Lemmy Kilmister - White line fever: the autobiography

Lemmy Kilmister was born in Stoke-on-Trent. Having been a member of the Rocking Vicars, Opal Butterflies and Hawkwind, Lemmy formed his own band, Motrhead. The band recently celebrated their twenty-fifth anniversary in the business. Lemmy currently lives in Los Angeles, just a short walk away from the Rainbow, the oldest rock n roll bar in Hollywood.

Since 1987, Janiss Garza has been writing about very loud rock and alternative music. From 1989 to1996 she was senior editor at RIP, at the time the Worlds premier hard music magazine. She has also written for Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, and New York Times, Los Angeles.

From heaving burning caravans into lakes at 1970s Finnish festivals to passing out in Stafford after three consecutive blowjobs, the Motrhead man proves a mean raconteur as he gabbles through his addled heavy metal career rsum Guardian

As a rock autobiography, White Line Fever is a keeper Big Issue

White Line Fever really is the ultimate rock & roll autobiography... Turn it up to 11 and read on! Skin Deep Magazine

First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2002
This edition first published by Pocket, 2003
An imprint of Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
A Viacom Company

Copyright Ian Kilmister and Janiss Garza, 2002

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.

The right of Ian Kilmister to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
Africa House
64-78 Kingsway
London WC2B 6AH

www.simonsays.co.uk

Simon & Schuster Australia
Sydney

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from British Library

Paperback ISBN 0-671-03331-X
eBook ISBN 978-1-47111-271-3

Typeset by M Rules
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berks

PICTURE CREDITS
The publishers have used their best endeavours to contact all copyright holders. They will be glad to hear from anyone who recognises their photographs. Cover photograph of Lemmy by Nicola Rbenberg ; Hawkwind photograph by Michael Odis Archives Referns; Motorcycle Irene, Phil Taylor and Lemmy photograph by Ray Stevenson Retna Pictures Ltd; Motrhead at Bloomsfield Terrace Redferns; Motrhead photograph by Fin Costello Referns; Motrhead photograph Corbis; Motrhead photograph by Paul Slattery Retna Pictures Ltd; Motrhead photograph by Fin Costello Redferns; Bishop Lemmy photograph by Fin Costello Redferns; Macho Lemmy Henri Clausel; Motrhead photograph by Glenn Laferman ; Motrheads 10 year anniversary party photograph by Tony Mottram ; Lemmy photograph by Mick Hutson Redferns; Lemmy photograph by Mitran Kaul Redferns

This book is dedicated to Susan Bennett,
who might have been the one.

I was born Ian Fraser Kilmister on Christmas Eve, 1945, some five weeks premature, with beautiful golden hair which, to the delight of my quirky mother, fell out five days later. No fingernails, no eyebrows, and I was bright red. My earliest memory is shouting: at what and for what reason, I dont know. Probably a tantrum; or I may have been rehearsing. I was always an early starter.

My father was not pleased. I suppose you could say me and my father didnt hit it off he left three months later. Perhaps it was the hair falling out; perhaps he thought I was already taking after him.

My father had been a padre in the RAF during the war, and my mother was a very pretty young librarian with no idea of the duplicity of the clergy I mean, you teach people that the Messiah was the offspring of a vagabonds wife (who is a virgin) and a ghost? And this is a basis for a worldwide religion? Im not so sure. I figured if Joseph believed that one, he deserved to sleep in stables!

So anyway, I didnt really miss my father, cause I didnt even remember him. And on top of that, my mum and my gran spoiled me rotten.

I met him twenty-five years later, in a pizza place on Earls Court Road, since he had apparently worked himself into a frenzy of remorse and wanted to help me. My mum and I figured, Maybe we can get some loot out of the son-of-a-bitch! So I meandered off up there to meet the sorry blighter I thought it was iffy, and I was right.

I recognized him right away he looked smaller, but I was bigger, right? He was a crouched little wretch with glasses and a bald spot all over his head.

I suppose it was awkward for him having walked out on someone for whom you were supposed to be the breadwinner, and then not a word for twenty-five years... awkward, sure. But it had been bloody awkward for my mum, bringing me up on her own and providing for my gran as well!

So he said, Id like to help you in your career, to try and make up for not being a proper father to you. Ha!

I said, Look, Ill make it easy for you. Im in a rock n roll band and I need some equipment amp on the fritz again! so if you can buy me an amplifier and a couple of cabinets well call it quits, okay?

There was a pause. Ah, he said.

I could tell he wasnt a hundred per cent into this scenario.

The music business is awfully precarious, he said. (Hed apparently been an excellent concert pianist in his day. But his day was gone.)

Yeah, I said, I know, but Im earning my living at it. (Lie... at least at the time!)

Well, he said, what I had in mind was paying for some lessons driving lessons, and sales technique. I thought you might become a sales rep or... He trailed off.

It was my turn to be unenthusiastic.

Bugger off, I said, and rose from the table. He was pretty lucky the vast reunion pizza hadnt arrived, or it would have become his new hat. I strode back into the fatherless street. It was clean out there and that was the Earls Court Road!

Talking of two-faced bastards my band, Motrhead, got nominated for a Grammy in 1991. The music industry doing us yet another favour, you know. So I got on the plane in Los Angeles New Yorks a long walk. I had a pint of Jack Daniels in my pocket: I always find it helps with the sobering up. As we taxied elegantly out on to the sun-drenched tarmac, I took a sip and mused pleasantly on this and that.

A voice: Give me that bottle!

I looked up; a stewardess with concrete hair and a mouth like an asshole repeated herself, as history will Give me that bottle!

Well, I dont know what you might have done, honoured reader, but the fucking thing was bought and paid for. No chance. I volunteered this information. The reply: If you dont give me that bottle, I shall put you off the plane!

This was becoming interesting; we were about fifth in the queue for take-off, were already late, and this boneheaded bitch was going to take us out of the line for one pint of Jack Daniels?

Fair enough, I said. Put my ass off this fucking plane right now, or words to that effect. And can you believe it, the stupid cretin did it! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! She made all those people late and miss their connections in New York, all for a pint of the amber pick-me-up... So what? Fuck her! And the horse she rode in on! Come to think of it, perhaps she was the horse she rode in on! I got another flight an hour and a half later.

It was an inauspicious start to the festivities, and it carried on like it began. When we got to the fabled Radio City (Home of the Stars!), everyone was dressed in hired penguin tuxedos, trying to look as much as possible like the motherfuckers who were stealing their money! I dont wear tuxes I dont think its really me, you know? And I dont think the ushers liked the Iron Cross.