Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers

by Martin Popoff

  ~

  Ace of Spades ends in a cloud of dust, like the villain blazing out of town on a black horse, crimes committed, with another fast track of menacing proto-thrash called “The Hammer,” which is just as long as the opener and just as brutal. It’s one of the band’s angriest and most threatening tracks yet, which, as Lemmy says, comes naturally. “The British are generally angry because of our climate, and the lack of things to do after 9:30 at night because the police close them all down as soon as we start liking it. It’s bloody impossible in England. It’s so fucking miserable. The weather there is just going to depress the hell out of you before you get out of bed. Just as soon as you look out the window, ‘Oh fuck, I gotta go out in that again?’ It rains all the time. You have no idea. And rain is worse than freezing to death. Freezing to death, at least it’s quick. But constant rain really beats you down and it ruins your hair, if you’ve got long hair. Life is a bitch, right? And so are you. You can’t get around life being a bastard because it is, and it’s not anybody cursing you, it’s not the devil getting on your case, it’s random shit. And it can happen to you. A piano can fall on you as you walk down the street on a sunny day. And if you’re lucky it will.”

  And with that coda, Motörhead had somehow, by sleight of hand and/or by the goodly senses of Vic Maile, created a record that is somehow more communicative to the band’s discerning audience, more punctuated by peaks and valleys, delivering a new batch of anthems in, certainly, the title track, “Shoot You in the Back” and “Chase.” But, maybe, just maybe, the appeal of Ace of Spades is equally made potent by the presentation of these three guys so boldly on the front cover, all packaged up with the concept of Lemmy’s saloon tarot tattoo.

  Whatever the reason, Motörhead were now local anti-heroes, certainly in London but also in hotspots like Germany and increasingly among the quickly growing army of metal fans all over North America.

  However, there would be limits. “We were not pretty enough for America,” says Lemmy. “We also didn’t come here on either of the big invasions. We came in between them. Motörhead has impeccable timing—we fucked the whole thing up. The New Wave of British Heavy Metal had not happened and the old wave, with Priest and Sabbath, had gone. We couldn’t get a record company to touch us.”

  “I can only assume it’s because we were a little bit ahead of our time,” reflects Eddie, on why the band never broke America. “I think the sheer onslaught of our sound put a lot of people off. It was not until a couple of years later that metal was accepted in the U.S.A., although in places like Chicago, Seattle and New York we went down real well, but in places like Omaha, not so good.”

  Lemmy in Toronto during the Ace of Spades tour.

  © Martin Popoff

  As for Ace of Spades still enduring, despite not even reaching gold in America, as the band’s main achievement after so many more records, years, beers and tears . . . was it a case of the band being so on fire that the album just could not be denied?

  “I think the people who bought it were the ones that were more on fire, so they remember it that way,” explains Lemmy, 20 years on. “I mean, I think we’re just as on fire now, really. And if you’ve seen us, you’ll know I’m right. That was a lot of people’s turning point, when they were 16 or whatever. That’s what you listen to for the rest of your life, what you listened to when you were 16. That determines what music you’re really going to be into. So a lot of people just remember it as their personal thing. It wasn’t that it was the best we did, it was that it was the best they heard. It’s a tricky thing.”

  CHAPTER 7

  No Sleep ’til Hammersmith: “The bomber, the sweat, the noise—it was an event.”

  Taking to stages up and down the U.K. like they were stagecoaches to be hijacked by highwaymen, Motörhead’s profile on home soil was something to be celebrated. And what better way to toast Motörhead’s unplanned lording over the NWOBHM and the release of their fine fourth record than with some beer drinkers and hell raisers?

  There was no better way, in the opinion of Chiswick Records boss Ted Carroll, who raided his vaults for some extra recordings from his 1977 sessions to come up with the Beer Drinkers EP set for release on November 22, 1980. Lemmy, for his part, was fine with the idea, indicating that without Ted’s interest, Motörhead would not have gotten off the ground, so fair game.

