Lemmy’s closeness to death has been a bit of a running joke for what seems like years now, but I don’t think anyone was expecting the hammer to drop quite so suddenly. So long, Lemmy the Lurch; Farewell, Count Motorhead.

In the period since he took on the mantle of mainstream celebrity’s token unredeemed rock n’ roll bad-ass a few decades ago, Lemmy memories and anecdotes have come thick and fast, too numerous to catalogue – easily enough to keep a pub conversation going through several full nights.

From the ‘Kerrang’ cutting we used to have pinned to the wall in my old student house, in which Lemmy’s thoughts on various armed conflicts (“that was a fucking horrible war that was… brother against brother..”) were crow-barred into a sidebar fluff piece under the title ‘Lemmy’s Top Five Wars’, to sitting in a balcony seat watching Motorhead play in the early ‘00s, noticing that I could see straight into the backstage area, and being astonished / faintly disgusted to observe various young ladies hanging around in obvious ‘groupie’ attire – in the twenty first century! In bloody Leicester! With a band of pensionable age on stage! (They were great that night incidentally, but then you knew that.) Throw in your own stories in the comments box below, should you wish, and we’ll keep it rolling.

Whatever qualms you may have about Lemmy’s lifestyle though, and regardless of how much he gratuitously traded on his ‘image’ over the years, he always managed to come across as immensely likeable – a straight talking, non-fool suffering sort of good bloke… if admittedly one who in an alternate world might have found his niche issuing commands from the top of a tank turret rather than from in front of a amp stack.

It was great fun to hear him presenting a one-off show on Radio 6 last year. He didn’t say much, but every strained declaration of “this is a bloody good rock n’ roll track” or “I always liked this bloke” carried more gravitas than hours of blather from most other DJs.

Enough of all that bollocks though, let’s get to the music – that being an approach I feel he may have appreciated, however efficiently reheated tales of boozing and whoring might have paid the bills.

I’m afraid I can’t contribute much here with regards to Ian ‘Lemmy’ Kilmister’s early days playing in various hard-touring r’n’b and freakbeat bands through the ‘60s. My sole knowledge of The Rockin’ Vickers comes via the track ‘It’s Alright’ – a bare-faced rip off of The Who’s ‘The Kid’s Are Alright’ enlivened by a sloppy, rough-ass sound and a truly weird/wild guitar solo - and I’ve never got around to checking out Sam Gopal, with whom he played for a while.

As such, our default entry-point here is Hawkwind, for whom Mr Kilmister – in collaboration with drummer Simon King - acted as a veritable rocket up the arse, propelling them from their early hippie meanderings toward the genre-defining space-rock juggernaut heard on ‘Doremi Fasol Latido’ and ‘Space Ritual’, and thus essentially keeping the engine running on some of my favourite music of all time, his presence as indefatigable bass-monster and last-man-standing pace setter (not to mention vocalist on the odd chart-topping number the others couldn’t be bothered to sing themselves) providing an absolutely vital part of the legend of one of the greatest bands of all-time.

Lemmy’s assorted anecdotes and gripes about life in Hawkwind were priceless (look up the excellent BBC Hawkwind doc on Youtube for further details), but before we get distracted by those, let’s move on to Motorhead, formed of course in ’75 under the # 1 all-time best ever band name ‘Bastard’ (and only changed after somebody pointed out that they’d never get on Top of the Pops with a band called that).

Having previously only been familiar with the hits, I’ve actually been playing a bit of catch up with this unfeasibly mighty yet ever-eccentric band in the past year or so, and have been enjoying it a great deal. As a great aficionado of mid-‘70s British freak-rock, you’ll be unsurprised to hear that my favourite era is probably their embryonic period with Larry Wallis (ex-Pink Fairies and of future ‘Police Car’ non-fame) on guitar.

At this stage, with Larry also contributing quite a bit on the singing and song-writing front, Motorhead seem to have been torn two ways between the mechanized heavy metal blitzkrieg for which they would shortly become known, and what I can only describe as a kind of ragged, socially conscious, anthemic pub-rock, as exemplified on Wallis-penned tracks like ‘City Kids’ (b-side of their blinding first single; pick up a copy if you ever see one), ‘On Parole’, and the anti-music biz tirade ‘Fools’.

Fascinating though this period may be (it’s best heard on the early recordings comp ‘On Parole’, and crosses over somewhat into their superb self-titled debut LP), Lemmy’s unbeatable mission statement of seeking to produce “very basic music: loud, fast, city, raucous, arrogant, paranoid, speedfreak rock n roll ... it will be so loud that if we move in next door to you, your lawn will die” speaks for itself, as does the subsequent Motorhead catalogue, following the departure of both Larry and drummer Lucas Fox in ’76, and their replacement with ‘Fast’ Eddie Clarke and the late ‘Philthy’ Phil Taylor shortly thereafter.

At this point, my fancy wordage grinds to a halt, because what can you say about Motorhead that a quick spin of ‘No Sleep Til Hammersmith’ won’t render blindingly obvious?

Thus far, my trek through the back catalogue hasn’t got much beyond ‘Iron Fist’ in ’82, but if ever a band was critic-proof, well…. here ya go. How many times is it worth restating that Motorhead rock to about the furthest extent that human endurance allows, that all three members of the aforementioned ‘classic’ line up are fucking legends, and that, from this point onwards, Ian Fraser Kilmister, whatever kind of human being he may have been at heart, took to his ‘Lemmy’ persona like a pilot with a freshly waxed moustache jumping into the cockpit of a Spitfire, never looking back.

Skip forward forty years, and earlier this month, I happened to follow a link on XRRF to this gossip piece, reporting that Lemmy was sick of rude journalists asking him when he was going to kick the bucket:

"I'm sick of the fucking, 'Are you going to die?' line of questioning. It's getting really old, that question. I’m alright. I'm going out there and doing my best.

I have good days and bad days but mostly I've been doing alright. The last tour of the States was very good."

[...]

"I don't do regrets, regrets are pointless. It's too late for regrets. You've already done it, haven't you? You've lived your life. No point wishing you could change it.

I'm pretty happy with the way things have turned out. I like to think I've brought a lot of joy to a lot of people all over the world. I'm true to myself and I'm straight with people.

Death is an inevitability, isn't it? You become more aware of that when you get to my age. I don't worry about it. I'm ready for it. When I go, I want to go doing what I do best. If I died tomorrow, I couldn't complain. It's been good."

It’s hard to argue with any of that. I’ll skip further superlatives, but he was a fucking good rock n’ roller, and he gave a huge amount to those of us who love this music. I’m glad he made 70. R.I.P.

Labels: deathblog, Hawkwind, Lemmy, Motorhead