metal heads
Three decades after their formation and the Motorhead heavy metal bandwagon keeps rollin’ - rock on. 21st Century Metal chats with the musical legends axeman-in-chief Phil Campbell to find out the latest on where they’re at.
In a sentence, Motorhead require no introduction - or need to prove themselves to anyone in the metal world. Classic studio albums (Iron Fist, Bomber, Overkill), classic live albums (No Sleep Til’ Hammersmith) and the single that everyone bar the musically deaf have heard in Ace Of Spades.
After largin’ it with the coolest guys in the WWF (playing at Wrestlemania and penning Triple H’s theme tune music) – plus the Worlds biggest heavy metal band saying that without a Motorhead there wouldn’t have been a Metallica – you’ve got to be doing something right. And Lord, frontman Lemmy is so popular that even the daily newspapers are scrapping over interviews with Kit Kat’s favourite violin playing endorsee. Seeming like less than 5 minute bikkie break since their last studio album (We Are Motorhead and We’re Gonna Kick Your Ass), greatest hits collection (The Best Of Motorhead) and live release (Bonecrusher), latest album Hammered - the 20th release of the bands infamous career - hits the stores on April 8. Can you resist?
Going on a very quick nostalgia trip, what in your opinion have being Motorhead’s greatest moments in terms of albums and live gigs? We’re proud of all our records that we’d put out, but when we got our first Grammy nomination for the 1916 album, that was a highlight – we thought it was a joke at first and somebody was winding us up! I think everyone in Motorhead would agree that our favourite album is Bastards. As you’ll know we do countless gigs and have played at some of the biggest stages in the world. A genuine standout was when we played at Wrestlemania for the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) – there was 650 million watching on pay-per-view – the largest figure for a pay-per-view event ever! Then there was the Astrodome in Houston, Texas… we’ve had a lot of great moments and its fun all the time, regardless of whether the venue is large or small – the feeling we get from doing it just can’t beaten.
The new album stays true to the ‘Heads signature sound yet again – what do you think has being the secret to Motorhead’s durability in the metal World over the last thirty years? I guess we’ve remained honest to our music – we write down music for the three of us in the band, not for anyone else. That’s the kiss of death when you start writing for other people. Good, honest music should come from within you – that’s what we do and hope people will like it. If they don’t, too bad – what you see is what you get! We don’t have computers there or anything like that, we write good songs – some albums are better than others but that’s all down to personal taste – and we have load of hardcore fans who insure we keep on selling out shows! It’s a way of life to us – it is our lives. We don’t know anything else – we just take care of Motorhead.
Motorhead have influenced everyone from punk rock bands to Metallica. For the younger generation who doesn’t know, who influenced the Head? Speaking for myself, the first time I heard real electric guitar played was when I was lent a copy of a Jimi Hendrix album, Hendrix In The West. That’s when I really got excited about the sound of electric guitar – then I got in Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin – and those bands are still going to this day. Speaking for Lemmy, he was into the Beatles and Little Richard – that’s what got him going at first, while our drummer Mickey Dee is very influenced by Thin Lizzy and the heavier stuff – Mickey’s being playing drums since he was three. Lem’s roots go back a little bit earlier than ours.
Given Lemmy sees newer bands such as Slipknot as coming from the circus and isn’t a disciple of nu-metal, which current groups do Motorhead admire? I can’t really speak for the other guys, but we were all big fans of Skunk Anansie – it was a shame that they spilt up because they were a really good group who had something different going for them. I’m a big Tool fan – I think Tool have being breaking new ground for a while now, and I’m also a fan of a band called Psycho Squad – they’re doing some good new stuff. I like Foo Fighters to. Some of the younger bands such as Linkin Park are bringing out decent material to – there’s room for everyone. The problem is that people are categorised too much. You go into a record store to buy a certain album, and you’ve probably walked half a mile to get to the section its in! Instead of separating all the different metal genres - nu metal, death metal etc – why not just put bands in alphabetical order? Music’s there for everyone, and I think the category thing messes things up to much and confuses people – there’s no need for it! People only want to buy a bloody CD for God’s sake, not have a guided tour of the record store! Some of the stuff that’s coming over from America, they’re labelling it rhythm and blues, yet its hip hop, which just doesn’t add up musically. Bands and artistes should be judged on their own merits – I’m sure if you spoke to all the top groups they’d have the same opinion as me. The labels confuse everyone – it gives people a mindset then. Things like this could start wars if you know what I mean (e.g., infighting amongst punk and metal fans in the 70’s et al, Ed.) – if there was no categories we wouldn’t have all this scrapping over which genres cool and what genre isn’t. I don’t think that’s healthy at all. It’s not about what trousers your wearing – it’s about the music. That’s what should count, but unfortunately, it doesn’t always. Good rock music will never die – it’s just to what extent the industry garbage swamps it. We really take care of the music that Motorhead puts out because that’s the only thing that we can control – what we record and what we play live. That’s why we’re so particular and care strongly about our music.
