Motor Fucking Head.
I used to travel with a single cassette tape (for the tape deck in the van) on one side was Patsy Kline's greatest hits, on the other side was Motorhead.
The first time I saw Motorhead was on June 1, 1982 at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco on the "Iron Fist" tour. Support act was Krohus on their "One Vice at a Time" tour and the opening act was Fist (I assume no pun intended).
Fast Eddie's last show with the band had been on May 14 in NYC, but in those pre-internet days it was only a rumor that he wasn't in the band anymore, until Brian Robertson of Thin Lizzy fame walked out in yellow cover-alls.
I sat in the front row of the balcony which gave me an amazing view of their "Bomber" lighting rig that they had brought (the same as on the cover of the "No Sleep 'til Hammersmith" live album. A little over 23 years later I sat in pretty much the same spot when Green Day first opened for themselves as "The Network", then performed "the opera" (American Idiot in it's entirety), then did an encore of "the hits" and THEN played a 26 song second encore.
Motorhead were SO FUCKIN' LOUD it was amazing. Dust and debris was falling from the ceiling for their whole show. Sadly, it's not an exagaration to say my ears are still ringing (which reminds me of a Lemmy story that we will get to later).
I saw them again in late 1985 (10th Anniversary, I have the sweatshirt sitting on the table in front of me) with Exodus (Paul Baloff singing) in the support slot and Wendy O Williams opening.
Fast forward to 1995 and I toured with a band called "Tiamat" who were the opening act on a bill headlined by a band called "Black Sabbath" that had Cozy Powell playing drums and Tony Martin singing. I'm too lazy to google the bass player's name, but Tony Iommi WAS playing guitar. The support act on that tour was Motorhead. They were amazing every night.
My favorite story about that tour is that when Lemmy died just after he turned 70 (SEVENTY! and we was more metal than ALL of us combined) my little brother and I were talking about him and he said "He was super cool to me" kind of nonchalantly, I said "Huh?! when did you meet Lemmy!?" He proceeded to tell me about the time on the Tiamat tour when he came to a show and ended up sitting in Lemmy's dressing room talking about tanks (my brother drove tanks in the army) and drinking Jack with him. I had no idea. It still amazes me even more than Lemmy Beachwear from the day of the Hampton Beach, NH show.
Then there was the time I was getting custom earplugs molded while laying on a couch at the Roseland Ballroom in Portland, OR and Lemmy was explaining to me why you don't really need ear plugs IF you treat your hearing like a callous and build it up and keep it that way. Old school carpenters didn't need gloves he said. Same thing. An audiologist later said to me "well.... he's not exactly wrong.... he does have a valid point.... buuuutttttt....."
In 1995, while on tour with Ben Folds Five, I finally got to see Fast Eddie when he played "Overkill" with the band at the London Astoria. Yes! Finally!
The last time I saw Lemmy perform was with The Head Cat, his band with Slim Jim Phantom of The Stray Cats, a few weeks after he turned 69 at the Roxy in LA. They were great, too.
I'm listening to "Road Crew" LOUD right now, that song is my life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FtVR7gdp5c
Well, it was my life, until the zombie apocalypse cancelled every tour...
Trivia - what word, that had never in the history of music before or since been used, did Lemmy rhyme in a song that he wrote in his previous band? Hint, the song foreshadowed his future band.
The man was a poet, the interwebs will prove me right, his lyrics are amazing, and he wrote songs you would never have guessed were his.
Sorry for the long winded post,
Doug "get me talking and I'll never shut up" Goodman
PS - because I'm not a teenaged girl I almost killed myself trying to take this backwards selfie, and because I'm kind of a dick I like to put on clothes I bought at shows I went to 35 years ago BECAUSE THEY STILL FIT ME! Ha!