It gave a name to one of the greatest and loudest bands on earth, defined the man who wrote it as the epitome of the sex and drugs and rock’n’roll lifestyle, and had a profound influence on Metallica, Venom and Napalm Death. But when Ian ‘Lemmy’ Kilmister wrote Motorhead more than 50 years ago it was, he says, “just another song”. Nobody, least of all Lemmy himself, could have foreseen that it would become arguably the most important song he would ever write.
In 1974, Lemmy was 28 years old and the bassist in space-rock gurus Hawkwind. He’d been in the band three years, and had sung lead vocal on their biggest hit, Silver Machine, which had reached No.3 on the UK chart in June 1972. But as a songwriter he was feeling frustrated. “There was never much interest in my songs in Hawkwind,” Lemmy told Classic Rock in 2016. Nevertheless, he stuck at it. And when Hawkwind reached Los Angeles on a 1974 US tour, he found the inspiration for a new song during an all-night booze and drugs bender.
