Thanks for the memories

Taranaki

Jonathan MacKenzie spent his younger days in journalism living it up in London with the world's loudest band.

And this time next week, a casually dressed 62-year-old Englishman will descend on New Plymouth to play very loud music for legions of black-T-shirted Motorhead fans. If he's true to form, Lemmy Kilmister will swagger onstage and growl a rudimentary greeting, run a hand through his lank hair and say something like: "We are Motorhead and we are a f...ing rock `n' roll band." Introductions over, he'll strike a chord on his battered bass guitar, launching an avalanche of industrial-strength heavy metal into the bowls of the TSB Showplace.

Once described as hot mustard in an otherwise boring musical sandwich, Motorhead's seminal album is its 1980 scorcher Ace of Spades. This year, the band celebrated 30 years in the business with the release of a double live album and a new studio work titled Kiss of Death.

But some bands are more than just bands. Not many achieve this status, but those that do roll easily off the tongue: The Stones, the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, Iggy and The Stooges and, of course, Motorhead. Credited with inspiring a new wave of thrash/speed metal bands over 20 years ago, today Motorhead enjoys a cult-like status with its T shirts popping up on Kate Moss and scores of other A-list supermodels. The band members are name checked by the biggest in the business, including U2 and Metallica. As Motorhead frontman, Lemmy Kilmister is regarded by his peers as an iconoclast, a national treasure, a cultural icon, an elder statesman of rock. He started his career as a roadie for Jimi Hendrix in the 1960s and was famously ejected from debauched prog rockers Hawkwind for excessive drug use. That's saying something.

I met Lemmy several years ago long before becoming the editor of the Taranaki Daily News when I was working in London. I say met, because it was more like a meeting than an interview. For a start, there was drinking and lots of it. I was the last interview slot of the day, which was good and bad: good because Lemmy and guitarist Phil Campbell were pretty oiled by the time I got there, bad because they had already endured a full day of banal questions by the time I was ushered into the plush hotel room a tad under the weather myself after being told to wait in the wrong bar of the wrong hotel at the wrong time.

Lemmy, whose father was a vicar, was ensconced sans shirt in front of his own bottle of bourbon. Phil was chugging beers while I opted for a JD and Coke. I was not offered the expensive-looking bourbon and neither was I asking. It was a fluid interview punctuated with a spontaneous but charming rendition of the Dad's Army theme song, which Lemmy and Phil played on a pair of unplugged guitars: Motorhead as I'd never heard them.

Eventually my tape ran out and it was time to go, but not before a quick snap to capture the Kodak moment. The photo meant I could prove to my mates that I had taken an opportunity to quiz Lemmy about the band's performance in Palmerston North in the late 1980s. The gig was at The Regent theatre and the crowd went wild.

Lemmy's recall of the evening was remarkably precise.

"We brought down the house, we did, and they f–-in' wrecked the place, too."

Fans tore seats from their moorings and clubbed one another with gay abandon as the band played on.

I knew a bloke who was at that gig, but his night was ruined when a knife-wielding bogan lunged at his buttocks in the midst of the ruckus. To this day, Milton Sandgruber bears the scars, but he claims it was worth it because Lemmy, ever the gentleman, delivered a dozen beers to the hospital to aid his recuperation. I doubted the veracity of this yarn, but I had a chance to set the record straight on that boozy afternoon in London six years ago: It's true.

On the strength of this recollection, Lemmy agreed to a photo at the end of our interview, assuming the pose you see here. I didn't get it quite right with the finger business, but nevertheless my wife has banned the picture from the house, claiming it is unsuitable for the children. These days, it has pride of place in the garage next to the CRC and the rat bait. Keen to rekindle our rapport, I recently squandered the first crucial minutes of a 10-minute phoner in a vain attempt to jog Lemmy's memory about our last meeting.

JM : I was the guy who brought along a camera and I had albums for you to sign.

Lemmy: We get a lot of that.

Indeed.

JM: Still leading the rock `n' roll life?

