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When Rolling Stone dialed up Motörhead's Lemmy Kilmister to discuss the band's 20th studio release, Motörizer (out August 26th), the famously moled rocker was happy to share his recipe for the perfect beverage: "One-third Jack, two-thirds Coke, about five ice cubes. Don't bother stirring it, it'll stir you! And then bend over, double and drink it upside down — that'll cure your fucking hiccups!" Kilmister also opened up about stupid record-company advice, the war in Iraq and his new documentary, Lemmy: The Movie.
Motörizer is Motörhead's 20th studio
album. Did you ever think the group would last this
long?
We never had any plan of any kind, really. A lot of people didn't
think we would last this long. You don't think like that when
you're starting a band — you're just starting a band to see
what happens. It's very gratifying to still be around.
What's the biggest difference between writing and
recording albums now than when the group did Overkill or
Ace of Spades?
It's like another planet, isn't it? People thought different,
people looked different, people did things differently, people
philosophized differently about their fate. It was just
different. And hasn't changed for the better, y'know?
[laughs] Ain't it funny, how things never seem to change
for the better? They improve things, and they're always worse!
The lyrics in "The Thousand Names of God" deal with the
theme of war. What are your thoughts on the current situation in
Iraq?
It's a fucking mess. It's another Vietnam — a war you can't
win, because you can't fight an enemy you can't see. Anybody in
that country could be the enemy. You can't shoot them all, so
therefore, you have to get out. We should have never gone there in
the first place. I mean, you can say, "Saddam is an asshole," which
is certainly true, but he wasn't a threat to America. George Bush
and Colin Powell on TV told me he was my enemy. And I knew that he
wasn't. I'll tell you a funny story — to improve the mood a
bit — when the British army went into Iraq for Desert Storm,
they had no desert uniforms, only the green ones. Do you know why?
Because they sold them all to Iraq two years before! Isn't that
brilliant? Sums it all up right there.
What can fans expect from Motörhead's set on the
tour?
I think we're only going to get one or two in from the new album.
We haven't played here in three years, so the set we're playing is
still fairly new to America. So maybe we won't change it —
except put a new one in from the new album.
How would you compare Motörhead audiences today to
30 years ago?
They're the same. They're kind of younger now, but we get three
generations at our shows. It proves that we were doing it right. We
get 13 or 14 year olds at the non-liquor gigs, it's great.
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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.