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Ian 'Lemmy' Kilmister obituary
Motörhead frontman whose reputation as one of rock’s hell-raisers belied his keen intelligence and interest in social and political issues
Joel McIver
Tuesday 29 December 2015
Few musicians have walked the rebel’s walk with as much conviction as the Motörhead frontman Lemmy, who has died aged 70 of cancer. Despite his high-profile image as a hell-raiser, Lemmy’s influence as a musician and songwriter should not be underestimated.
His bass guitar style was unique, combining a heavily distorted tone with chords for a sound that more resembled rhythm guitar. The amphetamine-fuelled tempo of Motörhead’s songs in the 1970s made the band – in any of its many lineups – stand out from the more leisurely heavy-metal sound of the day, inspiring younger admirers such as Metallica. Despite the rawness of his music, Lemmy’s melodies were indebted to classic 1950s rock’n’rollers such as Little Richard, giving Motörhead a recognisable and popular sound. Indeed, Lemmy always insisted that Motörhead were a straight rock’n’roll band, while all around him critics and fans told him that he played heavy metal.
Lemmy expressed his views of the world with great venom and precision on albums such as Overkill (1979) and Iron Fist (1982), with audiences responding with enormous enthusiasm to songs such as Ace of Spades, Bomber and I Got Mine. While Motörhead’s songs were often a simple celebration of debauchery (Born to Raise Hell) or a general hatred of authority (Eat the Rich), he also addressed subjects such as war (Get Back in Line) and child abuse (Don’t Let Daddy Kiss Me). Never afraid of taking a stand about any issue that interested or irritated him, Lemmy committed his views on a variety of subjects for posterity in his 2002 autobiography, White Line Fever, and in an eponymous documentary in 2010.
Unusually in the field of heavy music, Lemmy was a thinker, debater and philosopher of great intuition and compassion. Interviewers were routinely surprised by Lemmy’s keen understanding of social and political issues, although he was far from optimistic about the progress of mankind. “The world’s going to end up with everybody sitting in their room punching keyboards,” he said. His antagonism towards religion, governments and indeed any established authority was clear.
Lemmy’s interest in history was at the root of his controversial habit of collecting Third Reich memorabilia. He recalled that visitors to his West Hollywood apartment would blanch at his huge assortment of Nazi daggers, flags, medals and uniforms, to which he would riposte: “Well, my black girlfriend doesn’t have any problems with it, so I don’t see why you should.” He said: “By collecting Nazi memorabilia, it doesn’t mean I’m a fascist, or a skinhead. I just liked the clobber. I’ve always liked a good uniform, and throughout history, it’s always been the bad guys who dressed the best: Napoleon, the Confederates, the Nazis.”
He was born Ian Kilmister in Stoke-on-Trent, on Christmas Eve 1945, later celebrating the date with typically dry humour in Motörhead’s song Capricorn. An only child, Lemmy lived a relatively solitary existence, first in Stoke-on-Trent and then in rural north Wales, where his nickname was bestowed upon him by locals. (Contrary to later rumours, he insisted it was not derived from the phrase, “Lend me a fiver”.) Lemmy’s father, an army chaplain, left the family when he was young: as a result, Lemmy was close to his mother and always enjoyed the company of women.
After leaving school he worked as a horse breeder and on a factory assembly line before taking up the guitar and heading to London in order to take advantage of the burgeoning counterculture. He imbibed copious quantities of LSD as a roadie for Jimi Hendrix in the late 1960s and early 70s, and then as a bass player with the space-rock band Hawkwind. He said that hallucinogens made him more tolerant. In the late 70s and 80s, Lemmy took amphetamines in order to battle exhaustion when Motörhead toured for months on end. Even when he restricted his drug use from the 1990s onwards, due to hypertension and diabetes, and underwent an operation in 2013 to implant a cardioverter-defibrillator into his chest, Lemmy continued to drink and smoke: “Dogged insolence in the face of mounting opposition to the contrary,” as he put it.
