I had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sit down with Sir Lemmy at Motorhead’s recent stop at the Commodore in 2005. It was the band’s thirtieth anniversary a few years back, and the ‘Ead were kind enough to bring their commemorative tour through Vancouver, with COC supporting. This was to be a grand moment in my life. I was introduced to the phenomena that is Motorhead at the ripe, impressionable age of thirteen when a friend told me about this band who’d influenced Metallica a great deal, and then proceeded to play me “Eat the Rich”.

Nobody, no-fucking-body has, had, or will have a voice like that. And even then I knew – you don’t get a voice like that by playing it safe. You can only get a voice like that from a strict rock’n'roll diet: Cigarettes, whiskey, cocaine, and pussy. You can only get raw power like that from being Motorhead.

When the song finished, I remember saying, “What the fuck was that?” That was Motorhead, and I’ve been hooked ever since. Not only did the bandcelebrate its thirtieth anniversary in 2005, Lemmy also turned sixty on December 24th. A couple of grand milestones – it also being my own thirtieth birthday. Motorhead and I are the same age! I won’t go too deeply into the back-story – for that, you should read Lem’s 2003 autobio, White Line Fever (hey, you should read it anyway). It’s got the history, the debauchery, the drugged bacchanalia, and the stories behind the songs. They were the first band to unite the punks and the metalheads by sounding punk and looking metal. They made cool TV shows like The Young Ones even cooler by appearing as guests. And if that wasn’t enough to convince you, they’re also the band that made fucking umlauts so goddamned cool!

So just how DO you interview someone like Lemmy Kilmister? I mean, the man gets his start as a roadie for Hendrix, joins Hawkwind in ’71 and proceeds to steal the show from the rest of his been-in-the-band-longerbandmates, gets busted for amphetamine-possession at a Canadian border-crossing during a tour and gets fired by Hawkwind, fucks his ex-bandmates’ wives the moment he steps off the plane home from saidfiring, forms Motorhead in ’75 (which he’d threatened would be a band that sounded so ugly, “if we moved in next door to you, your lawn would die.”), and then proceeds to destroy everyone else in his path for the rest of his life… Did I also mention Motorhead won a Grammy in 2005? (finally), finally earning a modicum of the true amount of respect they’ve rightfully deserved for years?

No, honest, I wasn’t nervous at all.

Really, how DO you expect to step into an interview situation with someone like Lemmy and expect to say anything of value? He’s done it all, seen even more. Chrysler-driving Jesus! Lemmy is the God of Rock’n'Roll! Well, if you’re like me, you walk into the room, mumble a few words, fumble with your tape recorder and camera, and most of all, try not to sound too much like an asshole. Keep in mind, Lemmy doesn’t usually DO interviews; this one was a personal favour a friend of mine who happens to work for the band. So I made my way into the dressing room at the Commodore and there, next to the ubiquitous bottle of Jack Daniel’s and pack of Marlboro Reds, was the Man Himself: Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister. He shakes my hand, offers me a beer, and says first thing: “I’ve got a terrible fucking cold. None too enthusiastic at the moment, sorry.” I promise him I’ll keep it quick. You can read the rest…

REV. SCAPEGOAT: Congratulations, man. Thirty years!

LEMMY: Ah, yeah, thank you.

REV: Did you ever envision sitting here thirty years ago – that is, all of it getting this far?

LEMMY: Well, no, obviously not. I mean, you don’t even think of two years. You just think, “Ah, I’ll start a band, like”, you know?

REV: I gotta tell ya, it’s amazing to be sitting here. I’ve been a fan forever.

LEMMY: Well, it’s only one more year then twenty-nine, innit? And one less than thirty-one.

REV: Do you feel even remotely vindicated by the Grammy win? [NOTE:Motorhead's Grammy win was for a cover of Metallica's "Whiplash"]

LEMMY: No, man, it wasn’t for one of our songs. They managed to get afinal dig in… Even then when they gave us the fucking Grammy, theymanaged to make it not for one of our songs, you know.

REV: Pretty disgusting, when you consider [Motorhead's 2004 album] Inferno was a fucking amazing album, and destroyed everything else thatcame out that year. [NOTE: It really did. Do yourself a favor.]

LEMMY: Well, there you go… You can’t talk to these people. They don’tlike us anyway. I’m sure the only reason they gave us a Grammy was amercy fuck for being here thirty years later.

REV: In your experience, what has being on a major label done for youthat being on an independent…

LEMMY: Can you shut that door? [drum soundcheck going on outside the room making it hard to hear oneself think] We might get a bit of peace…Eh, doesn’t really help, does it? [No, not really] Okay, what was it, say again?

REV: Do you prefer being on an independent label rather than a major one?

