John Entwistle was Lemmy Kilmister’s favourite bassist: “You never saw him flicker”
Motörhead frontman and bass behemoth Lemmy Kilmister was one of rock music’s most effective four-string players. Fuelling the guitar assault of his band with the heavy clank of his Rickenbacker, even before the trio pioneered their blistering form of speed metal, his bass chops were clear for all to see. Notably, he cut his teeth in other groups such as Hawkwind, giving the space rock outfit a remarkably potent edge for the era on songs such as ‘Silver Machine’.
Lemmy was an unconventional bassist who played more like a guitarist, hence the heaviness of his work. In 1973, Hawkwind drummer Simon King outlined what it was like playing with the Staffordshire native, who would eventually be fired from the band. He said: “A lot of the time I play with Dave (Brock) – he’ll get into a kind of rhythmic thing and I’ll follow him so you get this kind of percussion and rhythmic guitar thing going, so Lemmy can loon forward a bit because he’s very much a frontman and gives off a lot of energy, so he can get out front and play a sort of lead on bass which sometimes is very effective”.
In 1980, Motörhead sticksman Phil Taylor echoed King’s assertion that Lemmy’s bass playing was not traditional. He said: “On stage, he’s difficult to follow cos he’s not really a bass player. There’s no solid bass lines to follow. A lot of the time I play more with Eddie [Clarke] than with Lemmy, but he’s out on his own because he is what he is.”
There’s no real surprise that Lemmy had such an uncompromising approach to the bass, given that he cited one of the instrument’s ultimate iconoclasts as his ultimate hero, The Who’s John Entwistle. Nicknamed ‘Thunderfingers’ and ‘The Ox’, Entwistle’s approach used lead lines and a treble-heavy sound to cut through the mix. Acutely aware of his unique approach, in 1989, Entwistle posited that “the Who haven’t got a proper bass player.”
Effusing about Entwistle, Lemmy told Revolver in 2002: “I love John Entwistle of the Who. Best bass player I ever saw, Entwistle! McCartney’s the second, though. He keeps giving in to the wimp in him, but he’s a great bass player.”
The following year, speaking to Bass Player, it was put to Lemmy that people admire his bass playing, to which he responded: “They’re quite right. I think I’m original, at least. I think I play like nobody else does. I always wanted to be John Entwistle, but since that place was taken, I became a lesser version.”
Further praising Entwistle, he said: “The best bass player on the face of the earth. He was the best for me, no contest. He was so in command of his instrument. You never saw him flicker. Never a bum note that I ever heard. And he was so fast, both hands going like hell. The bass solo in ‘My Generation’, you still tie yourself in knots trying to do it now. You can work it out, but it was another thing thinking it up. And that was back in 1964!”
Lemmy and Entwistle were friends. As Lemmy told Paul Du Noyer in The Word in 2006, the pair first met in 1966 when Lemmy’s band, The Vickers, supported The Who in Blackpool. “He was nice geezer then and until the day he dropped. He went out fairly well, I thought. Five strippers and a quick heart attack. And in the Hard Rock Café in Vegas at that,” the Motörhead leader said.
