Posted on 11/16/2004 9:14:36 PM PST by crushkerry
When not tying up his girlfriends, drinking Jack Daniels or taking speed, Lemmy of Motörhead, wild man of rock, likes to read PG Wodehouse. He tells all to David Jenkins
From time to time comfortably clad, sensibly shod women of a certain age approach a 58-year-old man who's invariably dressed in skintight black jeans, white cowboy boots, a black shirt and an Iron Cross. His hair is dyed; so is theirs. His moustache, too, is dyed; they tend not to have one. He is Lemmy, the Jack Daniels-glugging fons et origo of Motörhead, the rock band that has deafened audiences and defined methedrine-fuelled metal music for nearly 30 years, and has, of late, become intensely fashionable again. They are among the 2,000 or so women who, Lemmy estimates, have rumpled his silken sheets.
Lemmy: 'I sound like a gorilla on Valium' "And," says Lemmy, his voice soft, slightly plodding and tinged with a northern accent, "they go, 'Remember me?' And it's unfortunate, but you never do. The ones you want to remember never show up."
Among those he does remember are Julie Wilson, a former Playboy model who, four years ago, told the tabloids about the three days of torrid carnality during which Lemmy - the son of a vicar - kept her tied to a bed. "That was funny, wasn't it?" the singer and bass player recalls. "Then my solicitor sent them a letter saying, 'We are appalled by this accusation. Miss Wilson was not tied to the bed: she was hanging from the ceiling.' They didn't reply. I think we out-outraged them."
That dulcet speaking voice of Lemmy's is a surprise to anyone who's heard his howling vocals: "I've got what's called a Low Tonal Register which, loosely translated, means I sound like a gorilla on Valium" - or, to be frank, rather like the secretary of a bowls club in Newton-Le-Willows.
And despite the studied fearsomeness of the band's own mythology - "If we moved in next to your house, your lawn would die," the great man once declared - Lemmy comes on a bit like a bowls club secretary, too. "You know what I'm drinking, love," he'll say to the waitress; and, shaking his head, "Eh, we were very optimistic in those days; it's certainly not like it is now"; and "there's nothing wrong with good manners. I mean, they're free; everybody should have them". But then he adds, "That's another thing people could do with now: a good hit of f-in' acid. It'd make them into better people, the way I'm sure it made me a better person." That's Lemmy: a stouthearted spokesman for the solid, traditional values of the 1960s.
He certainly seems a good egg, sitting here in Bertie's Bar at the Royal Garden Hotel, Kensington, his home from home in London when he's touring, as he does for seven months a year ("That's where I'm happiest, on the road, with a bloody suitcase full of bad socks.") Bertie's Bar is appropriate, too, for Lemmy, an ardent bibliophile, is an admirer of PG Wodehouse, and of the Wooster books in particular: Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit was the last one he re-read.
It's only 3pm, so there is at first some understandable eye-widening, and some yawning, and a mild judder of the hand before a revivifying jolt of Jack Daniels and Coke gets Lemmy's system going. But what a system: at one point, he says, when "I was being very over-enthusiastic about testing... things, I went to Harley Street, and the doctor took a sample of me blood, and he rang up and said, 'Don't let him give a blood transfusion!'"
Nonetheless, Lemmy looks very well indeed: the merest hint of a tint of a tummy; just a few wrinkles on the forehead; a tendency to wheeze when chuckling - not really surprising if, as on this occasion, you smoke 12 cigarettes during a 90-minute encounter. But once that JD hits the spot, there is about him a radiant glow: "Some kid once asked me if I got bad hangovers. I said, 'Man, to get hangovers you have to stop drinking.' So the problem doesn't really arise, you know."
Born Ian Kilmister in Stoke-on-Trent, Lemmy was abandoned by his father, the vicar, when he was three months old: "I met him when I was 25. Nasty little weasel. He was a concert pianist as well, apparently, but he gave it up because it was too precarious an existence.' His voice drips scorn. 'I'm not like him." Lemmy's mother - "a very strong woman" - remarried, and Lemmy was raised in north Wales, in part on a farm: "I wanted to be a farmer; actually, I wanted to be a horse-breeder. And I had the stallions... but then I heard Little Richard, and that was it."
Just as significantly, he went to a concert in a north Walian boondock: "I don't really admire musicianship, per se - as is obvious from my own playing. I don't want to watch four guys playing their instruments and looking at their shoes. But I do admire a good act. I want to see people from another planet. Know what I mean? I want to see people come down and speak to me for an hour and a half and go away again - in the magic spacecraft. And I went to see Gene Vincent, and he was definitely from another planet. And that's as it should be."
So Lemmy headed for Manchester and a spell with a dog-collared combo by the name of the Rockin' Vicars. In due course he moved to London; became an adornment of the funkier end of the hippie underground - "he'd just lie on the floor and take drugs," a coeval remembers, "I was just amazed by his capacity"; gave himself the name Lemmy in slurred recognition of his habit of asking, "Lend me a fiver till Friday"; joined Hawkwind, the philo-psychedelic ensemble whose biggest hit was Silver Machine; was fired for being busted at the Canadian border; and, in 1975, formed Motörhead.
Since then the band has made 26 or so albums, of which Bastards is a favourite. At one point recognised as the loudest band in the world, they have given the world such songs as Killed by Death, Die, You Bastard, I Am the Sword, and - their biggest hit - Ace of Spades. The name Motörhead is a reference to Lemmy's tendresse for speed: "If you're going to do drugs, you might as well do something that's utilitarian... I mean, we once did 53 gigs in 56 days; you've got to have something to go on."
