Almost nine years after his death, Lemmy remains one of rock’s greatest icons – and one of the all-time great interviewees. In 2013, as Motörhead prepared to release their 21st album, Afterlife, he sat down for an epic chat that covered everything from driving on LSD while wearing fly glasses to the merits of The Beatles vs the Rolling Stones.
In the dimly lit control room of Paramount Studios in Hollywood, California, sits a man dressed in black, his black cowboy hat nodding to music that cranks from several speakers.
He has a drink in each hand – red wine in one, Jack and Coke in the other, the Jack apparently to disguise the taste of the wine. Some of the vast array of buttons and dials on the mixing desk move about on their own as if dancing to the music, and the man leans forward and turns the volume up. Somewhere in California, seismologists exchange worried glances. Motörhead have a new album.
The man in question is, of course, Lemmy – vocalist, bassist and living legend – and the rumours of his demise have clearly been greatly exaggerated. True, he’s slowed down, finally showing signs of age. But it’s easy to believe that the silver-tipped cane he now carries is as much for show as to assist his walking. And there’s a 50/50 chance it was made in Germany and has a dagger inside.
Motörhead has been your life for almost 40 years now.
Yeah. I am Motörhead all the time. When you work in a factory you get to clock out, but I don’t. I’m Motörhead 24 hours a day, so I think like that. I think Motörhead. That’s all I am to a very large extent. I know intellectually that there was a time when I wasn’t in Motörhead, but I can’t actually remember what it felt like.
You’ve led Motörhead through good times and bad. What are the challenges of being the band’s leader?
The challenge is for us to all be in the same place at the same time, and I’m as much to blame as those other two cunts, Phil [Campbell, guitarist] and Mikkey [Dee, drums]. We have keepers and minders who whip the herd into line. But half the time we have to fetch them along.
How would you describe your leadership style?
Absentee landlord. You can get away with anything with me as long as it doesn’t hurt the band or the performance. I don’t care what you do otherwise. Your private life is your private life, and if you choose to make it public, then it’s your public life.
You’re not a strict disciplinarian, then?
If you’re not pulling your weight then you’ve got to go, but apart from that I’m really sloppy. You’ve got to have somebody to blame, basically. That’s why I never ride on the crew bus, because the crew need to bitch about the band, and I know that because I was in a crew, or several crews. You don’t want the band with you in the bus because you have to let go about the band, especially if they’re all cunts. I flatter myself that I’m not. Because I was in a crew I tend to be more sympathetic to the crew than to the band.
When you were in Hawkwind in the early 70s, Dave Brock called the shots. What did you learn about leadership from him?
Oh, very little! I could have learned to be incredibly self-centred, but I didn’t. Brock wrote everything – he wouldn’t let anybody put anything else out. It took me three albums before I could get The Watcher on an album, and that’s only because he ran out of ideas.
What was the weirdest thing that happened in your time with Hawkwind?
The weirdest gig was us and The Sweet and Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. The Sweet went on first, then Bonzos, then us. I always thought it should have been the other way around because I wanted to get back and fuck this bird. But the Bonzos were great, all flying helmets and goggles and all that shit.
When Motörhead started out, you were branded ‘The Worst Band In The World’. But you’ve won a Grammy and you’re a hugely respected band, idolised by the likes of Metallica. Do you still feel like outsiders?
No. It’s difficult to feel like an outsider when you’re accepted by everybody. I tried. We’re outsiders as far as the industry’s concerned because even when they gave us a Grammy, they still managed to put the knife in because it was for a cover of somebody else’s song. They still managed to not give us a Grammy really, and that was only a mercy fuck because it was our thirtieth year.
Is the music business run by people who know nothing about music?
