The story of Motörhead

Ian Kilmister before Lemmy

Motörhead begins with one man, Ian Fraser Kilmister, born in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, on Christmas Eve 1945. His father, a former Royal Air Force chaplain, walked out when the baby was three months old, and Ian would meet him only once, at the age of twenty five. His mother remarried when he was ten, and the family ended up on a farm in Benllech on the island of Anglesey in north Wales. He later joked that being the only English kid among seven hundred Welsh ones was interesting from an anthropological point of view. It was at school there that he picked up the nickname Lemmy. He always said he had no idea where it came from.[1] [2] [3]

The spark was rock and roll. Lemmy took his mother's guitar to school after noticing that a boy with a guitar got surrounded by girls, and it worked even though he could not play it yet. He worked odd jobs, breaking horses and working on the line at the Hotpoint factory in Llandudno Junction. At sixteen he saw the Beatles at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, and he taught himself to play along to their first album. At seventeen he followed a holidaying girl called Cathy back to Stockport. She had his first son, Sean, who was given up for adoption. In Stockport he played in local bands, the Rainmakers and the Motown Sect.[1] [2] [3]

In 1965 he joined the Rockin' Vickers, a Blackpool beat group who performed dressed as vicars. They signed to CBS, released singles, and in 1965 toured Yugoslavia, one of the first British rock bands to play in a communist country. Around this time he had a second son, Paul Inder, with a woman in Manchester. He would not meet Paul until the boy was six. In 1967 Lemmy moved to London and crashed on the floor of a flat shared by Jimi Hendrix's bassist Noel Redding. Within weeks he was humping gear on the Hendrix road crew. He said later he sat in the wings every night, and that watching Hendrix was like watching magic.[1] [2] [3]

In 1968 he joined the psychedelic group Sam Gopal, using the name Ian Willis, and wrote most of their album Escalator, released in 1969. The late sixties also brought close calls and real loss. In 1969 a friend's girlfriend, a nurse, brought home what they thought was amphetamine from her dispensary. It was atropine. Lemmy swallowed a teaspoon, hallucinated wildly, and was told at hospital that another hour would have killed him. The deepest wound was Susan Bennett, whom he always called the love of his life. She died of a heroin overdose at nineteen. Lemmy hated heroin for the rest of his life and dedicated his autobiography to her.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Hawkwind and the sacking

In August 1971 Lemmy turned up to audition for Hawkwind, the space rock band from Ladbroke Grove, hoping to become their second guitarist. At an open air benefit show in Notting Hill the bass player failed to show, leaving his gear in the van. Lemmy had never played bass in his life. Their synth player Dik Mik, who shared his taste for speed, pushed him onto the stage, and he never gave the job back. Because he had learned on rhythm guitar, he played the bass with chords and double stops rather than single notes. It became one of the defining sounds of Hawkwind, and later of Motörhead.[1] [2] [3]

Hawkwind gave Lemmy his first hit. Their song Silver Machine had been cut live at a benefit for the Greasy Truckers at the Roundhouse in February 1972, and the vocal needed replacing. Lemmy said the band tried everyone else first, then let him have a go, and he nailed it in one or two takes. The single reached number three in Britain in 1972. He also played on Space Ritual and Doremi Fasol Latido. Lemmy later said Hawkwind was where he found out he was good at something. Offstage, though, he was the band's amphetamine man in a group that preferred acid, and the gap kept growing.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In 1974, on tour in Los Angeles, Lemmy borrowed Roy Wood's acoustic guitar in the middle of the night at the Hyatt hotel on Sunset, known as the Riot House, and howled a new song from his balcony for hours. It was called Motorhead, slang for a speed freak, and it came out as a Hawkwind B side in 1975. That May, on a North American tour, Lemmy was stopped crossing into Canada at Windsor, Ontario, carrying amphetamine. Police took it for cocaine, jailed him overnight, then released him without charge. Hawkwind fired him anyway. He liked to say he was sacked for doing the wrong drugs.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The best worst band in the world

