Lemmy Kilmister: Metal Guru

The following article was posted on www.telegraph.co.uk on Lemmy Kilmister from Motorhead:

From time to time comfortably clad, sensibly shod women of a certain age approach a 58-year-old man who's invariably dressed in skintight black jeans, white cowboy boots, a black shirt and an Iron Cross. His hair is dyed; so is theirs. His moustache, too, is dyed; they tend not to have one. He is Lemmy, the Jack Daniels-glugging fons et origo of Motörhead, the rock band that has deafened audiences and defined methedrine-fuelled metal music for nearly 30 years, and has, of late, become intensely fashionable again. They are among the 2,000 or so women who, Lemmy estimates, have rumpled his silken sheets

Born Ian Kilmister in Stoke-on-Trent, Lemmy was abandoned by his father, the vicar, when he was three months old: "I met him when I was 25. Nasty little weasel. He was a concert pianist as well, apparently, but he gave it up because it was too precarious an existence.' His voice drips scorn. 'I'm not like him." Lemmy's mother - "a very strong woman" - remarried, and Lemmy was raised in north Wales, in part on a farm: "I wanted to be a farmer; actually, I wanted to be a horse-breeder. And I had the stallions... but then I heard Little Richard, and that was it."

Just as significantly, he went to a concert in a north Walian boondock: "I don't really admire musicianship, per se - as is obvious from my own playing. I don't want to watch four guys playing their instruments and looking at their shoes. But I do admire a good act. I want to see people from another planet. Know what I mean? I want to see people come down and speak to me for an hour and a half and go away again - in the magic spacecraft. And I went to see Gene Vincent, and he was definitely from another planet. And that's as it should be."

Since then the band has made 26 or so albums, of which "Bastards" is a favourite. At one point recognised as the loudest band in the world, they have given the world such songs as "Killed by Death," 'Die, You Bastard," "I Am the Sword," and - their biggest hit - "Ace of Spades." The name Motörhead is a reference to Lemmy's tendresse for speed: "If you're going to do drugs, you might as well do something that's utilitarian... I mean, we once did 53 gigs in 56 days; you've got to have something to go on."

Read the full article at Telegraph Newspaper Online.

Source: Telegraph Newspaper Online