You wouldn’t believe the shit I’ve seen from record companies. These people talk nonsense all day. If we did our gig like they do their office work, nothing would ever happen. And it’s nonsense, all of it! Moving units. You wouldn’t believe the amount of time they spend talking about that and the target group. It’s just crap. In the old days you’d have one national chart and you had to get in that one because it was the only one that mattered. We got number one and about three or four down from us was the Bee Gees and it didn’t matter – that was what was important because you’d made it through everyone. How can you have a heavy metal chart? You’re preaching to the converted anyway. Country chart, what the fuck does that mean?
You’re one of the most famous rock stars in the world. Can you ever go out without being recognised?
Yes! In the dark, with a mask on! That comes with the gig, doesn’t it? If you try to be famous all your life, don’t bitch when you are! That ain’t right. Especially when people ask for an autograph. You tried to be that person that people would ask for an autograph, so give it to them! Get a grip on who you are. You’re that guy who wanted to be famous – desperate for it, right? You went though all that terrible stage fright and poverty and now you can’t sign an autograph? Fuck you!
Have you ever refused to give an autograph?
There was one guy once in the parking lot of wherever the fuck we were, Newcastle or somewhere up north. He came up to the bus and banged on the door and said, “Can you bring the band out? I want them to sign my albums. I bought all their albums and I want them to sign them all now because it’s cold out here.” He wasn’t understanding how it works. Politeness is the key. You ask, you don’t tell. The worst thing you can ever do with Motörhead is tell us to do something because then we’ll never do it. One of them certainly won’t do it and the other two will follow along for an easy life. People like that think they own you because they bought two albums. I like people with a bit of respect and humility and generally I’ll sign anything, I don’t mind.
Is it weird that people freak out when they meet you?
It’s weird to me, but it’s not to them because they’re impressed. I’m not impressed by me. Never was much. I always wanted to be better looking. People go, “Oh wow, Lemmy, you’re God!” And I go, “No, God’s taller, much taller.”
How have you managed to keep your feet on the ground?
I could always bring myself back down. There are lessons to be learned from both ends of that. On stage you couldn’t see who was in Hawkwind because it was about the light show, so we weren’t the heroes to look at; we weren’t spotted in the street. We got famous as a band and we got a lot of money to play with when we did the Space Ritual tour. That was a fucking great band, standing there out of your mind on whatever… People would hand you shit out of the crowd and we were so wrecked. We used to drive out to this abandoned mansion in Virginia Water, these huge, overgrown gardens, and we’d drive out there and drop acid. Those were some of the best times. I drove a van up to Marshall’s in Bletchley, tripped out of my skull, with a pair of those fly-eyes glasses on. There was eight of everything, so I just went for the middle one.
Do people always feel they have to keep up with you when you’re out socialising?
Yeah, they do. More people used to.
Has anyone ever drunk you under the table?
No, but there’s been a couple of chicks who’ve come close. They can drink more than we can! But then I used to get wailed and you couldn’t see any difference in me.
Who has failed the most miserably to keep up with you on a night out?
Well, it wasn’t you, Mörat. There were a lot of people worse than you! You failed to remember that you’d kept up!
Motörhead will always be remembered for Ace Of Spades. What other songs should you be remembered for?
I like a lot of our songs because I write them. I don’t know which ones are really worth remembering. I think Sacrifice is great and I really like In The Black on Inferno. But Ace Of Spades was one of those obvious instant ones, the most obvious instant one we ever wrote, and that’s why people latched onto it. We didn’t get to number one with it, but the album did very well because we were on a roll with Overkill and Bomber and then Ace Of Spades. And then No Sleep ’Til Hammersmith went straight in at number one and we couldn’t follow it. Iron Fist was fucking miserable. There’s three or four good songs on there, but those last two numbers are terrible.
When things got bad for Motörhead in the 90s, did you ever consider giving up?
No, because if you give up then you’ve definitely got fuck all. You have to start all over again from scratch and I never fancied that much. I’d done it three or four times and I didn’t want to start again at the Bricklayer’s Arms… or the Bricklayer’s Feet for that matter. I went through all the forming a band and sitting in the back of a truck about five times, but I believed in myself because I knew I didn’t play bass like anybody else. I knew no one was copying me, either! And the band had a unique sound.