Back in London, Lemmy took his equipment out of Hawkwind's storage, painted his psychedelic amplifiers black and started a band so that, as he put it, nobody could fire him again. He wanted it fast and vicious like the MC5, with a dose of Little Richard, and so loud that if they moved in next door your lawn would die. He first called it Bastard. His manager pointed out that a band called Bastard would never get on Top of the Pops, so he borrowed the title of his last Hawkwind song. With guitarist Larry Wallis from the Pink Fairies and drummer Lucas Fox, Motörhead played their first show supporting Greenslade at the Roundhouse on the twentieth of July 1975.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

They were broke. Lemmy admitted they stole equipment, and they lived in squats in Battersea alongside Hells Angels. United Artists signed them and sent them to Rockfield Studios in Wales with producer Dave Edmunds, but Lucas Fox was not working out. Lemmy called in Phil Taylor, a Leeds drummer he knew from the speed scene. One reason, Lemmy said, was that Taylor had a car. Taylor's drums were dubbed over Fox's on almost everything. The label hated the results and shelved the album, which only came out in 1979 as On Parole. In early 1976 Taylor brought in a guitarist he had met while doing up a houseboat on the Thames, Eddie Clarke.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

The plan was a four piece with two guitars, but Larry Wallis quit straight after the audition, and so the classic trio was born almost by accident. Lemmy on bass and vocals, Fast Eddie Clarke on guitar, and Phil Taylor, soon known as Philthy Animal, on drums. The early reviews were brutal. NME readers voted them the best worst band in the world. In August 1976 the new trio rehearsed and recorded at Emerson, Lake and Palmer's Manticore studio in Fulham. Those tapes then vanished for almost fifty years. In December they cut the Motown song Leaving Here for Stiff Records, but United Artists blocked its release because the band were still under contract.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

By April 1977 Clarke and Taylor had had enough and the band agreed to split after a farewell show at the Marquee Club on the first of April. Lemmy asked Ted Carroll of Chiswick Records to record it. Carroll could not get a mobile studio there, but he turned up backstage and offered them two days at Escape Studios in Kent to make a single. The band drove straight there and, fuelled by speed, laid down eleven backing tracks in a weekend. The result was their debut album, Motörhead, released in August 1977. It spent one week in the chart at number forty three. Its cover introduced Joe Petagno's fanged face, Snaggletooth, the band's emblem forever after.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Overkill and Bomber

The band still wobbled. Under manager Tony Secunda things grew so unstable that by March 1978 Clarke and Taylor were gigging in a side band called the Muggers. At one charity show that February they even played as Iron Fist and the Hordes from Hell, for contractual reasons. Then manager Doug Smith returned and landed a one off single deal with Gerry Bron's Bronze Records. The single was a cover of Louie Louie. Bron later admitted he released it unheard as a favour, and when he finally listened he thought it was the worst record he had ever heard. It charted anyway, and in October 1978 Motörhead made their first appearance on Top of the Pops.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Bronze put them in the studio with Jimmy Miller, the producer of the Rolling Stones' greatest records. Overkill came out in March 1979 and reached number twenty four, their first top forty album. The title track grew out of Phil Taylor sneaking into rehearsals early to practise on a second bass drum. He was halfway through the pattern when Lemmy and Eddie walked in and told him not to stop. The song became their set closer for the rest of their career. Lemmy also freely admitted that the riff of No Class was lifted from ZZ Top's Tush. American thrash band Overkill later took their name from the album.[1] [2] [3]

They went straight back in with Miller that summer, and the sessions for Bomber turned dark. Miller had slipped back into heroin. He would arrive half a day late, and at one point vanished from the studio and was found asleep at the wheel of his car. The album includes the band's first anti heroin song, Dead Men Tell No Tales. Eddie Clarke sang lead on Step Down after Lemmy got tired of him complaining about the limelight. Bomber came out in October 1979 and reached number twelve, their best yet. The title track was inspired by Len Deighton's novel about a bombing raid on Germany.[1] [2]

The cover painting showed the three of them in the gun turrets of a German Heinkel bomber. Lemmy insisted the plane be German, saying the bad guys always had the best gear. The band then commissioned a lighting rig to match, a forty foot aluminium bomber that swung over the stage on the tour with Saxon in support. In May 1980 Bronze released a live EP, The Golden Years, which climbed to number eight. The band had wanted to call it Flying Tonight, after that rig. Motörhead were now filling halls, embraced by punks and heavy metal fans at the same time.[1] [2] [3]

