“I opened my guitar case and nearly fainted because I thought there was a human hand in there. It turned out, it was half a pig’s head”: Girlschool look back on their wild life with Mötorhead

Motörhead and Girlschool were a heavy metal double act for the ages. After Lemmy Kilmister was wowed by the all-female band’s attitude and chops, Motörhead invited Girlschool out on tour during 1979’s Overkill cycle, before recording the collaborative EP St Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1981. The tandem worked wonders, reaching number five in the UK charts before being certified Silver, and it made Girlschool a mainstream force in the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal. 10 years after Lemmy passed away, singer/guitarist Kim McAuliffe reflects on life alongside one of the hardest-living bands in rock’n’roll history.

The original trio of Motörhead were pure rock’n’roll, from start to finish. Nobody else could have written a song like Overkill. They haven’t! It’s the kind of stuff that makes your hair stand up on end. Metropolis was one of my favourites to hear live. There’ll never be another band like Motörhead.

Kelly Johnson, Girlschool’s late lead guitarist, was living at my mum and dad’s because it was too far for her to keep coming and going between rehearsals. And one day she comes in with this single somebody had given her, it was Motörhead’s first 10”. We took one look at the picture and went, ‘What the hell is that? Look at the state of them!’ And that was before we even heard the bloody racket they made.

We were great friends with a band called UK Subs and my boyfriend Tim was sharing a house with their drummer, Pete Davies, and the bassist of this band called Fingerprints. It was a whole house of musicians. Anyway, we’d recorded a single in this dingy basement in Soho that stank called Take It All Away and on the way out, we ran into legendary DJ John Peel. He said, ‘What you lot been up to?’ When we told him, he said he’d play our single. Sure enough, he did, and Lemmy heard it. So one day he called up and offered us that Overkill tour.

Girlschool had been going for two years before we linked up with Motörhead on the Overkill tour. We basically stole my mum and dad’s Bedford van and drove it into the ground, going all around these little clubs in Europe. We had a right old laugh, but I don’t think we’d do any of that now, having the Marshall cabs laid out at the back with our sleeping bags top to toe and hallucinating little green men because you’d been driving so long.

Touring with Motörhead was one of the most special times ever. We had such a laugh, we didn’t know them at all at first and obviously they looked all tough, but they were really pussycats. We were quite young, so these little girls watching these blokes drink Special Brew and do god knows what. We were only getting paid a pound a day, so we had to choose whether or not we spent that on a pint or a sandwich. Beer usually won out! But then the lads would come in with big crates of beer to look after us.

We got on like a house on fire. They’d always come wish us luck before we went on, because it was our first time on big stages. One night Lemmy lingers around a bit longer than normal, so we’re like, ‘That’s a bit odd.’ I opened my guitar case and nearly fainted because I thought there was a human hand in there. It turned out, it was half a pig’s head. Cheers Lem, I’d got brains all over my guitar!

We did our first single with Vic Maile and he ended up doing our 1980 debut album Demolition, which turned out moderately successful. Motörhead heard it, and decided they wanted Vic too – they nicked our bloody producer! Vic and Lemmy got on like a house on fire because they both loved old rock’n’roll songs, so they came up with this idea of doing a collaboration between Girlschool and Motörhead, do these songs for Valentine’s day that would could massacre and call it the St Valentine’s Day Massacre. Vic suggested Please Don’t Touch by Johnny Kidd & The Pirates, and Lemmy already loved that song, so it was perfect.

In the studio… tantrums all over! Eddie Clarke chucked his guitar, Phil Taylor had broke his neck so couldn’t even shake a tambourine. We had a good laugh though and ended up on Top Of The Pops with Phil dancing. Wherever we went, we shared everything, so we shared a minibus to White City to record Top Of The Pops. They were so excited, like little kids. We went to this massive big warehouse where they do props and everything: ‘Look at all this stuff!’ We all went into this olde-worlde pub straight after and these little old blokes were staring at us like we were aliens.