Lemmy and the Lords of Loud : Anaheim-Bound Motorhead Man Still Gets Revved Up About Rock

“Knowledge is invaluable. There’s no replacement for it,” claims Lemmy, singer-bassist-grisly-figurehead of Motorhead. But, ye fans of this deathless metal band, don’t be too concerned that Lemmy’s going professorial on you. He might like to include a bit of social comment and world history in his lyrics, but he also likes to say [expletive] a whole lot.

Motorhead, in case you’ve missed it, is the British pedal-through-the-floorboards purveyor of such tunes as “Eat the Rich,” “Orgasmatron” and “Killed by Death.” In the history of rock, has there been a song title so brilliant as “Killed by Death”? The band itself can be deceptively brilliant, pounding out tales of excess and societal chaos with such lunkheaded glee that they become an affirmation of life, like a weed at ground zero.

These days, the band--which plays Wednesday at the Freedman Forum in Anaheim--consists of guitarist Phil Campbell, drummer Mikkey Dee and founding member Lemmy. Mick “Wurzel” Burston left last year, ending an 11-year hitch shortly after the band recorded its latest album, “Sacrifice.” That left Motorhead, founded as a trio in 1975, as a threesome for the first time since 1984 when Campbell and Burston joined as a dual-guitar team.

At 50, Lemmy--who had exhausted a dozen or so previous band members--has been rocking for three decades solid (except for a brief time of relative quiet roadie-ing for Jimi Hendrix) and shows no signs of mellowing.

As one might expect of a man who sounds as if he’s gargling molten lead when he sings, Lemmy (born Ian Kilmister) is a pretty peeved individual. Somewhat less predictably, he is able to articulate that rage and to root it in a humanistic concern for the world he lives in.

And, heck, we were impressed that he was even able to hear questions and respond after the rigors through which he puts his organs onstage. Even at club dates, Motorhead takes along its own sound system, a literal wall of speakers.

The last time the group performed at the Coach House, in 1992, our man reviewing the concert resorted to “bunk” earplugs, stuffing one pair in on top of another. He says it didn’t help. Encasing one’s head in Styrofoam probably wouldn’t help. You could run a jackhammer at their shows without people noticing. Meanwhile, according to their soundman, the band members keep 13,000 watts of monitors pointed just at themselves onstage.

“That’s a great exaggeration,” Lemmy said by phone from South Carolina during one of the group’s tours in 1994. “It’s only 12,000.” A governing command mounted on the band’s mixing board instructs the sound man: “Everything louder than everything else.” Lemmy said the maxim was originated some years back by the group’s semi-legendary former drummer Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor, who might not necessarily be the point man for disproving drummers’ reputations as being a tad thick.

Lemmy recalled: “We were in the studio with a producer, and Phil explained, ‘Look, it’s quite simple, we want everything louder than everything else,’ and just sat back, quite serious.”

Despite the nightly assault, Lemmy--who doesn’t wear ear protection--said his ears and throat are holding up just fine.

“It just goes to show you that the human body is a wonderful mechanism. It adapts to most things, if you give it a chance to. If you’ve sheltered and protected it all your life, it’ll just fail you. But it’s like how, to prevent a disease, you get a mild dose of it via an inoculation, right? Your body can take a lot.”

And what have been some of Lemmy’s favorite mild doses?

“Oh [expletive], everything, just about. I had the clap--the ‘round of applause,’ if you will--seven times in two years, ’66 and ‘67, and then I haven’t had it since. I think I’m immune. It’s pretty amazing when you think of it,” he said, chortling.

He’s been more prudent in other areas.

“I’ve never done heroin, and I’d never do crack in this time zone. Those are the drugs that human beings can’t handle. They’ll kill you, no doubt about that. People don’t heed that still. They have to become ‘tragic victims.’ Do I smell burning martyr? But lumping those and everything else under the label of ‘drugs’ is a big mistake.

“It’s like calling all food ‘cabbage,’ ” he said, adding that the drugs that have done him the most harm have been prescribed legitimately. And that led him into a diatribe lumping medicos, politicos and Amtrak together as “all pretty [expletive] up.”

