MOTÖRHEAD

Ian ‘Lemmy’ Kilmister lives pretty modestly for a hard-rock icon. His cloistered bachelor pad is a two-bedroom Hollywood apartment a horse’s cock from the Rainbow Bar ‘n’ Grill, the kind of place L.A. rockers with colour in their chin-scruffs go to grin at one another over their latest redundant record before a black t-shirt hassles them for thumbs-up Facebook happy-snaps. When he’s not parked over there next to the trivia game, he’s at home; no mansion, no butler named Giles, no swimming pool.

"There is a swimming pool in the back of the apartment block," he corrects me gruffly, but gruffly only because he’s 65 and smashes two-thirds of a bottle of Jack every day starting 1pm. Otherwise, Lemmy is an amiable sort of chap. "You know, a communal pool – but I can’t swim."

You’re 65 and you’ve never learnt to swim, I say more to myself than him, aghast. I suppose I’m feeling brave today – it’s a good day for it. Like the miles of broken bitumen recycling itself over and over again in the van’s rearview mirror this guy behind the wheel embodies, we’re on the road. Where? I don’t know, I don’t ask.

"In Britain, you don’t swim. You do a lot of fuckin’. It’s a damn sight better than swimmin’. I mean, swimmin’ is like fuckin’ on your own, innit. You do a lot of the same movements and that."

I think just because it’s called the ‘breaststroke’ doesn’t mean you’d approach a pair of tits that way, I counter, floundering at the air with reverse fish-hooked wrists and staring at him like his sexual technique could use a bit of work. The old boy cracks a grin. He likes this. Not many people take Lemmy to task on anything, precisely because he’s Lemmy – he doesn’t like that.

"You can usually spot the dickheads, you know. It’s fairly easy to spot the nodding donkeys. All you gotta do is say something that you know is wrong and if they agree, and you know that they know it’s wrong too, then you have to pull ’em up a bit, you know. I do it all the time."

Suddenly I’m a bit worried. Are you doing that right now?

"No," he croaks, and relief massages my shoulders. "Not yet," he adds, and the massage stops. "You haven’t given me any reason to yet."

That’s alright, I blurt out, and now that earlier bravado I suspected myself of having curdles into outright gumption when I tell him: I’m not really a Motörhead fan.

We screech to a halt. Lemmy glowers at me from underneath his sepulchre cowboy hat. Oh, fuck. I’m going to die. Just tell him Ace of Spades defined your youth. No, shit, don’t do that; you’ll make him feel old. Just-

"S’alright," he grizzles, starting up the engine again. "I don’t know you either, you know. That’s fair."

Off we go again, and even though we’re going nowhere in particular, Lemmy seems to know the Hollywood Hills like the neck of his Rickenbacker.

"21 years this year, yeah. I’m a jolly old Brit through and through, though. It’s no worse or no better than anywhere else, you know. It’s just that it’s Hollywood and it’s the States and it’s nice and warm, and England isn’t. Because of that, all the chicks wear less clothing which is always a plus, you know. Everything’s half-price, any questions?" His rasp has humour in it; Lemmy loves a good discount. Conversely the same isn’t true for the locals, who are often horrified by the sight of him getting around in his super-short Daisy Duke denim cut-offs when summer comes calling.

"I don’t wear them no more," Lemmy says, sad underneath all that gravel. "Not since I got the diabetes. Fucks the legs up, yeah. It’s a pisser. It’s Type 2, thank God; number 1’s the injection one every day, you know. I just take tablets. The thing is, there’s a lot more money in treating it than there is in curing it. I’m sure there’s a cure for cancer, you know."

He twiddles with the radio dials and something brash and lorded over by the explosive PMS of an intense woman blares out of the speakers. Coincidentally it’s a British band, Skunk Anansie.

