Lemmy lit another cigarette, blew smoke in my face and put it like this: “Life has a funny way of not paying attention to you. I wanted to do the British version of the MC5, simple as that,” he shrugged, referring to the American punk-metal legends who recorded such classics as Kick Out The Jams. “If I could have joined the MC5, I would have. But they were in Detroit and so I formed my own version instead – called Motörhead. Only we weren’t called that originally. And I wanted it to be a five-piece band – and we weren’t that either. The only thing I got right was that I wanted the music to be fast and vicious, just like the MC5.”
In fact, if Lemmy had really had his way, he might never have formed his own band at all. In keeping with Motörhead’s enduring reputation for being one of the most, well, awkward of bands, their story actually began with an ending – in this case, Lemmy’s sacking, in 1975, from his previous band Hawkwind. As he confesses now, “I would never have left Hawkwind if I hadn’t been fired.”