  “That was just pure drinking,” laughs Eddie, when asked about the band’s cover of ZZ Top mid-classic “Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers,” one of that band’s heaviest songs and one of the key biker anthems in the catalog of the bearded ones. “We always liked to listen to a little bit of ZZ Top. And my drinking at that time had only really just begun. I was a bit like, ‘Oh, the song’s got beer drinkers in it,’ so Lemmy said, ‘You could fucking sing it then.’ And I said, ‘I don’t know about that,’ but after another beer I did. It was fun just for the sake of it.”

  And so Eddie does, singing both parts, where on the original, the vocal is shared by Billy Gibbons and bassist Dusty Hill. Lemmy is added in subtly as a second vocal track, but it is Eddie who we hear prominently. Eddie also sings a raucous version of John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers’ “I’m Your Witchdoctor,” which contains just enough heavy metal licks and speed to overcome the ’60s chorus. All told, it’s an intriguing choice, and a track that was part of the band’s early sets when they had little of their own material. There’s also the instrumental “Instro” and a small, punky version of “On Parole,” a charmer of an original that evokes images of pub rockers gone punk, sort of Eddie and the Hot Rods meets Vibrators. All told, an interesting curio, given its prompting of armchair conjecture as to how the Motörhead album could have changed in complexion if some of these tracks were swapped in for others—say “Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers” or “Witchdoctor” (or another original, but an almost poppy and rock ’n’ rollsy one, “On Parole”) for the more pedestrian and old-news “Train Kept a-Rollin’,” for example.

  But Motörhead were not done with the EPs. Like Beer Drinkers, the St. Valentines Day Massacre EP, issued two and a half months hence, February 1, 1981, served as comic relief of sorts, to the serious business of the Motörhead albums. As touched upon, the idea of the band letting their hair down as it were, for these bits and bobs of new (and affordable) material now and again helped endear Motörhead to the punters while keeping them in the NWOBHM game, one in which the lifeblood was a steady stream of seven-inch singles.

  The St. Valentines Day Massacre EP was a novel collaboration between Motörhead and impressive NWOBHMers Girlschool (named on the cover as Motor Headgirl School), punk-rocking their way through Johnny Kidd and the Pirates’ “Please Don’t Touch,” while Girlschool covered “Bomber” and Motörhead covered Girlschool’s “Emergency.” Lemmy says that “Please Don’t Touch” was Vic Maile’s idea, but originally, the idea was for Girlschool to cover it in the conventional sense, that is on their own. Sealing the deal for the collaboration, Lemmy copped to the fact that it was one of his favorite songs growing up.

  It was natural that Lemmy would relish covering a track like “Please Don’t Touch.” As we’ve discussed, Lemmy loved the old rock ’n’ roll, and indeed his iconic look, as it became honed and focused and quite standardized over the years, was a mixture of biker, Wild West, Civil War and rockabilly or Teddy Boy. Johnny Kidd and “Please Don’t Touch” was perfect for Lem, in fact, the most autobiographical or intrinsic choice the band ever collared for a cover.

  “I don’t want to break out of the genre,” Lemmy would say, referring to the type of heavy metal Motörhead played (although that’s my shorthand for it, not his). “Because the genre is our music and we must be doing it right because so many people stuck with us. But within our musical form, we still bend the envelope quite a bit. We did a lot of different sound effect things on different albums. I think we’ve kept pretty well adventurous within what we do. I don’t see any reason to stray
from what we do because what we did in the beginning and what we do now is good music. And you can’t get it anywhere else. I mean, I’ve listened to everything from Little Richard to Art Blakey; I understand music. I know what I’m fucking doing. I come from a very diverse background. I remember Elvis’s first record coming out. And ever since then I’ve been influenced by him. So I’d like to do a country album, I’d like to do a blues album, and even, given the money, I’d like to do a disco album.”

  But true to character, there’s even a sad side to Lemmy’s fandom of the rich nascent rock history he got to experience first-hand. His voice dripping with cynicism, stoicism, and just a sense of “there you are—that’s the state of mankind,” he once told me, “I had my entire music collection stolen when I was living in London. I had a thousand albums and six hundred singles stolen. And they were all original singles. I had shit like Roy Head doing ‘Apple of My Eye’ on Back Beat Records, all very exotic. All of them were stolen. I’ve got a good selection again, but I wouldn’t say I’m a collector. I never really got into collecting records again.”