Phil Campbell has been your right-hand man in Motörhead for a long time.
Twenty-nine years now. I’ve seen more of him than his wife has!
Phil seems like an idiosyncratic fellow. What’s he really like?
It’s true, he is very idiosyncratic. I’ve never figured him out. You know how he got the job with Motörhead? He came to the audition with three different kinds of speed!
You auditioned two guitarists that day in 1983 – Phil and Würzel – and both of them ended up in the band.
Yeah, Phil and Würzel were supposed to shoot it out, to see who was gonna be the one. And that was the day that [drummer] Phil Taylor left the band, so there was only me in Motörhead for about four hours. I went to the studio and said, “I’m just gonna be ten minutes,” and I went to the pub. When I came back, Phil and Würzel were already going, “Well, if you play this solo then I can play this one,” already talking as a band. I was very impressed so I hired both of them.
You’ve talked about Little Richard being the greatest rock’n’roll singer of all time.
He was the greatest rock vocalist ever, there’s no doubt. The Beatles are close, and the Everly Brothers, and all kinds of other people are close, but nobody comes within fifty yards of Little Richard. He just took a song and ran away with it, and he was so joyful – he was full of good meaning and good intentions. I didn’t find out he was gay for years. You saw these pictures with the pencil moustache and the pancake make-up, but in those days you didn’t think about stuff like that. He was just this real exotic creature from America, that land past Mars where people go when they’re really rich and can afford to go on a plane. I never thought I’d go to America.
Have you ever met Little Richard?
No, unfortunately. But he’s rubbish now. We played this festival with The Head Cat [Lemmy’s occasional rockabilly band] and Little Richard was playing. I was really excited to see him, but he came on stage, played a verse of Good Golly Miss Molly, then stopped and started handing out Bibles and telling his life story. This is not what I had come to hear, so I had to exit stage left rather smartly. It was terrible! He was funny in his early interviews though, like, “I am the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen; wherever you’re going I’ve been and I’m back!” He was just fucking great. The king and the queen of rock’n’roll.
You’re a huge fan of The Beatles. Do you have a favourite Beatles album?
Oh, I like all of them except for Yellow Submarine. And even that’s alright.
Back in the 60s it was always The Beatles versus the Stones. Whose side were you on?
I didn’t care, I liked both of them. If push came to shove and I had to choose one, then it would be The Beatles, but I liked the Stones too. That first album was fantastic! The Beatles were more melodic and they had harmonies. The Stones didn’t have any harmonies, and I always loved harmonies because of The Everly Brothers.
You always said that The Beatles were the real bad boys, too.
Well, the Stones were from the London suburbs and The Beatles were from Liverpool. Liverpool’s rough, and that’s what made the music so great. All these people came back from America on the merchant ships and brought the records with them, and all the bands did the same 20 songs! But the Stones were great and I won’t hear nothing against the Stones.
Apart from charging hundreds of quid for a ticket on their latest tour?
Yes, well, that’s Jagger isn’t it? Of course it’s outrageous, but the Stones are a corporate company. That’s something Motörhead will never do. There is Motörhead Inc., but I don’t know anything about it. I don’t know if we’ve got an office or where it is if we have. I’ve never been to our office, I don’t know where it is, couldn’t find it on a map. But I don’t need to. My job isn’t being in an office and I didn’t sign up to this gig to be in a meeting. I’m here to play bass and sing and that’s what I do.
It’s well known that you were a roadie for Jimi Hendrix in the late 60s. Did Hendrix have a special aura about him?
Kind of, yeah. He was a wild man and chicks would go nuts for him. The aristocracy in England wanted to fuck Jimi Hendrix, and half of them were guys! Hendrix was incredibly sexually magnetic on stage. He had a body like a snake, and you knew that he knew what he was doing. And it wasn’t offensive with him, it’s just like, “That’s what I do.” Backstage it was like, take a number and wait! I saw him take three chicks into a hotel room and they all came out smiling.