"You know Skunk Anansie reformed?" he murmurs, sounding as excited as he’s capable of managing. "With all the original members, and they’re just as good. Yeah, so they got a new album out, actually. What’s it called, mate… fuck it, I forgot. I got it here, it’s really good." He rummages around in the glove-box on my side, and the car starts to swerve off the road. It takes him several worrying seconds to notice this. "You’ll find it, you’re on the internet, right?" He finally gives up and straightens up, as does the car. I’m thankful. "I went to see ’em, actually, before we did the last European tour, and they were fuckin’ excellent. She is so good, man, that chick, she is so fuckin’ good. You just can’t handle how good she is, it’s amazing. She walked out on the crowd’s hands – twice. In case you missed it the first time, she did it twice, you know. I do admire that in a woman, you know."

Stare out the window here and you’ll see lots to admire, although nothing that Lemmy’d shed his infamous bachelorhood for.

"I lived with chicks for long periods of time, but I mean, it wasn’t me, you know. I couldn’t get into it. I couldn’t get into being… faithful, to people. In the end, it always turned out they’d been unfaithful to me anyway, you know. If you’re on the road for three months, you aren’t settled down, are you? It’s a contradiction in terms, isn’t it."

But you’ve got a son, I point out. Two, in fact; maybe more. Paul Inder even gets up onstage with you quite a bit.

"Yeah. His mother was just a really nice chick. She was from Liverpool, you know. She was a real scouser, you know – I don’t know if you know what that means, right, but Liverpool people have a really great sense of humour. They’re fuckin’ funny as shit; comes from being through the wringer a few times, you know."

Earlier I’d stayed up late with Lemmy: The Movie. It has this comically disturbing bit in it where the titular rock-monster starts slapping his creaky knee over how said mother lost her virginity to John Lennon.

Paul didn’t seem to find that as amusing to talk about on camera as you did.

"She just happened to be going out with John at the time, you know – this is a long time ago, before they got famous, you know, before he got married, which is a long time ago, right – but all the same, she called her son Paul!’" Lemmy gasps for air, but he’s actually laughing. "Which is obviously a bit weird, since she was professin’ to be in love with John-like, innit."

So why didn’t you two, you know, tie the knot?

He’s thoughtful for a moment. "I think it’s when you get married that people get fucked up a lot; it slows you down, and the wife makes you get rid of all your mates. If you leave her, you get married again off the rebound or go back to her, you know. It’s fuckin’, all downhill after you get married, I think. Marriage gives you cancer, everybody knows that."

The single life. There’s your cure, I tell him. He nods sagely.

"If it saves one life, it’s worth it."

We’re quiet for the moment. This entire trip, Lemmy’s bad side has been staring me in the face. Out of the corner of his eye, he’s noticed me staring.

"They’re not warts, actually. They’re moles."

No… kidding.

"I ‘ad warts," he continues, matter-of-factly. "I had 19 warts on one hand once. I was in the bathtub one night and they vanished. It was really weird. They’d just gone when I got out. Fuckin’ most incredible thing."

Maybe Ozzy Osbourne’s right, I muse, when he says you’re made of iron. This makes Lemmy cough-cackle uproariously.

"A guy hit me over the head with a pool cue once, and it broke and I didn’t go down. I turned around and I said, ‘What’d you do that for?’ and he went, ‘Ah!’ and ran off up the road."

And your teeth are really, really nice for the amount of cigarettes you charf and the sheer volume of hard liquor you ingest.

"I ate my wisdom teeth," Lemmy affirms, and I look horrified. "I didn’t have ’em out but they’re not there anymore, so I must’ve eaten them."

A reasonable assumption. See, Ozzy’s right: you’re made of iron. With the impending apocalypse, you’ll have outlived the world. How unlikely.

He cracks a grin that fades just as fast. "It does sound pretty good, doesn’t it?"

MOTÖRHEAD’s Australian tour rolls into Melbourne this weekend and lands at Festival Hall on Saturday March 26. Supporting will be Regular John. For more information see imotorhead.com.

"A guy hit me over the head with a pool cue once, and it broke and I didn’t go down. I turned around and I said, ‘What’d you do that for?’ and he went, ‘Ah!’ and ran off up the road."