From sex to excess, it’s a miracle that Lemmy has even survived to share his rock knowledge, so listen up and listen hard!
NAKED AMBITION
What first got me into music was the women. I found that you could get women to take their clothes off quicker if you had a guitar. I’m really shallow!
FITTING IN
I was the new guy in Hawkwind. Getting on with people was fine. You take it as you find it. You have to do your best. I mean, there was people in Hawkwind that were impossible to get on with because they didn’t want to get on with anybody. There was a very strict hierarchy really. Dave [Brock] was the boss: as long as he was alright, you were alright.
IN THE SCENE
Being in a musical scene is good because you’ve got a captive audience. When Motörhead started the Pistols started and The Damned were playing. I remember talking to Brian James in the Earl Of Lonsdale on Portobello Road – he was walking about in a long overcoat, scruffy as fuck like; no bread, nothing – he said, ‘I’ve just started this band called The Damned’, and I was saying good luck and all that, patted him on the back and bought him a drink. Everybody was fuckin’ broke. That’s why they invented all them gimmicks with their clothes, because they were broke – it didn’t cost nothing to buy a few safety pins.
ANY PR IS GOOD PR
Sounds magazine called Motörhead “the best worst band in the world”. It’s perfect isn’t it? At least we were the best at something! We got in the polls, we got our name in the paper; it’s fuckin’ perfect! And like, everybody wants to see the worst band in the world, don’t they, to see if they’re really that bad.
DON’T SHUN THE SPOTLIGHT
‘Ace Of Spades’ changed things for us, made us famous. You have to get used to it, but don’t take long – I mean, if you try all your life to be famous, don’t fuckin’ bitch when you are.
YOU CAN BE REPLACED
I’m not bothered if someone in the band leaves. As long as I’m there it’s gonna sound roughly the same, because of the vocals. We can always find somebody else – especially nowadays; there’s ten thousand of the fuckers out there just waiting on a break. We didn’t even advertise after Brian [Robertson] left – we just said in the Melody Maker that he’d left, and we had like two hundred takers the week after.
PLEASE YOUR CROWD
You know you’ve done a good show when the audience goes, ‘Hooray’ at the end. If you leave them screaming, then that’s great, and touch wood, we’ve always done that so far.
DRUGS AND WORK DON’T MIX
The first sign of drugs impeding on your job is if you can’t do your gig, and that’s also the last sign. If you can’t do your show because you’re fucked up then you’re overdoing it. Because the only thing that matters is the show. If you’re doing some kind of stimulant to the mind or body, it has to make the show better, otherwise you can fuckin’ kick it in the head because it’s going to lose you your job, and there’s two hundred waiting to take your place when you do. motörhead’s new live dvd, around the wörld vol. 1, is out now.
Interview by Simon Harper
