So come on, what do you ask Lemmy? Motorhead is twenty-five years old this year, so he's been doing this whole Rock 'n Roll thing for a real long time and he has seen it all. Despite all the interviews with him I've read the only really cool question I'd ever heard put to him was by a mate of mine years ago when Motorhead were toring Japan on the back of "1916". This mate had been busking with his guitar down in Roppongi one night when Lemmy had walked past on the other side of the street. Amazed to see his hero suddenly right there in front of him the quick thinking bastard screamed out, "Hey Lemmy ! How does a parallelogram fly?" Lemmy, babe in arm, stopped dead in his arm through the air, shouted back, "Like this baby ! Like this !" I'd  talked to Shuhei about it and we'd figured we couldn't beat that. Sure, we'd have to have some questions, but we also knew that we were about to meet our heroes. If we worried about it too much we knew we'd fuck it up. So we didn't. We just took in a bottle of Jack Daniels, a few packs of Marlboro reds and a porno flick. The rest we'd leave up to Lucifer.

When we walked into the interview room at the hotel there was already a courtesy table laden with, of couse, a fresh, unopened bottle of Jack Daniels, coke, ice, and about ten bottles of Two Dogs alcoholic lemonade. Great, everything we'd need. And there were even a few scrawny looking sandwiches too. We were led into the room by a rather agaitated looking record label guy who kept nervously looking at his  watch. We were  the first interviewrs in a long line and apparently the schedule was already in tatters. "I'm terribly sorry," he mumbled, "but the band is going to be a bit late".  "Well of couse they are" I replied, but I don't think he got it. In fact he looked so puzzled and upset that I felt obliged to explain. "Of couse they're going to be late. It's Motorhead! we didn't exactly think they'd be going to bed early just to be ready for us." The guy looked relieved, a little. "Don't worry," I added, "I was out drinking all night last night myself !" He started to look nervous again? so I went for a piss.  So yeah, anyway, Phil (Campbell, guitar) was the first to roll in and the first thing he did was order a plate of seafood pasta, a bottle of Two Dogs and strike up a Camel. We had thirty minutes and "Burrn!"magazine's photographer was being a pain in the ass demanding photographs. It was  time to get the ball rolling. Best to jump in at deep end. Ask something heavy and hope the others would get here soon!

Burner: So was that gin and tonic you were drinking on stage last night?

Phil: No actually, it was this stuff, Two dogs. I usually drink English cider, but it's a bit hard to come by over'ere.

By this point I was beginning to get a bit of a morning after thirst on myself.

B: Say, would you mind if I grabbed one of those?

P: No, help yourself!!

Free booze! Right thne, this interview was on!

B: Yep, that's the stuff. When you threw that plastic glass full of it into the crowd last night I managed to catch a mouthful, but I thought it was gin and tonic.

P: Yeah, I didn't mean to do that! I don't know what happened! it just kind of slipped out of my hand!

B: Don't worry, by that point I needed a drink anyway. How go plans for the 25th anniversary gigs in Brixton?

P: People ask us what we're doing for the twenty fifth anniversary and I always tell 'em we're having some pens made. No, but it should be good fun. It's already sold out. We're hoping to get some guests. Ace from Skunk Anansie and Jeff Beck might be playing with us too. I'll be like, 'I'll just leave it to you then Jeff, I'm off to the bar.' Wurzel and Brian Robertson won't attend unless personally called up by Lemmy, so he said sid'em!

B: So it's not going to be an "All Stars" gig then?

P: No, we were hoping for it, that was the plan. But if Phil Taylor leaves America I don't think he's going to get back in without a fight for various reasons. (FAST)Eddie(Clarke,guitar) will probably show p though.

B: Twenty-five years is a long time. There aren't many bands at all that have survived that long.

P: Well, I've been with Lemmy for sixteen and half tears.

B: What keeps you going?

P: Rock 'n roll, alcohol. It’s the music really, it's a good job. I don't want to be sitting in an office. These guys who work in offices can't get away with half the stuff I can. But it's the music really. The day that we didn't think we were writing an dplaying good music we'd pack it in. We're proud of everything we've achieved. We have some bad gigs sure, but there's not a better feeling than when you walk off atage after a really good gig like last night. That's why I ended up getting so fucked up. I was so happy.　

