Motorhead icon Lemmy died last night, and I’ve never actually seen such an outpouring of grief on Facebook, even down to school friends (of my age) thanking me for introducing them to the man’s work “at a young age”. I’m not sure if that makes them think I’m older than him, or a child prodigy in terms of finding hairy old metal bands.
This was a man who had started his career as, let's face it, a hippy, with Hawkwind. He had a spell playing bass with punk legends The Damned, and lest we forget the Pistols' inspired punk motto was Kill The Hippies (later to be revisited in a frankly much better tune by Primal Scream's Kill All Hippies), and survived the potentially lethal confrontation of hippiedom and punkdom intact to become a bona fide rock legend through his work with Motorhead.
His work with Girlschool was impressive, too, though less so on a musical level, and nothing will ever reach the heights of The Ace of Spades anyway. And, possibly, no one will ever reach his levels of excess.
It's easy, when you're young, to think you're indestructible. Lemmy insisted to the UK's The Guardian just last year that he was still indestructible, despite his many ailments as a 69-year-old.
A couple of years ago, there was great debate about whether Margaret Thatcher should receive a state funeral in the UK following her death. I know which side of that debate I sit on. But if one great British personality ever did deserve a state funeral, it's surely Lemmy. He's done it all. He's been a punk, a hippy, a metal head, and he's appeared on The Young Ones – another of those wonderful 80s moments that will never happen again in an era of Simon Cowell-backed entertainment, sadly.
So, as we get ready for New Year's Eve, let's remember a song that's less predictably festive for once. I wish all of our readers, and Lemmy, a happy 2016, and let's make this our New Year tune for one last time.
cnewbould@thenational.ae