As a three-piece Motorhead have always had a unique chemistry, whether with Eddie or your self on guitar, Mickey on drums and Lemmy. Have the group considered re-adding a second guitarist (as the band did with Wurzel in 1984 for the No Remorse album, until he departed in 1995 after Sacrifice) to become a quartet again? When Wurzel left, rather than finding a replacement second guitarist, I said to the guys that I was sure we could make it work as a three-piece again, like how Motorhead initially started out. We started rehearsing and from there onwards it was obvious that it was going fine. I think just about every person I’ve spoken to since thinks this is probably the best and strongest line up. So no, we don’t have any immediate plans to add another guitar player. We just do whatever we feel like at the time – if we want to use Saxophone on a track its no big thing to us! We like to vary things so not all our albums are exactly the same. But sometimes you only have to do something slightly different and everyone thinks your having a big change of direction, like you’re taking up a new religion or something, but its just something different for the music you know? We’re entitled to play whatever we want – if we wanted to do an album of orchestral songs on a harp, we would do it – believe me. We respect the fans and thank everyone for sticking with us and stuff, but we don’t owe anyone anything.
Similarly, given Motorhead’s 110 decibels live and loud reputation, do you feel this chemistry in the group is now at its peak and that your recent live release Bone crusher highlights this? Well, the Bonecrusher DVD is a great celebration of the first 25 years of Motorhead. We had all our special guests there – Brian May, Ace from Skunk Anansie, Whitfield Crane, Eddie Clarke, my son and Lemmy’s son played with us onstage, as well as all our friends and family from all over the World. But who knows where our peak is? We’re just very happy at the moment – we’ve just done the Hammered album which is coming out in April (8), we’re about to go on tour next month in the States – its like the reuniting of a very close knit family. Who knows, we might reach other peaks – there’s a lot of life left in us yet and we just want to carry on doing what we do.
While Lemmy still remains unconvinced about how good No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith is, (often hailed as one of the greatest live metal albums ever), do you think Bonecrusher offers the same levels of greatness? Yes, I think it’s as good but its just from a different time, so you can’t make a direct comparison. At the time it came out, no one had heard anything like No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith, it was so brutal and everything, and that’s stuck in history for that time. This albums great as well and probably a lot more powerful than No Sleep…- times have changed, but they’re both important events in the history of Motorhead of which we’re very proud.
Were you happy with the contents of the rather excellent Motorhead…Best Of double disc? Were there any songs or particular versions of tracks that you thought should have being on there that weren’t? No, I think the record company did a pretty good job. We’ve had compilations in the past that have being really sub-standard but we think this one’s really good value for money. We have such a huge back catalogue that it goes down to personal favourites in the end, although it’s nicer to see some stuff on there which is not the usual stuff that gets put on these compilations. If people listen to a lot of the more obscure Motorhead tracks, they’ll still find a lot of good quality, loud rock ‘n’ roll there.
Lemmy plays the bass in rather unconventional manner, using the instrument more like a guitar than a four string. What inspired this style of playing? Originally Lemmy was a rhythm guitarist, in one of his first bands, the famed Rocking Vicars. When Hawkind were after a bassist, Lemmy said he’d play bass, but didn’t really (not in the traditional sense anyway…), and it all stemmed from there! Its good in a way – while it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, Its great having a unique style.
