Somewhere in the midst of all of this (and there’s even more to come!), March or Die got made. We used Pete Solley again, but – as often happens with our producers – he wasn’t as good the second time around. I think the title track to the album was the sticking point, ’cause he had his version of ‘March or Die’ and that was it. I wanted a few things changed and he didn’t help me at all. He just sat there, put his feet up on a chair and let the engineer work on it. I thought that was a bit crappy. That’s why ‘March or Die’ didn’t work. It should have: it was a tremendous track, and I have a couple of takes of it on tape that are much better than the version on the album. Other tracks are quite good, like ‘Stand’ and ‘You Better Run’. The record label wanted us to cover a standard and it was Phil Campbell, I believe, who came up with the idea of doing Ted Nugent’s ‘Cat Scratch Fever’. Frankly, I like our version of it better than Nugent’s – his is very thin, if you ask me. Ours knocked his out of the fucking loop – of course, nobody remembers ours. Overall, I think March or Die is underrated. I bet you think I’m going to put a good portion of the blame for that on the record company, and you’re right.
WTG was dying as we were making this record. Every time we came by their offices there were fewer and fewer people there, and by the time the album was released, only Jerry Greenberg and Leslie Holly were left. But the biggest indication about where we stood with our parent company, Sony, came when we released March or Die’s single, ‘Ain’t No Nice Guy’. That track had everything going for it: it was a great song, to begin with, and since it was a ballad it had serious radio potential. Then I wound up having Ozzy sing on the track along with me. Initially, he wanted the song for himself, but I wouldn’t give it to him (maybe I should have let him have it – more people would have heard it), so I had him come in and put vocals on. And Slash from Guns N’ Roses contributed the guitar solo; he came in one day, had a few drinks and laid down a couple of guitar tracks. Incidentally, I like Slash quite a bit. Guns N’ Roses may have had a nasty reputation but he’s a very nice, very genuine guy. Anyhow, we had this great song featuring two of the biggest performers in heavy rock. Jerry at WTG knew it was a great song. There was no way it could lose – that is, unless our record company tried to purposely sabotage it. And that is exactly what happened. It was a band’s worst nightmare.
‘Ain’t No Nice Guy’ was actually a radio hit, but that was completely down to us, without any help from Sony, or its marketing department at Epic. We asked them to get it on AOR (album-oriented rock radio) and they wouldn’t do it. They said, ‘We asked AOR and they wouldn’t play it.’ That, we knew, was a blatant lie because our management got it on; one of our own men, Rob Jones, and another guy we hired made all the calls to the radio stations. With two phones, we got eighty-two AOR stations in two months. And all these stations told us that Sony had never pushed it – these people had never even heard of the track until we told them about it! ‘Ain’t No Nice Guy’ wound up No. 10 in the radio charts, and Sony didn’t make call one – imagine what would have happened if they’d given it just the slightest amount of effort! But no: they actually tried to stop it from being played. One of the label’s radio guys called up a station in Kansas City and said, ‘I heard you’re playing “Ain’t No Nice Guy”. I wish you wouldn’t. We didn’t give it to you.’ What a fucking asshole! Here they had a hit song and they were going around trying to kill it! Our manager Todd rang this goon and totally lost it with him.
‘I’ve been kissing your ass for a year and a half to try to make you do your job,’ he told the jerk. ‘I’ve done my job and the only person who hasn’t is you! If that record isn’t back on rotation by ten-thirty tonight, I’ve got some cousins in South Central who’ll make sure you don’t write any more rejection slips for anybody!’
Of course, we were back on the air an hour later, but isn’t it sad that they make you go to that level? They give you no recourse: if you’re nice to them, they think you’re a pushover and ride all over you; if you’re an asshole, at least you’re dealing with them on terms they can understand but more likely than not you will be fired, which is eventually what happened to us. But being an asshole seems to be the only thing that will get a reaction out of these bloody suits.