Some people only have that charisma on stage.
Oh, Hendrix was worse off stage! He didn’t have a guitar to get in the way! But then he took a guitar everywhere with him. He took it in the toilet, took it everywhere. He was a great guy as far as I knew him and I met him a couple of times. I sold him acid or went to get acid for him.
Who do you admire as a lyricist? Bob Dylan? John Lennon?
I did like Bob Dylan, I thought he was great, but he was a great con man! He strung a lot of nonsense together and made it seem like it was really important. Masters Of War was my favourite because that was straight down the line, right in the bollocks, but stuff like Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream, about going to America with Columbus, that’s just nonsense! But the Eagles wrote good lyrics. Some of their songs are fantastic, like Take It To The Limit and New Kid In Town. They’re all very evocative of the West as it never was, but it’s a nice vision.
What lyric of yours are you most proud of?
I’m proud of quite a lot of them now. They used to be pretty duff, beginner’s stuff. The first really good one I did was Orgasmatron, with really big words like ‘obsequious’!
Did you get the title ‘Orgasmatron’ from the Woody Allen movie Sleeper?
No – I didn’t even know about that movie then. There was an orgasmatron in the movie Barbarella too, somebody told me. I mean, I saw the movie but it didn’t register. I was too busy looking at Jane Fonda’s tits. I didn’t care what the machine was called!
How do you approach writing lyrics?
I don’t want to pass on bad messages, you know? I always thought Slayer made a mistake with Raining Blood. We became good friends on that tour and I remember saying to their singer, Tom Araya, “You realise there’s people in the audience who think you mean that? They think you wanna see blood.” Then the next night half a chair came past his head and he’s lost it, like, “How dare you?” You should be careful what you say in songs because people ain’t there when you write it and they don’t know what you meant.
So what are you saying in the lyrics on Motörhead’s new album?
There’s one song, Queen Of The Damned, that’s a fairly straight story. It’s about a guy and one of his ex-birds is gonna kill him! But you can’t tell from the lyrics what most of the songs are about. And you should never analyse rock’n’roll. As soon as you analyse it, the deeper you get, the less it means. You should just get that fire up your spine from hearing it. You shouldn’t have debates about it. Fuck me, when Bob Dylan first came out he wrote a load of nonsense, complete balderdash! It was good balderdash, but it was still balderdash, and everyone used to go, “Oh, so deep!” And Hendrix used to go on stage and mumble and they’d all go, “Yes! The messiah!”
Have your songs ever been misinterpreted?
It’s really weird what people pick up. I got a letter about 20 years ago from this guy that said, “I realise from your lyrics that you’re a man who believes in the future of the white race,” and he sent me all this literature, all this neo-Nazi bullshit. I just tore it up and threw it away – it was just too wrong to talk about! But it’s like the Bible – you can read anything into it, you can make it mean anything.
You wrote the lyrics for Ozzy Osbourne’s song Mama, I’m Coming Home, and Ozzy said that what you’d written in that song was part of his own life story. Where did that come from?
I just wrote a song. He sent me a tape of the song with where he wanted the lyrics, and I think he gave me the title, but that was it. I’m good at that because that’s how I write our songs – I come up with a title and then write the song around it. Later, Ozzy and me were doing interviews in the same tent at this festival and this guy says, “The song Mama I’m Coming Home is the most personal thing you have written. Was it a big wrench?” And Ozzy just goes, “He wrote it!”
You also earned a lot of money writing for Ozzy.
I had a good time writing songs for him because when I came to America I was broke, I had nothing in the bank. Sharon Osbourne said, “Do you want to write four songs?” and they gave me this lump sum that was more money than I’d ever seen in my life! More money than I’d ever earned with Hawkwind and Motörhead, even when we were number one. I never got royalties, but that was alright with me. I’ve written a few more since, for him. I wrote Desire and I Don’t Want To Change The World, and on Ozzmosis I wrote My Little Man, which is very personal. I did write one about Randy Rhoads [Ozzy’s former guitarist, who died in 1982], but it bothered Ozzy because he got too deep into it. I’m good at putting myself in other people’s head, y’know?
