He enters and leaves the stage with the same phrase, "We are fucking Motörhead!” The person I refer to is none other than Lemmy, one of the gods of metal. Some may wonder why he is considered a god of metal, and it is quite simple…because he is old as dirt, and he has yet to lighten up his sound at all. He invented the genre of thrash metal (though if you mention that to his face you may want to run, because according to him he plays rock’n’roll) and is still, after 4 decades of music, still putting on awesome shows.
I had the honor to see this god onstage along with about 8 of my friends from the metal club here at USF. Seeing his fan base was unbelievable. You have old school punkers with denim vests, metal studs lining the hems, and covered in sewn on patches of all sorts of punk bands (Motörhead started in London with the punk scene, hence the heavy influence on his playing style.) 60-year-old bikers were all over the place with silver hair and harshly done prison tattoos. Old groupies with gigantic fake tits and saggy tattoos that riddled their bodies were everywhere. Most amazing of all were all of the younger kids who I would think hated this genre of metal were all over the place. Last but not least, and most fascinating of all, was when an older biker about the age of 50 came through, with his son who was around 30 who had brought his two kids who looked to be about 10 or 12. As they passed me the 30-year-old said, “It amazes me that 20 years later you still drag me to this shit.” Motörhead has spanned over 4 generations, and is still in high demand.
After Reverend Horton Heat, the opening band, left the stage and Motörhead came out, everyone went berserk. It was rather weird since no real moshing took place until at least half of Motörhead’s set was over. Everyone seemed to be in awe of seeing the god before them as he wailed into his microphone while ripping into his heavily distorted bass while blowing out our ear drums in the process. The energy level was incredible, and as they kept playing I watched all of these older fans that surrounded me went from being complete strangers to my peers in less than 3 songs. Beer was thrown, as were people, and of course, metal horns galore throughout the entire show, especially during songs such as Overkill and their trademark song Ace of Spades.
During shows the females get very frisky as well. My friend Francheska and I were standing there during the show and an old cougar (an actual hot older woman that still looks good for her age) walked by and grabbed her ass and groped my balls. This was not the end of this, however, as that cougar’s friend later propositioned my friends Mario and Jeff as we attempted to leave the venue after the show, which granted is hilarious, but is also kind of creepy at the same time. After all of us made it out the front door in one piece, we did the traditional metalhead thing…went to sit and bullshit in a restaurant for an hour or so. Perhaps one of the greatest things we all realized at that point is that all of us were not going to be able to hear a thing the next day, which is proof to us we had just seen one of the greatest men in the metal genre.
Some say that change is good, which I will agree, it is, but when you are creating art, it is better to stay true to yourself. Lemmy is one of the few musicians in the industry nowadays, of any genre, that people seem to forget about that sticks to his guns still to this day. Record companies and the constant change of guitarists to their lineup have always tried to make him refine his sound and he refuses to yield. That is why metalheads hold him on such a high pedestal: refusal to conform, and as Motörhead’s motto states,”Everything louder than everything else!”
