White Line Fever: The Autobiography

by Janiss Garza

‘Right then!’ she snapped and walked out. That was it. She went away and had the kid, Paul, and brought him up on her own. I met him when he was six, on a coke deal. I went to buy some cocaine from these Brazilian guys in Warwick Road, Earls Court. We were all, you know, waiting for the man, and I was in the kitchen making a piece of toast. Then in walked this little blond kid. ‘You’re my daddy,’ he told me. ‘Mummy’s in the other room.’ I walked in there, and sure enough, it was Tracy. I know why I was there, but how the fuck did she come to be there? I’ll never know. So I got her a fridge, ’cause she didn’t have one. Dragged it up four flights of stairs for her. Fucking terrible job, really, with only me and another guy doing it.

Wow

It just seemed like all of London was out of their heads back then. We used to get high and go down to the park and talk to the trees – sometimes the trees would win the argument.

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‘Fuckin’ hell, ’Mik,’ I said, ‘I can’t move. Can you?’ ‘No,’ he replied. ‘It’s great, isn’t it?’ ‘Yeah, but we’ve got to get onstage soon.’ ‘Oh, they’ll help us,’ he assured me. So the roadies hooked our bootheels on to the back of the stage and pushed us up, and they strapped my bass on me. ‘Right, okay,’ I said. ‘Which way is the audience, man?’ ‘That way.’ ‘How far?’ ‘Ten yards.’ So I stepped up – ‘One, two, three, four, five, right. Hit it.’

Lol

That was a great time, the summer of ’71 – I can’t remember it, but I’ll never forget it!

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‘HE’S DEAD! HE’S DEAD!’ she began screaming. Then she got Dave, and he was standing over me too, screaming, ‘HE’S DEAD!’ Meanwhile, I was lying there thinking, ‘What the fuck is the matter with these people? Can’t they see I’m trying to get some sleep?’ I wanted to tell them to shut up, but I was having kind of a hard time speaking. Eventually they figured out I wasn’t dead and after a while, I was all right again.

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‘It’ll be the dirtiest rock ’n’ roll band in the world. If we moved in next door your lawn would die!’ Actually, I stole that line from Dr Hook, but it quickly became the first of Motörhead’s many catchphrases.

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Japan loved Motörhead from the start. Brian had already been there with his band after Thin Lizzy, Wild Horses, and he told me with all confidence (and with his broad Scottish accent), ‘Don’t think you’re gonna get all this acclaim like you’re used to here in Japan. You won’t because they don’t do nothing. They just sit there and clap their wee hands.’ ‘Oh, don’t be too sure about that, Brian,’ I said. ‘You’re in Motörhead now,’ which probably irked him like shit. So we got there and sure enough, the first time the curtains opened across the stage, it was all, ‘AHHHH! REMMY!’ Blian got a bit upset by that. ‘Blian Lobertson’ – that’s rather unfortunate, isn’t it?

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But I didn’t fire Brian for any of those reasons. I would have kept him in the band forever if he was playing all right. It was just when he started fucking up that he became unbearable. We were part way through a European tour, in the fall of ’83, when it just got ridiculous. We were playing at the Rotation Club in Hanover, Germany, and we had just done ‘Another Perfect Day’ and he started playing it again. So I stalked over to him and said, ‘You cunt! We just played that!’ ‘Oh, sorry,’ he said, and he started it again a third time.

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During the latter part of May, we recorded six songs. Four of them – ‘Killed by Death’, ‘Steal Your Face’, ‘Snaggletooth’ and ‘Locomotive’ – ended up on No Remorse. The other two tracks we did went on the flipside of the ‘Killed by Death’ single and were both called ‘Under the Knife’ – they were two completely different songs, however. Maybe that sounds confusing, and it was meant to be. That’s what’s missing from record companies – that kind of lunacy for its own sake. That’s the great British legacy to the world, humour like The Goon Show, The Young Ones and Monty Python. Some people don’t get it, which is too bad for them. You’re supposed to laugh in life. Laughing exercises all the facial muscles and keeps you from getting old. Looking stern gives you terrible wrinkles. I also advise drinking heavily – it helps the sense of humour! Smoking pot helps the sense of humour no end, but after a while you lose it altogether and all you can do is talk about the cosmos and shit, which is really boring.

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We also went to Arizona to film a video for ‘Killed by Death’ – I don’t remember who paid for that, I don’t think Bronze did; no doubt we probably did. MTV banned it for a really stupid reason. I was riding a motorcycle in it with this girl and I put my hand on her leg and slid it up behind me. You didn’t see me grabbing the offending public hair, but nevertheless they didn’t like that. It was bullshit – that was when they were playing the hell out of Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ video, which had people coming out of the ground with shit pouring out of their nose, but they didn’t seem to have a problem with that!

