Motorhead’s Lemmy Kilmister: Vampire of the Sunset Strip
Motorhead’s Lemmy has long been one of my favorite rock and roll icons, and I was a kid who grew up on punk, not metal. He’s never really received the recognition he deserves as one of the hardest working musicians around so it’s great to see him profiled in Rolling Stone (you’ll need the print issue to read it, this is just a preview):
Lemmy Kilmister may be the most indestructible rocker alive. At 63 years old, he still spends nearly every day he’s not on tour swilling bourbon at West Hollywood’s legendary rocker hangout the Rainbow Bar & Grill — and his band still plays about 150 shows a year. Rolling Stone’s Mark Binelli put in some quality time at the Rainbow (and Kilmister’s nearby apartment, stocked with a mind-blowing array of WWII and Nazi memorabilia) for a profile of Motörhead’s singer/bassist in our new issue.
“The first time I ever saw Motörhead was on the Blizzard of Ozz tour,” Slash tells RS. “I swear to God, it was the loudest thing I ever heard. They EQ’d it in a way to rip the top of your fucking head off.” Ozzy Osbourne recalls that tour too: “[Lemmy] had a plaid bag with three books an a notepad. No change of clothes. His fucking rider was seven bottles of bourbon, eight bottles of vodka, two bottles of orange juice, and that’s fucking it!”
Unsurprisingly, Lemmy has taken a path that’s very unlike other rockers. Acknowledging his unusual journey, Kilmister tells RS, “I mean, I missed out on human relationships. But looking at relationships that I’ve seen along the way, I don’t think I’ve missed much.” Kilmister has let rock & roll be his guide since he was a kid learning Buddy Holly records in Wales, and in our profile Kilmister recounts joining (and leaving) legendary psych-rock band Hawkwind, attempting to teach Sid Vicious how to play the bass and the beginnings of Motörhead, which he conceived as a blend of Hawkwind, the MC5 and Little Richard.
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