In 1975 Lemmy was fired from Hawkwind after being arrested for drug possession on the Canadian border while on tour. His response was to form Motörhead with the guitarist Larry Wallis and the drummer Lucas Fox, although his manager dissuaded him from his initial choice of Bastard as a band name. After some early attempts to gain a profile, Motörhead’s personnel stabilised as Lemmy with the guitarist “Fast” Eddie Clarke and drummer Phil “Philthy” Taylor, the lineup which many fans regard as Motörhead’s finest and which was certainly the band’s most commercially successful. Their golden era – 1979 to approximately 1983 – peaked with the live album No Sleep ’til Hammersmith, which reached No 1 in the UK.
The musicians backing Lemmy came and went in subsequent years, but he kept the band going through many difficult times. The current Motörhead lineup, featuring the guitarist Phil Campbell and the drummer Mikkey Dee, is its longest-serving to date, having toured and recorded without a break since 1995.
Lemmy never married, explaining on many occasions that the love of his life had been Susan Bennett, a girlfriend who had died aged 19 from a heroin overdose. He had a lifelong hatred of heroin, and contempt for ineffectual governmental attempts to curb its use. One of many surreal meetings of minds between Lemmy and the establishment came in 2005, when the Conservative politician William Graham invited him to address the Welsh Assembly on the subject of heroin. To Graham’s embarrassment, Lemmy recommended the drug’s total legalisation. “Lemmy certainly has an alternative solution to the one presently being tried,” said Graham afterwards.
He was a man bruised by his upbringing, but who loved his son, Paul, with whom he was reunited in middle age after decades of separation. He adored and respected women, but worked his way through hundreds of one-night stands (“I’ve had my share … and yours too!” he said). His music was abrasive, but his tastes were cultured: Monty Python and PG Wodehouse were lifelong companions. “I’ve had a whale of a time out of rock’n’roll,” he once said, “and rock’n’roll has had a whale of a time out of me. That’ll do.”
He is survived by his son.
• Lemmy (Ian Fraser Kilmister), rock singer, born 24 December 1945; died 28 December 2015
Motörhead frontman whose reputation as one of rock’s hell-raisers belied his keen intelligence and interest in social and political issues
Joel McIver
Tuesday 29 December 2015
Few musicians have walked the rebel’s walk with as much conviction as the Motörhead frontman Lemmy, who has died aged 70 of cancer. Despite his high-profile image as a hell-raiser, Lemmy’s influence as a musician and songwriter should not be underestimated.
His bass guitar style was unique, combining a heavily distorted tone with chords for a sound that more resembled rhythm guitar. The amphetamine-fuelled tempo of Motörhead’s songs in the 1970s made the band – in any of its many lineups – stand out from the more leisurely heavy-metal sound of the day, inspiring younger admirers such as Metallica. Despite the rawness of his music, Lemmy’s melodies were indebted to classic 1950s rock’n’rollers such as Little Richard, giving Motörhead a recognisable and popular sound. Indeed, Lemmy always insisted that Motörhead were a straight rock’n’roll band, while all around him critics and fans told him that he played heavy metal.
Lemmy expressed his views of the world with great venom and precision on albums such as Overkill (1979) and Iron Fist (1982), with audiences responding with enormous enthusiasm to songs such as Ace of Spades, Bomber and I Got Mine. While Motörhead’s songs were often a simple celebration of debauchery (Born to Raise Hell) or a general hatred of authority (Eat the Rich), he also addressed subjects such as war (Get Back in Line) and child abuse (Don’t Let Daddy Kiss Me). Never afraid of taking a stand about any issue that interested or irritated him, Lemmy committed his views on a variety of subjects for posterity in his 2002 autobiography, White Line Fever, and in an eponymous documentary in 2010.
Unusually in the field of heavy music, Lemmy was a thinker, debater and philosopher of great intuition and compassion. Interviewers were routinely surprised by Lemmy’s keen understanding of social and political issues, although he was far from optimistic about the progress of mankind. “The world’s going to end up with everybody sitting in their room punching keyboards,” he said. His antagonism towards religion, governments and indeed any established authority was clear.
Lemmy’s interest in history was at the root of his controversial habit of collecting Third Reich memorabilia. He recalled that visitors to his West Hollywood apartment would blanch at his huge assortment of Nazi daggers, flags, medals and uniforms, to which he would riposte: “Well, my black girlfriend doesn’t have any problems with it, so I don’t see why you should.” He said: “By collecting Nazi memorabilia, it doesn’t mean I’m a fascist, or a skinhead. I just liked the clobber. I’ve always liked a good uniform, and throughout history, it’s always been the bad guys who dressed the best: Napoleon, the Confederates, the Nazis.”
