Lemmy Kilmister – A Life In Music

Lemmy, the rock legend, may have left this world for another, but he leaves behind a legacy that not many can replicate. From his days as a roadie for Jimi Hendrix, to his time in Hawkwind and eventually finding his feet with Motörhead, the man was the true definition of a rockstar. Here, Associate Editor (Reviews) Nick Ruskell gives us a glimpse of the icon through the years…

“Until [I met Lemmy], I’d never met what I’d call a real rock’n’roll hero before,” is how Dave Grohl recalls his first meeting with Motörhead’s frontman, on the website for his Probot project. “Fuck Elvis and Keith Richards – Lemmy’s the king of rock’n’roll. He told me he never considered Motörhead a metal band, he was quite adamant. Lemmy’s a fucking legend. No-one else comes close.”

When you have no less a person than the Foo Fighters mainman saying these things about you, they’re probably true. It’s hard to think of a time when Lemmy’s status as the bloke who lived harder, faster and louder than any other rockstar wasn’t an obvious truth.

But the story of Lemmy began before even that, on Christmas Eve, 1945, when he was born in Stoke-on-Trent. After his parents divorced, he went to live with his mother, eventually settling in North Wales with her and her new partner. It was here, at school, that the young Ian Fraser Kilmister noticed two things: girls, and how lads with guitars seemed to attract them.

Sensing an opportunity to get his end away, Lemmy began playing the guitar, in the hope of meeting girls. But his interest in music was also developing as much as his desire to sow his wild oats. For post-World War II youth, the arrival of rock’n’roll – spearheaded by Elvis Presley and his devilish shaking hips – was as much a symbol of freedom as it was a new style of music. This was rebellion on a massive scale, a chance to revel in the giddy thrill of life, sex and wild abandon in a way their parents never had. Lemmy wanted in, and after seeing a pre-fame Beatles at Liverpool’s Cavern Club, his mind was made up.

His first band to have any success were The Rockin’ Vickers, whom he joined in 1965 as guitarist. Though their name was nowhere near as household as their contemporaries in The Beatles, The Kinks or The Rolling Stones, they released a series of average-performing pop singles, the best being It’s Alright, a cover of The Who’s original, on which his guitar playing is a foreshadowing of the hard, stabby sounds of his bass in years to come.

It didn’t last, though, and in ’67, after the demise of the band, Lemmy got a job working as a roadie for Jimi Hendrix. As you might have read in our cover story in K!1582 back in August, Lem began taking acid during this time. But then, everyone was. And when Hendrix is buying, you don’t say no…

“Everyone was on acid, man!” he laughed. “Everybody was tripping. We’d hang out with Pink Floyd, ’cause they always had some. But everyone was fucked up! It was normal.”

So began a relationship with drugs and life on the road that would last until 2015. Acid, coke, speed, grass, booze, uppers, downers… Lemmy took it all. But in all that time, he still kept one thing out of his system.

“I didn’t get into heroin, which was the strange thing, ’cause I’d have become addicted immediately, y’know?” he mused. “I didn’t fall into that trap, I was a speed freak. I wanted to be up and at ’em. And that was what I did. I was up and at ’em and that was that. I sped through the downs and that was about it.”

With sex and drugs taken care of, Lem continued to rock’n’roll, first with psych outfit Sam Gopal, then in 1972 with space-rock legends Hawkwind, whom he got into partly because of a love of speed he shared with some of his future bandmates. It was a gig that would change everything.

Having never picked up a bass before, Lemmy was chucked in at the deep end. He swam by using chords instead of standard single notes, making him louder and fatter, perfect for Hawkwind’s infamous all-night, LSD and speed-fuelled gigs (check out their mind-bending Space Ritual live album for proof). But the problems also started early on. Lemmy wasn’t the singer, and when he sang on the single Silver Machine, something unexpected occurred.

“That really pissed them off because I wasn’t the singer, but I sang on that and it got to Number One!” he chuckled in August, 2015. Yet that wasn’t the only thing pissing off his bandmates. Eventually, while on tour in Canada in 1975, a drugs/law problem saw Lemmy banged up for five days on a possession charge (eventually dropped, on the fortuitous technicality that he’d been nicked for possession of cocaine, which actually turned out to be speed). Less fortuitously, he was fired from the band.

Motörhead were Lemmy’s first try at having his own band. He didn’t expect it to last, considering how everything else had gone. But despite being louder than war, looking like the Hell’s Angels’ more dangerous brothers, and once claiming that if they moved in next door to you, your lawn would die, they were a hit.

If you wanted a Fucking Loud Band, Motörhead were your men. Their appearance on comedy show The Young Ones in 1984 was perfect for the show’s mix of everything loud, ludicrous and loveable, while Lemmy’s appearance in spoof metal documentary Bad News, describing the band as “The worst kind of pimply shit”, is legendary. And as we’ve already seen, Motörhead’s music was the gunpowder that launched the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, thrash, the second wave of punk and beyond. Lemmy was one of the most influential musicians on the planet.

As the ’80s went on, Motörhead’s fortunes became less and less grand (“Except in Germany,” noted Lemmy. “Everyone forgot us in England, but we toured Germany loads and made loads of money!”), but when Metallica took their Black Album to America’s stadia in the early ’90s, they fell over themselves to ask Motörhead to support. At Lemmy’s 50th birthday in 1995, they celebrated by playing a set as ’Head cover band The Lemmys. Naturally, they all wore fake ’taches.

In the years that followed, the ‘Head began to find themselves on the up once more, and they sat firmly at the legends table. But whether up or down, fortunate or down on his luck, one thing remained – Lemmy was a rock’n’roll bastard. Dave Grohl’s never been more right about anything.

Words: Nick Ruskell

Don’t forget to pick up the issue of Kerrang! out January 6, to read our touching tribute to the legend that is Lemmy Kilmister.