Writing lyrics for Motörhead, you’ve always been drawn to the darkest subjects, such as war.
I can imagine why people do almost anything, wrong or right. I can imagine why people were in the SS and what it was like the first time they found out they had to kill people. Some of them liked the idea and some must have been horrified, but they still had to do it. That’s why I don’t feel bad about collecting all the Nazi stuff, because I know I’m the furthest thing you’d ever find from a Nazi. I’d never have gone for that, except maybe the uniforms! But I wouldn’t do that, couldn’t do that. I would desert.
You’re well-read on history. Which books, historical or otherwise, have made the biggest impression on you?
A couple of them are fiction, actually. Bomber by Len Deighton, and also Winter by Len Deighton, which tells the story of two brothers from Berlin. One became a lawyer for the SS and stayed there, and the other one moved to America. Bomber inspired me to write the song. That’s a great fucking book! There’s been a lot of good books about Hitler, and a lot of really bad ones, and the thing you get out of all of them is that nobody knew why he did it and they all think he’s a cunt. The only guy in the Nazi hierarchy I had any respect for was Goering because he was the only one at the Nuremberg Trials who stood up and said, “It was me! I did it and I’d do it again!” Everybody else hid behind the dead Führer and said they were following orders, but Goering said he did it. He knew they were going to kill him anyway, but he cheated them. Before his execution, he ate poison. What a cunt, eh?
Is there anything in Lemmy: The Movie that you think in retrospect was too personal or too revealing?
Well, the trash basket was pretty bad, but other than that, no. It was alright, it told no lies, didn’t pull any punches and I didn’t have to leave the theatre before the lights came on. I wasn’t embarrassed by it.
It’s certainly one of the loudest movies ever made.
That’s Motörhead! A fan once told me, “I love going to see Motörhead for two reasons. One, I love the music, and two, I can’t hear my wife nagging at me for three days after!” We found a guy asleep in one of the bass bins once, just crashed out, and it’s a fucking incredible sound in there!
What’s the best advice anyone’s ever given you?
Don’t drop any money on the floor! Or on a more serious note, don’t die ashamed. That stuck with me and I don’t know who told me.
What essential items do you always take on tour with you?
Shoes, clothes… I always come back with a suitcase more than I went with. I’ve been doing that for years and I still never learn, I still never take an empty case with me. My apartment was full of suitcases at one point.
“And then I went on a guitar-buying jag on the last American tour. I got some beautiful guitars, two Firebirds and a Les Paul, two SG basses. And this big old Gibson 355 that I bought off this lunatic who lived in the mountains in Pennsylvania. We met him in the parking lot at the bottom of the mountain because we couldn’t get the bus up there. He was like, “If y’all are back here again, just come by and say hi. Just look for the bullet holes in the front yard.”
When you’re home in Los Angeles, you spend a lot of your time at the famous rock’n’roll hangout the Rainbow Bar And Grill. Do you consider that place to be an extension of your living room?
No, my living room’s a lot smaller. And it doesn’t have a bar in it!
When did you first visit the Rainbow?
In 1973 with Hawkwind, when we first went over there. I was very impressed with it because it was much, much more fun then. In the 70s, America was much more fun than it has been for a long time. Endless whoopee!
It seems like drugs were more social back then, too. People shared, instead of hiding it away.
Yeah, we’ve drifted. We’ve become islands when we were a continent. Or sometimes incontinent, though thankfully I never was.
So many bands cite Motörhead as an influence. Which bands do you hear that influence in?
