"I invented Motörhead, and it’s Motörhead as long as I’m in it": At home with Lemmy - a classic interview

Author’s note: I’ve lost count of how many times I interviewed Lemmy, but I clearly remember I never had anything less than a great time. The first was in 1981 in Los Angeles, when Motörhead were on a US tour, opening for Blizzard Of Ozz. The last was also in LA, in 2006, at the legendary Rainbow Bar & Grill on Sunset Boulevard.

Since Lemmy moved to America, that rock bar, a short walk up the hill from his modest flat, had become his home from home. The waitresses all adored him. The bar owners cemented a black marble Motörhead slab on the floor just outside the entrance, like a one-band metal Hall Of Fame. Lemmy said drily that it reminded him of what made him leave Britain: being trodden on by the UK music business.

Except for his newly acquired set of shiny white American teeth, Lemmy never changed at all. Whenever I met him he was open, honest, smart, well-read, with the driest sense of humour. Tough as nails but a gentleman, who rocked like no one but could tear up over a Beatles song or Ann Wilson of Heart singing a ballad. (I’ve seen him do both.)

This is one of my favourite Lemmy interviews. It took place in 1986 at his rented house in London, shortly before the release of Motörhead’s new album Orgasmatron. Dressed head to toe in black, smoking Marlboros, a drink in his hand, he was the perfect host. Lemmy was a one-off. I miss him. I know I’m not alone in feeling that way.

It’s old, it’s dark, it hides a thousand evils behind a façade of normality and curtains drawn against the sun. On a boring West London street, it could be any old house. But it’s not, it’s Motörhouse, home of the one and only Lemmy, and his Motörhead sidekick Würzel, the Lone Ranger and Tonto of metal. A nasty little boy picking his nose watches me walk up the front path.

When you look closely the house is all sorts of abandoned-looking. Lemmy once said that if he moved in next door to you the lawn would die – and it looks like the neighbour has too. As I’m thinking of the possibilities - rent him out for the week and solve those bad-neighbour blues; install him in number 8 Downing Street and watch Maggie Thatcher wither away - he appears at the door in a haze of smoke, with a Carlsberg in his hand. The little boy makes a perfect scale model of the World Cup football with the contents of his nose. Lemmy leads me inside…

It’s civilised. Cosy, smoky and dark. Two downstairs rooms knocked into one with an arch in the middle where Lemmy’s model aeroplanes (crafted with love painted with precision) dingle-dangle on little wires. A fireplace crowded with Motörobilia and scary masks and World War II stuff. A far wall plastered with a collage of photos of Samantha Fox, the topless, E-cupped model and, loosely, singer that Lemmy was going to work with (there’s a photo of the spaghetti-eating contest where they met).

Out back there’s a garden with more weeds and concrete than The Smiths. By the sofa, various props of civilised life: whisky, beer, cigarettes, videos, TV set, and a nice cup of tea that Lemmy just made. And in the corner there’s a parking meter. Why’s there a parking meter in the front room, Lemmy?

“Well,” says Lemmy (he says ‘well’ just like he’d sing ‘well’ - Lauren Bacall to the nth degree soaked in Jack Daniels and strained through a filter tip) “I was coming out of the Embassy Club one night with this bird and it was just there. You know? I thought: ‘That would look good in the garden’, so I picked it up and hailed a taxi. And she’s going: ‘No! You’ll get arrested!’ And I said: ‘Well I’m not going to fucking walk home with it.’ So I hailed a taxi and I said: ‘Do you mind if I bring this in?’ And he said: ‘No mate, I don’t give a fuck.’”

This being one of those jovial, world-famous London Black Cab drivers who mow down old ladies, small cars and bicycles with a smile. So here it is, in the front room. Should be out front making them some money, I suggest. “We’ve tried it, but you can’t get the money out,” Lemmy shrugs.

Würzel comes in, plonks himself down on the sofa, lights up a cigarette.

Which of them’s the domesticated one, I ask, complimenting Lemmy on the nice cup of tea.

“Thank you. It was a tea bag. You just put it in a cup of water. He usually makes it. I wouldn’t say he was domesticated though.”

Würzel has just discovered that his cup of tea is full of washing-up liquid. Lemmy recommends milk. Do they do their own laundry?

