Review #408: Ace of Spades, Motörhead
#408: Ace of Spades, Motörhead
Fun Fact: The first Rolling Stone Magazine I ever read featured a profile of Motörhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister. That’s the thing that turned me onto this record, and also to Lemmy Kilmister. What a badass! Ozzy Osbourne says that he is “the king of heavy metal… the epitome of what being a rock star is all about… I don’t know how the guy breathes… He’s not human.” He admits to spiking people’s drinks with LSD in the band’s heyday, and also admits that his favorite modern music is by Kelly Clarkson and Taylor Swift. I was 14. This blew my freaking mind.
Lemmy started out his career as a Jimi Hendrix roadie, then joined a band called Hawkwind, which he was soon booted out of over drug possession. That did not deter Kilmister from drugs OR rock ‘n roll — he started Motörhead and kept doing both. Legend has it that he drank a bottle of Jack Daniels every day from age 30 to age 68, which might be why I used to pretend to love Jack Daniels. He was also addicted to amphetamines, which I’m not sure he ever stopped doing.
Lemmy played a kickass overdriven bass riff, and sang with the mic positioned far above his face, like he was literally howling from the depths of hell. Best example of both is of course on “Ace of Spades,” which seems to encompass all the best things about him. But he later admitted that he grew sick of their greatest hit, going so far as to confess that “I sang ‘The eight of spades’ for two years and nobody noticed.” Legendary.
What’s Motörhead all about? Just listen to their British-cowboy-flavored speed-metal, like “Shoot You in the Back,” “Fast and Loose,” and “Fire Fire,” and you know basically everything you need to. Guitarist “Fast” Eddie Clarke explained the philosophy behind the album concretely: “[W]e weren’t trying to get a message across, apart from have a good time, you know.” They loved music and being on the road — see “Dance” and “(We Are) The Roadcrew,” the latter of which is a tribute to their roadies. There’s some darkness, too — “Bite the Bullet” is about suicide, and “The Hammer” is about a serial killer — but it doesn’t get in the way of their good time.
Also, there are songs about women. Which makes sense — Lemmy reportedly slept with over 1,200 of them. I like a few of them — “Love Me Like a Reptile” is all the right kinds of gross, and “The Chase Is Better Than the Catch” is just an astute observation. I can’t get behind “Jailbait” for obvious reasons.
A role model, Lemmy Kilmister was not. But he wasn’t trying to be. He treated his body like crap, yet he lived to be 70 years old. In fact, I pulled out a copy of RS from November 2009 to find my favorite Letter to the Editor:
I wish Mike from Texas was right, but he was wrong. Congestive heart failure is what eventually took him. In fact, all three members of Motörhead’s most famous lineup have now passed. Kilmister may have been born to lose, but his headstone quotes another song off this album to describe him: “Live to Win.”
Review #407: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Neil Young & Crazy Horse
