Q&A: Lemmy Kilmister on Motorhead's Longevity, Famous Friends and Bad Advice

What can you say about the upcoming Lemmy: The Movie documentary?
It looks good, doesn't it? They're really nice guys, they're from New York — Wes [Orshoski] and Greg [Olliver]. They just showed up and said, "Can we do it?" And we said, "Yeah." They've been on I think three tours now — on the bus and filming us backstage and fucking around. They've interviewed a shitload of people — you wouldn't believe how many people they've interviewed. People I forgot I knew!

How do you feel when you hear Dave Grohl, Alice Cooper and Slash offer praise in the documentary?
It's really nice. It's a pleasure to be vindicated [laughs]. Because everybody in the world gave us six months to live when we started. So, my natural fuck you-ness couldn't allow me to break up the band before they got shut up. I think they've shut up, so now I'm not going to break up the band? just in case [laughs]!

You're one of the few people that can say they hung out with Jimi Hendrix and Sid Vicious.
They were both great gentlemen with me. I've seen Sid fight other people, and it was fucking horrifying. Hendrix was just a sweet guy — to an extent, he was murdered by the people around him, because they didn't take care of him. They just didn't watch his back.

What's your take on the current state of rock & roll?
Rock & roll's fine, because stuff isn't getting played on the radio, again. They will come up with something that the radio hasn't noticed, again, and they will definitely spark a terrible rush by the record companies to sign it all up — anything with a guitar around its neck from that city [laughs]. Like the Merseybeat, and the Nirvana thing — they went up to Seattle and signed everything that even owned a guitar, I think.

What was the most foolish piece of advice you ever received from a record company?
"Everything's wonderful, we're your friends! We're going to make you all millionaires!" When we were parting with Sony, we said to someone in the Sony hierarchy, "Why couldn't you tell us the truth?" And he said, "That isn't the way it works." A really awful statement for someone in the music business to make. The fucking asshole. It's enough to kill your faith. They're all like that though, it's not just Sony. People were signing bands, letting them make half an album, and then fire them off the label — for a tax loss. Just so their books were balanced, they'd destroy five young men's dreams. It's fucking disgraceful — you should be able to persecute them for that.