The once Strapping Young Lad chronicles the "pinnacle moment" with the Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing riff that helped him earn "social collateral" and he became "moderately accepted" with schoolmates.
Warning: Devin Townsend says he hasnāt played the riff in Judas Priestās āThe Sentinelā āfor enough years that it may be dubious.ā But thatās hard to believe when he delivers the soaring line thatās the hook from this Defenders of the Faith (1984) track. Townsend describes his initial discovery of the song as āone of those pinnacle moments.ā He also opens up about being a misfit kid, and tells a great story about overhearing older kids in band class talking about guitarāand how that riff suddenly made him one of those ācool kidsā ⦠almost.
Itās the guitar, he says, āthat made me at least moderately accepted, and that still holds true to this day.ā He also takes a lick at Fastwayās āSay What You Will,ā a hard-strutting blues-based riff, and Priestās āYouāve Got Another Thing Cominā.ā But perhaps the biggest revelation is that the first riff he fell in love with was from Johnny Cashās āFolsom Prison Blues.ā And yes, he does play it, plus the galloping rhythm. His next biggie was Motƶrheadās āMotƶrhead.ā āBut none of that, my friends,ā he adds, ācompared to the social collateral or being able to impress a bunch of goofy 16-year-old with a Judas Priest riff, so I will be eternally indebted to this riff.ā
And more news for Townsendās fans: the Canadian prog-rocker will be mounting an extensive European tour in the spring, behind his 2022 album Lightwork, a compendium of tunes he wrote and recorded under pandemic lockdownāwhich also has a counterpart in the demos and B-sides release Nightwork. Townsend notes that Lightwork was consciously written about taking a hard look at where we are as people after a profound time in history and then taking real care to focus our future energies on what is truly important to us in light of that. Friends, health, family, creativity, time off, not running from the fear, not allowing other peopleās expectations to define us, creative freedom and self-care. āDoing the difficult work to begin to know who we truly are, makes it so that during periods of unrest, we can maintain a certain degree of peace,ā he relates.
Lemmy's original name for Motƶrhead was Bastard, but his manager informed him that a band called Bastard would never be allowed on British TV's Top of the Pops.
We celebrate the legendary life of a beloved bassist whose wild authenticity, intense spirit, and guitar-like approach to the 4-string laid the groundwork for a generation of thrash-metal outfits.
Lemmy Kilmister sang with his head tilted straight back, like a wolf howling at the moon. His voice was charged with the same animal ferocityāa Jack Daniel's-cured growl that was a constant reminder of the danger within the bloodline of rock 'n' roll. And his bass playing with Motƶrhead was no less intense, drenched in distortion from a wall of overdriven Marshalls and punched out by a pick pummeling the strings of the three-humbucker signature model 4004 LK Rickenbackers he played for the last 20 years of his life.
All of that was silenced on Monday, December 28, 2015, when Lemmy died in his Los Angeles home at age 70 from an aggressive form of cancer that he'd been diagnosed with just a few days before. An early report stated that he died on his couch playing a video game, but given what we know of his proclivities Lemmy probably would've preferred to die with his hands wrapped around a slot-machine arm and a whiskey rather than a joystick. The legendary bassist had been stricken by heart issues and diabetes in recent years, and the health problems weren't just bad enough to cancel a European tour in 2013 and a handful of stops on a U.S. tour this fallāthey actually induced Lemmy to quit smoking and reduce his drinking. He switched from his beloved Jack Daniel'sāhe reportedly consumed a bottle a day for more than 30 yearsāto vodka, which he considered a less potent beverage.
Rock 'n' roll was Lemmy's religion and he was one of its most colorful disciples, dressing in leather and denim biker regalia on and off the stage. The band he formed and fronted since 1975 took its name from the British slang term for a speed freak, and that perfectly matched the intensity of the music they played from day one. Although Motƶrhead is often cited for an obvious influence on thrash metal, they were also part of the nascent punk movement, with the sped-up, hardened pub-rock sound of their debut album, 1977's Motƶrhead, playing comfortably next to early efforts by the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, and the Dead Boys.
As Motƶrhead's sound crystallized, Lemmy's trio pushed tempos and the buzz-saw mesh of bass and guitar even harder and louder, paving the way for the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. In turn, that movement influenced bands like Metallica and Anthrax, who understood Motƶrhead's foundational role in the scene, revered them for it, andāalong with Slayer and Megadethāoften covered Motƶrhead songs. And the respect was mutual. In 2005, Motƶrhead won a Grammy Award for its cover of Metallica's āWhiplash," which appeared on Metallic Attack: The Ultimate Tribute.