There’s some killer riffs on Hammered, such as opener Walk A Crooked Mile and Voices From The War, and a fine selection of wah-wah solos. Who has influenced your axe playing personally, or simply being guitar-playing influences? Besides Hendrix and Blackmore (earlier mentioned), Michael Schenker, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani – Jan Akerman from Focus (Dutch band from the early 70’s) is great to, I went to see him the other week and they were great live. There’s millions of great musicians around. I just do what I do. I’m not really a heavy metal player I don’t think; I’m just a loud blues player. I know my limitations and stuff but I get a big thrill out of watching the finest musicians, and whenever I get the chance I’m off to watch them!
What are your personal highlights on the new studio release Hammered? I like Voices From The War – I think that’s got a really bad ass guitar sound on it. I’m extremely happy with the entire album actually. A lot of work went into it, overdubbed rhythm guitars and solos etc, the vocal in Walk A Crooked Mile was one take, most of it is one take on there but we put a lot of effort into it. And the fact it was produced by Tom Panuncio, who produced for John Lennon, REM, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Ozzy etc, although Bob Kulick produced the demos for the album six months previously.
What contents of the album can we be expecting to hear live over the course of your next tour? We haven’t started rehearsing for the tour yet but we really want to do Voices From The War, Brave New World (which we’ll be hopefully shooting a video for this week) and we might even do No Remorse live. In a perfect world it’d be nice to do 5 or 6 tracks from the album.
Will you be digging out any more unheard Motorhead diamonds from the earlier albums that haven’t being played on previous tours? I think we’ve dug most of the diamonds out of the well! Not that its not dry or anything - we might pull one out if we can think of one but we’re more concerned with how many we can get out of Hammered at the moment.
What the album’s title, Hammered inspired through the intensity of the discs music? We all put together a bunch of names together and were racking our brains out for weeks over what to call it, and in the end we didn’t care what we called it – we had so many good titles that we just decided on Hammered in the end. It was one of Lem’s – it was a hard title and just about sums us up.
Will a selection of numbers from the last studio release We Are Motorhead…And We’re Gonna Kick Your Ass - including the stomping title track - keep up appearances, alongside all the other Head favourites? We never played to many from that album over the course of the last tour, so we’ll playing more from the new album this time around, but We Are Motorhead… is a great set opener and I think we’ll be playing that for the rest of our lives now!
What immediate touring plans do you have? First off we’ll be doing the aforementioned US tour (for six weeks, including a date in a prestigious New York restaurant!), then be doing a bunch of European festivals in the summer. In the second half of the year, hopefully a few months of that will be taken up with an extensive European tour, (including the UK.) I think we’ve put together the best Motorhead show ever this year – we’re doing Wembley arena on October 19 to, so that’s a nice step up for us.
And finally…
How did the move come around for Lemmy’s appearance on the classic Kit Kat ad, playing violin? I think they just called him up and asked him to do the ad – Lem probably said ‘are you going to pay me tonnes of money - because I don’t eat much chocolate’, they said yes! Its quite funny actually because me and my friend Simon were in a cab the other night and we phoned Stringfellow’s - Lemmy was in there and we needed to get a message to him. The woman who we were speaking to on the phone was going, ‘who, who?’ We just kept on saying ‘Lemmy, Lemmy’, until we finally gave in: ‘You know, the violin player from the Kit Kat ad!’ Then she knew (‘Oh yes, certainly!’). It’d be funny if Lemmy’s known as the violin player from the Kit Kat ad in ten years time!
Do you see it as a bonus that Motorhead are fashionable (Cat walk t-shirt’s et al)? It’s nice, yes. It’s always being cool to wear a Motorhead T-Shirt – they’ve worn them in so many major TV shows such as Friends, movies etc, so the more people that are seen wearing our T-shirts the better. There’s something weird about Motorhead; we’re stylish in the fact that we have no style and just do our own thing. (The WWF wrestler) Triple H features on our album to – he does the spoken word thing with Lemmy on Serial Killer, and Lem wrote his theme tune music. The song went gold in America and he insists on using it – we’re in contact all the time. He’s a big Motorhead fan and we get on well with the WWF guys now. He’ll be on our new video too if all goes according to schedule.