B: What did you guys get up to last night?

P: I didn't do much actually, just didn't get any sleep. The other guys went out. I heard a rumor that Mikkey (Dee, drummer) got fairly hammered, which is possibly correct.

Shuhei: Why don't you play "Motorhead"?

P: 'Cos Lemmy's fed up with it basically. We phase songs in and out. Its difficult to decide the set. We've got so many good songs, so many years. Mikkey hates playing "Going to Brazil", but there's no way we're ever going to drop that.

B: Do you mix in more old songs for Japan, 'cos you're only here like once every four years.

P: We did an extra song last night. We did "Broken", which we didn't do the night before, 'cos we haven't had much chance to rehearse that. We're still trying to build the set up. It's still a bit short for what we like.

B: Do you think you'll ever get fed up with playing the Ace of Spades?

P: No, never. It's suh a good song isn't it? And we love playing it.

B: What are your personal favorites?

P: I like the solo in "Killed by death", but it's hard, I like 'em all.

B: Some of the dates on this tour, well, I bought the T-shirts last night and?

P: The T-shirts! We're sending most of them back. There was only really one good design there. They keep trying to rip us off and rip the fans off. We don't want to sell stuff we don't think is right.

B: fucking A !

P: Yeah, anyway, we're going through a lot of Eastern Europe and Scandinavia this time?

Enter Mikkey

Mikkey: What d'ya say phil !

P: I was just saying where do we end the tour? I don't know.

M: It's England.

P: No, we start there.

M: No, we'll finish there too. We go back there after Italy.

P: I haven't seen that on my schedule.

M: Well, we might go back to England, but as of now it's fucking Italy.

Mikkey, I think, needed a drink. when he rolled in the full extent of the previous night's debauchey began to dawn on us. Mikkey is a prety buff dude by anyone's standards and this afternoon he was looking like a buff dude in a bad mood. He didn't just have bags under his eyes, he had December 24th Santa sacks. After ordering the spaghetti bolognese he went straight over to the courtesy table, ripped open a can of coke and grabbed three of the petite little sandwiches, wedged them together and shoved them into his mouth.

B: Some of the places on the tour are pretty? well, five or six tears ago no-one would have been playing Latvia and Lithuania. How is it?

P: Pretty good actually.

M: We've been there a couple of time now so... The first time we went to Lithuania? well that was years ago.

P: We've been amazed by some of them? places like Estonis. Just people coming from everywhere? er?　

M: We had a rough night last night as you can see.

B: Nice one. Right, forget that tour dates shit then. Tell us about last night.

M: Oohhh I just woke up. You didn't go thn Phil.

P: No. I didn't.

M: Ohhhh my god !

P: All I know about it is Freddie said you were pretty hammered.

M: Pretty hammered?

P: On a scale of one to ten, how do you rate it?

M: It's a good nine and half.

P: Any bail money involved?

M: No, but not far off.

B: Where'd you go?

M: We went to this, what's it? Sports Cafe?

B: In Roppongi?

Warren: Yeah, it shares a toilet with the strip club next door?

M: Yeah,, yeah, that's it, the Sports Cafe. They took good care of us there. It was fun.

M: (Grabbing a copy of C-W) Is this the magazine we're doing? Great, great? So, extremely heavy this year? yeah and, er, we're not finished yet? the, er, album's doing great, you know. And that's it, so piss off now! (Raucous laughter!)

B: Thank god for that! I was starting to think you were in a bad mood ! (Sound of more Two Dogs being cracked open).

 Enter Mr,R&R Lemmy! Lemmy was, of couse, the last to arrive. When he came into the room Shuhei's face was an absolute picture, as, very probably, was my own. The man standing in the doorway was a man we'd both worshipped from afar basically all our fucking lives!  To be fair to phil and Mikkey, we were honestly excited to meet the whole band, but Lemmy is, at the end of the day god ! Lemmy, the man, the legend. He looked like an eighteen yer old who'd just had a good nights sleep-though it was probably more like he'd just had an eighteen year old for a good night. Alert, bright eyed, he immediately cracked open the bottle of Jacj Daniels and loaded up a glass full of whiskey, coke and ice.

