King of Speed

Lemmy in Hawkwind

This is the third post in my entry on what I consider to be the “holy trinity” of influential musicians from the 60’s:  Twink, Steve Peregrin Took, and today’s subject, Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister.  Like the first two entries, Lemmy’s history covers the length and breadth of 60’s music, 70’s, music, and beyond.  Unlike the first two, however, Lemmy did indeed go on to find much-deserved commercial success, when he formed his own band, Motorhead, in 1975. 

Lemmy was there at the beginning of everything:  he reputedly saw the Beatles at the Cavern Club in 1961 and was inspired to learn the guitar by playing along to their songs.  He played with a number of 60’s bands before joining the Rockin’ Vickers in 1965.  The Rockin’ Vickers were a standard mid-60’s English band that mixed R&B, mod, and Merseybeat stylings but unfortunately never developed any original material of their own (all of their singles are covers of songs by other bands).  They did, however, achieve a level of fame for supposedly being the first English band to tour Yugoslavia. 

Lemmy eventually left the Vickers in ’67 and moved to London, where he shared an apartment with Noel Redding, soon to achieve fame as bassist for the Jimi Hendrix Experience.  Lemmy became a roadie for Hendrix for a while and continued to play with other musicians, joining Sam Gopal and Opal Butterfly for gigs.  In 1971 he and drummer Simon King (whom he’d played with in Opal Butterfly) were asked to join the seminal space rock outfit Hawkwind.  Their addition to that group produced some of its most memorable recorded work,  including the albums Doremi Fasol Latido, the live album Space Ritual, and Warrior at the Edge of Time.  Lemmy in particular wrote the songs “The Watcher” and “Motorhead” (which he would use as the title of his subsequent band) and sang the lead vocal for “Silver Machine”, the band’s biggest hit. 

In 1975 Lemmy was arrested in Canada and sacked from the band.  He then formed his own band, initially named Bastard, with former Pink Fairy Larry Wallis and future Warsaw Pakt drummer Lucas Fox.   Lemmy soon changed their name to Motorhead and recorded a demo with this lineup that was rejected by his record company, though it was later released as “On Parole” after Motorhead’s subsequent success.  This album is worth a listen as it is an interesting transitional document between the acid/space/psychedelic/hard/pub rock Ladbroke Grove roots of the principles and the hyper-sonic metal roar  for which Motorhead would become justifiably famous.  The songs range widely across the sonic landscape of the 70’s:  “On Parole” is a rollicking blues/hard rock number that sounds like early Aerosmith;  “Vibrator” sounds like pub rock and early punk; “Iron Horse/Born to Lose” is a slow bluesy number that almost sounds like Savoy Brown or even Wishbone Ash.  Two Hawkwind songs, “Motorhead” and “The Watcher” are covered as is a Pink Fairies number “City Kids”.  In 1997 EMI re-released a digitally remastered version of this Motorhead Mark I effort, adding to it some legendary demos recorded with Dave Edmunds of Rockpile fame, which may explain the heavy pub rock leanings of these first efforts.  This album is available on iTunes.

 Lemmy eventually replaced Wallis and Fox with guitarist “Fast” Eddie Clarke and drummer Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor, re-recorded many of the songs from this early effort, and this album was released in 1977. The rest, as they say, is history.  Motorhead went on to become one of the most successful heavy metal bands of all time while simultaneously appealing to the burgeoning punk movement (Lemmy even played bass with the Damned for a few gigs).