The legendary bassist's influence didn't stop there. Lemmy, whose given first name was Ian, was an erudite speaker and songwriter, and the blend of intelligence and brutality in Motƶrhead's music appealed to a generation of songwriters who emerged from the post-punk and burgeoning alt-rock scenes, including the Replacements' Paul Westerberg and Nirvana's Kurt Cobain and Dave Grohl. (The Replacements were among the many '80s and '90s bands known for covering Motƶrhead's 1980 breakthrough track, āAce of Spades," in their live shows.) And both Duff McKagan and Slash have attested to Motƶrhead's influence on Guns N' Roses. But the strangest evidence of Motƶrhead's widespread cultural capital is the song āYou Better Swim," Lemmy's rewrite of his 1992 tune āYou Better Run," which he and the band recorded for the soundtrack of 2004's The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. And they did it without compromising Motƶrhead's bloodletting sound.
Lemmy with his signature Rick bass and de rigueur Marshalls onstage in Camden, New Jersey, in 2008. āLemmy was Motƶrhead," says the band's most recent drummer, Mikkey Dee. āBut the band will live on in the memories of many." Photo by Frank White
Lemmy was born on Christmas Eve 1945 in Burslem, a farming hamlet that joined with five other small communities to form the town Stoke-on-Trent in central England. His parents split when he was 3 years old, and when Lemmy's mother remarried, he moved to Wales with his new family. There, while attending Sir Thomas Jones' School in Amlwch, he supposedly earned his nickname by constantly hitting up friends for money (as in, ālemme a fiver") to cater to his blooming lifelong passion for playing slot machines.
But for āLemmy," the true die was cast when he saw the Beatles at Liverpool's Cavern Club at the age of 16. He got a 6-string and began learning licks from the Fab Four's 1963 album Please Please Me, also picking up a thing or two about sarcasm from John Lennon along the way. Before long he was playing in a series of bands in northern England, though none caught fire. He eventually moved to London and roomed with Noel Redding, which then led to a gig as a roadie for the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Things began to click when he became bassist and singer for psychedelic rock band Hawkwindāan amphetamine-fueled adventure during which he developed his distinctive approach to bass: applying the double stops, full chords, and other basic blocks he'd learned during his previous career as a rhythm guitarist to his new 4-string instrument. After a 1975 arrest for drug possession at the Canadian border, Lemmy was fired from Hawkwind despite providing the vocals for the band's highest-charting single, 1972's U.K. No. 3 space-rock hit āSilver Machine."
Lemmy immediately formed his own band, whichāin keeping with his indomitable rock 'n' roll attitudeāhe named Bastard. When his manager told him a group named Bastard would never be allowed on TV's Top of the Pops, Lemmy renamed it after the last song he'd written for Hawkwindāonly with umlauts tacked on top of the second āo."
Motƶrhead struggled in the clubs for two years, often sharing bills with emerging punk-rock outfits like the Damned (for whom Lemmy played bass on a 1979 single). The trio was about to disband when they were offered a recording opportunity that led to a record deal and the release of their eponymous debut album. When the follow-up, '79's Overkill, shot up the British album charts to number 24, the band's survival seemed assured. In the ensuing decades, Motƶrhead cut a total of 22 studio albums, and Lemmy juggled a number of side projects and collaborationsāmost notably the rockabilly group the Head Cat, which included Stay Cats drummer Slim Jim Phantom. He is also the subject of the 2010 documentary film Lemmy, a biography that includes many of his famous acolytes and contemporariesāGrohl, Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica, Joan Jett, and Anthrax's Scott Ian among them. Lemmy was also a gamer. āAce of Spades" appears on three installments of the Guitar Hero series, and Lemmy himself is a character in Guitar Hero: Metallica.
After Lemmy's death, Motƶrhead's most recent drummer, Mikkey Dee, was quoted by the Swedish newspaper Expressen, saying, āMotƶrhead is over, of course. Lemmy was Motƶrhead, but the band will live on in the memories of many."
YouTube It
Lemmy Kilmister demonstrates his guitar-like approach to bass playing and the secret of his distorted toneāturn it up!āwith his ornate, three-humbucker Rickenbacker signature bass.
The pickups are available in individual neck, middle, or bridge models, or as a complete set.
Santa Barbara, CA (December 26, 2014) -- The sound of Motƶrhead is defined by the high-output fat tone and midrange grind that Lemmy Kilmister has delivered for decades with songs like "Ace of Spadesā and "Iron Fist,ā combined with a fast pick attack on his Rickenbacker bass. We started with carefully analyzing the pickups in his bass and then made them even ruder - that's right, even more attack and punch - while also making sure they had plenty of clarity under heavy distortion. The results are three unique pickups, each hand-built in the Seymour Duncan Custom Shop and available in individual neck, middle or bridge models, or as a complete set. The pickups are available in either a direct mount for Lemmy Signature Basses or pickguard mount for traditional Rickenbacker basses. You can also get your choice of nickel or gold.
For more information:
Seymour Duncan