Since we didn’t get any help from the record company at radio (to put it very mildly!), it won’t surprise you to learn that they also held us up at MTV. Here we were with this No. 10 song on rock radio and all we needed was about fifteen grand or so to shoot a video but they wouldn’t let us have it. So we took about $8000 of our own money and made our own – Ozzy and Slash, nice guys that they are, even came down and appeared in it. Although the video’s a bit jumbled, it didn’t turn out too badly. But MTV didn’t play it for a while because Sony took three weeks to sign the release!
Let’s talk about another thing we did that Sony wouldn’t do for us: we got on the Tonight Show, and we were the first heavy rock band to appear on that show, ever. It was our manager, again, along with our independently hired publicist, Annette Minolfo, who used their connections to get us on. Of course, the day we were taping, the record company sent a couple of corporate types to keep an eye on us, but that didn’t disguise the fact that they’d done nothing to get us on. In fact, they had told us it couldn’t be done!
I really enjoyed being on the Tonight Show. Jay Leno was really a gentleman, much nicer than David Letterman, whom we never even met when we did his show. Jay came up to the dressing room two hours before the show and asked us, ‘Have you got everything you need?’ He didn’t have to do that. During rehearsal, people were running around, panicking over the usual nonsense – ‘You can’t have it that loud! It vibrates the cameras!’ So I said, ‘How did they shoot all those train crashes then?’ It’s bullshit. Nothing shakes those fucking cameras! They were saying the same thing at the BBC twenty years ago, and it was lies then, too! But the actual show was a lot of fun. After our first number, I had to give five bucks to Branford Marsalis, who was the Tonight Show band leader at the time. Todd had introduced me to him at a club in Hollywood one night, when he’d just started with Jay and the Tonight Show. I said to him, ‘You should have us on the show,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, we will.’ Ha! ‘I bet you five bucks you don’t.’ He said, ‘Okay,’ and we did get on. The other guests included that kid, Neil Patrick Harris, from the TV series called Doogie Howser and character actress Edie McClure – she was a great girl. I had fun talking with Jay and joking around with Edie, we played two numbers and overall, it was a very good show – no thanks to Sony!
A couple of weeks prior to our Tonight Show appearance, we also played three West Coast dates on the Metallica/Guns N’ Roses stadium tour. I’m not sure how we got on; it was probably Metallica’s work. They’re the only band who have ever acknowledged their debt to us. Those three stadium dates went well, especially the latter two. We got all the PA and were treated with a decent amount of respect, which is as it should be.
Speaking of respect, I suppose this is as good a time as any to get back to the ugly business with Sony, where we had no respect whatsoever. I can only conclude that WTG was used as a tax loss for Sony because of their attitude towards us. It seemed as if they did nothing at all to help us, and everything to damage the sales potential of our records, especially March or Die. When that album came out and only Jerry and his assistant were left, we knew that WTG was on its way out, but we figured that Sony would put us on one of their other labels, probably Epic, because that’s who was doing our marketing. That’s the sort of thing that usually happens, and with the Grammy nomination and the great reviews we’d got for 1916 – and on March or Die, for that matter – it only made sense. But no, they dropped us, and to be perfectly honest, I think they did us a favour. Those Neanderthal corporate executives at Sony are all stupid, ignorant, fucking elitist twats. And that’s not sour grapes because I felt that way long before they dropped us! They’ve got no idea about music at all. They sell millions of records, but wouldn’t you if you had
the Michael Jackson catalogue and Mariah Carey? Believe me, Mariah Carey is far better off without Tommy Mottola! Mottola was the one who wouldn’t even acknowledge me at his own fucking Grammy party. Fuck him and fuck the rest of them. They’re the most inept bunch of motherfuckers I’ve ever seen in my life. Oh, yes.