Lemmy: Pretty much.

JM: Still lots of drinking, womanising and that sort of stuff?

Lemmy: Yeah, all that stuff.

JM: That's fantastic.

Lemmy: Yeah, I know.

JM: So any advice for those who might want to pursue hedonistic pleasures into their sixties?

Lemmy: Know your limits that's all you need.

JM: OK, on to something more serious.

Lemmy: I was being serious.

Much has been written about Lemmy's physiology and the effects of chronic drug use on his body. He christened the band Motorhead after a 1960s term to describe one who enjoys taking a lot of speed. But as with all things excessive, there are costs. A few years ago, Lemmy collapsed midway through a European tour and this gave doctors an opportunity to analyse his blood. Astonished medics discovered that years of drug use had chemically altered the structure of his blood, making it unique. He was warned not to donate any.

JM: Is that true?

Lemmy: Yeah, the doctor told me not to give any blood transfusions.

JM: Is that fair go? I mean, your blood chemistry was altered?

Lemmy: I s'pose so. He was the doctor, you know.

Although he appears to have paid no penalties for leading a rock `n' roll lifestyle, Lemmy learned "the trade" from one of the best in the business who wasn't so lucky.

JM: What was it like working as a roadie for Jimi Hendrix?

Lemmy: It was very interesting.

JM: Can you expand on that?

Lemmy: Well, it was a different world, then. I mean, it really was. It was like a different planet so different, it was incredible. Everybody talked differently, they did things differently, they looked at the world differently. It was just different and I can't really expand on that 'cause it'll just sound ridiculous. It was just so different, it was indescribable. I can't make it so that anyone would understand. They were great memories and you had to be there.

JM: So were Hendrix' excesses as legendary as we're led to believe?

Lemmy: Oh, yeah.

JM: Yeah

Lemmy: I should know I got the cast-offs.

Sixty-two and still unattached, Lemmy lives in a two-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles. His only child, a son who is a session player, lives nearby. He's not big on recreation, but he does enjoy visiting Las Vegas, watching documentaries about the second world war and adding to his extensive collection of Nazi memorabilia.

"I've got a Damascus steel Luftwaffe sword, I got uniforms, I got medals, I got insignia, I got wall plaques, I got hats, I got daggers, I got swords.

"It's a very expensive collection and it's all in my house. I can hardly f–-in' move. What an advantage."

He explains his penchant for liking bad guys by saying they always had the best uniforms.

"Take Napoleon, for example, the Confederacy they always had the sharpest shit. I don't know why that is, but it is a fact."

JM: So when you're not collecting Nazi stuff, what does Lemmy do for recreation?

Lemmy: What recreation? I go to Vegas, usually.

JM: Bit of gambling?

Lemmy: Hmm

JM: Are you having a nice bourbon and Coke at the moment I can hear a chink on the line?

Lemmy: No, that was me lighting a cigarette. But I am having a bourbon and Coke right now, as it happens.

JM: The last time we spoke, you were as well.

Lemmy: Yeah.

JM: Of course, I'm grossly disappointed that you don't remember the interview we had ...

Lemmy: I'd probably remember you if saw you you know.

JM: In your book White Line Fever, you make the point that because the Japanese don't come from a Christian heritage, the girls are not hung up by guilt. You said after a gig, a bunch of Japanese girls would come up to your room and immediately take their clothes off and they'd be perfectly cool about it.

Lemmy: Yeah, that's right.

JM: When that sort of thing happens when they strip off in your room do you immediately start having sex with them? Is it as simple as that?

Lemmy: Well, not anymore, no, because that's changed as well.

JM: How?

Lemmy: It's because their mother did that sort of thing, so they don't want to do what their mother did.

And on that note, my 10 minutes are up. "I'll see you down there," Lemmy says. "I'll buy you another JD and Coke."

Motorhead plays the TSB Stadium next Friday and Saturday. Tickets are $98 from Ticketek. Gate sales are expected to be available.