R.I.P Lemmy (Motorhead)

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#46

Post by caneparo »

Bottom post of the previous page:

From my personal point of view I wouldn't rate Hawkwind as a prog rock band; they are closer to the "canterbury sound" which was already gone by 1975.
I am a great fan of Motorhead and Soft Machine as well, especially in their jazz/fusion incarnations (1970 onward), but I couldn't really imagine Lemmy in that band :D
Lemmy was one of a kind he was a pure ROCKER
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#47

Post by erwin greven »

Brian Redman: "Mr. Fangio, how do you come so fast?" "More throttle, less brakes...."
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#48

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Curious story about Hawkwind and early Motörhead, their first album recording was scrapped, because it, well, sucked, and on that album, drummer Lucas Fox played, but was replaced by Philthy, who in the usual fashion managed to hurt his hand, at the time they re-recorded the drums. His knuckles accidentally landed in someone's face. You know how it is... Well, due to this setback, one track remained unchanged drumwise, and that incidentally happened to be one of the Hawkwind-songs, that made the transition. "Lost Johnny" (the other two were "The Watcher" and of course, "Motörhead"). When they did their REAL eponymous debut album, the tracks had all been redone, and Lucas Fox' contribution became irrelevant. The scrapped album did appear years later, when they had had a breakthrough, after the false start, and the somewhat weak 1st "official" album. Weak in terms of production, which wasn't really a major improvement on the first one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Parole

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mot%C3%B6rhead_(album)



I don't suppose Lemmy ever explained exactly what those lyrics really meant. They appear to be about drug abuse and "red-light" city life (possibly a companion piece of the later song "Metropolis" from the Overkill-album).

In any case, it's nothing to do with Michael Moorcock, or sci-fi/fantasy concepts, but the lyrics are rather good.

https://books.google.dk/books?id=GLyU7P ... ny&f=false

There appears to be personal references of various kinds, but noone seems to know what to make of it.
You only get a single chance
The rules are very plain
The truth is well concealed inside
The details of the game

You can hear it coming
You can see it from afar
It's pale and it flickers
Like a faded movie star

And up there in the castle
They're trying to make us scream
By sticking thumb tacks in her flesh
And canceling the dream

Can you find the Valium?
Can you bring it soon?
Lost Johnny's out there
Baying at the Moon

The time has come for you to choose
You'd better get it right
Berlin girls with sharp white teeth
Are waiting in the night

But you oughta really get some
It surely can't be hard
There's always trouble waiting
When you leave your own back yard

And underneath the city
The alligators sing
About how the puppets cannot dance
Since someone cut the strings

Run and get the morphine
For God's sake make it brief
Lost Johnny's out there
Looking for relief

Now Simon looks so evil
And you know he really tries
But every time he makes a play
That vital number dies

And Sally buys her underwear
From a store where no one goes
She makes it big in photographs
On the strength of what she shows

Then here inside the waiting room
The radio still screams
And we're all taking Tuenol
To murder our young dreams

Run and fetch your credit card
Try to make it quick
Lost Johnny's out there
Trying to turn a trick
When you listen to Lemmy talk on video about his former girlfriend, and a mate of his, dying from heroin addiction, back in 1973, it strikes one how artistically restrained and personal those lyrics really are. He found her dead in the bath, and witnessed the death of the other, as he was given a bad dose of contaminated heroin. Cut up with something Lemmy described as rat poison. That's as close as it gets, reality-wise. When compared to the much much weaker (in terms of lyrics) "Stay Clean", also off of their groundbreaking album Overkill, it really becomes clear what the experience with hard drugs back then meant to him. Can't say I feel like I'm over-analyzing that. Thunderingly ironic, then, that he was fired from Hawkwind for doing speed, when everyone else did LSD, 5 or more years out of vogue. Maybe, and very likely, his friend's fate was the inspiration for the Lost Johnny-song, which IMO is a very powerful one, indeed. And undoubtedly better in the Hawkwind-version. It's the sort of awful thing that changes one's view on life, as I'm sure it did, Lemmy's.

But doom and gloom aside, I have several versions of the On Parole-album, and it doesn't appear to be on youtube, so I can grab that, if anybody cares to hear it in its "original" (i.e. Motörhead) form, with Lucas Fox on drums, as Philthy couldn't finish the session with a busted hand.

When they played their 10-year anniversary Birthday Party-gig, they did a very special thing. They got everyone who'd been in the band to go onstage, including guest stars such as Wendy O. Williams and Phil Lynott - another heroin victim - who had played with Brian Robertson in the fantastic rock band Thin Lizzy.