He was born Ian Kilmister in Stoke-on-Trent, on Christmas Eve 1945, later celebrating the date with typically dry humour in Motörhead’s song Capricorn. An only child, Lemmy lived a relatively solitary existence, first in Stoke-on-Trent and then in rural north Wales, where his nickname was bestowed upon him by locals. (Contrary to later rumours, he insisted it was not derived from the phrase, “Lend me a fiver”.) Lemmy’s father, an army chaplain, left the family when he was young: as a result, Lemmy was close to his mother and always enjoyed the company of women.
After leaving school he worked as a horse breeder and on a factory assembly line before taking up the guitar and heading to London in order to take advantage of the burgeoning counterculture. He imbibed copious quantities of LSD as a roadie for Jimi Hendrix in the late 1960s and early 70s, and then as a bass player with the space-rock band Hawkwind. He said that hallucinogens made him more tolerant. In the late 70s and 80s, Lemmy took amphetamines in order to battle exhaustion when Motörhead toured for months on end. Even when he restricted his drug use from the 1990s onwards, due to hypertension and diabetes, and underwent an operation in 2013 to implant a cardioverter-defibrillator into his chest, Lemmy continued to drink and smoke: “Dogged insolence in the face of mounting opposition to the contrary,” as he put it.
In 1975 Lemmy was fired from Hawkwind after being arrested for drug possession on the Canadian border while on tour. His response was to form Motörhead with the guitarist Larry Wallis and the drummer Lucas Fox, although his manager dissuaded him from his initial choice of Bastard as a band name. After some early attempts to gain a profile, Motörhead’s personnel stabilised as Lemmy with the guitarist “Fast” Eddie Clarke and drummer Phil “Philthy” Taylor, the lineup which many fans regard as Motörhead’s finest and which was certainly the band’s most commercially successful. Their golden era – 1979 to approximately 1983 – peaked with the live album No Sleep ’til Hammersmith, which reached No 1 in the UK.
The musicians backing Lemmy came and went in subsequent years, but he kept the band going through many difficult times. The current Motörhead lineup, featuring the guitarist Phil Campbell and the drummer Mikkey Dee, is its longest-serving to date, having toured and recorded without a break since 1995.
Lemmy never married, explaining on many occasions that the love of his life had been Susan Bennett, a girlfriend who had died aged 19 from a heroin overdose. He had a lifelong hatred of heroin, and contempt for ineffectual governmental attempts to curb its use. One of many surreal meetings of minds between Lemmy and the establishment came in 2005, when the Conservative politician William Graham invited him to address the Welsh Assembly on the subject of heroin. To Graham’s embarrassment, Lemmy recommended the drug’s total legalisation. “Lemmy certainly has an alternative solution to the one presently being tried,” said Graham afterwards.
He was a man bruised by his upbringing, but who loved his son, Paul, with whom he was reunited in middle age after decades of separation. He adored and respected women, but worked his way through hundreds of one-night stands (“I’ve had my share … and yours too!” he said). His music was abrasive, but his tastes were cultured: Monty Python and PG Wodehouse were lifelong companions. “I’ve had a whale of a time out of rock’n’roll,” he once said, “and rock’n’roll has had a whale of a time out of me. That’ll do.”
He is survived by his son.
• Lemmy (Ian Fraser Kilmister), rock singer, born 24 December 1945; died 28 December 2015
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Lemmy appreciation: a life lived hard, a death too soon
Ian ‘Lemmy’ Kilmister confounded categorisation although his hard partying ensured he lived up to the reputation of the heavy metal genre
Laina Dawes
Tuesday 29 December 2015
Some will praise him for his musical legacy, and others for his seemingly nihilistic behaviour, as at times his hard partying ways and insistence in living a dedicated life to the music threatened to overshadow his musicianship.
Others will note that Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister created music that while loud and heavy, was beyond musical categorisations.
