The frontman Slash called of his hero: “I appreciate everything about him”
Very few things can leave Slash starstruck these days. As one of the most esteemed guitarists in the world, he has effortlessly collaborated with music legends, from sharing the stage with The Rolling Stones and blues icons like BB King to contributing leads on Ray Charles albums. Despite these remarkable experiences, though, Slash admitted that one of the greatest thrills of his career was working with Lemmy.
Because before Slash had existed, Lemmy could have feasibly been the definition of what hard rock was supposed to sound like. He may not have had a guitar slung across his back, but by playing his bass as loud as possible and delivering every song with that raspy voice, he seemed to be the greatest bridge between the old-school rock and roll and the modern sound of hard rock.
I mean, it’s not like Lemmy intended to reinvent the wheel. If anyone were to have asked him what he wanted to do with his life, he would have probably said to either join a rock and roll band or get laid, and as far as music went, he was always gravitating towards songs that left a feeling in your gut when you played them, whether it was Chuck Berry or Little Richard.
Most of Motörhead’s material might seem like a far cry from that early version of rock and roll, but some of their most interesting turns come from going back to the roots of the genre, whether that’s reinventing the wheel on Another Perfect Day or managing to get even bluesier with age on the song ‘Whorehouse Blues’ from the 2000s.
For Slash, his mentality as a working musician was the definition of what a rock and roll figure should be, and when cutting his solo album, the guitarist thought it made too much sense to include him on a track, saying, “Lemmy’s like one of my all-time f—ing heroes, and he’s a mate too. I really appreciate everything about him. I asked him to play on the record because it just seemed like one of the coolest things to do. He came in, and he wrote these great f—ing words – he’s such an awesome lyricist.”
Considering what Lemmy’s song, ‘Doctor Alibi’ is about, though, it may as well have been his life story. Compared to the greatest bad boys of rock and roll, Lemmy could put Keith Richards to shame with how much excess he lived up to, usually having an around-the-clock buzz by keeping to his traditional of Jack Daniel’s and Coke on the road before getting right back into the studio to cut another record. So him reciting lyrics about not listening to what doctors say about his rock and roll habits could have been a very real conversation he had with a specialist at some point.
Even until his final hours, Lemmy was determined to go out on his own terms. While he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer shortly before his passing, he still was playing until he dropped, going through the touring circuit for as long as he could stand upright and tearing through songs like ‘Overkill’.
Then again, maybe Slash saw some kind of kinship with how Lemmy operated. Both of them had their fair share of nasty behaviour in their glory years, but there’s nothing that a kickass riff and some attitude can’t fix once the record button gets pressed.
