Listen to Lemmy Kilmister’s isolated bass on Motörhead song ‘Ace of Spades’
Few songs are as endearing to the hard rock/heavy metal canon as Motörhead’s iconic ‘Aceof Spades’ is. Although they never thought of themselves as a metal band, the speed and ferocity with which Motörhead attacked the song proved to be an important building block when it came to thrash metal, speed metal, and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, which Lemmy and the rest of the band purposefully distanced themselves from.
Lemmy wasn’t a metal guy. If anything, the former Hawkwind bassist had more in common with the punk rockers of the later 1970s. After performing space rock with his original outfit, Lemmy embraced the biker image and frantic tempos that came to be associated with punk, specifically the American version that was coming out of New York at the time. Lemmy would have much rather played with the Ramones than Iron Maiden or Metallica.
One element of the band’s music that blurred the lines between rock and metal was Lemmy’s bass playing. Famous for his overdriven Rickenbacker sound, Lemmy was less a traditional bassist and more of a second lead instrument, spewing out chords and melody lines that were often reserved for guitar players. His preferred set-up of “maximum volume, maximum treble” wound up becoming instantly recognisable.
Lemmy himself half-jokingly (and half-not) described his search for bass tone as “haphazard” in the documentary Lemmy. “[It’s] guesswork, on a major scale. I’m a rhythm guitarist. I never trained as a bass player. I play a lot of open strings.” Lemmy also claimed that his signature bass sound wouldn’t work in any band besides Motorhead, given its power and volume.
That intensity can be heard on the very first notes of ‘Ace of Spades’. That opening riff isn’t coming from a guitar: it’s Lemmy’s bass. After pounding out the song’s opening salvo, Lemmy does a quick glissando before launching into the song proper. It’s not a particularly complicated or difficult bass line. Lemmy rarely moves beyond each chord’s root note. The impact comes in his willingness to go as big as humanly possible, pushing the song to its breaking point.
Any other bass player would duck out or lower the overdrive that would engulf the song. But Lemmy just keeps on chugging his way through the track, perfectly fitting in between the spaces that Phil Taylor’s manic attack and “Fast” Eddie Clarke’s more precise guitar lines leave for him. It all adds up to the iconic sound of Motorhead, something that wouldn’t exist without Lemmy’s unique attack on the bass guitar.
Check out Lemmy’s isolated bass from ‘Ace of Spades’ down below.
