Motorhead's Lemmy and Mikkey

CD: Today would have been Joey Ramones 50th Birthday. You did a song called Ramones, are you going to be playing that tonight?

LEMMY: We'll do Ramones, the one that I wrote for him.

CD: What do you make of the Motorhead T-shirts being sold in the high street, in shops like Top Shop.

LEMMY: Not anymore.

CD: Do they not sell them anymore?

LEMMY: It was just a brief fashion fad, you know. That's the thing about fashion it's all fads ain't it.

CD: It's quite amazing, I remember when I first saw it in the window of Top Shop. It was like who shops at Top Shop that knows who Motorhead are? Teenage girls, you know.

LEMMY: It's like, you know they were the wrong fucking colour anyway. They were white.

CD: You've been in the business, what is it 26 years?

LEMMY: That's this band, 34 me.

CD: Why do you think you've lasted so long?

LEMMY: Cuz I didn't stop. It's easy.

CD: On a roll? You just keep going.

LEMMY: It's simple. If you don't give up they can't get rid of you.

CD: So, what are the good and the bad things about the industry? How it's changed in that time.

LEMMY: Well the good thing is there are some good bands. The bad thing is almost all of the record business, the agency and management business. They're all just robbing you all the fucking time. All they want is the can of beans delivered to spot A by truck C so you can do gig F. They don't give a fuck about the condition you're in.

CD: You have some intensely loyal fans out there; I notice on your website you got a bit about them displaying all their tattoos in a little gallery. What is the most extreme behaviour you've witnessed by a fan?

MIKKEY: I don't know what that could be? We have a guy, that's here actually, a German that tattooed his whole body.

LEMMY: His whole body is Motorhead tattoos.

MIKKEY: Every inch. His face has started going now too.

LEMMY: He's on the website. Thomas from Germany.

CD: Does it make you feel good?

LEMMY: Well, yes and no.

CD: Does it freak you out?

LEMMY: Yeah. It makes you feel good about the band. Obviously we're doing the right thing, but it seems a bit extreme.

CD: Can you imagine doing it? Is there any bands that mean that much to you?

LEMMY: Laurel and Hardy maybe.

CD: How much of a rock and roll lifestyle do you actually lead these days?

LEMMY: I'm pretty much up with it.

CD: What sort of things do you do in a day?

LEMMY: I still do exactly what I did, more or less. I don't see any reason to change it. If it works don't fix it.

CD: In your wildest moments what is the largest hotel bill you've had after trashing a room?

LEMMY: I never really trashed hotels, cuz I knew Jimmy Paige and he told me how much it cost them the first time they trashed one. Even they were shocked by the bill they got. So, I figure it's a waste of fucking money. Whoever's room it is, is going to get the bill. So, I always go to parties in other people's rooms.

CD: Trash other peoples?

MIKKEY: Had a 2500-pound bill once in Seattle.

LEMMY: What about Czechoslovakia, Prague?

MIKKEY: But that was cheap though. The whole thing was very cheap.

LEMMY: The economy wasn't back on its feet yet.

MIKKEY: I thought I would have at least a three or four grand, and it was a couple of hundred pounds. The lamps were like fifteen bucks each. It was a really nice room though.

LEMMY: We destroyed a room in fucking New Zealand once, but we didn't hurt the room. We just took all the furniture out of it and put it outside in the corridor. And we tipped all these fucking flowerpots over. Pete, our drummer, then woke up and there was nothing in his room. Nothing, except him on the bed, That was it. No telephone, no lamps, no table.

CD: How many times have you been arrested, and what for?

LEMMY: A few times. I mean, I've been arrested about five times. But they only made it stick twice.

MIKKEY: I've been three or four times.

CD: Plan on getting arrested again?

LEMMY: The last one was funny cuz it wasn't his fault. The only time in his life that it wasn't his fault and he got fucking busted.

CD: No way.

MIKKEY: It's not fun. The thing is eight out of ten times, or every other time at least, you get arrested because of other people. It's not that we're bad guys all the time at all. It's like the last time in Denmark I was really good and I got busted because of other people.

LEMMY: They let him out to do the show. That was nice.

CD: You've lived pretty colourful lives, what's the grossest thing you've seen or done?

LEMMY: God, I don't know. Whatever ideas you've got, I've probably seen 'em twice. It isn't a question of the grossest thing, it's the whole thing and then the circus rolling down the road. It's like running away to join the army, it's that era, or running away to join the circus. Then you get in a band, and you get the crew and you get two buses and a truck and it's like this idiot fucking circus. It makes no sense at all logistically. We're all fucking crackers. By the time we've been in it two years, you're gone. After that it's just improvements.