  Lemmy’s tastes even ran towards the original country greats, which would be an influence, along with the rockabilly, on a side project he would have with Slim Jim Phantom of Stray Cats and Danny B. Harvey of the Rockats called Headcat. Note the similarity of nomenclature with “Headgirl,” one of the shorthand names of the collaboration with Girlschool.

  “I mean, that was a surprise to me,” chuckles Phil, remembering the original rock ’n’ roll Lemmy, Slim Jim and Danny B. album of 2000. “I went to see him when he first played a gig here in L.A. with Slim Jim, and I’ve never been a country fan, and to be honest, I thought . . . I walked out basically. Because I thought what the fuck is this?! It wasn’t Stray Cats and it wasn’t Motörhead—I mean Lemmy singing and playing acoustic guitar? I think he was going through this period in his life where, in his own mind, he was thinking, I want to be recognized as a great musician, not just Lemmy, the speed freak. It’s that kind of thing. But unfortunately he’d chosen the wrong genre to get that across. Because he doesn’t have a powerful voice. He has a very guttural voice but it’s not very powerful. It certainly doesn’t lend itself to that kind of country and western or whatever you want to call it. Although I don’t think he had any vocal influences at all, not really. Maybe John Lennon. I think secretly he always wanted to sound like John Lennon, because he’s got that kind of a voice; he always tried to sing in a similar meter that Lennon sang in. Yeah, John Lennon was one of his favorite vocalists.”

  Motörhead were big metal wear influencers with their bullet belts and studded wristbands.

  © Piergiorgio Brunelli

  “I mean, obviously he must like it,” continues Phil, back on the roots of rock. “I know that his favorite artist—and not a lot of people know this—has always been Buddy Holly. He always admired Buddy Holly; God knows why. I mean, I could never stand any of that sort of twangy twangy stuff. But Lemmy looks at it from a different point of view. I guess it’s because he was a teenager, and him being ten years older than me, he was a teenager when all those Buddy Holly–type bands came out. That was the music that was being played on the radio when he was 14, 15 and dating. So I guess it holds a lot of memories for him. I certainly don’t think it suits him at all. But he seems happy with it.”

  It’s an interesting point Phil makes about Lemmy and what happens when he tries to “sing.” Lemmy, does in fact, sound wheezy and asthmatic when he’s not pushing much air, and his ear for staying in tune starts to fail him. The effect points to another reason fans love the guy—although it might be something subconscious, something they don’t think about much—there’s a vulnerability in his voice, except it’s not the emotional vulnerability one usually talks about around vocalists, but rather a physical one, a reminder of all the hard living Lem’s packed into his head. The effect is that if he’s not screaming full-throttle at the dying of the raging inferno that is his life, his own pilot light is likely to go out.

  On the strength of the catchiness of “Please Don’t Touch,” not to mention the obvious mutual love and admiration and energy in the performance of it, the EP vaulted to No. 5 in the U.K. charts. And no surprise either, given the spirited harmonies laid down wobbly by all these punk metal friends. “You’ve got to remember,” reminds Lemmy, “I was doing all these influences before I did Motörhead, because I was in bands doing harmony songs. And I used to do the high harmonies in Hawkwind, so it’s not much of an adaptation, more of a recollection.”

  “Well, it’s one of Lemmy’s old songs when he was in the Rocking Vickers, really,” notes Eddie on the rollicking flagship track. “So it came from Lem. I’d never heard the song. I mean, I knew ‘Shakin’ All Over’ from Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, but that’s about as far as it went with me. But Lemmy came up with that one, and it was kind of like a love duet, because he was very fond of Kelly [Johnson], you know. And of course, the management loved the idea. But of course unfortunately, that little collaboration meant that the management thought collaborations were great, and then later insisted we did the Wendy O. Williams one, which destroyed the band. So, in hindsight, maybe we shouldn’t have done the St. Valentines Day Massacre.

