Dedicated to the birthday and death date of the “coolest rock and roll scumbag” of our fucking world! Lemmy was born on December 24, 1945 in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England. He left for Valhalla on December 28, 2015 in Los Angeles (age 70).
He was born on Christmas Eve, 1945. Symbolic, isn’t it? To the accompaniment of sirens and the rumble of ruins, a baby appeared in a world scorched by war, who was to become the human embodiment of cacophony. Not a quiet savior in a manger, but a future croaking demon in a greasy leather jacket who came not to atone for sins, but to bathe in them with gusto. Ian Fraser Kilmister. Lemmy. From Stoke-on-Trent, where rain mixes with coal dust and dreams are crushed by brick walls, straight into the larynx to spit out a hoarse scream and a hellish chord. He died as he lived, uncomfortably, leaving behind the stench of tobacco, beer, honesty, and the very “white line fever” that was shamefully hushed up in Russian, calling it all cheerful “On autopilot.” He was this autopilot, a self—destruct programmed rocket that flew for seventy years, against all laws of physics and medicine, until it ran out of fuel from amphetamines, Jack Daniels and female delights. The cause of death is heart failure. And cancer in the ass. It’s not a medical term, it’s poetry. Lemmy’s poetry. The organ, on which he always found adventures, finally gave voice and responded with a metastatic symphony.
He didn’t just witness the birth of rock and roll. He was his by-product, his dark, smelly, necessary underside. While the Beatles were singing about “love that can be taken and given,” Lemmy realized with punk clarity what kind of love he wanted to take and give at the age of fourteen, at riding school. Women. Everything. Indiscriminately, but with an avid, almost scientific interest. Music? To hell with the music. Forty percent — yes, the love of three chords. But at sixty, it’s an elementary calculation: the guitar is the most effective dildo that lures females. My stepfather’s garage became his first temple, the altar was an old sofa, and the rituals were sweaty and fast.
The dialogue with the stepfather, who breaks into the mystery, is the anthem of the generation: “Are you aware that you’re lying on top of this girl?” “Yes, I know I’m lying on top of that girl, motherfucker! How did you know?” It’s brilliant.
And off it went. Hawkwind, space rock, but even here it’s mundane, like a peasant. The powder is in my pocket at the Canadian border. I didn’t hide it. What for? Honesty is his signature style, his alternative super cool. The first prison. Not “concepts”, but boredom and the smell of shit. He was bought out not out of brotherly love, but because there was no one to put to the microphone at the concert. Cynicism as a currency. Motörhead is not a band, but a diagnosis. “The most disgusting band in history. Your lawn will wither if we live next door.” This is not self—loathing, it is a proud declaration of sovereignty over the world of shit. They became his soundtrack: overloaded, rolling into hell like a steam train without brakes…
Stories? They are not told. They breathe in them like the stale air of a basement. Finland, 1979. A dressing room van that stinks of desperation and socks. The royal decision: burn or drown? The sinking van is a land art act dedicated to the Baltic Sea. Prison. Deportation. The police looked at them as if they were biological weapons. And he saw UFOs somewhere in the middle between psychedelics and everyday life. A bright pink balloon over the moors. I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t gasping. Stated:
“People don’t know how to do that. A plate, then. They didn’t even notice us, the carrion. They probably flew to America while we were getting into the car.”
Surrealism is not the lot of intellectuals. This is the everyday life of someone who didn’t sleep for three days, and then got sucked off three times backstage at Stafford, which is why he collapsed, passing out from an overabundance of bliss. Isn’t this enlightenment? Sex is like pure physics, the most fun activity of those “when you’re not laughing.”
His code was simple: not to be an asshole (but to be a real asshole). One day, the band was invited to play a live show on Clyde Radio in Glasgow. But the soundman did not arrive… They didn’t start shouting and brawling. They unwound the fire hose, shoved it into the radio studio, turned on the faucet, and took off. Hydroanarchy. Has the promoter in Norway brought it to a boiling point? Don’t hit. It’s boring. Shackle, undress and pour cheese sauce with mayonnaise on the stage. Gastronomic torture. The policeman was outraged by the sauce, not the violence. That’s the whole philosophy: cruelty should be farcical, with an absurd flavor.
He was a magnet for legends. Lars Ulrich (not yet Metallica’s drummer at the time), a young Danish fanatic who puked with happiness and booze in a Hollywood suite. Lemmy didn’t cover him with a blanket. He photographed this mess and pasted it into the booklet of the album “Orgasmatron”. The highest form of ordination. You’re a dirty spot in mythology, congratulations. He himself was constantly teetering on the brink of everyday extinction: he fell asleep with a cigarette, blew up the mattress, and almost cut off his hand with a razor thrown on stage. He lived like a madman, literally and figuratively. After the cut, the hand turned black, not “blue,” but blackened, “black, with redness.” He almost lost his fingers, but he lay down and walked on. Metal is not about guitars. Metal is in your veins, in your will, in your freaking determination to stand up to the end, even when it’s gushing out of you, “like a pump.”
Lemmy has always been a link. Between heavy metal and punk. Between speed and blues. One can’t help but recall “Walk the Walk… Talk the Talk” is the second studio album by the American supergroup The Head Cat. It was recorded in four days in June 2010 in Hollywood. It was an injection of pure, undiluted street hell in the entryway of modern music. Eleven years of silence (after the album “Lemmy, Slim Jim & Danny B”), and here they are — three old demons who came out of the cracks in the asphalt of rockabilly to spit in the face of time with a raucous ode to “American Beat”. Lemmy is not growling here, but rather scratching at the seams of Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran songs with a rusty razor. This is not nostalgia — this is an exhumation performed without anesthesia, where Robert Johnson’s Crossroads smells not of mysticism, but of gasoline, and cheap whiskey.
It die. Not in battle, not on stage. From cancer in the ass and heart failure. A heart that had pumped an ocean of trash and was still beating with the metronomic precision of a bass riff finally said, “Enough is enough.” He lived to 70, having laughed at all the doctors, moralists and teetotallers. He proved that it is possible to build eternity on three pillars.: speed, rock, and unwavering loyalty to his own ugliness.
Actually, Lemmy wasn’t there. Lemmy is. He is the same white path to infinity, the smell of gasoline and semen after a fight, the wheeze from a broken amplifier that is still humming in silence. He is the eternal “Ace of Spades”. Squeeze it to the bottom, smoke, love women, be honest bastards and don’t let the lawn in front of your house be green. He left, leaving all the autopilots of the world to themselves. The world is empty. He became quieter. And, damn, more boring.
A wish from the author in the finale:
Let them always play at full power in your personal hell, the bass runs over the edge, the glass is never empty, and the angels (if there are any) are all with a cigarette in their teeth and a MOTÖRHEAD tattoo on their ass. Happy birthday, you old devil. And happy death day. After all, it’s the same thing in this case.