Ace of Spades and number one

In August and September 1980 the band recorded with Vic Maile at Jackson's Studios in Rickmansworth. Maile had engineered for Hendrix and the Who and had worked with Hawkwind. He was quiet, diabetic, did not drink, and needed his crispbread at six o'clock, so the band did not dare push him around. They nicknamed him Turtle. Clarke said that for the first time you could hear everything that was going on, and Lemmy said Maile got him singing instead of shouting. The single Ace of Spades came out on the twenty seventh of October 1980 and reached number fifteen. The album followed in November and reached number four, the highest studio album of their career.[1] [2] [3]

Ace of Spades is built on gambling images, mostly poker, though Lemmy said his real vice was slot machines, and you cannot really sing about spinning fruit. The cowboy cover photo that looks like the Arizona desert was shot in a sandpit in Barnet, north London, and the blue sky was airbrushed in because the day was cloudy. The song became the one everybody knew. Lemmy grew sick of it and insisted the band had done its best work later, but he played it every night because the fans wanted it. It was the tune that finally made Motörhead a household name in Britain.[1] [2]

After the tour's Belfast show in December 1980, Phil Taylor was badly hurt in backstage horseplay and broke his neck. He later played in a neck brace, which you can see in the Ace of Spades video, and was left with a lump on the back of his neck. While he healed, Motörhead teamed up with their label mates Girlschool, whose guitarist Kelly Johnson Lemmy adored as a player. Under the name Headgirl they recorded the St. Valentine's Day Massacre EP, with Girlschool's Denise Dufort on drums. The lead track, a cover of Johnny Kidd's Please Don't Touch, reached number five in February 1981.[1] [2] [3] [4]

That March the band toured on what they called the Short Sharp Pain in the Neck tour, named after Taylor's injury. Mostly from shows in Leeds and Newcastle came No Sleep 'til Hammersmith, released in June 1981. It went straight in at number one. The joke is that none of it was recorded at the Hammersmith Odeon. Lemmy was asleep in a New York hotel when the manager rang with the news, told him to call back later, then sat bolt upright a minute afterwards when it sank in. A live version of the song Motorhead became their biggest single, reaching number six.[1] [2] [3]

That summer Motörhead toured North America for the first time, opening for Ozzy Osbourne's Blizzard of Ozz. Following them around was a Danish teenager called Lars Ulrich, who went home to California and told James Hetfield they had to start a band. Hetfield later said that without Lemmy there would be no Metallica. But the peak was also the start of the slide. Iron Fist, recorded in early 1982, had to be produced by Eddie Clarke after the band fell out with Vic Maile. It reached number six, but Lemmy later called most of it garbage. On tour, a giant iron fist prop was meant to open its hand and instead jammed in a rude gesture.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Coming apart

The classic line up broke in May 1982 on the band's first headlining tour of North America. Lemmy wanted to record Tammy Wynette's Stand By Your Man with Wendy O. Williams of the Plasmatics. Eddie Clarke hated it, refused to play, and after the New York Palladium show on the fourteenth of May he was gone. The circumstances were argued over for the rest of their lives. Clarke formed Fastway with Pete Way of UFO. Taylor, a big Thin Lizzy fan, pushed for Brian Robertson, Lizzy's former guitarist, who flew in to finish the tour and stayed for one album.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Robertson was a brilliant player and a terrible fit. He took seventeen hours over a guitar part, Lemmy complained, and refused to play the old songs fans came to hear. On stage he wore satin shorts, leg warmers and ballet shoes next to two men in leather. Another Perfect Day came out in May 1983 and flopped, though many fans now love it, and the Brazilian band Sepultura named themselves after its song Dancing on Your Grave. Robertson played his last show at the Metropol in Berlin on the eleventh of November 1983. Lemmy said that line up was the lowest point of their career, and he never spoke to Robertson again.[1] [2] [3]

