A passing that most likely has Keith Richards a little nervous, seemingly indomitable Motörhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister has taken his leave from this mortal coil, he was 70 years old.
“There is no easy way to say this…our mighty, noble friend Lemmy passed away today after a short battle with an extremely aggressive cancer. He had learned of the disease on December 26th, and was at home with his family, sitting in front of his favorite video game from The Rainbow which had recently made its way down the street.”
Born Ian Fraser Kilmister in Staffordshire, England in 1945… as legend has it, the nickname Lemmy originates from his fondness for the phrase “lemme borrow a fiver” back in his earlier days as a starving musician. Kilmister founded Motörhead in 1975 and was 35 years old before achieving any sort of notoriety… from that point on however, Lemmy’s journey was steadfast and true, 22 studio albums since 1977’s self-titled debut winding all the way to the latest, Bad Magic released just this year back in August, exactly 4 months before his death.
Many don’t know that Lemmy played bass for a stretch in seminal Space Rock band Hawkwind before the formation of Motörhead. He got the gig originally when he was in a club where that band was set to perform and their bass player didn’t show. Up to that point he had been solely a guitar player, picking up the bass for the first time that particular evening… his eventual departure from Hawkwind turned out infamous as well originating when he was asked to re-record vocals on a certain track when the bands bi-polar vocalist Robert Calvert was admitted to the hospital and unavailable. The track, Silver Machine, became a major hit but the fact that it was Lemmy’s voice on the recording stirred up intense animosity among the other members of the band. He was fired soon after, the excuse being a drug possession bust in Canada, although the band first bailed Lemmy out of jail because they couldn’t come up with another bass player for a show they were playing… at the conclusion of the show, Kilmister was dismissed… Lemmy credits this as the impetus behind starting Motörhead, so the rest was history.
In the end, Lemmy lead an interesting life for sure… but that said, he had also consumed enough drugs and alcohol to kill a small village… so he made it quite a way… beyond the cancer that eventually got him, in recent years his overall health had been in decline having had a pacemaker installed as well as an ongoing battle with hematoma… these issues caused the band to cancel or postpone many dates over the last couple years… but Lemmy was a heavy metal icon who influenced artists from Alice Cooper to Metallica, Ozzy Osbourne to Dave Navarro… Dave Grohl, Nikki Sixx, Slash and more speed metal bands than could possibly be counted… and for a dude that claimed to have laid with over a thousand women, I laughed when I found he had enlisted porn stars as models on Motörhead’s merch page on their website…
A true rock and roll personality, to his very core… godspeed Lemmy Kilmister… whether you went up or down, the house band just got a little bit harder and a little bit faster.
