Outspoken, Like a True Motor Mouth

Lemmy doesn’t worry a lot about offending anybody’s sensibilities.

When a record label head once complained that Motorhead offended too many people, Lemmy’s response was: “ ‘What the [expletive] are they doing that I shouldn’t offend them? Tell me that! Why do you keep offending me telling me this [expletive]? I’m on your label.’ He should have been sticking up for me, but of course that was too much to hope for. Everybody’s so scared of everything, afraid of offending this lobby and that lobby.”

One thing that offended Lemmy was Kurt Cobain’s suicide, and he is none too reserved in his opinions on it.

“Artists so often don’t recognize what they have. I mean, he got everything he wanted, and he discovered he still wasn’t happy. But he could have given it up, couldn’t he? He could have become a [expletive] bacon slicer again or whatever he’d been, couldn’t he? But he didn’t. He just bitched and moaned all the time and then blew his [expletive] brains out, leaving the wife and kid. Good deal? I don’t think so.

“I don’t like that much. I always thought suicide was cowardice. You have to stick with it. You’ll only have to come around again if you duck out, I believe, until you get it right.”

While a good rant may have its place in Lemmy’s world, he doesn’t have much room for whiners.

“Don’t blame the insufficient potty-training that affected you as a child. All the famous people in the world who did great, humane things had the same things done to them, and they’re OK. They got around it. They lived through it. They didn’t make a song and dance about it and freak out; they sorted it out, right? People can’t do that no more; they have to sue somebody first and then wail about it in a book or series of magazine articles. It’s really a shame people can’t be self-sufficient.”

Scratch a cynic, they say, and he’ll likely punch you. When you ask Lemmy what things he isn’t cynical about, though, it turns out he’s a big softy at heart.

“The same things are worthy that always were: trust, justice, love, peace and faith. Faith in what doesn’t matter, as long as it gets you through without hurting anyone else. You can be whatever you like as long as you don’t try to force it on me like I’m an ignorant savage or infidel. People can’t leave other people alone.”

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Many of his lyrics may have a violent theme, but he says it is a gross misinterpretation to say they promote violence. Rather, he claims, “I’m nonviolent, really nonviolent, and the world is getting more violent in spite of what I say because people don’t actually read the lyrics because they’re not well-enough educated because nowadays they graduate them functionally illiterate, right?

“I find history is a good subject for songs, because, God knows, it’s boring in school. I never learned any history in school. I did a lot of reading afterward. I figure if I can mention something and listeners think it’s cool, they might read about it, and that’s good.”