Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers

by Martin Popoff

  But back to the rending, the events leading to Clarke’s departure from the band were accelerating once they got to New York. This was all going down at the Palladium, May 14, 1982, which would mark Eddie’s last show with the band. Clarke wouldn’t be around to see the single finished and issued.

  Do not accept a ride from this man.

  © Piergiorgio Brunelli

  “No, I had done the backing tracks. We laid down the backing tracks in Toronto, and then I think Lemmy finished it off later. He’d finished it off later and produced it later. But yeah, Brian Robertson was already on the fucking plane, I think. Or he was already over there. Phil was working some number. Yeah, some number was going, and I had no idea, mate, to be honest. I had no idea. I was pretty fucking heartbroken by it. I had to get back . . . I had to get out of there. I thought this is ridiculous. I don’t understand it. I thought we would die together as a band. I did my usual, ‘Listen, I’m leaving,’ but I wasn’t leaving. They said fuck off then. They threw me out, really. And it all started over that bird. I think Phil was just sticking to Lemmy’s coattails, because he saw Lemmy as the leader, and I was left out in the fucking cold. I never foresaw not being in Motörhead. I just never saw it. I thought—some of the things Phil got up to—if anybody needed firing out of the band, it was Phil. But it didn’t even cross our minds—we wouldn’t do that. But it’s all history now.”

  “He left the band over that,” is the point-blank way Lemmy characterizes it, thinking back specifically to wearing the Wendy O. Williams shirts on the bus ride. “Yeah, I remember that. It was really funny. He was mad, but it was really funny. If you haven’t got a sense of humor about you, then you might as well check out.”

  CHAPTER 10

  The Aftermath: “God bless him, little fella.”

  “I am not one to hold grudges,” reflects Eddie, soon to have a considerable hit on his hands in America with his new band Fastway. “I had to pick myself up and was fortunate to run into Pete Way. We had such a blast putting Fastway together, when I was asked by my new accountant what to do about the Motörhead money, etc., I said, ‘I am doing okay. I do not want to give them any trouble; we had some good years.’ But first I had to fly back to England and I had nothing. All of my equipment, my guitars and everything, was still on the road with Motörhead. I remember kicking along the streets with a half a bottle of vodka in my pocket and hardly any money and thinking, ‘Fuck, I’m not in the band anymore.’ It was devastating.

  “Fortunately, I was young,” continues Eddie, stressing it didn’t take him long to sort out a next move. “I also had a bit of a drink problem so that kind of helped, as well. You can drink yourself every night until you forget things. It was not long after that when someone called me and said, ‘Pete Way has left UFO and would you like to get together to have a meeting?’ I had to do something so I agreed. Pete was in a similar situation as me, as he had been kind of forced out of his band because of his behavior. I was forced out of my band due to my behavior. We both also liked to have a drink. So I met with Pete and we had a drink and then I went to see this guy I knew and asked him if we could use his rehearsal room on credit because we didn’t have any money. He agreed to let me pay him later. Topper Headon from the Clash was just down the road and we got chatting and he said, ‘Ah, this is fucking great, I’ll play drums.’ The next thing I know we get to rehearsal the next day and Topper is on drums, Pete is on bass and I’m on guitar and it just sounds great. It was the first time I had played with a proper bass player in seven years.”

  Explaining his optimism for this new band versus the hard graft that Motörhead had become, Eddie notes that, “Pete is a wonderful bass player. I was playing some solos and my guitar had never sounded so sweet. The underlying sound of Motörhead made it so I had no bass to lean on to play a solo. I was always struggling with my sound. I didn’t realize until I played with Pete that the problem was that I didn’t have a proper bass guitar for my sound to be soaked into. From there on it was fantastic. Topper was great but he had some issues and problems and he had to leave. We were really three outcasts. He told me that he was not in the right place and that he had to leave. One of Pete’s fans told us that Jerry Shirley was painting and decorating in this town just outside of London. We met up with him in a pub in London and he comes in all covered in paint. Jerry was one of the greatest rock drummers of our time and he is standing there covered in paint. He liked to drink too, which was handy. We sorted it out and he agreed to join the band. We started rehearsing with Jerry and it sounded great.”

