I’m going to lose/And gambling’s for fools/But that’s they way I like it baby/I don’t want to live forever.” Only where on the recorded version Lemmy sings, “and don’t forget the joker,” here he sings, “but apparently I am.”
“I’ve been doing this a long fucking time,” he says, back in the hotel room.
You know, when people ask how long you’re going to keep on doing this, what they’re actually asking you is, ‘How long are you going to live?’
“I suppose so, yeah.”
So, how long are you going to live?
“I was actually just checked out by a doctor in Berlin ‘cos you have to have insurance before you can go on tour. If you’re unwell or you’re about to kick the bucket then they won’t insure you. It’s simple business, you know? Anyway, this doctor in Berlin told me that I have a liver like a baby’s…”
Bollocks.
“No, seriously, he did.”
And the lungs? What did he say about your lungs?
“Apparently my lungs are fine too.”
Which frankly, kids, is astonishing. It’s astonishing because Lemmy is smoking at pretty much a constant rate throughout this interview, and thus, you might imagine, at pretty much a constant rate throughout the day. Throughout the week. The Month. The year. His life. He’s not just smoking either, he’s smoking Marlboro Reds.
You know the rumour for years has been that you’ve got cancer?
“Really? Is that the rumour?”
Yeah.
“I hadn’t heard that one.”
Is it true?
“No, it’s not true. I haven’t got cancer.”
When you look back, are you happy with your lot?
“Yeah, I’m very happy with my lot,” he says. “What’s not to like, if you think about it? I’m in a band that’s made some great music over the years. We’ve made some great fucking records man. Some records that I’m very proud of. And we’ve always been true to ourselves. Motörhead has never told you a lie. And that’s very important to me.”
Do you think you get the credit you deserve?
Lemmy stops and thinks about this for a moment. But only for a moment.
“I think we’ve made some great albums that people haven’t really paid attention to,” he says. “So in that regard we haven’t got the credit we deserve. Bastards was a great album and Sacrifice was a great album, but they didn’t really sell all that well. Not as well as some albums we’ve made that haven’t been that great.
“But there’s not much you can do about that, as a guy in a band. All you can do is make your music and put it out there and see what happens. But on the other hand we’re in a position that loads of other people would envy. People know the name of our band, and they know at least one of our songs. Ace Of Spades, everyone knows that one. And that’s not bad. I can’t complain about that.
“We tour and we make a living from this. I live in LA where the weather is great all year round. I get to drink at [popular Sunset Strip haunt] The Rainbow. And at the moment we’re experiencing one of those upsurges in popularity that Motörhead experiences every eight years or so. We’re still going strong, and there are plenty of bands who haven’t lasted anywhere near as long as we have.
“If you add all that up,” he says. “That isn’t bad.”
No, it ain’t bad. Just looking at Lemmy is something to see. He has what appears to be, if not the shakes, then at least the mild tremours. He drinks too much, putting away a good third of a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in this hour long conversation alone. He smokes too much, opening the window and joking that he does this, “so he doesn’t kill me.” Still, by the time 60 minutes is up, the ashtray is stuffed with dead cigarettes. His breathing is a touch laboured, it seems, and his mind does tend to stay on its own path, rather than anything too close to the question he’s just been asked.
But when he puts on that white label CD of Kiss Of Death, he becomes someone else entirely. It doesn’t matter that we’re sitting in the room with him. It wouldn’t matter if a great white shark, a grizzly bear or a million dollars was sat in the room with him. Because he is totally lost in the music. His eyes are closed and his mouth is singing along. To himself!
His hands are, alternatively, smoking, drinking Jack Daniels, playing along to the drums, picking out the notes to a guitar solo, or strumming along to the chords of his ominpresent Rickenbacker bass guitar.
Lemmy is totally lost to the moment. If we were to say to him, “Lemmy, this music is shit,” (which, by the way, it isn’t) I believe he would stop what he was doing and physically throw me out of the room. Which makes it all worthwhile.
“The one thing I’m really proud of about this band,” he says, “is that we’ve never become a nostalgia act. Of course people want to hear Ace Of Spades and Overkill, and I understand that. But we still make music, we make new music, and we take a great deal of care making that music. If people hear it then that’s great, but if they don’t we’ll still keep releasing albums. We don’t care.
“But if we just existed on memories from the past then I don’t think I could cope with that. I wouldn’t be happy with that at all.”
Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 156, August 2006