In February 1984 Lemmy auditioned unknowns. Down to the last two, a former army corporal from Cheltenham called Michael Burston, known as Würzel, and a young Welshman called Phil Campbell, he heard them play together and hired both. Within days the new line up was playing Ace of Spades on the BBC comedy The Young Ones. Then Phil Taylor quit, leaving Lemmy to ask whether he had left them or they had left him. Former Saxon drummer Pete Gill took over. When Bronze planned a compilation to close the book on the band, Lemmy took charge of it himself, and No Remorse reached number fourteen that September.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The new single Killed by Death stalled at number fifty one, and its video, made by the Plasmatics' manager Rod Swenson, was banned by MTV for violence. Worse, the band went to court with Bronze, believing the label was not promoting them, and Bronze responded by keeping them out of the studio for two years. Motörhead survived by touring. They played in Australia, Hungary and across America, and made a notorious live appearance in a Birmingham television car park on a Saturday morning children's show, which brought noise complaints from the neighbours. In June 1985 they celebrated ten years with two nights at Hammersmith Odeon.[1] [2]

Lawsuits, Los Angeles and a lifeline from Ozzy

The Bronze case was finally settled in the band's favour, and their management set up its own label, GWR. Orgasmatron, produced by Bill Laswell, came out in August 1986 and reached number twenty one. Lemmy said Laswell was brilliant at sounds and ruined the mix, calling the result mud. The title track attacked organised religion, politics and war, the three things he hated most. In 1987 Lemmy took a role in the Comic Strip film Eat the Rich. During filming Pete Gill was fired, and Phil Taylor came back. The album Rock 'n' Roll followed that year, with the Monty Python star Michael Palin reciting a mock prayer over the band.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Rock 'n' Roll was rushed and sold poorly, and a row with GWR over which live single to release ended in yet another court case, not resolved until 1990. That year Lemmy moved to Los Angeles, taking a small rent controlled apartment in West Hollywood a couple of blocks from the Rainbow Bar and Grill, where he could be found most nights for the rest of his life, playing the video machine. The band signed to Epic and WTG. The album 1916 arrived in January 1991, its title track a slow, near spoken lament for the young soldiers killed on the Somme. It earned Motörhead their first Grammy nomination, losing to Metallica.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Money finally came from an unexpected place. Sharon Osbourne asked Lemmy to write lyrics for Ozzy's album No More Tears. He contributed words for four songs, including the ballad Mama, I'm Coming Home, which became Ozzy's only solo top forty hit in America. Lemmy said he made more money from those songs than from fifteen years of Motörhead. The next album, March ör Die, was recorded in Los Angeles in 1992 as the riots broke out, and Lemmy remembered seeing a house burning on television and then the other side of the same house out of the studio window. It featured Ozzy and Slash, but it went down as a misfire.[1] [2] [3]

During those sessions Phil Taylor left for the second time and for good. After his drumming failed on I Ain't No Nice Guy, Lemmy let him go, and later said it was the hardest thing he had done because he knew it would devastate Taylor. Tommy Aldridge played most of the album, and a Swedish drummer Lemmy had chased for years, Mikkey Dee from King Diamond's band, finally said yes. Dee's first show was on the thirtieth of August 1992. That same year the band hired a new manager, Todd Singerman, who had never managed a band before. He stayed with Lemmy for the rest of his life.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The long road with Campbell and Dee

Bastards, in 1993, was the band's defiant answer to March ör Die. Lemmy and Campbell both called it one of their best, but the German label ZYX barely released it outside Germany, and the band ended up posting out promotional copies themselves. Among its songs was Don't Let Daddy Kiss Me, Lemmy's song about child abuse. In 1995, during the recording of Sacrifice in Hollywood, Würzel stopped contributing and then walked out. The band chose not to replace him. From then on Motörhead was a trio of Lemmy, Phil Campbell and Mikkey Dee, the longest lasting line up they ever had. For Lemmy's fiftieth birthday that year, Metallica played at the Whisky a Go Go as a cover band called the Lemmys.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The trio kept an album coming roughly every two years and toured relentlessly, with bigger crowds in places like Argentina, Germany and Japan than at home. In 2000 Lemmy was diagnosed with type two diabetes after a hospital stay. That October the band celebrated twenty five years at Brixton Academy with Eddie Clarke and Brian May as guests, and the old bomber rig flew again. They also found a home in wrestling. Motörhead recorded The Game, the entrance music of wrestler Triple H, and played him to the ring live at WrestleMania in 2001 and 2005. Triple H grew his facial hair in tribute and later spoke at Lemmy's funeral.[1] [2] [3]

