Lemmy Kilmister

There are few rock bands in the world that are 35 years old. And fewer that have existed without interruption, regularly playing concerts and releasing a new album every couple of years. Motörhead’s “newest” member, the drummer Mikkey Dee, has been with the band since 1992 and the guitarist Phil Campbell joined in 1984, but the band’s frontman, Lemmy Kilmister, has not moved from in front of the microphone since establishing Motörhead in 1975.

 

The band has remained true to its roots, playing exactly the same music as it did 30 years ago. One accepts the fact that Motörhead has released 20 albums without making any serious progress when one realises that the band’s spirit is also unchanged. There is not a weak album among those released over the past 30 years. The band has not experimented, but it has not made compromises either. The sound is the same: one or two guitars, a bass, a drummer and a singer, just enough for faultless rock’n’roll.

 

Lemmy Kilmister is 65 years old and he has been careful with neither his voice nor his health. Kilmister is the poster-boy for the “rock’n’roll lifestyle” with no lack of experience with drinking and drugs. He’s a kind of biological wonder who would make a poor candidate for a blood transfusion as the blood of a normal person would probably kill him.

 

Kilmister wasn’t prancing around the stage. It might be more accurate to say both he and Campbell were glued in place. But one doesn’t go to a Motörhead show for spectacle – although there was some of that during the show at Hegyalja – one goes to listen to the music, to real rock’n’roll.

 

Author: Bálint Kovács / Photo: MTI