MIKKEY: Stuff that was fun twenty years ago, isn't that fun anymore. Stuff that was super boring ten years ago is great.

CD: That sounds like you're starting to get old.

LEMMY: It isn't even getting old, it's experience. It's not the age you are, it's the experience you get. I've seen more people who've had more experience quicker than us, but with us luckily it was gradual. Being in a gang-bang is no longer fun. It was when I was sixteen, and lasted about six months. After that I started liking girls properly, and that's a different thing. Then all that orgy stuff didn't really occur to me cuz I didn't think it was fun anymore because you always felt guilty for somebody.

CD: Of all the myths about you or press stories that have been told about you are they all fiction, or are some of them true?

LEMMY: Well, a French magazine printed an obituary for me, about three months ago.

MIKKEY: It's always something that's really off the wall.

LEMMY: (To MIKKEY) What's the funniest one they've printed about you?

MIKKEY: Oh god I don't know.

LEMMY: Mikkey Dee has sex change? Mikkey Dee has breast implants? The world needs to know.

MIKKEY: No, nothing like that but they completely make up stories sometimes.

LEMMY: They do, and they quote you completely out of context. You say a whole sentence and they print the first half. Makes you say something you would have never said in your life.

CD: Why did they think you were dead? Where did that come from?

LEMMY: I've been dead three times. Stories of my death were greatly exaggerated.

MIKKEY: I died in a car wreck in New York in a taxi.

LEMMY: You look remarkably well for it.

MIKKEY: I feel pretty good. They come up with the funniest things sometimes. You just loose track over the years.

CD: Lemmy, you've been involved in several projects over the years: a Sam Fox collaboration, insurance adverts.

LEMMY: Sam Fox what?

CD: Collaboration. Didn't you do a song with her?

LEMMY: Never happened. We only talked about it. It never got done.

CD: I read about it on a website.

LEMMY: That's one of the great myths. The other one in Japan they thought I was married to Wendy O Williams.

CD: Many lies out there about you then. But, you've done many TV appearances and some films as well. Is it true that you appeared in Hardware for a hundred quid and a bottle of JD?

LEMMY: No, it was three hundred quid. And they made the terrible mistake of giving the bottle of JD before they filmed it. So I dropped one of their guns in the river. They never got it back.

CD: What was it like doing that? It looks like a right laugh, a good film.

LEMMY: Yeah, I thought it was a good film apart from my bit. But it was the worst voice-over you've ever seen in your life, because I found out on that project that I couldn't do voice-overs. I find it kind of embarrassing, I wasn't really 'on' on that day. Eat the Rich is the best film I've been involved with.

CD: Any fond memories of your cameo in the John Wayne Bobbit movie?

LEMMY: No, not really. It took about ten minutes and I didn't really get to see any chicks. All I got to see were two gay cops walking through the woods, and they cut that part anyway.

CD: Have you ever been asked to do any larger roles?

LEMMY: In Eat the Rich I was in all the way through the movie on that one. You should try and get it, I believe it's available at your local Blockbuster.

CD: Heh heh, I'll check that out. What do you make of the current music scene, with nu-metal, skate-punk and all that?

LEMMY: I could make a nice bracelet, pair of earrings perhaps. It's garbage. Skunk Anansie are worth ten of any of them and they've split up now from lack of interest.

CD: I don't know how that is because they sold out Rock City just last year.

MIKKEY: I was going to say, it must be something else.

LEMMY: It's her. She's got dragged into a solo career. You know what it is, the record companies been in her ear. If you go solo you'll make more money. What they mean is they'll make more money.

MIKKEY: They split up bands all the time. You've gotta be pretty fucking dumb to fall for all that. That's why I'm surprised.

LEMMY: They're probably right, you know. She can probably make a solo career, but it won't be as good as the band because the band makes the arrangements between them. It's always better to be in a band. When we first started it was like Lemmy and Motorhead, or Lemmy's Motorhead, or ex-Hawkwind. And I said stop that shit right now. Motorhead, that's it. We do it on our own, or we don't do it. I mean ex-Hawkwind: How much does that date you? Fucking hell, it's bad enough being in Motorhead now.

CD: What was the best era for rock music then, and why?