Producer Cameron Webb arrived with Inferno in 2004 and stayed to the end. Motörhead finally won a Grammy in 2005, for Best Metal Performance, but for a cover of Metallica's Whiplash. Lemmy grumbled that it felt like a pity award for their thirtieth anniversary. That November he addressed politicians at the Welsh Assembly about heroin and startled his Conservative host by calling for it to be legalised, saying it was the only drug he had seen someone die of. In 2007 Joe Petagno, creator of Snaggletooth, stopped working with the band after a dispute with its management. Lemmy said publicly he hoped they could be reconciled.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In 2010 the documentary Lemmy premiered, showing him at home among his collection of Second World War memorabilia. The collection drew accusations of Nazi sympathies, which Lemmy rejected, saying he liked the uniforms and that the bad guys always dressed best. He spoke against racism often. In July 2011 Würzel died of heart disease at sixty one, and Lemmy dedicated a Sonisphere show to him. From 2013 Lemmy's health collapsed in stages. He had a defibrillator fitted in his chest, cancelled tours, swapped whiskey for vodka and cut down to a pack of cigarettes a week. Still, Aftershock came out in 2013, and the band launched its own heavy metal cruise.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

The last tour and after

Bad Magic, the twenty second and final studio album, came out on the twenty eighth of August 2015, the band's fortieth anniversary year. It reached the top ten in Britain. The tour was hard to watch. Lemmy walked with a stick, a show in Salt Lake City was cut short by altitude sickness and breathing problems, and a set in Austin stopped after three songs. At Glastonbury that June he had a mental block and sang Ace of Spades while the band played Overkill. Yet he finished a European tour, and Motörhead's final concert was in Berlin on the eleventh of December 2015. It closed, as always, with Overkill.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Loss came in quick succession. In November 2015 Phil Taylor died in London at sixty one, after a long illness, with liver failure cited. Lemmy called him one of his best friends and said he was devastated. On the thirteenth of December friends threw Lemmy a seventieth birthday party at the Whisky a Go Go, where he watched from the balcony, frail, a stick across his knees. Days later he went to hospital. A brain scan found cancer, and on Boxing Day a doctor told him he had two to six months. His reported reply was a dry remark that two months was not much. The Rainbow's owner moved Lemmy's favourite video game machine into his apartment.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Lemmy died at home in Los Angeles on the twenty eighth of December 2015, four days after turning seventy, while sitting at that game with people he loved around him. His death certificate listed prostate cancer, cardiac arrhythmia and congestive heart failure. The band asked fans to play Motörhead loud and have a drink or a few. The next day Mikkey Dee said Motörhead was over, because Lemmy was Motörhead. At the funeral at Forest Lawn on the ninth of January 2016, streamed live to hundreds of thousands, Dave Grohl, Slash and Lemmy's son Paul spoke, and his bass was plugged in and left to feed back through the chapel.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The deaths went on. Eddie Clarke died of pneumonia on the tenth of January 2018, aged sixty seven, the last of the classic trio. Original guitarist Larry Wallis died in September 2019 at seventy. Mikkey Dee joined the Scorpions. In 2025 the long lost Manticore tapes of the 1976 trio were released for the fiftieth anniversary. Then on the thirteenth of March 2026 Phil Campbell, Motörhead's guitarist for thirty one years, died at sixty four after a long spell in intensive care following major surgery. As of 2026, Mikkey Dee is the only surviving member of the final Motörhead.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

Their reach is enormous. Motörhead sold more than twenty five million albums, and critics credit them with inventing speed metal and thrash, a label Lemmy always refused, insisting they were a rock and roll band. Members of Metallica spoke at his funeral, and the band wrote the song Murder One about him, named after his amplifier. Some of his ashes were put into bullets and given to friends including Rob Halford, some were scattered in the mud at the Wacken festival in 2023, and James Hetfield had a pinch mixed into a tattoo. Scientists named an extinct crocodile relative Lemmysuchus, and asteroids carry the names Lemmy and Motorhead.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The people around Motörhead