Andy Law
Three decades after their formation and the Motorhead heavy metal bandwagon keeps rollin’ - rock on. 21st Century Metal chats with the musical legends axeman-in-chief Phil Campbell to find out the latest on where they’re at.
In a sentence, Motorhead require no introduction - or need to prove themselves to anyone in the metal world. Classic studio albums (Iron Fist, Bomber, Overkill), classic live albums (No Sleep Til’ Hammersmith) and the single that everyone bar the musically deaf have heard in Ace Of Spades.
After largin’ it with the coolest guys in the WWF (playing at Wrestlemania and penning Triple H’s theme tune music) – plus the Worlds biggest heavy metal band saying that without a Motorhead there wouldn’t have been a Metallica – you’ve got to be doing something right. And Lord, frontman Lemmy is so popular that even the daily newspapers are scrapping over interviews with Kit Kat’s favourite violin playing endorsee. Seeming like less than 5 minute bikkie break since their last studio album (We Are Motorhead and We’re Gonna Kick Your Ass), greatest hits collection (The Best Of Motorhead) and live release (Bonecrusher), latest album Hammered - the 20th release of the bands infamous career - hits the stores on April 8. Can you resist?
Going on a very quick nostalgia trip, what in your opinion have being Motorhead’s greatest moments in terms of albums and live gigs? We’re proud of all our records that we’d put out, but when we got our first Grammy nomination for the 1916 album, that was a highlight – we thought it was a joke at first and somebody was winding us up! I think everyone in Motorhead would agree that our favourite album is Bastards. As you’ll know we do countless gigs and have played at some of the biggest stages in the world. A genuine standout was when we played at Wrestlemania for the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) – there was 650 million watching on pay-per-view – the largest figure for a pay-per-view event ever! Then there was the Astrodome in Houston, Texas… we’ve had a lot of great moments and its fun all the time, regardless of whether the venue is large or small – the feeling we get from doing it just can’t beaten.
The new album stays true to the ‘Heads signature sound yet again – what do you think has being the secret to Motorhead’s durability in the metal World over the last thirty years? I guess we’ve remained honest to our music – we write down music for the three of us in the band, not for anyone else. That’s the kiss of death when you start writing for other people. Good, honest music should come from within you – that’s what we do and hope people will like it. If they don’t, too bad – what you see is what you get! We don’t have computers there or anything like that, we write good songs – some albums are better than others but that’s all down to personal taste – and we have load of hardcore fans who insure we keep on selling out shows! It’s a way of life to us – it is our lives. We don’t know anything else – we just take care of Motorhead.
Motorhead have influenced everyone from punk rock bands to Metallica. For the younger generation who doesn’t know, who influenced the Head? Speaking for myself, the first time I heard real electric guitar played was when I was lent a copy of a Jimi Hendrix album, Hendrix In The West. That’s when I really got excited about the sound of electric guitar – then I got in Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin – and those bands are still going to this day. Speaking for Lemmy, he was into the Beatles and Little Richard – that’s what got him going at first, while our drummer Mickey Dee is very influenced by Thin Lizzy and the heavier stuff – Mickey’s being playing drums since he was three. Lem’s roots go back a little bit earlier than ours.
Given Lemmy sees newer bands such as Slipknot as coming from the circus and isn’t a disciple of nu-metal, which current groups do Motorhead admire? I can’t really speak for the other guys, but we were all big fans of Skunk Anansie – it was a shame that they spilt up because they were a really good group who had something different going for them. I’m a big Tool fan – I think Tool have being breaking new ground for a while now, and I’m also a fan of a band called Psycho Squad – they’re doing some good new stuff. I like Foo Fighters to. Some of the younger bands such as Linkin Park are bringing out decent material to – there’s room for everyone. The problem is that people are categorised too much. You go into a record store to buy a certain album, and you’ve probably walked half a mile to get to the section its in! Instead of separating all the different metal genres - nu metal, death metal etc – why not just put bands in alphabetical order? Music’s there for everyone, and I think the category thing messes things up to much and confuses people – there’s no need for it! People only want to buy a bloody CD for God’s sake, not have a guided tour of the record store! Some of the stuff that’s coming over from America, they’re labelling it rhythm and blues, yet its hip hop, which just doesn’t add up musically. Bands and artistes should be judged on their own merits – I’m sure if you spoke to all the top groups they’d have the same opinion as me. The labels confuse everyone – it gives people a mindset then. Things like this could start wars if you know what I mean (e.g., infighting amongst punk and metal fans in the 70’s et al, Ed.) – if there was no categories we wouldn’t have all this scrapping over which genres cool and what genre isn’t. I don’t think that’s healthy at all. It’s not about what trousers your wearing – it’s about the music. That’s what should count, but unfortunately, it doesn’t always. Good rock music will never die – it’s just to what extent the industry garbage swamps it. We really take care of the music that Motorhead puts out because that’s the only thing that we can control – what we record and what we play live. That’s why we’re so particular and care strongly about our music.