What Lemmy violently disapproves of is heroin. He'd like Keith Richards to get a title, but "heroin f-in' ruined him for years. It's all very well, that funky Keith business, but how many people do you think he influenced? All those young guys, impressed by Keith, and doing it as well. You've got to take some kind of f-in' responsibility - Jesus!" (In fact, I've been told by several sources that, prior to Motörhead gigs in the States, Lemmy will tour the down-and-out areas, giving away free tickets. After the concerts, he'll give the bums a hot meal and tell them to take drink and drugs to their hearts' content - except for heroin.)
There was, of course, another force at play in Lemmy's choice of career: "I watched this TV programme, and there was Eddie Cochran, and Gene Vincent, and Cliff Richard. And they were surrounded by screaming women. And I thought: that's the job for me." Lemmy had stumbled on a way to make himself attractive; a way to get girls to look on his face and see past those famous warts... "They're not warts. They're moles. I did have warts, 19 of them, on me hands, and one of them went round this finger like a snake. And I was in the bathtub one day and they vanished."
Vanished? What does he mean?
"Just vanished. No scar. No nothing. And they weren't in the water. Weird, eh?"
Well, I say, the Lord moves in mysterious ways...
"F-in' damn sight too mysterious for me, I'll tell you that..." He reflects. "Actually, I'm a reverend. I'm a reverend of the Church of F-in' Universal Peace, or something. This guy got me ordained on the internet so I could marry him and his girlfriend. Then we were on tour so he had to get some other geezer to do it." He gazes, thoughtfully, into the middle distance. "Anyway, I'm not about to go marrying people: I think it would be a terrible thing to have on your conscience."
Certainly, marriage is a state that has eluded Lemmy - or, rather, Lemmy has eluded marriage. He currently has four girlfriends, two of them black ("black girls have a brilliant sense of humour"). Of the quartet he says, "The girls I've got, I love them all. It's balderdash to say you can't love several people." In his time, though, he's had a voodoo doll of himself thrust through his letter box, a legion of pins cushioned in its crotch. Had he treated one amour particularly badly?
"I never treat them badly. They just turn on me when I won't commit."
Lemmy has two and a half children. One, born when Lemmy was 17, and the mother 15, was adopted. The mother recently tracked her son down and discovered him to be the very, very straight pride and joy of very, very straight and elderly adoptive parents. According to Lemmy, the lad put his head in his hands and groaned when his mother told him who she was - "and she's a social worker now" - so he doesn't feel he has the right to inflict himself on his son's idyll. The second, Paul, lives in Los Angeles, and is much in demand as a record producer. The half, as Lemmy's told it, is the progeny of a Frenchwoman who slept with both Lemmy and his roadie two nights running: "I met him. He didn't look like me. But then he didn't look like Graham either. Maybe it was a third party. Under cover of darkness."
But despite this, he's never had a yearning for family life?
"Not if you have to marry someone,' he chuckles, a bewhiskered Sir Jasper de nos jours. 'And I never met a woman who can stop me looking at all the others. Mind you, when you get to a certain age, you're not as interested. I did my conquistador bit, and I don't feel the need to keep on repeating myself. But I still have a lust for living."
A lust for living that's shot through, nonetheless, with a stern moral code - after his own fashion. Once, for instance, in Los Angeles Lemmy saw a thug trying to drag a woman into a van: "And he had a f-in' great sawn-off. But I couldn't see that happen, could I? Couldn't see her disappear and then the next day in the paper read about a body found in a skip, you know? And what I did was pull the gun away and say, 'Leave her alone!' And all the time I'm thinking, 'I don't even fancy this chick, and he's going to blow my f-in' head off.' But you couldn't see her goin' like that."
That's authentic Lemmy: gallant, yet plain-speaking and true to himself. But does he, as I half-suspect, really sneak off stage, slip into a well-cut suit and spend the evening doing crochet? The wheezing chortle fights its way through Lemmy's luxuriant moustaches: "No, man. What you see is what you get. I'm on stage 24 hours a day."
But is he a prisoner of his image?
"Oh yeah," he says, beaming, lighting another Marlboro and sinking yet another Jack Daniels. "Oh yeah. But I chose it. Don't try to be famous all your life and then f-in' bitch when you are. I can never be anonymous - especially when I walk round looking like this; especially when I take so much trouble not to be anonymous, right? It means it's working. I mean, if you're a rock star, you should bloody well be a rock star, and stop f-in' around."
Ace Of Spades....
I actually like Motorhead, Hawkwind too. Lemmy is one of those guys you don't have to worry about what he is thinking.
Another Perfect Day is Motorheads best album!! ;-)
I remember Motorhead playin in Clevo in the 80's at the Variety Theater- so loud the bas relief plaster fell off the walls of the old theater. Hang tough, Lemmy.
Time to Play the Game.......
He must donate his liver to science.
ROTFL - Lemmy is still a walking laboratory.
Rock on Motorhead!!
/jasper
Who'd win in a fight Lemmy or God?
Trick question
LEMMY IS GOD
great interview
He's pretty cool. Takes his own responsibility and makes no apologies for who/what he is. Crazy, man !!!
I love Motorhead. I have a videotape of them called "Everything louder than everything else". Favorite quote: "There's never any F'n ashtrays"!
Outstanding interview of a metal giant. Thanks for posting.
Lemmy's hilarious and certainly an icon. I'll occasionally listen to some Motorhead but they're lower on the list than many other metal bands.
Hard to believe that he turns SIXTY this year!!
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