This is the whole gig:



The wiki article on Lucas Fox states he appeared for the song Motörhead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas_Fox

You can however see, throughout, at for instance 28:25 and 32:29 (curly brown hair, no mustache, white striped wifebeater), that it's actually Pete Gill. During the break at 54:43, they bring on an extra drum kit, and then both he and Philthy play, for the grand finale. Where's Lucas Fox, then. Well, I believe he appears at 56:24-56:30, holding a guitar, shouting "Motörhead", right up in front of the camera, to the left of Phil Campbell.

And, finally, 54:45-54:50: "I don't know... I don't think Larry Wallis has made it..."

He didn't. Probably because he didn't feel he held any stock with this band, who got rid of him, and scrapped his record, and possibly because he didn't like Lemmy, and wasn't interested in standing there pointlessly, like some sort of prat.

The music business is and has always been a funny, old sort of game.
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#49

Post by Jesper Hvid »



The generic sort of musical and lyrical composition that Lemmy got away with, times and times over.

You cannot say Motörhead, unless you say Lem, Philthy, and "Fast" Eddie.

They were Motörhead, the real disgusting deal. MY Motörhead.
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#50

Post by Jesper Hvid »

What was really the difference between the early '80s spoof "Headgirl" collaboration between Motörhead and Girlschool, and the later infamous Wendy O. Williams-recordings, that destroyed the best Motörhead line-up.



These weren't "E.P.s", BTW, they were three-track 45-rpm 7" singles. I own both of these.

So, what's the explanation. Here's the suggestions, based on [YT] interviews. Believe me, I've seen them all.

1) Lemmy was pussy mad, and only did the WOW stuff in order to get laid. Which he definitely did. Bangingly.

2) "Fast" Eddie couldn't work with WOW, because she was a completely talentless shock rock phenomenon.

3) Philthy Animal Taylor dislocated his jaw, licking out Girlschool, and then broke his neck between WOW's thighs.

4) Lemmy decided he was the #1 boss of Motörhead, and called the shots, in all possible senses of the word.

My vote?

EL NUMERO CUATRO.

But don't get me wrong, I regard Girlschool as a solid rock band, and Wendy as a great piece of feminism. It's all about Lemmy.
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#51

Post by Jesper Hvid »

Jesper Hvid wrote:

The generic sort of musical and lyrical composition that Lemmy got away with, times and times over.

You cannot say Motörhead, unless you say Lem, Philthy, and "Fast" Eddie.

They were Motörhead, the real disgusting deal. MY Motörhead.


See?

We are getting nearer and nearer, all the time. I wonder if you know what I'm talking about. Hint: Freud.
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#52

Post by Jesper Hvid »

Well, simply:



The "answer to life's mystery", according to Lem - in the end a disillusioned and hedonistic man. Rock'n'Roll ain't Sex and Death. Elvis, James Dean and Marilyn Monroe were weak. There's more to life than posing, binging and instinctively propagating. Lemmy was wrong. Dio was right. Life is mostly a pointless exercise, unless you somehow locate the key to your soul, and unlock the gates to the inward existence. The only Universe of which you'll ever be Emperor.

The main difference in attitude is this:

ImageImage

The philosophical difference went far beyond Lemmy's human faculties, and possibly also his intellectual ones.

He had very strong moments of clear-sightedness, and that brought out the best in him.

But he was too earthbound. Too addicted to the pleasures of the four basic senses.

I think there just might be a little bit more to life and Rock'n'Roll than that.

Goodbye, Lemmy. "Bite the bullet". I'm leaving you now, like a passing acquaintance. Does that ring a bell?

But I'll damn sure remember Motörhead.
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#53

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How Motörhead sounded with Larry Wallis on vox. Apparently a current minor hit with the pervo-fetichist [YT] crowd... The Mentors really couldn't have done worse that this, a-har-har...

1:10-1:17 I could totally swear he sounds exactly like Johnny Rotten, there, for a moment. Way before The Sex Pistols, mind.

And from the wiki page on this fabulous disaster of an album:
In his autobiography White Line Fever, Lemmy recalls of drummer Taylor tried singing "City Kids" but "he sounded like two cats being stapled together."
What a magnificent piece of cool yet utter irrelevance, if that tape still exists. What I meant earlier on, about how much of a tribute in itself, to them and their crazy lives, if those dirt-covered treasures were ever to emerge.

Apparently, there really was a lower common denominator to their act, even at the very beginning.

