The Motörhead album Lemmy called “torture” to make
Rock and roll isn’t always a stroll in the park. While touring the world and performing for eager crowds might seem like a blast, it’s also an endless rollercoaster ride that many would likely want to disembark from after just a few years. Despite Lemmy’s commitment to the long haul with Motörhead, he recognised that Another Perfect Day fell short of the masterwork he envisioned.
When looking at all of Motörhead’s albums, though, it comes back to the menace behind every one of Lemmy’s songs. For all of the great music that every member of the power trio brought, Lemmy’s spirit is the bedrock of every one of their tracks, whether he was singing about the pleasures of gambling on ‘Ace of Spades’ or his nefarious habits on ‘Whorehouse Blues’.
Although Lemmy was already blending punk with hard rock on his first albums like On Parole, bringing in Phil Taylor and ‘Fast’ Eddie Clarke into the group gave them the musical rocket fuel to become legends. While every member of the trio brought their own spice to the group, Clarke would find himself out of step with the rest of the band.
Since he didn’t want to be at the beck and call of whatever Lemmy wanted, Clarke eventually departed for a solo career, putting together the basics of the outfit Fastway with bassist Pete Way of UFO. Lemmy may have been left without a guitarist, but he found an equally strong legend in the form of Brian Robertson to take his place.
Fresh off of working with Thin Lizzy, Robertson was the kind of maestro that anyone could have asked for, playing leads that were flashy and tasteful whenever the moment called for it. He had the chops, he had the fury, but the fan consensus was terrible when he went out on the road with the group.
Not wanting to be overshadowed by the band’s legacy, Robertson had his own problems gelling with the fanbase… something that Lemmy would continue to pick up on. As the frontman remembers, during one of Robertson’s first gigs, two members of the Hell’s Angels biker gang looked at each other and wondered if they should kill Robertson once the concert was over.
Even though the look may have been different, the fire didn’t stop burning on Another Perfect Day, featuring Lemmy diving deep into the sounds of progressive rock on a handful of occasions. Looking back on the recording, Lemmy thought that it was painful trying to put the final product together.
When talking about his favourite Motörhead tracks, the frontman had bad memories of the sessions, saying in The Guts and The Glory, “Making Another Perfect Day was fucking torture. Brian would take 17 hours doing a guitar track. It fuckin’ took so long compared with the other albums. Then when it was released, everybody fucking hated it.”
For any massive Motörhead fans, Another Perfect Day is still a worthy predecessor to the band’s classic years and a great experiment for a group that’s known for playing strictly rock and roll. If you’re in need of more Motörhead but don’t want to listen to ‘Overkill’ or ‘Ace of Spades’ for the millionth time, this is the kind of record that jumps out at those willing to take the deep dive.
