The bassist Lemmy said was “unlike anyone I’d ever seen”
Most artists strive to get their iconic sound cemented within one second of airtime on the charts. Regardless of how many people tend to look the same or are mining from a similar songwriting playbook, having the ability to pick out any instrument in a lineup in just four notes is the reason why artists want to carve out their golden touch in the first place. While Lemmy was absolutely vicious when performing with Motörhead, he knew that he could never attempt to play like his idol, John Entwistle.
When looking back on Lemmy’s classic material, a lot of it descended from the old school of rock and roll. No matter how many times he has tried to tweak his sound over the years, there’s no doubt that he’s pulling from the same heroes that he loved when he was growing up, whether that was the scream of Little Richard or the reckless abandon he heard listening to the MC5.
It was all about aggression in those days, but when looking at that raw anger in rock and roll, is there anyone who did it better than The Who in the 1960s? Sure, there had been the beginnings of garage rock once in a while, but what Pete Townshend created with ‘My Generation’ was the kind of anthem no one could deny.
But while the lyrics about young people being alienated worked like a charm, no one was focused on anything but that bass groove. It’s almost insane to think of a three-minute pop song to have a bass solo break, but it could be easily mistaken for guitar, given how Entwistle boosted his treble all the way up when he played and approached his instrument like a lead guitar in some respects.
If you listen to tracks like ‘Ace of Spades’, Lemmy practically used the same tactics, just with a gruff voice. Everyone was focused on the fact that the frontman sounded like he had gargled with sandpaper as soon as he started, but given how trebly his bass was, it actually matched the sound of his voice perfectly.
When discussing his influences, Lemmy would later admit that while Entwistle was his primary inspiration, he never wanted to play like him, telling Guitar World, “Entwistle was like a lead guitar player, wasn’t he? He wasn’t like anybody I had ever seen. If you watch both sets of his fingers, it’s nuts. What he did is nuts. I used to sit and watch him. I couldn’t believe it. I never tried to play like him—just the tone more or less.”
Then again, Lemmy talking about not copying Entwistle may have been out of necessity rather than by design. He already had a gruff approach by playing with a pick, but there was no way he was going to throw line massive fills a la ‘The Real Me’ into classics like ‘Overkill’ while still trying to sing.
But that’s the beauty of taking inspiration from every facet of rock and roll. It might not come out the way that you wanted it to, but even if you completely miss trying to sound like your favourite act, it normally ends up sounding more original as a result.
