Lemmy Kilmister (1945–2015)

'Since I was about twenty-five, nothing changed, except I got smarter and wiser and things have an effect on you. But I never thought I was any older, really. It was just a very long twenty-five! I can't imagine being fifty.'


Well, there you go. That tough and rock n' roll/ punky energy that goes on and on and never stop, the louder than everything else -'born to loose, live to win'- and raw attitude that Lemmy incarnated just stemmed from that: an over the top passion for everything show more hedonistic about life, and a refusal until the end to surrender to the rank and file. And why should he have? Motorhead was rank and file in its own way, like an army (even if an army of one at time!) crushing it all when on march. No matter how old, just listen, no but LISTEN to their unique sound: Motorhead was rock n' roll drunk and on speed! If you don't like it, well, sorry to say, but you have no taste - or, as Lemmy would have asserted: 'f.uck you!'. Sure, they weren't much original, and, album after album, what you got is was what you'll get. And so?

Now, I confess: I love Motorhead (they contributed to define metal for Pete's sake!) but I don't think drugs and alcoholism are edgy, and, as tolerant as I can be, 'sex, drugs and rock n' roll' is not the type of life I look up to. I don't care; just not for me. Lemmy having been the rock star we all know, I worried: would I get here a long and stupid brag of all of the above excesses? I am glad to say: not at all. Or rather: yeah, of course, there's that too; but not only. In fact, when it comes to booze-drugs-shags (gosh! the guy even lusted on teenage girls in Thailand, how sick is that!?) you can easily skip over, because the music always takes precedence. And the music...

I got lost when he details all the scene before joining Hawkwind; but it's not my generation, so... I was happy to see the usual metal cast popping all around: John Lord (personal opinion: to me, no Deep Purple = no metal; there you go), Ozzy, Randy Rhoads, Lars Ulrich and Metallica, Dave Mustaine, Slayer, Slash, Alice Cooper, Twisted Sisters and Dee Snider (that he keeps calling Dee Schneider, that must have been a private joke between them two!)… What's striking is that, apart from the people who tried and screwed his band, he never has a bad word for anybody. Lemmy might have been a killer onstage, but he seemed to have been a fairly friendly geezer indeed... Apart to the people who tried and screwed his band! Following the change of line-up is rocambolesque. Being human, he also allows himself a good rant against the music industry (Sony in particular):

'Those Neanderthals corporate executives at Sony are all stupid, ignorant, fucking elitist twats… they've got no idea about music at all... They're the most inept bunch of motherfuckers I've ever seen in my life. Oh, yes.'

'These people treat music purely as commodity, like selling cans of beans. Most people that promote bands have never heard of the bands they promote. Nobody seems to believe in the music any more. The industry's building all the time, but they're killing the music.'

Well, what did he expect? Most importantly, he obviously talks about his music too! The loss of a guitarist?

'...when they are two guitars, you can never get things worked out completely because somebody won't agree with it. With one guitar player the bass can do anything.'

His recording process?

'We go in with nothing and just hammer it out. It costs less that way, and obviously it works.'

'Look at Jeff Beck, Clapton and Page - they played a lot of their early classic work in one take.'

His albums?

-'1916': 'one of the best records of our career'
-'Bastards': 'one of the best album Motorhead has made so far. Every song on it is strong.'
-'Ace of Spades' (duh!): 'one thing that will always puzzle me are those people who, for some bizarre reason, think our career ended with 'Ace of Spades'... 'Yo, dude, "Ace of Spades", - that's the famous cry that has come to plague me. Occasionally I get really pissed off.'

Well...

Sadly, that wave of rock n' roll/punky energy which was supposed to go on and on (who thought such a guy could even die?!) stopped for good in 2015, when his cancer finally got him. Here's an updated edition of his original autobiography (which was first published in 2003) so it has a couple of tributes added in the end. It's a nice touch. All in all, 'White Line Fever' is not as trashy as you may have expected. Lemmy was Lemmy, and all the way through, dark sense of humour and all, you can hear him in here chatting his life away with that unmistakable voice tarred by whiskey and cigarettes. And who doesn't want a chat with Lemmy? The king is dead, but long live metal! show less

Almost, but not quite entirely, not what a Motörhead fan would expect from Lemmy.

Far too many unfunny anecdotes and dreary tales of drug use. The recurring theme of the inadequacies of producers and record companies leading to the relative underperformance of the group post "No Sleep 'til Hammersmith" seems to miss a rather obvious point in my opinion.

The endless tales of Lemmy's sexual exploits are tedious in the extreme and made me wonder if he "doth protest too much?"

Overall, there is show more far too little about the glorious music. Port Vale, the undoubted zenith of Motörhead's career, is dispensed with in slightly more than half a page.

If you accidentally acquire this book, be careful - your lawn will die. show less

Entertaining look at his life and career in music - which almost seemed to be 1 and the same, once he was in adulthood. Not a fan of his band particularly but that doesn't matter. Anyone with any interest in the music business would still get something from this. Written with humour and, while co-written with another (or perhaps ghost written), it actually reads for the most part like an extended series of interviews - Lemmy's voice and way of speaking is well preserved and the book gallops show more along and never drags. His thoughts on his band, former bandmates and other musicians are given, no holds barred, along with many of his exploits. An entertaining read. show less

i read this one years ago. i dug it quite a bit. it's not an easy read because it's written very strangely, a paragraph will start somewhere in the 70's and end in the 90's then the next paragraph will jump to some point in the mid 80's. makes things a little tricky to follow at points, but lemmy's such a wild character that it's well worth the effort.