"I think I just played the same song the whole night." Thin Lizzy legend Brian Robertson on his controversial time in Motorhead, and why Lemmy asked him to leave

While he is celebrated worldwide among rock fans for being a vital component of Thin Lizzy's classic line-up, Brian 'Robbo' Robertson's time in Motorhead proved to be more polarising.

The guitarist stayed with the band for just 18 months, and only played on one studio album, 1983's Another Perfect Day, but Lemmy later remembered the period "as the lowest point in our career".

In a new career-spanning interview in the new issue of Classic Rock magazine, Robertson admits that he was never a fan of the band, and was happy to be asked to leave when the time came.

Robertson, now 70, joined Motorhead in the middle of an American tour in the spring of 1982, flying to the US to replace 'Fast' Eddie Clarke.

"I knew it was going to be rough when I started trying to listen to the material on the flight, because I couldn’t distinguish one track from another," he recalls, admitting that the only Motorhead song he knew beforehand was Ace Of Spades. "I said to Phil [Taylor, drummer] on the side of the stage, What the fuck are we going to do? I can’t distinguish between the songs. I though, Right, I’ll just get on there and do it... I think I just played the same song the whole night."

Though Robertson says that he enjoyed his time in Motorhead, and that he "didn't really clash" with Lemmy, he was ready to move on when he was asked to leave the band in November 1983.

"Things weren’t going well," he remembers. "During that last European tour, we weren’t selling tickets. So they came up with this idea: that somebody had to get ill, so we could pull the tour and get the insurance. I was the one picked. So I stayed up for two nights with the road crew in my room. They got this doctor – who the promoter had in his pocket – to come in and sign a certificate for the insurance company.

I was obviously fucked up at that point. We came back to London, and [Lemmy and Philthy] came down and said, 'We should part company'. I was totally okay with it, because I was looking out for other things. We never really fell out."

Asked how being a member of Motorhead compared to being in Thin Lizzy, Robertson says, "Total opposite."

"They didn’t like rehearsing, didn’t like soundcheck, didn’t like being in the studio much," he says. "We liked to party [in Lizzy], but Motorhead was non-stop."

You can read the interview in full in the new issue of Classic Rock, which will go on sale tomorrow, March 3.