Photo by Chris Tuite
(Listen to an Apple Music playlist with Motörhead highlights here.)
Four days after turning 70, Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister died. The Motörhead frontman hadn’t been in good health—heart trouble, diabetes, and a steady diet of cigarettes, speed, and Jack Daniel’s kept him on the ropes in recent months. His band’s shows were cut short and sometimes canceled, and news stories were written about his decision to (gasp) avoid brown liquors. Still, he seemed impervious to death—he’d made it this far, after all. At his 70th birthday party, rock star friends joked about how he would outlive us all. Two days later, doctors found cancer in his brain and neck; two days after that, he was dead.
There’s an unfillable void left in his wake. The man was a true original. Nobody has Lemmy’s voice—that loosely melodic subterranean growl was perfectly suited to songs about chasing girls and getting fucked up night after night on the road. Even the way he positioned himself in front of a microphone—neck craned back, facing upwards—was unique. There are many great bassists in the world, but nobody has Lemmy’s precise combination of tone, technique, and power. With his sunglasses, handlebar mustache, and bullet belt, he sang from a position of rebellion and strength. Motörhead’s was biker gang, street fighting, and war music—you put it on when you want to feel like you’re in control.
Lemmy Kilmister was one of rock’n’roll’s all-time underdogs. “Born to lose, live to win,” read his Ace of Spades tattoo, and he clearly lived that mantra. He was expelled from school because he beat his headmaster with a cane. He got a job as a roadie for Hendrix where his duties mostly involved scoring drugs. An outcast, an outsider, and by no means a pretty boy (more like a greasy swampman), he partied hard. That’s the cocktail that made Motörhead such a vital band—their dirtbag lyrics were being sung by a real-life deviant party monster. He was the spirit animal encouraging you to live to win, to do whatever it takes to enjoy life, and to fight everyone who tries to interfere.
Born in England just after WWII, Lemmy grew up in a world without rock’n’roll. At around 10 years old, he heard the music that changed his life—Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, and Jerry Lee Lewis. These guys were bold, brazen, uncompromising characters—a loose template to work from later in life. He saw the Beatles at the Cavern Club, appreciating their musicianship, sense of humor, and scrappiness. (In his memoir, he describes watching John Lennon knock a guy out during a show one night.) Watching early Motörhead footage isn’t all that different from watching old clips of the Beatles bantering with each other—they were quick and funny and tough when necessary.
Lemmy always seemed slightly out of place as a member of the prog rock band Hawkwind, but his contributions were excellent. He wrote and sang the meditative, spare, and acoustic “The Watcher” from 1972’s Doremi Fasol Latido, and it’s shocking to contemplate its sound in terms of Lemmy’s later career. Eventually, he was dismissed from Hawkwind. As explained in the 2010 documentary Lemmy, his taste for speed while the rest of the band preferred psychedelics created a rift in communication. When he finally started a new band, he reworked a Hawkwind song he’d written called “Motörhead”, stripping it back from Hawkwind’s more arch arrangements to keep it fast, loud, and simple.
In the song “Overkill”, there’s a line about how it’s important to “feel it in your guts”—to let the music hit you in the spine and force you to move. It’s almost like a mission statement—they’re actively trying to whip you into a frenzy with this galloping, triumphant, and aggressive music. Like the Ramones, Motörhead had a formula. Their music served as a bridge between the metalheads and the punks, pushing kids to play their own music faster, heavier, and louder.
Lemmy had a penchant for Nazi memorabilia (he insisted that his collection came from a place of historical interest, not ideological fascination) and wrote leagues of scumbag lyrics, but Lemmy wasn’t merely loved—he was adored. The wrestler Triple H, who has three different entrance themes sung by Lemmy, told a story about how he once saw Slash “starstruck” in the presence of his hero. Fans would make pilgrimages from all over the world to Los Angeles’ Rainbow Bar on the off chance that he’d be playing the game machine at the end of the bar. People love telling Lemmy stories, and there are a lot of them out there.
I made a trip to Sorrento, Italy, and my Airbnb host and I were trying to find common ground across the language barrier, discussing our respective hometowns and taste in music. After a couple of false starts, she asked me, “Do you like Motörhead?” I was not expecting this question. Excited, I said yes. With a huge, sincere smile on her face, she said, “I love Lemmy.”