Lemmy appreciation: a life lived hard, a death too soon

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/dec/29/lemmy-appreciation-a-life-lived-hard-a-death-too-soon

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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.

Related: Lemmy, lead singer of Motörhead, dies at 70

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.