Born To Lose, Live To Win

When I was growing up, the obituaries section of the news often contained the names of iconic celebrities from their respective fields. I can vividly remember the deaths of the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Gracie Fields, Arthur Askey and numerous Jazz greats such as Duke Ellington or Charles Mingus whose names I was familiar with but whose work I would not appreciate until much later. The common factor amongst them is that they had reached the natural end of their lives. Any deaths amongst the Rock and Roll generation tended to be due to accidents (for example Mark Bolan), substance abuse (Keith Moon and far too many others to contemplate) or other tragedies (John Lennon). Rock and Rollers went out in a blaze of fury; they didn’t, in the words of John Le Mesurier, simply “conk out”.

I think this changed in 2001 when George Harrison succumbed to cancer, probably related to his years of smoking but as one commentator pointed out at the time he had died not of the Rock and Roll lifestyle but of the ravages of life that we all experience. I was actually surprised in 2012 when Deep Purple’s Jon Lord died that he was aged 71 having surpassed the biblical allotment of “three score years and ten”. The Angry Young Men with the long hair and big amplifiers were starting to get old. It eventually comes to us all but I was still saddened this week by the death of Lemmy from Motörhead: known to his friends and fans simply as Lemmy.

In a way he was the most unlikely of heroes. I first came across Motörhead with the album “Bomber” (and later discovered that I also knew him from Hawkwind, particularly Silver Machine). Their fast, loud and often nihilistic music appealed to me as did their somewhat unorthodox appearances on Top Of The Pops. However, Lemmy seems to have an appeal far beyond those that appreciate his amphetamine fuelled interpretation of Rock and Roll: Lemmy seemed to appeal even to those that would regard his music as “just a noise” (and as much as I like Motörhead I don’t think that is an unreasonable position). The fact that he owned his own life is an inspiration to many but looking past his gruff image and no-nonsense language was someone who was well read and had opinions that were both unconventional and of considerable intellectual depth.

I think it had become increasingly obvious over the last year that he was not a well man. The fact that he kept performing to a gruelling schedule is a testament to his never say die attitude. I saw Motorhead back in the 1980s in North Wales. They were a four-piece at the time. The venue was small (capacity was something like 500 or so) and the band appeared to have brought along enough amplification for a football stadium. In spite of this it was not “just a noise” as I was able to hear all the songs and their lyrics quite clearly although this was pretty much the last thing I could hear clearly for several days afterwards. The memory lives on: not so much the music but the adrenalin, the exhilaration, the bruises from the mosh pit.

I’ve been listening to some of Motörhead’s old albums over the last few days. They weren’t always consistent although the most recent, Bad Magic, is surprisingly good. To a point, I think Motörhead albums are a bit like your favourite Doctor Who: your first is always your favourite which for me would be Bomber but if I had to pick a favourite it would be Orgasmatron from 1986. Musically, it is up there with anything they had done previously with the fast catchy riffs but the title track’s lyrics show Lemmy at his venomous best spewing his disgust for the hypocritical worthlessness of religion, politics and war. The papers have printed many of Lemmy’s quotes in recent days but possibly my favourite appeared in Sounds (or possibly Kerrang!) in the 1980s: Do unto others as they would do to you; but do it first!

Receiving much less coverage in the news but actually happening on the same day was the news that former Czech republic goalkeeper Pavel Srníček had died. This was the football player that I used to be mistaken for when I lived in Newcastle (Srníček was the Newcastle goalkeeper at the time and lived not that far away from me.) I suppose it’s one thing when a 70 year old, hard-drinking rocker like Lemmy reaches the end of the road but when it is a 47 year old professional sportsman like Srníček it does make one wonder at the nature of mortality.