I like that video

‘I sink you haff done somezing very awful to this person,’ he informed us. ‘Yeah? Well, he told us all the wrong fucking directions,’ and all: we told him the story. ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ he said. ‘But zis is no reason to cover a man viz cheese!’

He told this story in an intrview once

I was standing around when I heard this voice behind me say, ‘Hello, Lemmy. I’ve always wanted to meet you.’ I turned around and it was Eric Clapton. This was big news for me because I remembered him well from the Bluesbreakers and the Yardbirds. So I managed to say hello without grovelling – I mean, Eric!

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Can somebody tell me why the richest country in the world has bums living on the streets?

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I like having all this stuff around because it’s a reminder of what happened, and that it’s in the past (for the most part – Nazism still exists, but at the margins). I don’t understand people who believe that if you ignore something, it’ll go away. That’s completely wrong – if it’s ignored, it gathers strength. Europe ignored Hitler for twenty years. We could have beaten him in 1936: the French army could have chased him out of the Rhineland and he would have been done. His people would have been toppled from power. But the French ran away – again – and let him in. As a result, he slaughtered a quarter of the world! And he was a non-smoker, non-drinker, vegetarian, smart suit, short hair, well turned-out. Would have been served in any restaurant in America, unlike Jesse Owens, the hero of the 1936 Olympics.

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Apparently people don’t like the truth, but I do like it; I like it because it upsets a lot of people. If you show them enough times that their arguments are bullshit, then maybe just once, one of them will say, ‘Oh! Wait a minute – I was wrong.’ I live for that happening. Rare, I assure you.

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So I wrote a song about it. But I do have a lot of ambivalence about that tune. This kid wrote to me and said he played it for his grandfather, who was there, and the old man cried all the way through it. That’s a very great compliment, but I’m not sure I like the guy feeling that bad for my gratification. It’s an amazing thing to have happen, though, to reach back over all those years and touch somebody like that.

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I’d like to mention that I’m available for more songwriting if anybody is interested. Quite reasonable rates – just the mortgage on your first-born child!

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Overall, I think March or Die is underrated. I bet you think I’m going to put a good portion of the blame for that on the record company, and you’re right.

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Of course, we were back on the air an hour later, but isn’t it sad that they make you go to that level? They give you no recourse: if you’re nice to them, they think you’re a pushover and ride all over you; if you’re an asshole, at least you’re dealing with them on terms they can understand but more likely than not you will be fired, which is eventually what happened to us. But being an asshole seems to be the only thing that will get a reaction out of these bloody suits.

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A couple of weeks prior to our Tonight Show appearance, we also played three West Coast dates on the Metallica/Guns N’ Roses stadium tour. I’m not sure how we got on; it was probably Metallica’s work. They’re the only band who have ever acknowledged their debt to us. Those three stadium dates went well, especially the latter two. We got all the PA and were treated with a decent amount of respect, which is as it should be.

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The thing that got me the most was she claimed I insulted her sexually! Do you know what I said? I said, ‘You’re the best-looking representative we’ve had from a record company in years.’ That was it! If telling someone they’re looking good is harassment, then the world has truly gone out of its fucking mind.

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‘Yo, dude, “Ace of Spades”,’ – that’s the famous cry that has come to plague me. Occasionally I get really pissed off. It’d be nice if instead I heard someone say, ‘Have you got anything new out? I’d like to hear it.’ That would be much better. But no, they come up to me and say, ‘You guys were so great!’ And I say, ‘Yeah? If we were so great, how come you stopped listening to us after 1980?’ That’s what I don’t understand – the usual reply is, ‘Oh, I got married.’ People are fucking weird.

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In my life so far, I have discovered that there are really only two kinds of people: those who are for you, and those who are against you. Learn to recognize them, for they are often and easily mistaken for each other. Also, it seems that our brave new world is becoming less tolerant, spiritual and educated than it ever was when I was young; of course we are all susceptible to the ‘good old days’ syndrome, but this is not an example of it . . . Inherited hatred (i.e. hatred your parents schooled you in) is not only stupid, it is destructive – why make your only driving force hate? Seems really fucking dumb to me. Finally (and this is good advice), buy our albums. You won’t be sorry! Love, Lem September, 2002

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In my life so far, I have discovered that there are really only two kinds of people: those who are for you, and those who are against you. Learn to recognize them, for they are often and easily mistaken for each other. Also, it seems that our brave new world is becoming less tolerant, spiritual and educated than it ever was when I was young; of course we are all susceptible to the ‘good old days’ syndrome, but this is not an example of it . . . Inherited hatred (i.e. hatred your parents schooled you in) is not only stupid, it is destructive – why make your only driving force hate? Seems really fucking dumb to me. Finally (and this is good advice), buy our albums. You won’t be sorry! Love, Lem September, 2002

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