Lemmy and Eddie Clarke. Clarke was the quiet one who held the classic trio together, the man who turned Lemmy's roar into riffs that drew on fifties rock and roll. Their partnership produced every one of Motörhead's biggest records, but by 1982 the drinking and the rows had worn it thin, and they split bitterly over Stand By Your Man. Time softened it. Clarke guested at the twenty fifth anniversary show in 2000 and joined Lemmy on stage again in Birmingham in 2014.[1] [2] [3]

Lemmy and Phil Taylor. Lemmy knew Taylor as a speed scene regular who would pass out at the house he shared with Hells Angels, and hired him partly because he had a car. Philthy Animal became the wild engine of the classic line up. He left in 1984, came back in 1987, and was let go in 1992, which Lemmy called the hardest blow of his career. When Taylor died in November 2015, Lemmy said he had lost one of his best friends. Lemmy died seven weeks later.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Lemmy and Dave Brock. Brock led Hawkwind, the band that turned Lemmy into a bass player and then fired him in 1975. Lemmy was bitter for a long time, but he always said he would have stayed in Hawkwind if they had let him. The two stayed in touch for decades. In 2002 Hawkwind supported Motörhead at Wembley Arena and Lemmy sang Silver Machine with them, and Brock kept urging his old friend to slow down.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Lemmy and Kelly Johnson. Lemmy championed Girlschool when other bands sneered at an all female group, taking them on tour and recording the hit EP St. Valentine's Day Massacre with them in 1981. He rated their guitarist Kelly Johnson as highly as Jeff Beck on a good night and admitted they had a brief affair. Johnson died in 2007 at forty nine, and Lemmy named her among the women he had lost that he still thought about.[1] [2]

Lemmy and Wendy O. Williams. The Plasmatics singer was Lemmy's partner on the 1982 duet Stand By Your Man, the record that cost Motörhead Eddie Clarke. Lemmy remembered her fondly as a great woman and completely mad. Williams died by suicide in Connecticut in April 1998, and Lemmy counted her among the women whose loss stayed with him far more than any departed bandmate.[1] [2] [3]

Lemmy and Ozzy Osbourne. Motörhead opened for Ozzy's Blizzard of Ozz tour in 1981, and a lifelong friendship followed. Ozzy called Lemmy the king of heavy metal and marvelled that he never saw him falling down drunk. In 1991 Lemmy wrote lyrics for four songs on Ozzy's No More Tears, including Mama, I'm Coming Home, and Ozzy sang with him on I Ain't No Nice Guy the next year. On Lemmy's death Ozzy called him one of his best friends.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Lemmy and Metallica. Lars Ulrich followed Motörhead around on tour in 1981 and went home inspired to start a band with James Hetfield. Metallica covered Motörhead songs as a birthday gift, played Lemmy's fiftieth birthday as the Lemmys, and wrote Murder One about him after he died. Hetfield said that without Lemmy there would be no Metallica, and had some of his ashes mixed into a tattoo.[1] [2] [3]

Lemmy and Joe Petagno. The American artist met Lemmy through Hawkwind and in 1977 created Snaggletooth, the fanged war pig that became Motörhead's face. He painted most of their covers for three decades. In 2007 he quit after a dispute with the band's management, saying there would be no more heads from his hand. Lemmy answered publicly that it was a misunderstanding and that he hoped they could reconcile.[1] [2] [3]

Lemmy and Todd Singerman. Singerman talked his way into managing Motörhead in 1992 despite never having managed a band, and stayed until the end. He was the one who took Lemmy to hospital after his seventieth birthday, broke the news of his cancer to the world, and welcomed mourners at the funeral. He later helped place Lemmy's ashes at festivals like Wacken, calling them his homes around the world.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Lemmy and Paul Inder. Lemmy's son Paul was born in Manchester in the sixties, and father and son did not meet until Paul was six. As an adult Paul became a guitarist and joined his father on stage for Ace of Spades and Killed by Death. At the funeral he called Lemmy a stage warrior and a free spirit. Lemmy's estate was left entirely to him.[1] [2] [3]