“No,” says Lemmy. “We used to have a machine but it broke down. It’s difficult when you’re bachelors.”

But this is a man who’s learned to rise above difficulties in the past three years. It was that long ago that two thirds of his band - ‘Philthy’ Phil Taylor and cleaner-behind-the-ears ‘Robbo’ Robertson - disappeared, and a legal battle with Bronze Records began that prevented the new line-up of Lemmy, Würzel, Pete Gill and Phil Campbell from putting out a record.

While the label was releasing compilations and the press was writing obituaries, Motörhead was out on the road - Australia! Hungary! Scandinavia! The United States! Tromso! Tromso? (“Even the people who live there have never heard of Tromso. It’s past the fucking Arctic Circle!”) - honing itself into the tightest pack of Metal animals this side of Metalzoic, and climaxing in a 10th Anniversary show at London’s Hammersmith Odeon, where Motörheadmen past and present joined on stage in a rousing chorus of the song that started it all: Motörhead.

Lemmy wrote the song for Hawkwind before they kicked him out after five albums, in ’75, and sang it with Pink Fairies Larry Wallis and Lucas Fox when he put together his new band. “The worst band in the world,” as the critics called it. Soon came Eddie Clarke and Philthy - the line-up we scholars call ‘classic Motörhead’ - and two of the best metal albums ever to scream through speakers: Overkill and Ace Of Spades.

And then Eddie left in disgust over Wendy O Williams, Robbo came in for one album - Another Perfect Day; it wasn’t - and what with poor sales and poorer record company, it looked like Motörhead was done for, over, flat on its back and deader than the neighbour’s lawn.

Except to Lemmy Kilmister. “Motörhead is my livelihood, it’s what I enjoy doing. If I gave it up, what would I have left? Fuck all.” So he didn’t, and as soon as he could he put out an album. Orgasmatron is it, and it’s brilliant. Lemmy thinks so too: “The best one so far, don’t you think?”

I’m rather partial to Ace Of Spades, I say.

“It’s certainly the best thing we’ve done since Ace Of Spades,” says Lemmy. “And this is definitely the best Motörhead.”

Other than the obvious difference to all but the innumerate, how’s this Motörhead different, I ask.

“Enthusiasm,” says Lemmy. “That’s the main difference. It’s such a relief to be with three geezers who want to be in the band, in Motörhead, as a thing - all together, us against the world. The others got really jaded about the whole thing. You had to put a pistol up their arses to get them to play any of the old songs. Even Motörhead, for fuck’s sake.

"If I went to see Little Richard and he didn’t play Long Tall Sally I’d be round the fucking dressing room banging on his door! This lot really want to do this, and I’ve never had that sort of thing in a band since Eddie left, really. And it wasn’t there for quite a while before he left either.”

The dispute between Lem and Ed over Ms Sticky Nipples is public domain by now. But why did Philthy leave? He seemed as permanent as a wart.

“I don’t know, really,” says Lemmy. “I don’t think he knows. It’s just that it wasn’t going that well with Brian Robertson, so we fired him and got these other two guys in, and on the day we got them Phil announced he was leaving.

“He was just fed up and he didn’t think it was going to get any better. I think he was just depressed about being in a heavy metal band and never getting any honour from his fellow musicians. Do you know what I mean? Because you never get the respect side of it.

"You might be a fantastic player, but nobody expects you to know how to play. A lot of metal bands have got musicians that are a damn sight better than what you’d get in a jazz fusion band, but you don’t get any fucking Grammy awards, no accolades.”

Does that bother him, I ask?

“No, it doesn’t bother me because I’m a cobbled-together bass player anyway. I’m not supposed to be playing bass, I play rhythm guitar, so I’d never be in a poll for bass players. And I’m not exactly Maria Callas either. So I get voted in because I’m a character.”

Certainly is. Even trendy Sounds and NME writers wear Motörhead T-shirts. (“It’s because,” says wise Lemmy, “they get them for nothing.”)

But not Brian Robertson. Uh-huh. You always got the impression, seeing him with Motörhead, that the band was a bad smell under his daintily freckled nose.

“I know what you mean,” says Lemmy. “The fans felt the same way. He was always more like ‘I’m Brian Robertson, guest guitarist’ instead of one of the band. But he was a good player. I think Another Perfect Day was a good album.”

