No sleep till Hammersmith --- Motorhead --- 1981 (Bronze)
Ah, Motorhead! The darlings of the club circuit, the people in whose company to be seen,
the ones you want to be seen on the golf course with... er, yeah. Motorhead have always had a certain endearing charm, but they do polarise opinion. To those who don't know their music, they're simply loud and nasty, uncouth and rough. To those who have experienced their output though, they're loud and nasty, uncouth and ... um.
Look, Motorhead are never ever going to be fashionable, nor would they want to be. In many ways, they're the epitome of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, even though they precede it by a few years. They also have pedigree, and impressive pedigree at that. Lemmy was previously with space rockers Hawkwind, and, er, that's it. Well, okay, so they don't have that much pedigree. Still, nobody cares. They do what they do and eff any who tries to stop them, or put them down. I recall a cartoon years and years ago in
Kerrang! when Brian Robertson joined them, briefly replacing “Fast” Eddie Clarke. It showed Brian reeling off a tuneful solo (depicted by a flow of notes from his guitar) with Taylor remarking with a disdainful grin to Lemmy, “'ere, 'e a bit
melodic, inn'e?” Sort of sums up Motorhead really.
No-one would ever use the words restrained, gentle, ballad or my favourite, introspective, in hearing distance of these guys. They play loud and they play fast. When they're not playing loud and fast, they play loud and fast. But to be fair, occasionally they will play loud and fast. They make most metal bands seem tame by comparison. Now I'm no huge fan of them --- I like, as I've mentioned in the episodes of “The Meat Grinder” (TM) that I've run so far, to be able to make out what's being sung and played. In Taylor's words, someone who's a bit melodic --- but I do think they're enormous fun and a real British, and indeed Heavy Metal, institution. And there's no grey areas with them. Let's face it: no-one's going to pretend they're a blues band, or a heavy rock band. Metal is in their blood, and they embrace it, always.
Most people like me, who have heard only the odd Motorhead album, would naturally gravitate towards reviewing their most famous, which yielded the only hit they ever had commercially and which is the only song anyone not familiar with them, or even metal, will know or will at least have heard of. But I personally found “Ace of spades” uninspiring. I didn't really know why until this one came along, and then it clicked: for me, and possibly for a lot of people, Motorhead are not a studio band. Somewhat like someone mentioned about Kiss, you pay to hear them live. It's on stage that they deliver, and listening to their studio albums generally tends to leave me cold.
But out there when Lemmy's treadin' the boards and the Bomber is droning overhead, tens of thousands of metalheads screaming and punching the air and headbanging: that's when Motorhead are a force to be reckoned with, and in many ways they're almost unapproachable when they turn it on. Almost literally. I recall when Ireland has its one and only metal festival, back in the mid-eighties, and Motorhead were on the bill. I had to move away from the stage, up a hill to where the band could barely be seen, and my ears were still bleeding! Not only that, I still couldn't discern anything but noise. But that didn't matter. It was loud, it was dirty and it was fun.
Which is, I think, why their first live album shot to number one when released, and why it's still held in such high regard. Yes, the popularity of “Ace of spades” and the burgeoning NWOBHM helped, but at its heart, this is an album that shows a band who go on stage and give it their all, and to hell with anyone who has a problem with it. You don't so much listen to Motorhead as experience them, and this is one hell of an experience.
It starts, rather predictably, with the big hit, the one everyone knows, and to be fair “Ace of spades” sounds great live, thrashing along as you would expect, Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor bashing away at the drumkit like his muppet alter-ego on speed, Lemmy's voice loud and proud over the crowd (how's that for a triple rhyme?), while Eddie Clarke shows us in no uncertain terms why he appends “Fast” to his name. Next up is “Stay clean”, which has a lot of Steppenwolf's “Born to be wild” about it, with a fine solo from Mister Clarke. It is in fact just a smidge slower than “Ace of spades”, though not too much: Motorhead have never really done slow. It's also short; Motorhead don't do long either. No epics for them!
