In 2013, when Motörhead’s album Aftershock was released, the band’s legendary leader Lemmy Kilmister spoke to Classic Rock about some of the great musicians he admired and worked with.
He began by discussing one of the great innovators of rock ’n’ roll, Little Richard.
“He was the greatest rock vocalist ever, there's no doubt,” Lemmy said. “The Beatles are close, and the Everly Brothers, and all kinds of other people are close, but nobody comes within 50 yards of Little Richard.
“He just took a song and ran away with it, and he was so joyful. He was full of good meaning and good intentions.
“He was Little Richard, I guess, because nobody else was!
“I didn't find out he was gay for years. You saw these pictures with the pencil moustache and the pancake make-up, but in those days you didn't think about stuff like that.
“He was just this real exotic creature from America, that land past Mars, where people go when they're really rich and can afford to go on a plane. I never thought I'd go to America.”
He recalled seeing Little Richard perform at a festival which also featured The Head Cat, the rockabilly trio in which Lemmy starred alongside and guitarist Danny B. Harvey and Stray Cats drummer Slim Jim Phantom.
“We played this festival with The Head Cat, this rockabilly festival, and Little Richard was playing.
"I was really excited to see him, but he came on stage, played a verse of Good Golly Miss Molly, then stopped and started handing out Bibles and telling his life story. This is not what I had come to hear, so I had to exit stage left rather smartly!
“It was terrible!
"He was funny in his early interviews though, like, ‘I am the prettiest thing you've ever seen, wherever you're going I've been - and I'm back!’
“He was just fucking great. The king and the queen of rock ’n’ roll!”
Lemmy never met Little Richard, but he did meet Jimi Hendrix a couple of times.
“He was a wildman and chicks would go nuts for him,” Lemmy said. “The aristocracy in England wanted to fuck Jimi Hendrix, and half of them were guys!
“Hendrix was incredibly sexually magnetic on stage. He had a body like a snake, and you knew that he knew what he was doing.
“And it wasn't offensive with him. It was just like, ‘That's what I do.’
“Backstage it was like, take a number and wait! I've seen him take three chicks into a hotel room and they all came out smiling.
He continued: “Some people only have that [charisma] on stage, then when you meet them they're dull as hell. Hendrix was worse off stage!
“He took a guitar everywhere with him. He took it in the toilet, took it everywhere.
“He was a great guy as far as I knew him, and I met him a couple of times. I sold him acid, or went to get acid for him…”
Lemmy spoke of his friendship and long working relationship with Ozzy Osbourne, and described how he wrote lyrics for various Ozzy songs including the hit Mama, I’m Coming Home.
“Ozzy sent me a tape of the song with where he wanted the lyrics, and I think he gave me the title, but that was it. I'm good at that because that's how I write our songs. I come up with a title and then write the song around it.
“We were doing interviews in the same tent at this festival and this guy says, ‘The song Mama I'm Coming Home is the most personal thing you have written. Was it a big wrench?’ And Ozzy just goes, ‘He wrote it!’
“I really had a good time writing songs for Ozzy because when I came to America I was broke," Lemmy admitted. "I had nothing in the bank.
“Sharon Osbourne said, ‘Do you want to write four songs?’ Then they gave me this lump sum that was more money than I'd ever seen in my life! More money than I'd ever earned with Motörhead, even when we were number one.
"I've written a few more since for Ozzy. I wrote Desire and I Don't Wanna Change The World, and on [1995 album] Ozzmosis I wrote My Little Man, which is very personal.
Lemmy revealed that he had written a lyric about the guitarist who starred on Ozzy’s first two solo albums before he was killed in a plane crash in 1982.
“I did write one about Randy Rhoads,” Lemmy said, “but it bothered Ozzy because he got too deep into it. I'm good at putting myself in other people's head, y’know?”
In that same interview, Lemmy spoke about his partners in what turned out to be the final line-up of Motörhead - guitarist Phil Campbell and drummer Mikkey Dee.
“The challenge is for us to all be in the same place at the same time,” he said, “and I'm as much to blame as Phil and Mikkey. We have keepers and minders who whip the herd into line. But half the time we have to fetch them along.”
He said of his leadership style: “You can get away with anything with me as long as it doesn't hurt the band or the performance. I don't care what you do otherwise.
“Your private life is your private life, and if you choose to make it public, then it's your public life.”
He also talked about the band’s road crew - in an echo of one of Motörhead’s greatest songs.
“I never ride on the crew bus,” Lemmy said, “because the crew need to bitch about the band, and I know that because I was in a crew, or several crews.
“You don't want the band with you in the bus because you have to let go about the band, especially if they're all cunts. I flatter myself that I'm not. Because I was in a crew I tend to be more sympathetic to the crew that to the band.”
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