Würzel nods, so I ask him was he a Motörhead fan before joining? Lemmy looks up from his whisky.

“I had two albums,” Würzel beams like a schoolboy who knows the right answer, “Ace Of Spades and No Sleep. And then I heard Another Perfect Day. A friend brought it round and said: ‘Have you heard the new Motörhead?’ and put it on and I really liked it. But it didn’t do very well, did it?”

“Certainly didn’t,” growls Lemmy.

So much so that a lot of people - actually, let’s be honest, it was just a couple of people in the press - rang the death knell for Motörhead.

“I don’t even listen to them,” says Lemmy. “I’ve always been determined that they don’t tell me when it’s finished, I do. They all thought I was going to have a new name for it too, lay Motörhead to rest, cross its arms over its chest, shut its eyes and leave.

"Well I invented Motörhead, it’s Motörhead as long as I’m in it. And I’m not going to start again, going around the boozers, I’m too old for all that shit. Can you imagine? The Red Lion in Brentford again? A fucking nightmare,” he chokes.

Lemmy’s 47, Würzel’s 37, a baby. Where did he find him?

“Under a rock,” grins Lemmy. It’s a wicked grin. “I was looking for a toad and I had to make do with him.”

Did he kiss him and turn him into Prince?

“More likely to turn into a lay-by,” Lemmy says wittily, making one of many references to Würzel’s manly prowess. (“Don’t mention the measurements or that’ll be it,” whispers Lemmy, “the rest of us will never get a bird in America next time. Let’s just say when he gets undressed, people throw buns at it.”)

What were you doing before Motörhead, I ask Würzel?

“What, musically?”

Unless there’s something else you want to tell us. Feel free.

“Well I was on the roof, killing moss, spraying chemicals on it, and in the evening I was playing with this band called Bastard.”

“Which is a coincidence,” says Lemmy, “because that was what I was going to call Motörhead originally!”

“The reason I called it Bastard was because I was sick of it up to here with all these wallies,” Würzel goes on, “so I thought I’ll call it what I want and just get on with it. Which is what Lemmy wanted to do too.”

Describe the new band in sentences of two syllables, I demand of Lemmy as Würzel goes to make more tea.

“Würzel’s sneaky and cheerful, Phil Campbell’s young and horny, and Pete Gill is old and flash, like me,” says Lemmy, “but in a different way.”

Does he feel his age?

“You find you have a reserve that clicks in, that goes into overdrive when you need it,” says Lemmy.

Does he eat salads? “No.” Has he ever eaten a salad? “Yes.” And that’s why he doesn’t eat salads? “Yes.”

“Who wants to eat rabbit food all the time?” asks Würzel, who’s come back with the tea.

“Rabbits,” say Lemmy and I in two-part harmony.

There’s harmonies on the new album - on one track anyway, Ain’t My Crime - only not like those sorts of harmonies. Lemmy tells me it’s a love song. Personal experience?

“Of course. If you go through life and you don’t get married or you don’t die, it’s going to happen.”

Is Lemmy a confirmed bachelor?

“Well you get set in your ways,” Lemmy says as he shifts onto the floor. “Because if somebody says to you: ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t live like that’, you say ‘Fuck you!’ and that’s another one gone, isn’t it? So I’m not expecting to live with anybody really seriously again. Except Würzel, and that really is serious. I find him walking backwards and forwards in the kitchen singing to himself at all hours, or telling himself jokes under his breath and laughing at them.”

Tell me about first love, I ask, whimsically. “Tender, romantic and hopeless,” Lemmy answers, just as whimsically. “Actually, on the first one you’re so shit-scared that nothing happens, ever. All these macho stories you get in the locker room, it’s bullshit, it never happens.”

“Mine,” Würzel’s gone all misty-eyed, “was called Ethel Taylor.”

“Ethel?” perks up Lemmy. “Mine was Kathleen Sweeny. A little slip of a Catholic girl…”

And he’s got a lot to say about religion. Always has had - the evil and hypocrisy of the whole damned thing’s been as permanent a fixture with Motörhead as the fetching horned death’s head logo. Lemmy’s favourite song on the album is the title one, Orgasmatron. “The lyrics, really they’re very personal. Maybe people will hear them and not think I’m just a mindless gorilla in a leather jacket.”