“Metropolis” has an almost (almost!) progressive guitar intro, then pounds away into another, again somewhat slower cruncher, Motorhead's view of the future facing us and Eddie making that guitar do things it was surely never intended to do! Lemmy announces that “The Hammer” is dedicated to “little Philbert” (!) and we're back rocking at full speed. Lemmy has always managed to straddle that fine line between a gravelly but distinct voice, and death growls, but of what I've heard from him, I've always been able to understand (mostly) what he sings, and would put him in a separate class of his own really. There's menace and yet humour in his voice, almost as if he's just up there to have a ****ing good time, and if youze guys want to come along for the ride that's fine, if not then **** off!
“Iron horse/Born to lose” is then dedicated to “all the angels in here”, presumably the bikers, and is of course a heavy, powerful ode to those who stride the steel stallion, as the boys show the other metal bands how it's done. A bluesy little solo from Clarke just adds the final touch, even if it does get a tiny bit confused and wanders off near the end! A real blues boogie then for “No class” then Phil takes centre stage for the breakneck (snapneck?) “Overkill”, which I've always thought has an awful lot of “Ace of spades” in it, very similar in melody. Yeah, I said melody: what of it? As Lemmy says in the lyric here: shut up! It's pretty long: in fact, it's only one single second short of being the longest track, with a great jam in the middle that takes up pretty much the last minute and a half of the song, and showcases Motorhead at their best.
I'm not sure, but Motorhead may be the only band ever to acknowledge their roadies in song --- I
am wrong, of course: didn't Jackson Browne do that in “The load out”? --- and here their tribute to their hardworking grunts who set them up and make sure everything's working, and then break it all down after the show for it to be moved to the next gig roars out like a prayer and a battlecry: “(We are) The Road Crew” has since become a staple of their show and a favourite with fans the world over. Opening with a Led Zep style riff it quickly takes off on Clarke's frenzied guitar and Taylor's pounding drumming with Lemmy bellowing his throat out.
Let's be perfectly honest here: reviewing the individual songs on “No sleep till Hammersmith” doesn't really work, because Motorhead are not really about diversity or originality, which is not to say their music is poor, but it does suffer from something of a sameness, at least for someone who isn't familiar with much of their recorded output. But that's not really important, as tracks like “Capricorn” --- which Lemmy inexplicably introduces as “a slow one”, when it's nothing of the sort! --- and the crowd-pleaser “Bomber” fly by in a blur of riffs, thuds and feedback accompanied by a gruff growl and roar of approval from the audience. The important thing is the atmosphere created by the band and the fans together, so that a big arena (it's Newcastle, not Hammersmith, despite the title) seems almost like someone's front room, or at least a big back garden, and an unaccountable sense of intimacy pervades the concert.
Although my own only live experience with Motorhead was, as already mentioned, something of an endurance test, I think that can probably be put down mostly to crappy sound equipment onstage, as most of the other bands sounded pretty poor too. From the sounds of what's going on here though, I would have loved to have seen them perform live in a proper venue, because at its heart it sounds fun. The songs are all eaten up by the audience, many of whom probably only knew “Ace of spades”, but again it didn't matter. Everyone was there to have a good time, and by the sounds of it a good time was had by all, band included.
The album closes on Motorhead's title song, and everyone surely goes home happy. There are no pretensions on this album, and none in the band. They know they're loud, dirty, uncouth and completely unfashionable, and hell but they like it that way. Unapologetically heavy metal, unreservedly louder than most wars, and rockers to the core, you'd go a long way to find a band who are more fun live than Motorhead. You should have this album in your collection: it's even listed in the book “1001 albums you must hear before you die.” Now
that's a recommendation!
TRACKLISTING
1. Ace of spades
2. Stay clean
3. Metropolis
4. The Hammer
5. Iron horse/Born to lose
6. No class
7. Overkill
8. (We are) The Road Crew
9. Capricorn
10. Bomber
11. Motorhead