Overkill: The Untold Story of Motörhead by McIver Joel

Author:McIver, Joel [McIver, Joel]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Music Sales
Published: 2011-11-04T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

1990–91

By 1990 Lemmy was practically broke – not a position anyone wants to be in, especially at the age of 44, and even more so after 15 years of solid, back-breaking touring. “I never had very good managers,” he told the Independent, adding that when he finally moved to Los Angeles after years of considering emigration, “I had about £500 left in the bank. I thought that that was the end for me.”

As far back as the early seventies, Lemmy had told Chris Salewicz, “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.” In the grim days of the Brixton riots, he occasionally foresaw the tension between public and police escalating to apocalyptic levels, saying: “I think it’ll be fighting in the streets – and I think it’ll be down to whether you fight in the streets or you don’t. ‘Fraid so. There’s no half measures in that sort of situation.”

Some of this doom-prognostication might have come from his previous experiences at the hands of the law. After all, Lemmy had been arrested for the most trivial of reasons, he recalled: “Possession of an offensive weapon – a little penknife that said, ‘A present from Norway’. A policeman got very upset by it. He’d wanted to do me for drugs, but I didn’t have any so he settled for that. ‘You’re nicked,’ he said. ‘You’re coming with me.’ He’d handcuffed me, so I had to agree. I could have tried dragging him down the street, but he had a whistle and walkie-talkie.”

Perhaps Lemmy outgrew England and its uptight ways, and coupled with the distinct lack of interest which this fair isle was showing towards Motörhead, a move to the rock’n’roll capital of the world seemed a logical decision. “We would have broken up before now if we’d stayed in England, because the interest here was zero,” he told Paul Du Noyer. “In America they’d never heard of us, so we went over and had a go at them. I was sick of London… I’d been in London since 1967, I was 44 and I thought, ‘Fuck it, if I’m going to go anywhere, I’d better go now’. I miss Britain, but only a bit. I don’t miss the weather, for a kick-off. People say, ‘Oh I love England, it’s so green’. I say, ‘That’s because it’s underwater half the fucking time, it’s seaweed!’ The only thing I really miss is the cheese, which they can’t make in America to save their fucking lives, it’s terrible. And they can’t do Marmite, so I take that home with me. I like LA, I’ve got good friends there. Everything’s half price. And the chicks are cuter. They are! They wear much less clothing because of the torrid heat.

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