  “Oh, they were fucking great,” continues Eddie, remembering the Girlschool gals, good for one classic NWOBHM album by this point and months away from another. “They supported us on the Overkill tour. They really were a good little outfit. Kelly was a great guitarist, and, I’ve got to say, Kim was a great vocalist/rhythm guitarist. In fact, they were just a great little band. Don’t get me wrong, in those days, it wasn’t that common for girls. Of course there was the Runaways, which I never gave a lot of time for. But Girlschool could kick ass and we really liked them. So when this came up, of course, Lemmy had this thing with Kelly. He was very close to Kelly. He loved her to bits. And of course Lemmy jumped at the idea, and we thought, you know, why not? We were kind of in between things at the time.”

  “Basically people were fed up with what was going on,” figures Girlschool guitarist and vocalist Kim McAuliffe, on how she ended up in the NWOBHM’s first all-girl band. “At that point, we were missing heavy metal bands coming out. Obviously you had all your great ones, didn’t you? You had all your greats, but there wasn’t any more coming out, so we decided to do it ourselves. And obviously Motörhead, really; that’s the main influence. Right in the beginning we were just writing our own stuff and it was influenced by Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. Obviously we were into heavy metal when we were young, but then later it was punk and Motörhead.

  “As for getting signed to Bronze,” continues Kim, “what happened was obviously they had Motörhead at the time. It was Lemmy, basically, that came along and saw us at rehearsal. We were literally touring around ourselves, doing everything ourselves. We got our own little single out, ‘Take It All Away,’ which, because of the punk era, everybody at that point could actually do what they wanted. What happened was me and Enid, since we were little, we used to play at this little club, and so we started off there and we got to know this guy at the new club and he started his own little record label with a punk band called U.K. Subs, who were fantastic and great mates of ours. So of course we started out with them for the first single. And then Lemmy heard about us, and then they wanted to get out with our band, support them on their very first major tour. And of course they thought, oh yeah, girls, a bit of a laugh, whatever. So he came down to see us play at rehearsal, and we were all really frightened. He looked really scary. Of course he came down and he was lovely.”

  The idea for the EP came from Vic Maile, who had been with Girlschool in December of ’80 into ’81 at Jackson’s in Rickmansworth recording Hit and Run, their second album with him. Vic had produced Ace of Spades just before, and Girlschool’s debut album Demolition just before that.

  “Vic was our first producer,” answers Kim, offering a profile of Vic. “That was
at a time when we were really stubborn and pigheaded and we didn’t think we needed a producer. We thought we knew it all, at the tender age of 18 or whatever we were. The first time we met him we didn’t get along at all! We thought we were a bunch of God knows what and we didn’t like him at all. But when we were going to record ‘Emergency,’ our very first single for Bronze Records, nonetheless they made us work together, Bronze Records did. Of course, as it turns out, we struck up a great friendship with him and obviously used him quite a bit over the years. And of course, so did Motörhead—he did one of their best albums for them, which went straight to No. 1. So it was so funny that after that first meeting, that we got to be great friends afterwards and really liked his work. He was a lovely bloke as well. He was really funny. He was very quiet and had this really dry sense of humor. At each recording session—we should have twigged, I know, by now—but at each recording session he would be taping us without us realizing, and then he would give us a tape and we obviously sounded like twats at the time arguing and doing what we used to do; it was usually quite hilarious, really. We had some great times, great fun. Sadly, he died in ’89, and he was only 40-something.”

  ~

  Work on the proposed St. Valentines Day Massacre EP didn’t go exactly as planned, with Phil Taylor having to settle for an “insults and inspiration” credit due to injury. As well, but not impinging on his being able to perform, during that same month, Phil and girlfriend Motorcycle Irene got caught in a drug sweep of houses associated with the band all across London (deemed the Great Motörhead Police Bust) and were charged with possession; two roadies, Graham Reynolds and Geoffrey Lucas, were also nabbed in the operation, which found cannabis residue, methaqualone and cocaine.