Tuesday 29 December 2015

Lemmy

When i woke up this morning the radio was playing 'Born to Raise Hell' which was surprising as it is usually something far more gentle at 6am and when it finished the presenter explained it was in honour of Lemmy who died yesterday.
As usual when a massive character dies there has been much use of the word legend bandied about but to me Lemmy only had a couple of great songs to show for a long career, the aforementioned 'Born To Raise Hell' and Ace of Spades'.
The legend around Lemmy was his lifestyle, the bottle of Jack Daniels he downed and the two to three packets of cigarettes he smoked everyday. 
He once halk jokingly said that as a musician he wasn't all that great but that 'the volume’s loud so nobody really notices that much' and for someone who had 23 albums, unless you were headbanging along to Hawkwind and Motorhead in the late 70's and early 80's he is largely remembered just for the Ace of Spades song and the scene in the Young Ones where they were legging it to University Challenge with Lemmy banging out the the song in the background.
What Lemmy bought to the table was that he was a proper rock star living the rock star life which we all would like to think we would be if given the opportunity.
"If you're going to be a fucking rock star go be one. People don't want to see the guy next door on stage, they want to see a being from another planet. You want to see somebody you'd never meet in ordinary life' he said and that is exactly what he did, hard drinking and touring until the end.
There are not many, if any, of the like of Lemmy making music today where the whole scene is dominated by plastic identikit performers so in that way he will be missed and he did leave behind two amazing songs which are impossible to listen to unless your eardrums are stretched to the point of disintegration.

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