While many fans of Motörhead have explored Lemmy's material with Hawkwind, only a select few know of the 1969 psych rock album that marked his debut as lead singer and songwriter: Sam Gopal's Escalator. Lemmy – credited on Escalator as Ian Willis – had previously been in the Rockin' Vickers, but, as he put it, he was "just a hod-carrier" in the Vickers, playing guitar on a few singles, but not writing any songs.
The Gopal album, by contrast, "was the first album I ever did," Lemmy told me during one of our three conversations, which took place between 2009 and 2011. "I wrote all the songs in one night, except for the Donovan cover [‘Season Of The Witch’] and ‘Angry Faces’,” written by Leo Davidson.
The title track has one of his first strokes of lyrical genius, of some relevance now that the man has departed: "I can feel it / The spring unwinding in my head / And if you think you like me living, baby / You're gonna love me when I'm dead."
"That’s because people get better when they’re dead!" Lemmy said, laughing darkly, when I asked about the lyric. "I mean, Buddy Holly and Randy Rhoads, they acquired much more dexterity on the guitar when they were dead. Nobody seemed to notice it before!"
It wasn't the only time the topic of mortality came up during our conversations.
"As you get older, you think about it more, as a more pressing thing," he said at one point. "But it doesn’t really bother me. Being dead is the same thing as being alive, only more still."
Lemmy had been diagnosed as diabetic, by the time of our first interview, but was in decent health, considering.
"I mean, I'm 63 - you don't get better!" he said.
He told me that he had been "dead twice," referring not to medical diagnoses, but mistakes in journalism, with his obituary appearing in a French magazine while he was still very much alive. "When you get to that stage, anything else is just pastry."
He was more receptive towards the idea of an afterlife than one might expect, saying that of the religions he'd looked into, Buddhism "makes the most sense."
"I don’t believe in a grand design," he told me, "but I do believe in a power of some sort."
While his fans may have celebrated his reputation as a superhero of substance abuse, the Lemmy I spoke to told me he was bored of being asked about such matters, and said of his lifestyle that he didn't recommend it for anyone else. "It's not going to be particularly good for anybody. I don't like to espouse it, y'know?"
He was also skeptical about hero worship directed his way, saying, when "you shave this idiot every day, you don’t think of it as a fuckin’ hero, when you’re looking back at it in the mirror."
We chatted about his controversial collection of Nazi memorabilia, which included a set of Hitler's cutlery. He assured me that he was a history buff and certainly no Nazi, and that his collection was "a pension scheme," since rock 'n' roll doesn’t have one. For instance, a unique Nazi dagger that came up for auction in a catalogue he received had a starting bid of $100,000.
“So this is not your average skinhead buying it, this is lawyers and doctors," he said.
He picked The Ruling Class as one of his favourite movies, shared his enthusiasm for PG Wodehouse, and – since he'd dedicated "In the Name of Tragedy" to William Shakespeare at one of his Vancouver shows – told me that his favourite Shakespeare play was Richard III.
Asked about the perks of being Lemmy, he proudly told me a story of once being invited to ride in a steam locomotive. "I love steam locomotives. And I don’t think that that’s because I’m old fashioned, it’s because steam locomotives are alive, whereas diesel is just a bus on rails – fuckin' soulless!"
The one time I met him in person, backstage at the Vogue in 2011, Lemmy inscribed a copy of his autobiography, White Line Fever, to me, with one word, "Luck!" and graciously accepted some gifts, including a bottle of Jack, a signed copy of Chris Walter's East Van, and some weirder curiosities, like a copy of the notorious Japanese hentai anime, Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend. ("Have you seen any tentacle porn before," I asked, and he guffawed and said "No," in a way suggesting both amusement and the possibility he thought I was totally nuts. Gotta admit, I felt a bit proud of that moment.)
It was a privilege having met you, Lemmy. Thanks for all the amazing music.
