Who Would Win In A Fight, Lemmy Or God?

Trick question.  Lemmy is God.

     As awful as the movie Airheads was, the answer to that question could not have been more correct.  Lemmy Kilmister would most certainly qualify as a god in the mythological sense.  Lemmy carried over fifty years of rock history on his shoulders.

     One of his go to lines in interviews was “I remember a time before Rock 'n' Roll.”  That is something all of us younger pups have certainly taken for granted over the course of our lives.  And this statement comes from a person that saw The Beatles play in clubs, roadied for Hendrix, played in Hawkwind and melted our brains with Motorhead.

     Trying to imagine my adolescence without rock music makes me shudder.  There is no way that I would have made it out of my teens or even to this very moment if it weren't for the rush of dopamine that I get from rock music.  There are days that I'll only get out of bed because I know that if I don't no one else is around to hit the play button.

     My first exposure to Motorhead was in the 8^th grade while watching the British comedy The Young Ones on PBS.  There was a musical guest on each episode to play during some sort of montage.  Motorhead was on to play “Ace Of Spades” while the cast was trying to get to a television studio to appear on a gameshow, in the episode “Bambi.”

     I don't even know if I had any interest in music at that point in my life but that always stuck in the back of my mind.  Weirdly, even though that Ace Of Spades seed was planted in my youth, Orgasmatron was the first Motorhead album that I ever bought.  A friend of mine had it on in his car when we were hanging out and the Lemmy hook sank in deep and has been there ever since.  The next time I walked into the now long gone record store Brave New World, I came walking out with my own copy of Orgasmatron, No Sleep til Hammersmith, and a greatest hits comp.  Those were enough to sate my curiosity until years later when I started to pick up each album as I came across them.  Motorhead released twenty-two studio albums and several live records over the forty years of their existence.

     Their final studio album, Bad Magic, was a fitting send off for Lemmy and the band.  I haven't gone back to it often since Lemmy's passing but Bad Magic was in heavy rotation up until then.  From all accounts, Lemmy had a very difficult time recording the album due to his escalating health issues but he pulled it off in the end.

     Motorhead's last live album, Clean Your Clock, is a really difficult listen.  It was released a few months after his passing and the shows the songs were pulled from were recorded a few months before.  His death was still too fresh in my mind when I tried to listen to it and it was very apparent that he was struggling through each song.  This was at the point where he had to walk to his mic stand with a cane and have his Rickenbacker handed to him when he got there.  I would still recommend picking up the vinyl because it came with a bad ass pop-up book like gatefold cover.  When you open it wide there's a stage setup with the members of the band.

     Lemmy's death was a gut punch.  I took solace in knowing that the sun was going to come up in the morning and that Lemmy would always be there to steal my hearing.  Knowing that one of Life's great truths no longer holds has a way to compound my usual existential crisis.  Being followed by David Bowie's passing a few weeks later certainly didn't help matters either.  Trying to listen to their records for months afterward was not something that I could do in public.  Finding myself to be a snotty, tear covered mess while at the coffee place was not the best situation.  As if I don't get enough weird looks already.

     Lemmy was aware of what a life filled with whiskey and amphetamines would lead to and he accepted responsibility for his own actions.  The man left nothing on the table when he left us and the world is a better place for it. May we all be stone deaf forever.