Happy 30th BirthdayMotörhead!

Mon 19th Dec, 2005 in Features

This Christmas Eve, vocalist Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead will turn sixty. Generally, sixty is the age of retirement, but for Lemmy he is still on the road touring, which makes him one of (if not the) oldest musicians out there. But then again, this year marked the 30th anniversary of Motörhead – now that’s thirty years worth of songs, thirty years worth of albums and thirty years worth of touring and what an appropriate way to end their 30th anniversary celebrations than by supporting Mötley Crüe on their Carnival Of Sins tour.

After all, it was Motörhead who started the heavy metal/rock’n’roll crossover genre that Mötley Crüe have come to master, and are now famous for. “Mötley Crüe have been around almost as long as Motörhead!” drummer Mikkey Dee laughs, backstage as he waits for Mötley Crüe to finish their soundcheck so Motörhead can start theirs. “But yeah, in a way, I’m sure they got inspired by us, somewhat. But a lot of bands have when they started in the late ‘70s, early 80s. Only now we have no idea about what inspires certain bands because we can’t hear it!” he says. “We have some bands that come up to us and say you’re our biggest inspiration and we say – what?”

Even though Dee is well into his forties, he is still considered the ‘baby’ of the band by his peers. He has been with Motörhead since 1992, replacing “Philthy Animal” Taylor, thanks to his impressive résumé of playing in King Diamond and Dokken. “King Diamond was great but when I left King in ‘88 I was so tired with that type of playing. I felt really crappy as a drummer, even though people thought I was good, because it was all technical shit and I agree it was great, but I was very narrow as a drummer” he admits. “I was missing playing just a single beat, and I was stressed just having to play drums. After than I joined Dokken which was great. Then I got a call from Motörhead, they’ve been asking me since ‘86 to join the band but I turned them down like three-four times,” he says, “I’m glad I didn’t join before, because I wasn’t ready. And it’s almost been fifteen years since I’ve joined the band… but I’m the rookie!”

Since their union, all three members of Motorhead now reside in different countries – Lemmy in Los Angeles, guitarist Phil Campbell in Pontypridd, Wales, and Mikkey Dee in Gothenburg, Sweden. Dee use to live in Los Angeles but has become jaded with the city, and has opted to move back to his hometown of Gothenburg. “I lived in LA for twelve years but then I had a problem with all the rules and regulations” reminisces Dee “Overall in the US it’s not that much fun anymore. I don’t want a country being ruleless” he states “but when the Americans go ‘land of the free’, I say, you don’t know what free is, for fuck’s sakes, you can’t do anything over there anymore.”

“Like they just question everything you do…” he complains, “like, I walked home from The Rainbow, on Sunset [Boulevard], and I stayed in a hotel not far from there. It’s a Saturday, and the cops pull up and says, what the hell am I doing out at this hour? What are you talking about? And I was close to getting arrested…” He reveals, “Because I was sarcastic. I said, I’m walking, not driving! Fuck it. They shouldn’t have asked me in the first place!”

As a band, Motörhead have become somewhat of an icon of rock’n’roll. It may be thirty years since they started out, but the fans are still out in full support of them, in particular a new generation of younger Motörhead fans that Dee is still amazed by. “In the US and Europe, a significant amount of kids – I mean ‘Kids’.” He quips, “We’ve literally doubled the ticket sales and it’s not the old fans coming back, they’ve been there the whole time, it’s young… from six to sixteen. I mean, kids – real kids!” he exclaims, “Eight, ten, twelve year olds in the front row… with dad, or on their own, it’s been amazing!”

In 1993, Motörhead were the first hard-rock band to perform on The Tonight Show. The appearance was a revelation for the music industry for a band of that genre to score a prime time spot on national television, and also buoyed confidence in other bands after them to believe that they can gain that type of attention. “There’s a lot of good new young bands and I think the last couple of years, I think that scene has changed a lot, to the better because mid-nineties to the end of the nineties, it was really bad.” He says, “Of course there are exceptions, and a lot of good bands came out but overall the business was terrible. And in the last couple of years you start to hear a lot of really good melodies. Really good bands are coming out and it seems like musicianship is important again. To be able to play your instrument before you can call yourself a musician. It seems a lot of the nineties bands forgot about that. Because it was just attitude – hate your mom, hate your work, hate the world, hate everything! And we are not on that kind of base at all”.

But after having a thirty-year career with Motörhead, the guys have what most young bands want, longevity. There is no guaranteed formula, but Dee thinks that the fact that they have always stayed true to themselves and have not compromised the style of their music, has something to do with their illustrious run. “The secret is just to stay true to your music, and not to change because of the scene. We write songs for the three of us, not for you, or for the fans or for anyone. If people like it, then that’s a bonus but it’s our album and unless we write what we like it’s not going to be strong.” He states, “Whenever I say that, they [other bands] say, well it’s easy for you to say, because you’re in Motörhead and you guys can do that now. Yeah but how do you think we got to this point?” He explains, “It’s not like fifteen years ago we kissed ass and changed our music. It’s been so bad we almost went under several times. But we still come back and did what we do best. It sounds weird but we have some fans who barely like us but they like what we’ve been doing and achieving.” He says, “So when musicians say we inspire other bands, I think we inspire in a lot of other ways rather than just musically. And that’s good too.”

The legendary Motörhead released one of their absolute best albums in 2004, Inferno! Now we have the 30th anniversary edition Motörhead’s killer album Inferno and DVD! The DVD features the 30th Anniversary Show filmed live at the Hammersmith Apollo England, The Guts & Glory Motörhead Story, Whorehouse Blues video clip and the making of the video and more.

You can win a copy of the special collectors edition – enter here!