immediately.” As far as Lemmy was concerned,
he said, his only real rule of the road was: “Treat
me all right, I’ll treat you all right. I don’t care who
you are – Jews, blacks, Arabs, Italians. If they’re
okay to me I’ll be okay to them. It’s the only way
toreally work it, isn’t it?” The only thing Lemmy
was genuinely prejudiced against, he said with a
dry chuckle, was the record business. “And the
police, of course.”
More telling, however, in retrospect, was when
Lemmy confided how much he saw his future in
another land.
One day, he said, “I’d really quite like to move
out of this country. I’d really like to move to
America, because America may be completely
crazed but at least it enjoys being crazed. I mean,
you can get busted by a cop, and if you give him the
right rap and spiel he’ll actually let you go, and
maybe he’ll even blow a joint with you first.”
Lemmy’s romantic view of America would alter
drastically over time, but he never gave up on the
idea of how much better his life would be if he
lived there.
Meanwhile, the music press lapped up the idea
of Motörhead as cool new dicks on the block, with
ZigZag editor Kris Needs summing it up best:
“Motörhead needn’t be taboo if you’re a punk, or
whatever other uniform you choose. They simply
pack more punch, sheer mania and represent the
ecstasy of excess more than anyone around in any
of the enclosures.”
But then as Lemmy said: “Every liner has its tug.”
And suddenly United Artists woke up to the fact
that they still had an unreleased Motörhead album
in their vaults: On Parole. Typically in such
situations, UA gave no mind to the fact that the
band had already released a far superior version ofthe album in the shape of 1977’s Motörhead, nor the
fact that guitarist Larry Wallis was no longer in the
band, they simply went ahead and released On
Parole in time for Christmas 1979.
“Another valuable lesson learned about
record companies,” Lemmy sneered. “Also
proving that I was right all along and the album
should have come out when we’d recorded it in
the first place.”
It reached No.65, and, ironically, is now
considered a treasured collector’s item – assuming
you can find the original vinyl pressing.
Chiswick Records,
another former label, also
got in on the act, releasing
Beer Drinkers And Hell
Raisers, a four-track EP
comprising the tracks that
had not been included on
Motörhead: the Wallis-less
version of On Parole, two
covers, including the ZZ
Top song of the EP’s title,
and an instrumental,
essentially an unfinished track, titled Instro.
The EP did rather better than UA’s cash-in
release, climbing to a very respectable No.43 – and
bringing some much-needed income for the band.
“I didn’t like it, but I could hardly begrudge
them,” Lemmy said. “After all they’d done for us.”A
ll those TV appearances and magazine
covers had now turned Lemmy, Eddie and
Phil into unexpected stars. By the start of
1980 their weekly wages had now been upped to
£200 a week, and suddenly their lives were
changing. Doug Smith was determined that itshould all be for the good, at the same time, as he
says: “This was Motörhead we’re talking about, not
the Three Degrees.”
Lemmy, in particular, “was very easy to work
with in those days”, says Smith. “He just made me
angry because he felt that he didn’t need to do
anything. So he’d get people in the office to go and
buy his boots for him. I said: ‘Lem, you’ve got to try
them on.’ ‘No, no, they know my size down the
market.’ The white boots. He always wore those
silly white boots. Everybody in the office had to do
something – go and buy Jack Daniel’s for him or
whatever he was drinking
at the time. He wouldn’t
bother to look for a flat, so
somebody had to go and
look for a flat for him.”
Smith recalls organising
a £10,000 publishing
advance for each member.
“They were all going to buy
a house with it. Once
they’d found a place, we’d
give them the ten grand
each, so it didn’t go anywhere else. Eventually
Eddie bought a place in Chiswick. Phil bought
a place in Chelsea. And Lemmy still hadn’t looked
for anything.”
Then Doug arranged some appointments for
him. “The first one he went to, the woman opened
the door, screamed and slammed the door in his
face. That was the last time Lemmy looked for
a place to live.”
But he didn’t need to. For the next three years
Lemmy pretty much lived on the road. A new
mission every night, as he sang on Bomber. Until
CAM one day...
ERA
PR
ESS
/^ P
AU
L^ SL
ATT
ERY
“Great lyrics, some
good riffs, but overall
Bomber was a bit flat
after Overkill.”
‘Fast’ Eddie Clarke
CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 35MOTÖRHEAD