  “There were some drugs around but drink was the main drug,” continues Eddie, on whether booze got to be a hindrance at any point with either of his bands of brothers. “I suppose sometimes it caused a few problems but other times it was helpful. I am sure some of my drunken antics pissed people off. I think it comes with the territory, but it didn’t really have a negative effect. A lot of the fun was down to the heavy party lifestyle. But of course, I may have a twisted take on these things. I had some of the best times of my life with Motörhead, although it was a struggle with that band. We finally made it through sheer will and determination. Motörhead was very intense and suddenly I walked out of that intensity into this breath of fresh air that was Fastway. I started playing like I always knew I could. Of course, the problem with Fastway was that Pete left and then Jerry left and then I was drinking too much and I got out of control. There are a lot of bad memories surrounding Fastway.”

  It’s well known that Fastway’s fortunes declined quickly, along with Eddie’s profile in rock, which persists at no more than a low hum to this day. But first there was the self-titled Fastway album from 1983, which spawned the hits “Easy Livin’” and “Say What You Will” and almost went gold in the States, followed by a second solid CBS-issued record in All Fired Up. And back in the Motörhead camp, even if Eddie was never to rejoin forces with Lemmy and Phil, relations soon became cordial again.

  “Yes, well, Lemmy buried the hatchet at the Reading Festival in 1982 when Pete and I did a guest spot with Twisted Sister. We got on stage and suddenly Lemmy appeared! So, it was all good from then on. Phil was a different story, as he was the main instigator in my being excluded from the band. Notice I do not call it leaving, as it was not my choice. Everyone else says I left—not me! It is funny how I am still a little raw about the whole thing of not being in Motörhead anymore. Some things you just don’t get over. I had imagined dying onstage with Motörhead.”

  Twisted Sister vocalist Dee Snider remembers this quasi-reunion between Lemmy and Eddie quite well, which he relates. But first to mind is a tale that demonstrates the graciousness of Lemmy, one in which Lemmy supported the gaudy and glam Twisted Sister against a hostile English crowd. Indeed, for all of Lemmy’s gruff pronouncements that his focus is Motörhead and Motörhead only, he’s always been one to provide moral support to anyone crazy enough to get into this most demoralizing of businesses (more the women, of course, but the guys too).

  Last hurrah before the changing of the guard, Heavy Sound Festival 2, June 10, 1984.

  “Lemmy became our guardian angel,” begins Dee, one of many metal stars to sing the praises of many days playing with Motörhead over the decades. “He saw Twisted Sister, and his first kindness to the band was just as a personal favor to Pete Way. Pete Way was producing our Under the Blade record, which we were recording in England. And Pete said, ‘Hey, watch out for these guys; Dee’s a good guy.’ And Lemmy, being this great guy, ‘All right, I’ll take care of them.’”

  “So we did Wrexham Football Ground, April of ’82, which became a game-changer for us, but we were terrified as a band. It was our first big show in England, and it was in the daylight opening for Motörhead. Suddenly where we desperately needed to have this sort of veil of secrecy, we were walking out on stage with makeup on. I mean, we were very terrified for that show. It was a stadium show, we ended up
second on the bill to Motörhead’s crowd, and the guys were better looking than the girls. With Motörhead’s crowd, you’d sooner go with a guy than one of the girls. When we saw that audience, we hadn’t had one record out in the country, and there was a hatred. Hair metal wasn’t around—there wasn’t any hair metal in 1982. There was no glam. Glitter was dead, and Anvil was canned. They called them Canvil, because they canned and bottled them on stage because Lips wore those fishnet arm things. And so he was gay. Girl had been bottled off the stage—Phil Collen and Phil Lewis’s band were wearing makeup. We were coming out with faces of makeup at a time when there was a hatred for the remnants of the glitter rock.