As a three-piece Motorhead have always had a unique chemistry, whether with Eddie or your self on guitar, Mickey on drums and Lemmy. Have the group considered re-adding a second guitarist (as the band did with Wurzel in 1984 for the No Remorse album, until he departed in 1995 after Sacrifice) to become a quartet again? When Wurzel left, rather than finding a replacement second guitarist, I said to the guys that I was sure we could make it work as a three-piece again, like how Motorhead initially started out. We started rehearsing and from there onwards it was obvious that it was going fine. I think just about every person I’ve spoken to since thinks this is probably the best and strongest line up. So no, we don’t have any immediate plans to add another guitar player. We just do whatever we feel like at the time – if we want to use Saxophone on a track its no big thing to us! We like to vary things so not all our albums are exactly the same. But sometimes you only have to do something slightly different and everyone thinks your having a big change of direction, like you’re taking up a new religion or something, but its just something different for the music you know? We’re entitled to play whatever we want – if we wanted to do an album of orchestral songs on a harp, we would do it – believe me. We respect the fans and thank everyone for sticking with us and stuff, but we don’t owe anyone anything.
Similarly, given Motorhead’s 110 decibels live and loud reputation, do you feel this chemistry in the group is now at its peak and that your recent live release Bone crusher highlights this? Well, the Bonecrusher DVD is a great celebration of the first 25 years of Motorhead. We had all our special guests there – Brian May, Ace from Skunk Anansie, Whitfield Crane, Eddie Clarke, my son and Lemmy’s son played with us onstage, as well as all our friends and family from all over the World. But who knows where our peak is? We’re just very happy at the moment – we’ve just done the Hammered album which is coming out in April (8), we’re about to go on tour next month in the States – its like the reuniting of a very close knit family. Who knows, we might reach other peaks – there’s a lot of life left in us yet and we just want to carry on doing what we do.
While Lemmy still remains unconvinced about how good No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith is, (often hailed as one of the greatest live metal albums ever), do you think Bonecrusher offers the same levels of greatness? Yes, I think it’s as good but its just from a different time, so you can’t make a direct comparison. At the time it came out, no one had heard anything like No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith, it was so brutal and everything, and that’s stuck in history for that time. This albums great as well and probably a lot more powerful than No Sleep…- times have changed, but they’re both important events in the history of Motorhead of which we’re very proud.
Were you happy with the contents of the rather excellent Motorhead…Best Of double disc? Were there any songs or particular versions of tracks that you thought should have being on there that weren’t? No, I think the record company did a pretty good job. We’ve had compilations in the past that have being really sub-standard but we think this one’s really good value for money. We have such a huge back catalogue that it goes down to personal favourites in the end, although it’s nicer to see some stuff on there which is not the usual stuff that gets put on these compilations. If people listen to a lot of the more obscure Motorhead tracks, they’ll still find a lot of good quality, loud rock ‘n’ roll there.
Lemmy plays the bass in rather unconventional manner, using the instrument more like a guitar than a four string. What inspired this style of playing? Originally Lemmy was a rhythm guitarist, in one of his first bands, the famed Rocking Vicars. When Hawkind were after a bassist, Lemmy said he’d play bass, but didn’t really (not in the traditional sense anyway…), and it all stemmed from there! Its good in a way – while it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, Its great having a unique style.
