Kitty and the Kilmister
Oktober 2, 2008 · Print This Article
So Lemmy, how is your neighbor’s lawn doing?
He doesn’t have a lawn. I live in an apartment building now. But his windows break. That’s as much as I can bring about. (hehe)
You moved to L.A. 18 years ago. Before that you said in an interview: „I’d really like to move to America. There you can get busted by a cop and if you give him the right rap and spiel he’ll actually let you go, and maybe he’ll even blow a joint with you first.” Have your expectations been met?
Well yeah, the cops have always been like that in the States. I mean there are some cops like that here too, but not many. There it is not the junior cops but also the superintendants.
Funny. I find US American cops and security forces in general to be rather obnoxious. Especially since 9/11.
Yeah, that part is fucking heavy, but you don’t really come across that unless you are flying. When you travel within the country in your car you don’t have to deal with that.
Part of Motörhead’s success is certainly due to the band’s evil image that was unheard-of at the point when you started in 1975. Can rock ‘n’ roll still be evil today or at least scare people?
Well, we can still piss people off. This stupid generation that makes up all the laws for example. It is the Woodstock generation. They are my generation and I fucking hate them! They have become our parents: fucking uptight assholes. And I don’t know where they got it from. It certainly isn’t my fault. When people get to the age of like 45 they think they have to be responsible and fucking think about the future of their kids. But that’s rubbish, the kids don’t want your future anyway, they want their own. It’s a waste of time and generation after generation it is all the same. Sending them off to war, what a good idea that is! You get them back in a box with both legs missing and a bad attitude. The fucking war in Iraq is Vietnam again. They didn’t learn anything. Off they go again. 4000 guys were killed after they said it was over. George Bush, ha!
Let’s hope for Obama.
Let’s hope for Obama. But someone is going to shoot him, you know that, don’t you? Some white fucking maniac in the States. Or some black maniac who thinks Obama has sold out. It usually happens that way, too. It is too dangerous I think.
Are you eligible vote in November?
No. Who is going to vote anyway? Who for? There is nothing to vote for, only things to vote against. The worst of two evils.
Speaking of which, the evil seems to fascinate you. Your apartment is loaded with memorabilia from the Third Reich…
I’m just fascinated by how the Germans all crawled around kissing [Hitler’s] ass for all these years. That is very interesting. Even the mighty British Empire was kissing his ass, man! We could have stopped him in 1934 but we didn’t, so we got what we deserved. And it was obvious that the guy was going to do everything he did because he wrote a book about it 10 years before he came to power! If I had realized how much Nazi stuff there actually is I would have never started to collect in the first place. I mean there were about 200 national socialist organizations and every one had their own fucking uniform, their own daggers, badges, hats. For the people who made uniforms those were happy days.
With Motörizer you are releasing your 24th album. How is this one different from the last 23?
I don’t know. When you doing it, you don’t know what it is like. You just work on something until you like it. And then you put it out and hope that the people will like it, too. I really like it. It is the fifth version so far. So you could say we had a disagreement on the mix. Everybody wanted his instrument louder. But this is a pretty good one. I think it will do ok.
Women seem to have always played a big role in your life. For Motörizer you wrote a song about one called “English Rose”…
It’s an English girl I see in L.A. She has been over there a long time, too. And we share an interest in how many contortions you can bring your body in and we are also remaining contact. It’s more of an anthropological study, really.
You have been around for over three decades now. How has your audience changed over the years?
Some of it hasn’t, it is still the same guys. But we have tons of thirteen-, fourteen-year-olds all over the world. Some of them think that “Sacrifice” is our first album but that is ok with me. To many of the older ones we are all about Ace of Spades.
Haven’t you grown sick of that song yet?
I don’t mind playing it. But I don’t need people saluting and shouting it at me with a bunch of spit from only two feet away.
Indeed, some of your fans can be disturbing. At my last Motörhead gig a big trucker guy in front of me first did a propeller spin with his greasy long hair and then turned around and vomited all over me…
Oh. Sorry to hear that. Hope he didn’t put you off too much but that man probably saved your hearing!
Do you listen to any new bands?
Of course! (thinks for a long time) There is a good band from L.A. called the Sex Slaves. I saw a couple of cool bands in L.A. but I can’t remember who they were. I don’t really know who the new people are. I mean, I still think the Foo Fighters are new. And of course you always refer mostly to people of your own era. But I have come through a lot of eras. I really liked the punk thing and that was after us. We started the year before the punks. And we were the only band with long hair that the punks liked, because we sounded like punks if you close your eyes. But we had long hair so we had to be heavy metal obviously. The media made us heavy metal. But we never said that, I always said that we are a rock ‘n’ roll band, which is what we are. But we have to be something for them to write under a heading other than ‘rock’. I despise most heavy metal, never liked it. Ponderous fucking boogie bullshit. But there you go, not to worry, we’re on tour with Judas Priest again in August.
And you contributed the song “Shake your Blood” to Dave Grohl’s heavy metal side project Probot.
Yeah. I really like him. I have been on stage with the Foo Fighters a couple of times doing that Probot track. Dave is a genius with the audience! He speaks to them and they really drink it up, it’s a talent. I don’t have it. Paul McCartney didn’t have it with the Beatles either, he fucking seems like he is made of wood he’s terrible! The video to Shake Your Blood with those suicide girls was great. That was the first time since 1966 that I have been on a revolving stage. And the fucking guy turned it up too high and we were whizzing around and everything was in a fucking blur.
You were given the Mojo Hero Award. Are you a hero?
Oh yeah, too much man. Out of sight vibes! That’s another thing I don’t get. A hero in peace times is a fucking violent nut case. In war times you can give him a medal but he can’t get a job afterwards because he is a psychopath! Anyone who would run into a hail of bullets is a fucking idiot. I will give the award to Mikkey because it is shaped like an M. We all got Grammys anyway and I got a couple of other awards so I’m all right. Tough the Grammy was just a mercy fuck because we had been around for so long. It was our 30th anniversary. And even then they didn’t give it to us for any of our own songs but for a Metallica cover. And the one before that was for another Metallica cover, too.
At age 62 you still don’t have health insurance. But you did appear in an Axa commercial years ago, did they not offer to insure you?
No, they preferred to pay me five and a half thousand pounds. And that was a lot back then! I don’t really care about health insurance. The thing is, I have no dependance. But there is enough money sitting in my house. All I have to do is sell a lot of that stuff and then I’m halfway a millionaire. This Nazis stuff is big money now. A dagger of Hermann Göring’s brother in law just went for a hundred grand! I have an Air Force sword from the Third Reich made from Damascus steel. It was a seven grand when I bought it ten years ago so now it is probably worth at least twice as much. So that stuff is my insurance. Rock ‘n’ roll does not have an adequate pension.
http://www.myspace.com/motorhead
Motörhead: Motörizer (Steamhammer/SPV)
Text + Interview > Kitty Bolhöfer
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