Lemmy Kilmister

Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead, photographed in Chalk Farm, London 9.5.1982

In September of 1982 I was dispatched to Chalk Farm by Sounds to meet with Motörhead’s bad boy bassist and singer Lemmy Kilmister in his manager’s office. I was ushered in, and there was Lemmy, lounging back in the big wooden chair, the three inch heels of his white cowboy boots resting on the massive desk. Lemmy was cowboy casual in a National Square Dance Convention 1979 t-shirt and blue jeans held up by an intimidatingly massive bullet belt, while he inhaled smoke from the Marlboro in his ring-bejeweled left hand. Although the many cans of Carlsberg on the desk were untouched, the Smirnoff bottle on the desk was more than half empty and in his right hand, with pinky finger extended, he was nursing a large glass of vodka and orange.>

He said hello and we exchanged pleasantries. I looked away for a moment, maybe to change lenses, and when I looked back, Lemmy was holding in his right hand what we in England call a fuck-off knife. The kind of knife that, if Crocodile Dundee saw it, he would say “Yeah. That’s a knife.” From his jeans’ pocket he pulled out a plastic bag, and he calmly opened it. While looking at me, he plunged the menacing-looking blade into the plastic bag, shoveled out a mini mountain of dangerous and probably life-threatening white powder, and generously proffered said contraband in my direction. No thanks, Lemmy, I said, I’m OK. And he grunted, shrugged, and smiled as the Ben Nevis of narcotics disappeared up his nose.

We then climbed up onto the roof of the building, overlooking the Roundhouse, where Lemmy proceeded to provide me with the most glorious session of rocket-fueled photography.

Pinned on his blue Levi jacket was a badge that read, in all-caps, I’M THE PERSON YOUR MOTHER WARNED YOU ABOUT.