Ronan McGreevy from Irishtimes.com spoke with MOTÖRHEAD mainman Lemmy Kilmister recently about a number of topics. An excerpt from the chat follows:

With the exception of a job putting washers on Hotpoint washing machines when he was 17, Lemmy’s whole life has been in rock’n’roll. He saw THE BEATLES playing the Cavern Club, roadied for JIMI HENDRIX (a gentleman, a stud and the greatest guitar player ever, he says) and got thrown out of prog-rock ensemble HAWKWIND after being busted by the Canadian police. “I was doing the wrong kind of drugs,” he recalls.

Motörhead have been going since 1975, though Lemmy is the only constant. It is difficult to convey how original their aural onslaught was in the days before punk and thrash metal, or how Lemmy reinvented the bass as a rhythm guitar. Nobody showed him how to do it.

He has never stopped since. Motorizer, their newest release, is studio album number 19 and his attitude to touring might best be conveyed in the words from We Are the Road Crew , the song he wrote as a tribute to his travelling entourage: “I just love the life I lead, another beer is what I need, another gig my ears bleed.”

“This is where I live, see, in this dressingroom and on the bus,” he says looking around the rather shabby confines of the dressing room in the Ambassador Theatre before his last concert in Ireland.

“I’ve just been home for a month. It nearly drove me out of my fucking mind because when you get off the tour you say: ‘I need a rest. I’ll put my feet up’. Three days later you’re crawling up the walls.”

Motörhead reached the zenith of their fame in the early 1980s. A trio of great albums, Overkill, Bomber and Ace of Spades , was followed by their live album No Sleep ’til Hammersmith , their only number one to date. That hot streak, though, has been as much a help as a hindrance. Many of the band’s most ardent fans date from that era, but it is surprising how many youngsters turn up to their gigs, unburdened by the received wisdom that Motörhead’s prime was past before they were even born.

“When you’re 16 and it’s your favourite music, you have it forever. There’s nothing in your life that replaces that. You can’t, but we’ve got to keep playing it [the newer music] until they [the older fans] finally listen to it. The new album is going to help.

“The younger generation are different. They think our first album is Sacrifice [1995]. You know, I can see three generations out there any time we play. Where else could a 63-year-old fucked up cunt like me get an audience like that?"

“I thought about settling down for 10 minutes once. What better life could you have going all over the world and making people smile. It’s a fucking good job.”

Read the entire interview here.