LEMMY: Well, my only experience with a big label was Sony, which was a fucking nightmare, you know, so, yeah, I’d rather be on an independent – although we’re on Sanctuary [Records], which isn’t exactly independent.

REV: True.

LEMMY: It’s fucking monstrous. They’re buying everything. Everythingthat Verizon hasn’t got, Sanctuary bought.

REV: Lemmy, what in the hell is wrong with rock’n'roll these days?

LEMMY: Well, there’s not enough rock’n'roll in it, you know? Trouble is, five people control all the outlets through which you can hear or see it, and none of them are rock’n'roll fans, you know? That’s why you’ve got all this crap on MTV – which became what it set out to fight. It’s kind of disgraceful, really. We only had two hours on MTV a week, and they even took that away! They’re trying to kill rock’n'roll again, they’ve been doing it since Elvis Presley – they can’t do it.

REV: With the way technology’s working now, with the ease which you can find good rock’n'roll, you know, with the Internet, file-sharing…

LEMMY: You’ve gotta know that it exists first! That’s the hard part!

REV: What is it about rock’n'roll that makes it such a high-casualty-rate occupation?

LEMMY: It isn’t! It isn’t a high-casualty-rate occupation! It’s just that when famous people die, more people write about it!

REV: Do you believe in the old adage, “From great suffering comes greatart.”?

LEMMY: No, I don’t think so. I think great art comes just as much frombeing self-satisfied and pampered as a child as it does from fuckingdeprivation. You know, if you look at the history of a lot of greatartists, a lot of them grew up completely ordinary people frommiddle-class backgrounds, you know – nothing to do with suffering! Theironly ‘suffering’ was self-imposed when they went to live in the fuckinggutter and pose. You know, and getting money sent from home and shit tosurvive on, eh. It’s a lot of bollocks talked about that, you know.

REV: Is it a daunting prospect, being one-third of the Holy Trinity of Rock?

LEMMY: Who’s the other two?

REV: The Ramones and AC/DC.LEMMY: Ah… Hmm… No. Good company, though…

REV: I mean, all you need, are some Motorhead records, some Ramones records, and some AC/DC records, that’s it. I know you were good friends with the Ramones. Any stories you want to tell about them? Especially now that three of them are gone, what do you remember most?

LEMMY: Well, I remember the first time I played “R.A.M.O.N.E.S” to Joey,he burst into tears, that was in a hotel in New York.

REV: No shit?

LEMMY: Yeah. Um, first time I ever saw them was in 1976 or ’77 at theRoundhouse in London [NOTE: More than likely 1976, the Ramones bi centennial tour of Europe]. They had The Runaways with them on that tour, and Joan Jett wore my bullet-belt on stage. And uh, Dee Dee, came up to me once in the Scrap bar in New York after he’d left the Ramones, in a filthy old army grey coat, there was dirt ingrained in it – he’d been sleeping in the park. And he asked me to lend him ten bucks, and I gave him fifty, and he broke down. That was fuckin’ terrible… But then he… He got himself out of that for awhile. He went through it, Dee Dee did, but most of it was of his own doing. You know, if you read his book Poison Heart, what it says mostly is that “I was a loser, and I’m determined to stay one.” Right? He was his own worst enemy, like. And then Johnny of course, “The KKK Took My Baby Away”, from Joey, who had a sense of humour…

REV: I just watched the [Ramones] DVD, End of the Century, and I neverknew the story behind that song until I watched the film. [NOTE: JohnnyRamone's wife Linda was previously Joey Ramone's girlfriend. After Johnnytook her away from Joey, Joey wrote the song "The KKK Took My Baby Away",an obvious jab at Johnny's extremely conservative, right-wing, andgirl-stealing ways.]

LEMMY: Well, Johnny was in the KKK!

REV: What? You’re kidding!

LEMMY: No.

REV: I mean, I knew he was right-wing, but…

LEMMY: Well, I mean maybe it was just because he was very far right-wing, maybe HE wasn’t in the KKK, but I’m sure he had friends in it. And ‘coshe stole Joey’s girlfriend, that’s how the song got wrote. I thought it was quite funny – fuckin’ Joey had a black sense of humour – he was like an English man in that respect. You know, “I Don’t Wanna Go Down In The Basement”, that sort of thing. I’ll tell you the funniest thing about Joey, he always thought he was singin’ in an English accent. You know, like the vocals to “Blitzkrieg Bop”, he thought that was an Englishaccent! Too much, man…

REV: How was [Dave Grohl's] Probot to record?

LEMMY: Great! Took two hours.

REV: You’re working with Dave again, I hear?

LEMMY: Yeah, he’s done a track for my solo album.

REV: When’s that coming out?

LEMMY: God knows…Whenever I get it finished. Ain’t much time between Motorhead… Whenever I can grab a couple of hours, you know?