‘Two thousand years of misery, of torture in my name/Hypocrisy made paramount, paranoia the law/My name is religion, sadistic sacred whore.’ That’s some of them.

“That’s how I feel about the whole fucking thing,” steams Lemmy, detailing wars, inquisitions, poverty, the Vatican, the Pope’s withered balls and Catholic girls in-the-club for God. His mother was a Catholic. His father left them - and he was a Protestant vicar, for Christ’s sake! The Reverend Sydney Kilmister. She had to write to the Pope to get permission to remarry.

His father, Lemmy says, is a hypocrite. No love lost, they didn’t even contact each other until Lemmy was grown up and already starting a band. They met up, dad asked forgiveness, said he’d do anything to make it up to Lem, who asked for some money - not much, just enough to get the band off the ground. Dad said no, he didn’t think it was right for his son. He’d send him to school to be an accountant instead. Lemmy said ‘Fuck off’ and the rest is heavy metal history.

So that’s where the doom and gloom comes from?

“I think that’s my star sign,” says Lemmy, who’s a Capricorn, who are all (except for Jesus) miserable sods. But, “I’m on the cusp of Sagittarius, so that’s what my outgoing bit is. I’ve got the depression and the doom and the pessimism of a Capricorn but I laugh at it because of the Sagittarius bit. I think it’s funny!

"The oncoming death of the universe as practised by the human race is inevitable and I just think it’s fucking hilarious! They put a new war on the telly every night and I just fall all over the floor - here they go again!”

“It’s true what you say about cusps,” pipes up Würzel, who is a Libra and Scorpio mix.

But do they mix a good cocktail?

“Yes I do, actually,” says Lemmy. “I invented a cocktail called the Motörheadbanger. I made it out of the entire band and crew’s duty frees on the French tour last year. It’s really quite interesting, and quite expensive to get it mixed up, but you only need two and the world ceases to exist.”

Do they throw many parties at the Motörhouse, I ask?

“No, I just go to everybody else’s. It’s a much more sensible idea. Why have a dog and bark yourself?”

Why indeed. Are they kind to animals, by the way?

“Yes, actually, but we don’t have any.”

What’s the best party Lemmy’s ever ligged at?

“You’ve got me there. I’ve got a ton of parties to go back through, because I do like a good lig. Couldn’t have been one of ours because I avoid ours like the plague. I always tend to grab the girl and leg it out of the side door before the party starts. I’d sooner be in the crowd than at the fucking party. But the Stones one was a good one - at the Roof Gardens, after they did the 100 Club.”

That was where Eric Clapton came up to him, tapped him on the shoulder and said: “Are you Lemmy? I’ve always wanted to meet you”. And Clapton was one of his fucking heroes, even if it was Hank B Marvin he impersonated (complete with all the moves; he did it during Hawkwind and they weren’t amused) in front of the mirror. That was also the party where Würzel, seeing a ravishing blonde across the room, confided to Ronnie Wood: “Cor, I wouldn’t mind having a shot at that after the party,” and Ron pointed out that it was Mrs Wood.

Lemmy says he goes to these ligs for the beer and the girls, not the music. If AC/DC or ZZ Top were in town, that’s a different matter; he’d be there every night. Contrary to popular belief he doesn’t just listen to heavy metal.

“I’m just as likely to listen to Mike Oldfield or Joni Mitchell. People think when we go home we listen to fucking Judas Priest albums. They must think you’re a moron! I listen to a lot of rock’n’roll, Chuck Berry, Little Richard.”

His latest pick-to-click, if you care to know, is Zodiac Mindwarp, admiring any man who can sing about his willy for an hour a night. Then again, he rates Samantha Fox as a singer… Which musician would they least like to spend a night with.

“Divine,” says Lemmy.

“I thought you were going to say Paul Weller,” says Würzel.

“Easier to stand than Divine,” says Lemmy.

Talk turns to Raquel Welch for some reason, who is Lemmy’s Ideal Woman, and then we’re going to watch videos, so I’ve only got one more thing to ask: is there anything about the Real Lemmy that would shock and surprise your fans?

“Yes,” says Lemmy. “I’m a woman.”