Lemmy and Brian Robertson. Robertson rescued the 1982 tour after Clarke left, then became the most mismatched member Motörhead ever had, with his shorts, ballet shoes and refusal to play the classics. He felt he was a Thin Lizzy star doing them a favour. Lemmy called that line up the lowest point of the band's career, and said in 2013 that the two had not spoken since 1983.[1] [2]

Phil Campbell and Würzel. The two unknowns auditioned separately in February 1984, and Lemmy hired both after hearing them play together. For eleven years their twin guitars powered albums from Orgasmatron to Sacrifice. Würzel left in 1995, but he kept guesting with the band and stayed friends with them. When Campbell died in 2026, Mikkey Dee pictured him hanging out again with Lemmy, Würzel, Philthy and Eddie.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Rare facts about Motörhead

• Lemmy met his father only once, when he was twenty five. His father, a former RAF chaplain, left when Lemmy was three months old. When his mother later remarried a Catholic, Lemmy said the Vatican required him to be declared illegitimate.[1] [2]
• His first professional band, the Rockin' Vickers, performed dressed as vicars. The Blackpool group were among the first British rock bands to play a communist country, touring Yugoslavia in 1965. They were especially popular in Finland.[1] [2]
• Lemmy recorded his first album under the name Ian Willis. Willis was his stepfather's surname. He used it in the psychedelic band Sam Gopal, whose album Escalator came out in 1969, and said he wrote most of it in a single night.[1] [2]
• Lemmy had never played bass before the night he joined Hawkwind. He came to audition as a guitarist. When their bassist failed to show for a Notting Hill gig in 1971, he was pushed on stage with the missing man's instrument.[1] [2]
• The song Motorhead was written on Roy Wood's borrowed acoustic guitar. Lemmy grabbed it from the Wizzard room at the Hyatt on Sunset, the Riot House, in 1974 and bellowed the song from his balcony for four hours while cars stopped to listen.[1]
• Lemmy said he once tried to teach Sid Vicious to play bass. Before Sid joined the Sex Pistols he asked Lemmy for lessons. Lemmy said he tried, but that Sid lacked the artistry and was lucky if he could stand up.[1]
• Johnny Rotten told Lemmy he used to sell acid at Hawkwind shows. Lemmy was standing at the bar of the Roxy punk club in his flares when a voice behind him said it. He remembered the young Rotten with long red hair.[1]
• NME readers once voted Motörhead the best worst band in the world. That verdict came in their first year, while their shelved debut for United Artists sat unreleased. It finally came out in 1979 as On Parole.[1]
• Motörhead once played under the name Iron Fist and the Hordes from Hell. It was for contractual reasons, at a 1978 charity gig for William Wordsworth's manuscripts. Lemmy told the crowd to read plenty of Wordsworth, which gave the live album its title.[1] [2]
• The boss of Bronze Records released Motörhead's first hit without hearing it. Gerry Bron said he put out their Louie Louie as a favour, found it horrifying, and was even more shocked when it charted.[1]
• The drum pattern of Overkill came from Phil Taylor practising alone before rehearsal. He was teaching himself a second bass drum when Lemmy and Eddie walked in and told him to keep going. The song was built on the spot.[1]
• The Bomber tour's lighting rig was a forty foot flying aeroplane. The aluminium bomber had four lit engines and could swing backwards, forwards and side to side over the stage. It returned for the twenty fifth anniversary show in 2000.[1] [2] [3]
• The desert on the Ace of Spades cover is a sandpit in Barnet. The blue sky was airbrushed in because the day was cloudy. Each band member's cowboy outfit was based on a different Western hero.[1]
• Producer Vic Maile, nicknamed Turtle by the band, was a teetotal diabetic. Eddie Clarke said Maile needed his crispbread at six o'clock and the band were scared to upset him, so for once they listened to a producer.[1] [2]
• No Sleep 'til Hammersmith was not recorded at Hammersmith. The number one live album came mostly from shows in Newcastle and Leeds in March 1981. The Beastie Boys later nodded to it with No Sleep till Brooklyn.[1]
• Doctors refused Lemmy a full blood transfusion in 1980. He wanted to swap out fifteen years of chemicals. Tests showed his body was so saturated that clean blood could have killed him.[1] [2]