  “And Lemmy literally walked out on stage and stopped the audience from bottling us. They hadn’t started. They were getting ready; their arms were cocked with the bottles. And he introduced us, saying something like, ‘I have some friends of mine here from the States! You will listen!’ Which gave us just the briefest of pardons, and the audience welcomes us. And they listened to us for a minute, and they said, ‘What the fuck? These guys aren’t gay. These guys are fucking linebackers with lipstick.’ You could see them; they were like, ‘Lemmy and those fags?!’ But it just gave us enough time to play, and fire was shooting out of my ass for that show. It was one of my most memorable victories. I remember walking off stage and ten minutes later—this was a football stadium—someone said, ‘Listen.’ And they were still chanting ‘Twisted boom boom Sister boom boom Twisted boom boom Sister!’ And I was like holy shit!

  “And then Lemmy came down and said, ‘I introduced you; now you introduce me.’ And I was like holy shit! And I stepped out on stage and introduced Motörhead and the place went fucking nuts. That was a huge breakthrough for us. I mean Lemmy, I love that guy forever. If he hadn’t done that, it might have been a whole different story and we would have been bottled off the stage, and it would have read ‘Twisted Sister went home with their tails between their legs.’ And England turned out to be the place that broke us first. But what star goes out three bands early, walks out on stage and effectively destroys his ‘entrance’ by bringing on an unknown band and saying something like that? I certainly don’t.”

  As for Twisted Sister’s part in thawing relations between Lemmy and Eddie: “So Lemmy had fallen in love with our band. He started showing up at the Marquee and introducing us and even playing with us, of all things. But we were at the Reading Festival, coming out, and we were being bottled on the stage at Reading, bottled! Again! And he comes out, he joins us and says, ‘Come on, I’ve got a couple buddies.’ So Pete Way and Fast Eddie are on stage with us, and he reconciles with Fast Eddie. They are having a heated, hated breakup, 1982, and Lemmy, for the first time, walks out on stage with Twisted Sister and Fast Eddie and Pete Way, and I have those pictures.”

  “Yep, that was Reading, the summer of that year,” reiterates Eddie. “We had been working on the Twisted Sister album. Peter produced the album and I played on one track. And then of course Lemmy jumps up and has a go as well. It was quite funny. So it did break the ice a little bit. It was kind of nice actually as it forced us to talk to each other. I certainly didn’t have an axe to grind. It took Phil a bit longer as he was a bit bitter and twisted. It was a sad end really, as I never thought it was going to end. I didn’t have a problem with him—they had a terrible problem with me. But I’ll still never work that one out.

  “Lemmy was all heart, really,” continues Eddie, on the subject of his ex–band mate supporting Twisted Sister. “I mean, he would always have a kind word to say to anybody. And he would talk to anybody. And we all were like that, but Lemmy had pearls of wisdom. He had been around a long time. It’s another reason I think we did well is because we had Lemmy. When we were getting bad reviews and that in the very beginning, Lemmy would always say, ‘Hey, listen, man, you’re going to get a lot of those.’ And he just, at certain points in my career, I can remember Lemmy saying things and it really helped. Because he had been there before and I hadn’t. So there was a bit of the old wise man about him. And especially Dee and the boys, I mean, a lot of people used to look up to Lemmy because he was such an icon.”

  “It’s true,” agrees Dee. “I mean, again, each of the shows, Wrexham, Reading, we were in danger of just being obliterated and sent packing. And Lemmy Kilmister uses his influence—he was huge and Motörhead were huge. And when Lemmy says, ‘Hey, check them out,’ you fucking checked them out. He’s fucking Lemmy. He has spoken. He’s that guy. Another example, The Tube television show: we were floundering at the beginning of that show. And, you know, it wasn’t just Lemmy, but he comes out with Robbo and joined us for ‘It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll.’ And that’s the show I took my makeup off on stage, and that took it over the edge. That was legendary. The next day we had multiple record company offers and we got our deal with Atlantic. He has been our fairy godfather.”

  I asked Dee to sum up what Motörhead meant to the rock world at that magical time, and it’s a question that gave him pause.