Motörhead's Overkill inspired Metallica - so maybe Vibrator inspired Battery... :haha: :haha: :haha:
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#54

Post by erwin greven »

burial Lemmy.
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#55

Post by Andy »

Yeah. I watched the service.
Found it quite nice with all the shared anecdotes there.
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Godspeed Lemmy
:bye:
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#56

Post by Jesper Hvid »

Why were they burying Lemmy from a church? Are you fucking kidding me. They might just as well have pissed on his grave, afterwards, while they were at it.

I saw it, too, and frankly, I'm glad Lemmy didn't. It was so totally not in his spirit, that the speakers cannot have known him, very well, at all. Not understood a single word he tried to say. Has anyone really understood a fucking thing of what he tried to say? It was just a rockstars' union sendoff sort of thing. In Hollywood, where that sort of thing belongs. I find it disgustingly offensive. Max. so.

And then the stuff which noone talks about, can't they just forgive him, and fucking say so, instead of apologizing on his behalf, for abandoning his own flesh and blood, several times in his life.

Because it simply cannot be apologized for, it can only be forgiven. Barely, and only by the people who were abandoned. Paul Inder thinks he won the "dad lottery", are you shitting me. He didn't even hold a ticket. Stop fucking lying, you prat. What an insult to everyone all over the world, who works every day to keep their families together. But mr. rockstar who never gave a toss about me, was just a smashing dad. I'm going to fucking puke.

Here's these cunts now saying how great a dad he was, and he never thought for a moment about them until late in his life, when he didn't have the energy to knock up any more of these tarts.

Fuck this, it's rotten to the bone, everyone at that funeral can fuck off to hell for all I care.

Yuck.
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#57

Post by PTRACER »

I was in a metal pub last night with Sam Totman from Dragonforce and a couple of girls and we were the only ones having a good fucking time, because everyone else was watching the funeral on TV and were miserable as fuck. Imagine it. A metal bar, on a Saturday night, full of depressed blokes with beards and long hair and spiked jackets. The atmosphere sucked. That's NOT WHAT LEMMY WOULD HAVE WANTED.
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#58

Post by erwin greven »

I was yesterday in a metal pub in the netherlands. We had a good drink on Lemmy, even when the funeral was on tv. It was a good one.
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#59

Post by Jesper Hvid »

PTRACER wrote:I was in a metal pub last night with Sam Totman from Dragonforce and a couple of girls and we were the only ones having a good fucking time, because everyone else was watching the funeral on TV and were miserable as fuck. Imagine it. A metal bar, on a Saturday night, full of depressed blokes with beards and long hair and spiked jackets. The atmosphere sucked. That's NOT WHAT LEMMY WOULD HAVE WANTED.
Certainly not, and the ceremony struck me as being petty bourgeois. Not Lem. It's not the brown-noseing, arselicking moron scummy shit like Grohl, Ulrich, or Osbourne. Who had fuck-all to say, anyway.

It's the simple fact they put Lemmy Kilmister in a church. The greatest possible insult to the man's memory.

Lemmy would have wanted a right rave-up, with bourbon, beer, speed, cocaine, Harley-Davidsons, sluts, tarts, groupies, strippers, cigarettes, firearms, noise, joking, laughter, fisticuffs, vandalism, one-armed bandits (oddly enough), and all possible things Rock'n'Roll.

But no.

What they did, see, they put Mr. Lemmy Kilmister in a church.
Eaton was a firm believer in a joyous life after death. He was convinced that most cemeteries were "unsightly, depressing stoneyards" and pledged to create one that would reflect his optimistic, Christian beliefs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_La ... (Glendale)

That's not distasteful, that's downright evil. Horrid. But maybe that's what you get, when you spend your waning years with the cocksuckers of the rock industry.
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#60

Post by Jesper Hvid »

Well, enough necrophelia, back to the band,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mot%C3%B6rhead#Cover_art

These names didn't catch on, it was like Vic Rattlehead (Megadeth) or Doris (Metallica), they didn't enter Metal "pop culture" in the same manner as the iconic onstage Iron Maiden-dummy "Eddie" did. But it was the same sort of thing. An "extra" band member, a mascot. A trade mark, in a sense.

But, unlike the others, the Joe Petagno-designed "Snaggletooth" actually made it into a song.



This is from No Remorse, which wasn't technically a standard studio album release. They did a fat compilation including new stuff, and Snaggletooth ended up on that. A fast-paced song, like an outtake from Iron Fist, just a damn good one. One of four, but I don't think they did an E.P. with just those on it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Remors ... ead_album)
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#61

Post by Jesper Hvid »

In his autobiography White Line Fever, Lemmy recalls of drummer Taylor tried singing "City Kids" but "he sounded like two cats being stapled together."
Lemmy never lied:


Philthy Animal Taylor wrote:...and a useless cunt, that's me!
:haha:
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