We did some headlining dates in Argentina and Brazil and then – before having to regroup and think about getting a new record company – we attended the CMJ convention in New York. CMJ is a college music trade paper and it holds a convention every year. Several organizations have these music conferences and I’ve been to quite a few of them. They’re odd affairs: there are generally a bunch of minor executives slapping each other on the back and spending their expense accounts at the bar, but there are also a lot of younger people, not much more than fans, who are just starting their careers in the music business (poor souls!). And of course the corporate suits have a few artists they’re trying to parade around. I was there, but nobody was parading me around – nobody dared! Wurzel and I were on a panel – those things are such jokes! Nothing meaningful ever gets said. At this particular one some woman metal singer who called herself the Great Kat wasted everyone’s time babbling on and on about how wonderful she was! Wurzel, meanwhile, was taking a piss in a bottle behind the tablecloth. But I do remember that particular year’s convention fondly because Wurzel and I ran into a man I very much admire – guitarist Leslie West.
Leslie West is great, a complete maniac with these mad fucking psycho eyes. I introduced him to Wurzel, and he gave Wurzel this look and said, ‘Tell me, is that a name your mother heard of, or was it given to you later?’
Wurzel, who was a bit unnerved by Leslie’s mad stare, replied, ‘L-later, in school.’
‘Tell me, Wurzel, tell me the truth – do you take drugs?’
‘Y-yes, I do.’
‘Step this way.’
So they disappeared into the men’s room, both of them in one stall, which is not an easy thing to do, considering Leslie’s size. West dropped the cocaine on his shoe and he said, ‘I don’t want you to think the wrong thing of me, Wurzel, but you’re going to have to go down on me now!’ So Wurzel had to get down and snort it off his boot!
Leslie West didn’t have much patience with this convention. ‘I can’t stay here, Lemmy,’ he told me. ‘All these people are fucking peasants.’
‘I know that!’ I said. ‘I’m trying to get out of here myself.’
‘Well, I’m leaving,’ he said. ‘It grieves me, Lemmy, to leave you alone here, but I’m going.’ And he went out to his car and took off. I can’t say I blame him. They never did shit for him, any of his record labels. There’s a guy who should be number one, but he’s been ignored for years by the ‘hit machine’.
Anyhow, by the end of the year we were without a label once again, but we were much better off, if you ask me. After hearing one too many lies from the powers that be at Sony, I finally asked one guy there, ‘Why didn’t you tell us the truth?’
And this was his response, absolutely verbatim: ‘That’s not the way this business works.’
Can you imagine somebody saying that! How could you be so dishonourable? People like that should be hung by their balls from a burning piece of wood. But after almost thirty years in the music business, I should have figured it out. I’ve always said that good business is theft – if you’ve had a good business day, you’ve stolen somebody’s money. These people treat music purely as a commodity, like selling cans of beans. Most of the people that promote bands have not even heard the bands they promote. They just got a name that came up in the shuffle. Nobody seems to believe in the music any more. The industry’s building all the time, but they’re killing the music. They’re trying to, anyway, but I won’t let them as long as I’m alive. Fuck ’em, you know. They are disgraceful, stupid, arrogant, forgettable bastards – that’s right, forgettable, because people are gonna remember me, but the suits will be forgotten. Fuck ’em. Who are they? Somebody who worked for Sony? Ha! You’ll have to do better than that!
CHAPTER TWELVE
we are motörhead
As you can probably tell, I wasn’t exactly distressed at being dropped by Sony. We’d been in worse situations. Things like that don’t bother me at all – you just have to keep going and everything will sort itself out. It always does. You can’t run around panicking and giving up; you’ve got to have the strength of your convictions; you’ve got to know that somebody out there is going to recognize you as worthwhile and that you’ll still be in the picture. If you look like you’re beaten, then who’s going to come forward?
So we carried on throughout the last days of the Sony débâcle like we always do – we played some gigs. Not long before we got dropped we did about five dates with Ozzy Osbourne and Alice in Chains. Ozzy was doing one of his so-called ‘farewell’ tours – like he’s ever really going to retire! He’d fucking go nuts if he retired! Ozzy is one of the most charismatic performers in the world; that’s what he does. Take that away from him and he’d go completely crazy. If he could see himself the way everybody else does, he’d never go on about retiring ever again. He will have to retire one day, I suppose, but not until he can’t walk any more. But anyway, we only played a few of those ‘retirement’ shows and then got thrown off the bill because we did the Guns N’ Roses/Metallica dates on our days off. That wasn’t very rock ’n’ roll, if you ask me, but since we were playing third, under Alice in Chains, I didn’t really care.