"Hey, I know you !" he said pointing at me. "You were in the crowd last night! You were the one going WHAAAAA!" I couldn't speak. My gonads had just dropped off.  Lemmy is well practiced at making himself at home. He settled into the sofa and started flicking through Issue #28 of Chain-Whipped looking for Shuhei's story on their London Astoria gig. The Burn photographer was starting to get a bit edgy. He wanted to get his shots and be on his way. But you don't rush Lemmy. Holding up a hand he continued to flick through the issue. "I've seen this. This is good".

B: We adandoned talking about the tour because we've been hearing stories about last night?

Lemmy: Oh yeah, we went down the Sports Cafe.(Laughing) I had a great time, Mikkey didn't have such a good time!

M: I had a blast!

L: Tim and Alex brought that Australian bird home. What's her name? Evelyn? She's a dumd ass.

B: One question I was asked to ask you by a friend Lemmy was do you remember a girl called Madison? She's a porn star. You posed with her for the cover of his favorite porn magazine.

L: Yeah, I know Madison. We've got a mutual friend tells me how she's doing. She's got a band together. Like her do you? (Obviously my cunning "friend's question" ploy had fallen at the first hurdle!)

B: Ah man, I've only seen pictures, but I mean?

L: She's pretty good in the flesh man, believe me.

By this point Shuhei was almost ready toexplode. If you've read Flailing #28 then you'll know that Shuhei flew to London for the Motorhead gig at the Astoria and although he'd managed to get backstage and meet Phil and Mikkey, he'd just missed meeting Lemmy by secounds. Now was his big chance.

We'd arranged for a translator to be present, because Shuhei's English isn't the best, but he wanted to speak to Lemmy himself and I wasn't about to stop him! The communication was sometimes a little slow and occasionally Shuhei fell back on the translator, but through it all Lemmy was patient and totally fucking cool! You'll get the picuture.

S: What is "Man" and "Hot (cool?) man behaviour? Where is it describes from? Include black.

L: I dunno, I was never figuring out to be 'cool', you know? or 'hot' for that matter. I just wore black originally cos you could wear it for longer cos it doesn't show any dirt. You didn't have to keep washing it. If you wear white you have to wash it all the fucking time. I only had one set of clothes at that time. Now I have five sets of clothes and they're all black.

S: What is your meaning of 'real man'?

L: The meaning of a man is like man, as opposed to girl.(General laughter)

B: I guess it's like what's your definition of a man as opposed to a?

L: ? as opposed to a woman? (More laughter) As opposed to a giraffe?

B: Well, there are some pretty cool giraffes out there.

L: There are indeed some very cool giraffes. They move around with such stately grac (laughing). But I mean man is Homo sapiens. We come from the dust and to the dust we shall return, you know?

M: I can tell what's not a man that's easier.(Deleted name), he's not man.

L: He's shaped like a man.

M: But he's not a man.

P: A man is someone who admits to his mistakes.

M: (Another deleted name), he's not a real man either!

L: Marilyn Monroe, she's not a man.

P: A man usually has very small tits.

L: Yeah, very small tits and a large bump in groinal area.

B: So what is the Motorhead preference in the tit department?

L: We just like tits, we don't really mind, you know we just like tits. If you get a pig you get eight you know. Well with some pigs anyway.

S: Motorhead’s warpig, drawn by Mr.Joe Petagno. Is from your idea, where is it came from? I really love it, because it is very powerful and same image with motorhead tunes, That design won’t lose comparing with another bands. I have same design Japanese style tattoo in my right arm.

L: It was me and Joe thought of it between us. Originally Joe put the horns on the head with the chain between them and that was no fucking good, so I put them in the mouth and that's how we got it.

Shuhei took this opportunity to show them his Motorhead war pig arm tattoo.

L: very good. Look at that, that's great.

The band was suitably impressed and with a little encouragement Shuhei showed them the dragon tat on his back.

B: Show'em the rest Shuhei !

L: Yeah, come on, show us the rest. Ooh, fucking hell. Yakuza ! That's fucking great. Painful that, on the back bone. Very good.

S: Lemmy, what's this tattoo? (On Lemmy's right forearm)

L: It's a red Indian thing, you know, shields, spears, stuff. It's fading, I'll have to get it touched up a bit.

