The Day Lemmy Taught Me About Speed

It was as incongruous a sight as you could hope to see in the mid-afternoon light of the Burbank Hilton lounge—Lemmy Kilmister, the subsonic genius behind Motörhead, standing alone at the bar, hunched over a glass of whiskey like a bronze statue of Atlas sinking beneath the weight of a metal sky. He was dressed in black with two studded belts and a pair of white ankle boots with Cuban heels like Elvis used to wear onstage in Vegas.

The Hilton was hosting a heavy metal music seminar called Foundations Forum, only this was the mid-1990’s, a time when major labels were dropping their metal acts and looking for the next Limp Bizkit. Spandex and Satanism were out, baseball caps and Caucasian rap were in, and Lemmy was drinking by himself in the nutsack of the City of Angels like he couldn’t give a fuck either way. Read More...