We also did some recording. We had a couple of songs on the soundtrack to Clive Barker’s Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth – ‘Hellraiser’ (perhaps not surprisingly) and ‘Hell on Earth’, which were recorded in the same session. In addition to those, we recorded ‘Born to Raise Hell’, on which I shared vocals with Ice T and Whitfield Crane, the singer from Ugly Kid Joe (he’s a nice guy . . . now he’s a nice guy! Hi, Whit!). The latter song was a last-minute thing – it played over the end credits, and didn’t appear on the soundtrack album. We actually did a video for ‘Hellraiser’, but Sony, of course, didn’t pay for it – I think it was the movie company’s doing. So as you can see, our career wasn’t at all dependent on anything Sony did (and thank God for that!).
Later we did some shows in Argentina and Brazil, with Alice in Chains opening for us. Some of those South American countries are virtually lawless, and you really have to watch your ass there. One year when we were down to do some shows in Brazil, we got invited to the President’s son’s house, and the cops tried to railroad us on the way. That’s a great source of income for them, to arrest people like us and then ransom us for a lot of money. And of course, all rock bands are hugely wealthy – ha, ha! This particular time, we were playing with Iron Maiden and Skid Row, and after we finished, we walked up to the parking lot, and all these security guys were standing around the van we were supposed to use to get to the hotel, and one of them was inside fooling around with one of the seats. He came out looking really shifty and I thought, ‘Fuck that!’ So I went over to my guys and I said, ‘Nobody gets in the fucking van!’ and I insisted that we get another one. The guy tried to tell me, ‘Oh, there are no other vans,’ and I said, ‘Then we’ll stay here the fucking night. I’m sleeping in the dressing room. Okay?’ Another van was somehow found, and we dropped off the people who were staying in the hotel and headed for the President’s son’s house. About ten yards up the promenade, what do you know but we had a cop on our tail. The guy got us all out and went straight for that seat. There was nothing there, of course, and he didn’t know what to do! He asked us some lame questions – ‘How old are these girls?’ and all that – but he was screwed and he knew it. Then we had to wait (he said the van was ‘overcrowded’) until they brought us another van and I thought it was going to be the same scam again. I went walking off down the promenade to the hotel, with Todd following me – I don’t see why you should willingly put your head on the block! But the van came driving past and there weren’t any cops following them and they said
, ‘Get in.’ So we got in and finally arrived at the President’s son’s house. That was something else altogether! You get up there and all these soldiers suddenly walk out of the woods with their guns at the ready, asking for the secret password and all that. We had clearance so we were let in without any more hassle. We had an all right time but there weren’t enough girls there, if you ask me. Phil Campbell was running around drunk with the President’s son and all these large security guys, they ended up being a great bunch – not that you’d form a long-lasting friendship or anything.
We did the States again, too, this time with Black Sabbath. The peculiar thing about touring with them was that every day they had a nap in the afternoon; everything shut down, it had to all go dark in the dressing room and three of them sat side-by-side on the couch, nodded off like little rabbits. Bobby Rondinelli, actually, didn’t want a nap, but he was out there with Geezer and Tony! It was kind of boring for us in Milwaukee because we shared the dressing room with them – it was all one big room, divided up by a curtain. So all the lights were out and we had to sit in darkness for an hour. It was very fucking strange. Even if Motörhead’s around until 2035, I don’t think we’ll ever be ready for naptime. That said, I do have to say that Black Sabbath delivered every night. They were consistently good all through the tour.
The year ended on sort of a sour note. We were supposed to tour England but as I’ve already mentioned, it got cancelled because the promoters wouldn’t guarantee the money and we sure weren’t going to fund it ourselves – you know the story. We did go right through Europe, though, and did very well, as always. See, we’re the only consistent factor in the whole scheme: we always show up and play our stuff, we’re always on time, and we’re always pretty reasonable (well, mostly). If the promoters did their job half as well as we do ours, we’d all be happy.
White Line Fever: Lemmy: The Autobiography Page 21