Inspired by both Elvis and Little Richard, his insistence on performing music on his own terms was first apparent during his short stint as the front man for the space-proggy Hawkwind.
The band greatly benefitted from his unique bass tone, created because when he joined in 1970 he couldn’t play or sing. After being fired for drug use in 1975, he immediately started Bastard, a power trio that nourished Kilmister’s burgeoning passion for punk rock. Pleadings from his manager about the economic and social viability of the name eventually led him to re-christen his trio as Motörhead.
Ian ‘Lemmy’ Kilmister confounded categorisation although his hard partying ensured he lived up to the reputation of the heavy metal genre
Laina Dawes
Tuesday 29 December 2015
Some will praise him for his musical legacy, and others for his seemingly nihilistic behaviour, as at times his hard partying ways and insistence in living a dedicated life to the music threatened to overshadow his musicianship.
Others will note that Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister created music that while loud and heavy, was beyond musical categorisations.
Inspired by both Elvis and Little Richard, his insistence on performing music on his own terms was first apparent during his short stint as the front man for the space-proggy Hawkwind.
The band greatly benefitted from his unique bass tone, created because when he joined in 1970 he couldn’t play or sing. After being fired for drug use in 1975, he immediately started Bastard, a power trio that nourished Kilmister’s burgeoning passion for punk rock. Pleadings from his manager about the economic and social viability of the name eventually led him to re-christen his trio as Motörhead.
While the band has always been accepted within the heavy-metal scene, Kilmister described the foundation of the music as coming from another musical style. The abrasiveness and the urgency of Britain’s punk scene inspired him and punk rock’s attitude matched his outsider perspective.
“Basically, I wanted to be the MC5, playing fast, loud rock’n’roll,” he told SPIN in 2009. “We were never a metal band. Judas Priest and Black Sabbath were metal, but we were never like them.”
But the accessibility and Motörhead’s popularity among the new wave of British heavy metal fans, created a miscategorisation that would stay with the band for decades.
Kilmister’s tall, longhaired, unconventionally attractive biker look, coupled with his mullet chop sideburns, led him to be the poster child for the heavy metal scene.
Motorhead’s rise to fame in North America coincided with the glam metal craze of the mid-1980s and when he moved to Los Angeles in 1990 he took advantage of the bevy of women who flocked to his favourite bar, the legendary Rainbow Bar and Grill.
Whether solo or with his band, Kilmister often appeared in press photos with a scantily clad model, often in a sexually suggestive (if not downright vulgar) pose.
According to the 2010 documentary, Lemmy: 49% Motherf**ker, 51% Son of a Bitch, his penchant for female company didn’t lessen with age. In the film, he uses the services of a prostitute to keep him company at his apartment, a cramped, two-room unit (crammed with Nazi memorabilia) just off Los Angeles’s Sunset Strip.
Despite his tongue-in cheek lyrics in the single Killed By Death (If you squeeze my lizard / I’ll put my snake on you / I’m a romantic adventure / And I’m a reptile too), the never-married Kilmister discovered, mentored and collaborated with Girlschool, the all-female hard rock band, and was one of the very few men in the heavy metal/hard rock scene who was vocal about the mistreatment of women rock artists.
“All of these (female) bands, people treat them like second-class citizens, because they’re chicks,” he told Crypt Magazine in 2010. “There’s all this ‘show us your tits, and we’ll give you a gig’. And all of that shit. It’s really like, poor.”
His dedication to exploring other musical genres not only led him to form The Head Cat, an LA-Based rockabilly band, but also a rumour of a musical collaboration with Janet Jackson in 2005. There was also talk of a project that would have him working with longtime friend, Skin, the black female vocalist for Skunk Anansie which, if it were ever to materialise, would surprise fans of both bands.
In the month prior to his death, a visibly weak Kilmister received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2015 Bass Player Live! Event in California, where noted colleagues such as Metallica’s Robert Trujillo sang his praises as someone who not only was respected for his talent, but whose personality had inspired a legion of metal fans to pick up a bass guitar.
Up until his death, four days after his 70th birthday, he was preparing to head to Europe to kick off the band’s 40th anniversary tour. Despite some serious health concerns, including diabetes, Kilmister compromised with his doctor by switching from whiskey to vodka. But he refused to get off the road.
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