• Phil Taylor once taped a drumstick to his broken hand to keep playing. He had broken it punching a man outside his London flat, and gaffer tape got him through the shows until it healed.[1]
• The Brazilian band Sepultura named themselves after a Motörhead song. Sepultura is Portuguese for grave, a translation of Dancing on Your Grave from Another Perfect Day. The American band Overkill took their name from the 1979 album.[1] [2]
• Würzel's nickname came from the scarecrow Worzel Gummidge. Army mates gave it to him for his West Country burr and wild hair. Lemmy told him to add the umlaut for heavy metal effect.[1] [2]
• Würzel once knocked Bill Wyman flat at the 100 Club. Rushing downstairs in excitement, he collided head on with the Rolling Stones bassist. Lemmy loved telling the story.[1]
• Michael Palin appears on Motörhead's 1987 album Rock 'n' Roll. The band were recording in a studio Palin owned and, as Monty Python fans, asked him in. He delivered a mock prayer in the style of The Meaning of Life.[1]
• Lemmy said four songs for Ozzy earned him more than fifteen years of Motörhead. Sharon Osbourne asked him to write lyrics for No More Tears. Among them was Mama, I'm Coming Home, Ozzy's only solo top forty hit in America.[1] [2]
• Joey Ramone called Motörhead's R.A.M.O.N.E.S. the ultimate honour. He compared the tribute on 1916 to John Lennon writing a song for you. The Ramones went on to cover it.[1]
• Lemmy's bus rider on the 1981 Ozzy tour was mostly spirits. Ozzy recalled seven bottles of bourbon, eight of vodka and two of orange juice, and that Lemmy's luggage was a bag with three books and a notepad.[1]
• A 1981 Motörhead show in Stoke used a stage built entirely of speakers. According to Rolling Stone it pushed 117,000 watts, and a man four miles away rang during the soundcheck because he could not hear his television.[1]
• The video for Killed by Death was banned by MTV. It was directed by the Plasmatics' manager Rod Swenson and rejected for what MTV called excessive and senseless violence.[1]
• Lemmy appeared in a 2001 Kit Kat advert playing violin. He sat in a string quartet in a genteel tearoom. He also voiced a character called the Kill Master in the video game Brütal Legend.[1]
• The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame lost Lemmy's Ace of Spades tour jacket. He lent it for an exhibit and was told it had gone missing. He said they owed him a jacket before he would even speak to them.[1] [2]
• In 2009 Lemmy named Taylor Swift and Kelly Clarkson among the new music he liked. He told Rolling Stone that harmony still made him shiver, and was about the only thing that did.[1]
• At Glastonbury 2015 Lemmy sang Ace of Spades while the band played Overkill. He blamed a mental block after singing both songs thousands of times, and admitted it had also happened the night before.[1]
• Lemmy told Welsh politicians in 2005 that heroin should be legalised. Invited to speak against the drug, he read from typed notes and called legalisation the only answer, leaving his Conservative host visibly uncomfortable.[1] [2]
• Some of Lemmy's ashes were loaded into bullets for his friends. Recipients included Rob Halford and Doro Pesch. His ashes also went into an urn shaped like his cavalry hat and into the mud at Wacken in 2023.[1] [2]
• An extinct crocodile relative is named Lemmysuchus. It was named in 2017. An asteroid, 243002 Lemmy, followed the asteroid 250840 Motorhead named after the band.[1]
• Motörhead's first Grammy nomination was lost to Metallica. 1916 was nominated for Best Metal Performance at the 1992 Grammys and lost to the Black Album. Their only win came in 2005 for covering Metallica's Whiplash.[1] [2]
• Motörhead's final song on stage was Overkill. It closed the last show in Berlin on the eleventh of December 2015, as it had closed their sets for decades.[1] [2]
• Phil Campbell first met Lemmy at twelve, asking for his autograph after a Hawkwind gig. About a decade later he joined Motörhead and stayed thirty one years, longer than any member except Lemmy.[1] [2]
• Campbell and Dee were first left off Motörhead's Rock Hall nomination. Only Lemmy, Clarke and Taylor were named for the 2020 ballot. After a fan outcry in October 2019, the Hall added Campbell and Dee.[1] [2]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.