LEMMY: Everybody has his own memories and memories are what make it good. I've liked all the periods for different things. But the first one was the best, because I remember when there wasn't any rock and roll. There was nothing and then there was Elvis and Little Richard and all them people. And that to me was the most exciting thing because you had nothing before it. You had fucking Frank Sinatra and then a wop-bop a bop. it was fucking just wonderful. And you were really part of a secret society then because only about ten people in every city liked it at the beginning, and then it got bigger. And then the movie The Blackboard Jungle came out with Bill Haley and they had riots in cinemas. It wasn't even the band, just a movie, and they had riots. People turning the seats up and going nuts. And that was great. And then the Beatles, that was a really big to be there, and then the punk thing. But it's always come back to rock and roll. Elvis, The Beatles, The Sex Pistols, The Damned, us. It's always been a straight line, and Skunk Anansie are in that line, but there's very little else that is. It's getting fewer and further between, but something will happen, it always does. I've seen the cycle go round four times. It'll always come back to rock and roll.

CD: How do you feel that some people see you as the living embodiment of all things rock and roll?

LEMMY: It's all right with me, because I am. It's true and at least I remember it all. It's not like that fucking Kid Rock: I am rock and roll. No you're not man! You're not even good incidental music never mind rock and roll. If you have to have a dwarf on stage it's kind of rough isn't it? And his dwarf died so he's going to have to go down into the woods to the cottage again and find another fucker. It's fucking pathetic isn't it.

MIKKEY: He just came up out of no where.

LEMMY: And that's where he's going back to. But he's making millions.

MIKKEY: Oh my god, he's sold something like twenty million records.

LEMMY: Yeah, but he's still crap. Big sellers have never been any criteria for excellence. I remember Lieutenant Pigeon sold a lot of records for awhile there. They were a terrible instrumental band.

CD: I've never heard of them.

LEMMY: No you wouldn't have. Way before your time. But how about Oasis? Imitation Beatles or what? But at least they wrote good songs; I'll give them that.

CD: What was it that made you want to be in a band?

LEMMY: Seeing all the birds that people got. It's true. All these guys, chicks were screaming at them. You wouldn't believe it. I mean Cliff Richard and the Shadows, when he first started his gimmick, you know what it was? He never smiled. Can you imagine? He had side-burns like Elvis and he was good then, but that only lasted about a year and off he went.

CD: On his summer holidays.

LEMMY: Yeah. But we have produced some good rock and roll stars but they went quickly. Billy Fury was the best. Marty Wilde was pretty good, Kim Wilde's father. And the best one was Johnny Kid and the Pirates. The Pirates came back in the punk thing as a three-piece band because Johnny Kid got killed in 1966. I drove past his dead body, but I didn't know it at the time. I've seen lots of dead bodies. I found one in bed next to me one morning, my old lady. Heroin.

CD: Horrible.

LEMMY: Yes it was, but it was along time ago.

CD: As a bass player in a band myself, what advice could you give me about the music industry?

LEMMY: Read the small print. Never sign things on the steps of an aircraft, because that's where they always bring it. When it's panic time: Sign this quick! Why? It's vital, otherwise your career will flounder, women all over the world will have the food torn from the mouths of their starving babies, they'll die and it be awful. Sign this now. Never sign that now. Read it, take it on the plane, and then maybe sign it and send it back to them.

CD: What else is there to do? Do you have any ambitions left?

LEMMY: Oh yeah, lots. I'd like another album straight in at number one in England. That's my unrealistic ambition. I'd just like to get appreciated a bit more. I mean people say respect, but they just think it's so awesome that we're so old and still playing. But we'll still whip their ass. There's no band on this world that can beat us on a live show. That's why we don't get any big tours. Nobody wants to follow us. We leave it all feeding back and that is the end of the show. We've had people forbid us from going on tour with them. So we said fuck them, because if you can't hold your own you shouldn't be top of the bill. I always say to bands 'go for it', if you can catch us, catch us. People who join the band, If you can upstage me, upstage me, cuz at the moment I'm doing it all. That's why Mikkey's so great, he's something to watch Mikkey.

CD: Okay, final question. How much is too much?

LEMMY: There is no too much. There are only degrees. There is no too much. There is too much if it starts to play you instead of you playing it. If you're doing dope and you start to spend all your time looking for more dope then that's wrong. That's a joke then because your music suffers, your love life suffers, your self-respect suffers. If you want some advice from someone that knows, and believe me I know, there is only one drug that kills people and that's heroin and occasionally downers. But you have to be a real accident-prone case to die on downers. But speed never killed anybody coke never killed anybody dope never killed anybody. Nothings killed anybody except heroin and that kills everybody. So no matter how elegantly wasted you get, or how cool it seems to be, it's not. It's like dying from an embolism in a toilet in the middle of the night and getting found that way. It's not very elegant. Fuck it, you know. But don't die ashamed. Don't ever lie on your deathbed and think 'that was shit'. Don't do that, because that's the worst.