Motörhead: "Sometimes You Discover That You Really Look Like An Asshole On Stage And You Really Don’t Want to Repeat That," Says Lemmy

Jeb Wright of Classic Rock Revisited recently sat down with Lemmy of Motörhead for a chat. Read excerpts below:

Jeb: You’re getting ready to embark on the Mayhem festival.

Lemmy: It should be energetic. It should be hell backstage between acts. The first day will be crazy and disorganized. It will be hopeless. More or less, I will just sit back and laugh at all of them. These days, everyone takes everything so seriously. It’s only rock and roll, you know, its okay.


Jeb: Any festival called ‘Mayhem’ should have Motorhead be a part of it. Where are you playing?


Lemmy: That is fair enough, yeah. I think we are going to be between Anthrax and Slayer. We may be before Anthrax, I’m not sure yet.


Jeb: Slayer and Anthrax look up to you, Lemmy. Are you comfortable being The Godfather of Heavy Metal?


Lemmy: I wouldn’t call it that, they might, you know. I just do what I do and that is to be the bass player and vocalist for Motorhead, that’s my title.


Jeb: I think Motorhead’s epitaph will be, “They kicked ass.” How do you explain that America wants you around now? For years they didn’t want anything to do with you.


Lemmy: Well, that is what we do, we kick ass. As far as the popularity goes, I never saw the point of letting them win. If you let them win then the whole thing was for nothing. You’ve got to prove it. You’ve got to say, “Yeah, I was here and I shit on your hydrant – you’ve got to leave your mark.


Jeb: You never did get that hit single in America, though.


Lemmy: We never did and I think that it is a bit late for that now. The movie did alright, though. It went Gold and it was number one on Billboard; I couldn’t believe it. It’s okay though because I thought I deserved it anyway… Seriously, I’ve always felt that we were a pretty good band and I always have thought that we deserved more attention in America. We’ve been putting albums out here since 1982. If it takes making a movie about one of us to get us more recognition then I say, ‘Let’s do it.”


Read the entire interview here.