The curious connection between Lemmy Kilmister and WWE
Lemmy Kilmister’s raspy vocals bought heavy metal to the masses with his seminal track ‘Ace Of Spades’. But it was his unlikely friendship with pro-wrestler Triple H (real name Paul Levesque) that introduced Motörhead to a younger generation of WWE fans.
Triple H was a huge fan of their amphetamine-fuelled sound and distorted guitars and tasked Jim Johnston, the in-house music producer at WWE (the man behind The Undertaker’s iconic theme), with producing something similar for his walk-out song. But Johnston missed the mark. “It wasn’t the sound I wanted,” Triple H told MTV News. “I kept saying, ‘I want it more raw, more gritty,’ and I kept saying, ‘Think Motörhead, think Motörhead.’ So finally, Jim was like, ‘Why don’t we just get Motörhead to do it?’ They were into it, and they did the song for me, and they came to one of the shows, and Lem and I just hit it off.”
And so came ‘The Game’, arguably the most iconic theme song to emerge from the pair’s friendship. Lemmy’s lyrics really sealed the deal on Triple H’s character turning nastier, and he’d prowl to ring as Lemmy growled, “Look over your shoulder, ready to run / Like a good little bitch, from a smokin’ gun,” complete with a menacing laugh that no doubt terrified young audience members.
Lemmy then ramped up the threat again for ‘King of Kings’, which he said was his “favourite” to record. Triple H had just started going by ‘The Kings of Kings’ and wanted a new song to hammer the point home, and he said what Lemmy came up with was phenomenal. “The great thing with him,” Triple H explained, “Is you can just kinda give him the feel of what you want. When I went with the ‘King of Kings’ moniker and was doing the Conan stuff with the skulls, we built that song around that image.”
While Triple H is busy revering the rocker’s songwriting skills, Lemmy simply grumbles in his usual dry tone: “I’ve been writing songs around that image my whole life.” He was just as humble after recording ‘Line In The Sand (Evolution)’, the last theme he recorded for Triple H. He has also filmed screaming, “evolution is a mystery,” in his usual low growl, before he then nonchalantly quips, “another day at the office”, as he steps out of the recording studio.
Lemmy always played it characteristically cool, but he spoke emphatically about the effect that working with Triple H had on Motörhead’s career. As a guest on the Metal Injection podcast, Triple H recalled talking to Lemmy backstage before a Motörhead gig, where Lemmy told him: “You’ve gotta look out there tonight”.
He added: “Wait until you see all the kids that are at our event. We didn’t have any of that before we started with you. It used to be an old-timer event at our shows where it was all these old metalheads that had kinda aged out. All of a sudden, we’re like this cool, young band, and we’ve got kids here and teenagers and young adults that are at our shows again. It’s been like a refresh for us.”
Triple H had similarly kind words to say about Lemmy but sadly had to share them at his memorial service in 2016. During the ceremony, which was live-streamed live to more than a million fans on Motörhead’s official YouTube channel, Triple H summed up their friendship by saying: “If you’re in a stadium, with over 80,000 people in it, and you’re coming up on a riser onto a stage, with smoke all around you and the World Title on your waist, and you look to your side as you come up with lasers, pyro and Motörhead playing, and Lemmy is standing next to you, singing about you – it is the most kick-ass thing of all time.”
“Lem, Mickey and Phil gave me the greatest gift of all time, which was their sound,” he said, adding: “More importantly than that, Lemmy gave me the gift of his friendship. We connected.”
Listen to the most popular collaboration between the pair below.