There’s some killer riffs on Hammered, such as opener Walk A Crooked Mile and Voices From The War, and a fine selection of wah-wah solos. Who has influenced your axe playing personally, or simply being guitar-playing influences? Besides Hendrix and Blackmore (earlier mentioned), Michael Schenker, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani – Jan Akerman from Focus (Dutch band from the early 70’s) is great to, I went to see him the other week and they were great live. There’s millions of great musicians around. I just do what I do. I’m not really a heavy metal player I don’t think; I’m just a loud blues player. I know my limitations and stuff but I get a big thrill out of watching the finest musicians, and whenever I get the chance I’m off to watch them!
What are your personal highlights on the new studio release Hammered? I like Voices From The War – I think that’s got a really bad ass guitar sound on it. I’m extremely happy with the entire album actually. A lot of work went into it, overdubbed rhythm guitars and solos etc, the vocal in Walk A Crooked Mile was one take, most of it is one take on there but we put a lot of effort into it. And the fact it was produced by Tom Panuncio, who produced for John Lennon, REM, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Ozzy etc, although Bob Kulick produced the demos for the album six months previously.
What contents of the album can we be expecting to hear live over the course of your next tour? We haven’t started rehearsing for the tour yet but we really want to do Voices From The War, Brave New World (which we’ll be hopefully shooting a video for this week) and we might even do No Remorse live. In a perfect world it’d be nice to do 5 or 6 tracks from the album.
Will you be digging out any more unheard Motorhead diamonds from the earlier albums that haven’t being played on previous tours? I think we’ve dug most of the diamonds out of the well! Not that its not dry or anything - we might pull one out if we can think of one but we’re more concerned with how many we can get out of Hammered at the moment.
What the album’s title, Hammered inspired through the intensity of the discs music? We all put together a bunch of names together and were racking our brains out for weeks over what to call it, and in the end we didn’t care what we called it – we had so many good titles that we just decided on Hammered in the end. It was one of Lem’s – it was a hard title and just about sums us up.
Will a selection of numbers from the last studio release We Are Motorhead…And We’re Gonna Kick Your Ass - including the stomping title track - keep up appearances, alongside all the other Head favourites? We never played to many from that album over the course of the last tour, so we’ll playing more from the new album this time around, but We Are Motorhead… is a great set opener and I think we’ll be playing that for the rest of our lives now!
What immediate touring plans do you have? First off we’ll be doing the aforementioned US tour (for six weeks, including a date in a prestigious New York restaurant!), then be doing a bunch of European festivals in the summer. In the second half of the year, hopefully a few months of that will be taken up with an extensive European tour, (including the UK.) I think we’ve put together the best Motorhead show ever this year – we’re doing Wembley arena on October 19 to, so that’s a nice step up for us.
And finally…
How did the move come around for Lemmy’s appearance on the classic Kit Kat ad, playing violin? I think they just called him up and asked him to do the ad – Lem probably said ‘are you going to pay me tonnes of money - because I don’t eat much chocolate’, they said yes! Its quite funny actually because me and my friend Simon were in a cab the other night and we phoned Stringfellow’s - Lemmy was in there and we needed to get a message to him. The woman who we were speaking to on the phone was going, ‘who, who?’ We just kept on saying ‘Lemmy, Lemmy’, until we finally gave in: ‘You know, the violin player from the Kit Kat ad!’ Then she knew (‘Oh yes, certainly!’). It’d be funny if Lemmy’s known as the violin player from the Kit Kat ad in ten years time!
Do you see it as a bonus that Motorhead are fashionable (Cat walk t-shirt’s et al)? It’s nice, yes. It’s always being cool to wear a Motorhead T-Shirt – they’ve worn them in so many major TV shows such as Friends, movies etc, so the more people that are seen wearing our T-shirts the better. There’s something weird about Motorhead; we’re stylish in the fact that we have no style and just do our own thing. (The WWF wrestler) Triple H features on our album to – he does the spoken word thing with Lemmy on Serial Killer, and Lem wrote his theme tune music. The song went gold in America and he insists on using it – we’re in contact all the time. He’s a big Motorhead fan and we get on well with the WWF guys now. He’ll be on our new video too if all goes according to schedule.
Andy Law
