"Rock 'n' Roll is Lemmy. Lemmy is Rock 'n' Roll."

Back when I was cool (or, when I thought I was…or at least when I cared about that shit), I had the rare opportunity to hang out with Motorhead founder Lemmy Kilmister. I was living in a college town in Nor Cal, and Motorhead played at a local club. A few weeks before the show, I had attempted to line up a telephone interview with Lemmy so I could run a story hyping the show in the alternative newsweekly I managed at the time, but no one from Motorhead management returned my calls, so I gave up and moved on.

The day of the show rolled around, I was sitting on my couch after work watching a ball game and the club’s promoter called my cell phone. Lemmy was sitting at the end of the bar drinking by himself, and he was willing to sit down with me and a tape recorder; apparently, he had no idea I tried to get to him in advance of the show. I gathered up my gear and headed to the bar. Since there were a few people milling around and the jukebox was playing some loud bullshit, we were taken to a table on the bar’s back patio, which was closed, and I fired up the recorder and pulled out my camera.

The interview was pretty much shit. That’s not to say we didn’t have a great conversation — we did; we hung out for a couple of hours, drinking and smoking and bullshitting — it’s just that it wasn’t much of a proper interview. Sure, I asked questions and he answered them, and we talked a lot about music and the rock star life style and being an icon and a bunch of other stuff, but… The tape in the recorder ran out about half way through our conversation, and most of what he had to say was unintelligible anyway — between his accent and his mumbling, which got worse the deeper we got into a fifth of Jack Daniels — but it’s most definitely two hours of my life that I’ll never forget. (Click the photo up there to see the best shots I got while hanging out with Lemmy.)

There’s a biopic about Lemmy coming out next year, and it looks fucking awesome. And it’s about goddamn time that he got this kind of shine. Dave Grohl (who kicks ass in the movie trailer) says it best: “More than any other rock musician, he is the baddest motherfucker in the world.” Amen.

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