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A similar attitude is at the core of many of his lyrics: Lemmy rails at a world exploding with greed, violence, despotic governments, corrupt religions and sundry back-stabbers. In general, there’s a whole lot of Armageddon going on.

“You’ve noticed that, have you?” he asked with a chuckle. “I’m only writing about the current situation. When you have governments as venal as the American and English governments, and indeed the Russian and Chinese governments as well, when you have anyone holding onto power for the sake of it, and they will not let go of it until it absolutely screams in their fist, then you’re in trouble. And we’re in trouble.

“If we don’t get somebody who puts his [expletive] foot down soon, we’re going to have somebody who puts 10 million feet down, and it’ll be Hitler again. He’ll clean up all the crime on the streets and make it so everybody will be able to walk home at night. The trouble is you could be walking straight into arbeit macht frei [the ‘work makes freedom’ slogan Nazis posted cynically in concentration camps].

“That’s what people want, a strong leader. Even now, after all the lessons of history--Napoleon, Hitler--they still like to get orders so they have no way to get in trouble thinking.”

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Lemmy doesn’t see religion as enlightening matters much.

“This kid came up to me and said, ‘Oh, Lemmy, you’re God!’ I said, ‘No, I saw God when I was on acid. He’s taller.’ Ha ha. I don’t like organized religion. I hate those evangelists that pollute your channels on Sundays. Like Jimmy Swaggart [who was embroiled in a sex scandal] saying God told him to take up his ministry again. And people [expletive] went for it, for a story that lame.

“You have to do away with people needing a god to save their ass, spiritually, you know. You have to get people to be responsible for their own actions, completely. And only then will you have any kind of idea what is actually going on. Until then, we’re all just like shamans and bloody mystics, magicians and all that. We really haven’t grown from that.”

Amid the howling coda in live performances of “Killed by Death,” Lemmy has been known to exclaim “Rock and roll is the only religion that never lets you down!”

He says that never has been a difficult creed for the band to live up to, despite its miserable fortunes in the industry. There have been bright spots--including a Grammy nomination for the album “1916” in 1991 and stadium gigs with Guns N’ Roses and Metallica--but most of the band’s 20 years have been plagued by false starts and broken promises.

Lemmy and his bandmates often find themselves playing in clubs no bigger than those in which he started more than 30 years ago.

“What can you do? We’re Motorhead,” he said. “We’re apparently destined to be this endless underground band. And that’s OK. ‘Cause we deliver a hell of a show. When you come to see Motorhead, you see rock and roll at its best. I don’t care who anybody is, they have a job following us on the stage. So I’m satisfied. I do the best I can, and that’s all I can ask.”

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Is it ever a burden having to soldier on, being the larger-than-life Lemmy 24 hours a day?

“Oh, it’s all right with me. After all, I made him. I was very shy when I was a teenager. I thought, ‘[Expletive] this, I’m never going to learn how to dance.’ So I created this monstrous [expletive] arrogant bastard, and it works. I’m quite quiet offstage. I think I’m really bloody boring, but apparently I’m not, because chicks keep coming back. I must be doing something right.

“I used to work in a factory, and this beats the [expletive] out of that, I’ll tell ya. And that’s all I’m qualified for, academically. It was washing machine parts, and it was really interesting work, man, believe me. It was clank, click, clunk, clang every two minutes from 7:30 in the morning till 5:30 at night. God save rock ‘n’ roll.”

Though the music business has burned out performers half his age, Lemmy is not looking forward to retirement.

“It isn’t all a bed of roses, but it isn’t all [expletive] iron spikes either. It’s a good gig. Getting to travel around the world and bring joy to people is not the worst job in the world. It’s better than spraying napalm on children, and they give you a medal for that.”

* Motorhead, Belladonna and Speedball play Wednesday at the Freedman Forum, 201 E. Broadway, Anaheim. 8 p.m. $22.50. (714) 999-9599.