REV: Well, don’t stop doing Motorhead…

LEMMY: Oh, I wasn’t thinkin’ about it.

REV: The albums just keep getting better and better. [2002's] Hammeredwas amazing, Inferno was amazing. Nobody else stands a chance, man.

LEMMY: [2000's] We Are Motorhead was better, I thought. I thoughtHammered was a dip between We Are Motorhead and Inferno.

REV: But when Hammered came out and everyone was like “What’d you thinkof the new Motorhead album?” I was like, “Well, fuck, it’s the new Motorhead album!”

LEMMY: Yeah, there was a couple of good songs on it, yeah, a few goodsongs. I didn’t like “Down the Line” much, I must confess to a mentalaberration. ‘Cos they [the rest of the band] wrote that fucking riff, andI was stuck with it to write words and of course, we were under the clock.I wasn’t crazy about that song. Apart from that, it was alright.

REV: Hey, how was the Wrestlemania gig you just did? Obviously, the showwasn’t set up for a big rock band, it’s a wrestling gig. How was it? [NOTE: A few weeks prior to the Vancouver show, Motorhead played Wrestlemania XXI at the Staples Center in L.A. A few days prior to theVancouver show was their 30th Anniversary show, also in L.A. Questionsubmitted by Steve of Mandible Claw fanzine].

LEMMY: Well, I’ve never seen people PANIC. It was like being in aburning building, you know… “QUICK! OVER HERE! NOW! COME ON! COMEHERE! RUN RUN RUN! NOW NOW NOW! GOTTA GO, GOTTA GO!” [Lemmy waves hisarms frantically] You know, all this shit they’re sayin’ to me, and itdoesn’t have to be that way, man. You can get shit done and be like,normal. But there you go, that’s their way of doing things, I suppose. Live TV, Live TV! I said “I’ve DONE live TV before you were born, whatthe fuck’s the matter with you?” Running round and round [like that],you’ll give yourself a fuckin’ hernia!

REV: Are you partial to any particular Motorhead covers you’ve heard overthe years?

LEMMY: Best one ever that I’ve heard was by an all-girl Swedish band, on an album called Traveling North, I think it was called…on Pink Pussycat Records. A long time ago. And they covered “Killed by Death”. And another all-girl Swedish band covered “Hellraiser” and put an ABBA song in the middle of it… [Lemmy starts singing, clapping, pantomiming disco dancing] “Do you like it? Do you like it? Does your mother know?” In the middle of “Hellraiser”!

REV: That’s excellent!

LEMMY: I tell ya, shit, that was great!

REV: How did you find out about the West Memphis Three? [NOTE: Go towww.wm3.org for info on this one...I ain't doin' all your homework for you].

LEMMY: Sorry, the what?

REV: The Black Flag tribute album, Rise Above, with Henry Rollins?

LEMMY: Yeah… Oh, that? That was the West Memphis Three album?

REV: Yeah.

LEMMY: Well, yeah, Henry just asked me “Do you wanna sing?” And I just went and did it. That was another one that only took two hours in all.

REV: Always better when it goes quick, eh?

LEMMY: Yeah.

REV: You’ve done some acting in your time…

LEMMY: Very little, I was just being me.

REV: Well, your cameo in Bad News was awesome.

LEMMY: Ah yeah, that one was funny. But that wasn’t acting…

REV: Are there any roles you’ve passed on that you wish you’d taken?

LEMMY: Well there was one as a caveman [in a film] in Switzerland. This guy wanted me to dress up in a fur robe and fuckin’ lurch around going “Ugh!” and shit, you know. Turned that down, yeah.

REV: And your Shakespeare was awesome, too, in Tromeo & Juliet. Thosemonologues…

LEMMY: Wrote them myself… I can speak Shakespeare…

REV: Finally, in the eventual four-hour X-rated epic film that will comprise the story of Motorhead, who would you have play you?

LEMMY: I don’t know, really…. Me, I suppose.

REV: You’d do it best.

LEMMY: Yeah, right. Well, I do have more insight into the character thananyone else.

REV: Thanks man! Thanks a lot for taking the time to let me sit downwith you!

LEMMY: Cheers, mate! See you at the show!

And there it is. Gracious to a fault even in a state of sickness, Lemmy was cool enough to pose for photos and autograph my copy of White Line Fever. I couldn’t ask for much more than that, so I won’t. I thanked him profusely, and went on my gleeful way. I went back to the Commodore that night for the show, and saw Motorhead put on a show that would leave most contemporary (and younger) bands in the dust. They’ve done it longer, and they still do it better than anyone else. If you were there, you know what I’m talking about. If you weren’t, see them whenever you get the chance.

Everything Louder Than Everyone Else, indeed!