Everything influences you, even if it influences you not to play like that. Bands have told me they like Motörhead. I mean, Mötley Crüe used to play Motörhead to go on stage, same with Guns N’ Roses. I was amazed by that because Guns N’ Roses were like the Stones at the time. And now Slash is a really good friend of mine. We share an experience of defibrillators. He’s a really nice guy. When I came out of the hospital, after surgery, he came round to my house about five times and he’s on the phone all the time. I went up to his house, too. Nice house!
But you’ve never gone for the rock-star mansion yourself?
Nah, what’s that worth? You can only be in one room at a time. Home is where you leave your shit. And if you get a bigger place it’s because you’ve got more shit. But that doesn’t matter. What does that mean, that you can invite other people from mansions around? Go around comparing mansions? It’s all bullshit, and I don’t need a pool because I can’t swim anyway.
When you look back on your life and career, is there anything you would have done differently?
Well, I’d have been better looking, but apart from that I’ve had a pretty good time. Even if I don’t get better and I’ve done my last show, I can’t complain. I’ve realised nearly all of my dreams and most people don’t get to do one of them. Most people have to go and do a job they fucking despise all their life, just because they got married too early or there’s no other jobs around.
I used to do that job – I used to be in the Hotpoint factory and it was fucking terrible. By seven thirty in the morning you’re working, all you’ve got to talk to is the foreman who comes around with a clipboard, looking over your shoulder like a fucking vulture. And then at the break you can talk to all these people with The Daily Mirror stuck in their back pocket. You can feel your brain dying.
I had this fucking machine that you had to wind with a brass handle, and they gave you a big thing full of little brass nuts and you had to tighten them all up. When you got rid of all of them they took them away and gave you another lot. It did me one favour – it convinced me I’d rather starve to death than do it again. I lived on the streets rather than do that job again.
How have you changed as you’ve got older?
Well, a lot my hair fell out and a lot of it didn’t. I’m sick now and I’m hoping to get better, but if I don’t then tough luck. I can still make albums even if I have to sit down and play them. If I can’t do it right on stage I ain’t gonna do it, so we’ll have to see if I get better from this shit. I think I’m gonna get all the doctors together and bang their heads together and say, “Do it! No matter what it takes!” I’m taking all these pills and I don’t feel any better at all, so why am I taking them?
Have you ever found yourself saying, “It was better in the old days…”?
It was better in the old days, there’s no question about that. The thing is, you can argue about which old days. I don’t see anything happening that I wish I was young for. I mean, we had the TV on in the studio yesterday while we ate and there’s all these young bands on, and they were fucking rubbish! Every one of them was worse than the one before!
You once said you’d like to settle down and raise horses.
Yeah, one day. I can’t see it though, can you? You don’t get very loud horses. I love horses, but I’ve been away from that life for so long that I don’t know if I could even ride a horse. I guess you never lose that – it’s like a bike. Well, it’s not like a bike – it’s got four legs and a big head, and you don’t have to get underneath it and fix it with spanners!
If you had made more money in your career, would it have made you happier?
No, it would have made me richer. I find that people with a lot of money are much less happy than me. When I used to go to the Embassy Club in London, I met a lot of millionaires and you couldn’t get a smile out of them with a fucking crowbar! All they’re doing is worrying about money the whole fucking time, and the more you have, the more you seem to need to get. It becomes a sport, but that’s the death of the mind, looking after money all the time. It’s a terrible thing and it’s going to bring every country in the world down, including this one. I think this one might be next! The economy’s gone to fuck and they can’t control it. All they can do is outsource jobs to make themselves pay less and then nobody’s getting any work here. They’ve blown it. The American economy was the best in the world and they’ve blown it.
How do you measure happiness?
With a stick and a piece of string. What the fuck is happiness? You wanna be happy, then don’t expect it, don’t hang on for it.
What, then, is the meaning of life?
Life is like being in the army: long periods of terrible boredom interspersed with brief periods of incredible terror. You can be happy for a while, but don’t think that it will last, because it can’t last, given the statistics. Everything’s completely random. There is no plan.
Originally published in Classic Rock Presents Motörhead: Aftershock