  “Motörhead . . . man, I’m going to give some thought to how I’m going to verbalize this. Like AC/DC, they deconstructed heavy metal and infused it with a new vitality and transformed it into a new element. Lemmy will tell you that they were more a punk-driven thing. They weren’t metal-driven. They weren’t a metal band. AC/DC, they never viewed themselves a metal band. They were accepted by the metal community, but it wasn’t necessarily their goal. None of the brilliant ideas, the brilliant musical changes of our time, happened on purpose. Alice Cooper was trying to be a Doors-y psychedelic band, and they sucked at it! And he invented shock rock. And Bowie wanted to be the Beatles and all of a sudden he’s the king of glitter. Nirvana wasn’t trying to be the first grunge band. They were just trying to play rock that appealed to them and they were infusing it with this garage element. So, great new ideas happen that way. And I think that’s what Motörhead brought. They brought back a simplifying of hard rock music, stripping it down to its rawer elements, its most primitive elements. Which just set bands like Metallica down a whole new path of rock ’n’ roll.”

  Another couple of New York heavy metal legends who wholeheartedly sing the praises of Motörhead are Charlie Benante and Frank Bello of Anthrax fame.

  “Motörhead influenced us in a very specific way,” reflects Benante. “Motörhead didn’t look like your polished rock stars. They were just these . . . do these guys sleep, did these guys bathe? They just looked like this crew, this gang, and they had an awesomeness to them. And the cool thing about Motörhead back in the day is that a lot of punk and hardcore fans appreciated Motörhead as well. It was one of the first real crossover bands. But as a drummer, the way Phil Taylor attacked his drums, in songs like ‘Overkill.’ He was like a punk rock drummer playing metal and I always looked up to that.”

  “Everybody was inspired from Motörhead,” adds Frank Bello. “And to me they’re just good time rock. Lemmy always says, ‘We play rock ’n’ roll’ and I love that. I’ve toured with Motörhead a million times, we’ve done Motörhead shows forever and I just found that there is just this great rock ’n’ roll thing that they have going, yet in a metal way. Rest his soul, I met Phil a few years ago, a really nice guy. I’m friends with the band now, but the original band is the band I got into in the beginning. And what I get from them is just a lot of heaviness. Fast Eddie with those great guitar parts, complementary with Phil’s kick drums and Lemmy’s bass and vocals—that was Motörhead, man. This great three-piece band playing the heaviest shit ever.

  “I’ll give you a quick story,” continues Bello. “This is one of my favorite moments in my bass life, okay? All right, so me, being Mr. Fan Boy, over the side of the stage for this sound check every day, because I’m a bass guy. I just love Lemmy’s tone. I love the way he plays, everything about it. So I was a fan boy on one of the tours. I just started watching every sound check at the monitor board. So Lemmy sees me. He’s checking out his bass, he’s playin
g the song, and he looks over at me and he goes, ‘Hey, come here!’ He calls me over, and I say, ‘Hey, Lemmy, how you doing?’ He goes, ‘Try this on.’ And he puts his bass on me, dude. He puts his main bass on me, and he goes, ‘Go play.’ He hands me his pick, and I swear to God, remember the movie Back to the Future, the opening sequence, where Michael J. Fox plays that opening chord and gets blown away by the speaker? That’s what it was for me. It was so fucking amazingly loud—in every cool way in the world. It was one of the highlights of my bass career. I didn’t mind how loud it was and how much it hurt my ears. The fact that Lemmy gave me this opportunity, I will never forget that; it was a very special time for me. Because he actually acknowledged me and brought me over. And then the cherry on top, he goes, ‘Here, this is the one I play with. This is the one I throw out.’ So he gives me a pick, the one that he actually plays with—there are two different picks. There’s one he has a better feel for. ‘This is the one I play with. Keep this one.’ I’ll always be fan boy, dude—always.”

  Meanwhile, as Eddie found his legs with Fastway, Phil Taylor remained with Lemmy for the band’s next album, Another Perfect Day (featuring new guitarist Brian Robertson, ex–Thin Lizzy) and No Remorse (a mix of compilation and new songs). He would be out of the band for 1986’s Orgasmatron but back for 1987’s Rock ’n’ Roll and 1991’s 1916 before leaving for good as the band began the recording sessions for what was to become 1992’s dog’s bollocks of an album, March or Die.