P: I've got the Motorhead's dog (pig?) too, with a great big cigarette burn in the middle of it, self inflicted.

M: You did that yourself?

L: What ws her name?

P: No it was me. Did that years ago.

L: And I've got this one (exposing shoulder). It's only small, but I drew it myself.

P: I think my next one is going to be a pint of strong bow cider!

L: Have skate boards tattooed on the bottom of you feet! (laughter). O.K?

S: There are many bands influenced from Motorhead and they are leading today's music scene. What do you think?  I am one of the man who is influenced from you and plays the guitar in the band called "TYSON". Please choose to be an opening act when you visit to Japan. You are always welcome.

L: Congratulations (hand shake), I7ve heard of you.

P: "Tyson" ! I've heard them as well.

L: That's his band. Yeah, but we don't get support bands in Japan. Thay just put us on. It's weird that. You know, why is that? They just have seven o'clock and we're on!

B: I agree, absolutely. I mean we know a lot of excellent bands who would play for free. They'd just love the opportunity. They'd kill for an opportunity like that.

L: Right, right.

P: Yeah, like all the night life is open until the wee hours in Japan, so to have a gig over by ninemakes no sence?

S: I will play ! (thrusting his demo tape at Lemmy).

L: Thank you.

M: Yeah, it's ridiculous to go on at seven?

L: Cold as well. Cos I likie to go out and watch the support bands, get into the crowd, theevent. And then you have to go on cold at fuckin' six, seven in the evening.

B: We were thingking exactly the same thing. It used to be that way with in more support bands.

L: Yeah, I think it's usually the people from abroad who don't get support bands. If you get local bands you get three of them a night right, at a gig.

M: But in Japan isn't it really morelike, they go to show and they's there let's say, to see Motorhead. They don't really want hang out and see another band.

P: But the gigs aren't exactly cheap. Beseides, it's good to give local bands a chance to get on a decent sized stage.

M: The crowd here is very different though. I think that the music here has grown up differently. It hasn't grown up with festivals like in the U.S. and Europe. Like there you go to a festival and you hang out and get drunk and roll around pretty much listen a little a little bit to all the bands. Or at last you hang out and it's in the background. Here it's more 'a concert'. You go and see the band and then you go home.

L: Yeah, I think the Japanese are very serious minded people. I think they take thir music very seriously, like bingo and that's it.

P: They take it all in though. You can definitely see the musicians in the crowd. Like there was this one guy in Nagoya, right there in front just intently watching me play the whole time.

L: They take that band and they take everything from that band in. They don't want to know about anything else.

B: The people I meet here, if they like a band, they do know everything about them.

L: Yeah, every fucking thing. I've met people here who knew Motorhead releases that I didn't even know about.

M: We got mail, when we played Tokyo three nights, we got mail between the dates?

L: Yeahm right !

M: ?so I read a few of them and it was like, I mean they'd bought tickets to every show we did, and it was like, 'please tomorrow, can you play the ballad with more felling.' And I'd obviously been coughing or something, like a hair in my throat, whatever, and I don't even remenver this, but the letter was like, 'Dear Mikkey Dee, Isaw you coughing. I hope you are not sick and you are feeling better and tomorrow can you play the ballad with more feeling? (Laughter) Right there, it says a lot about how totally into their band, their music they are.

P: Definitely, they're an amazing race of people.

L: I've always really liked coming here.

M: Yeah, it's amazing and it's good because they really do demand a lot, you know?

L: And fair enough. So they should! By this point the record company dude was getting very concerned that we'd overrun our allotted time very badlly and vision. I was beginning to think he was going to have kittens.

B: Er, I think we're getting a bit pressed for time here now, but before we go, there is just one last thing Lemmy and it has to be brought up. In the liner notes of the new album., "We are Motorhead", you said, "as you get older you do slow down." Is it sure?

L: No, that's a joke !

B: That's joke? Thank God for that ! Just wanted to clear that up.

L: We didn't speed up them tracks artificially you know, we played 'em like that.

M: We start the gig with the fastest song we've ever written !

P: But if you ask us any questions after the show tonight we'll probably be answering a bit slowwww.

B: It'd be great to have more of a chat, but I think the organizers are getting a bit upset.

M: Yeah, we are a bit pressed on time. I've got to get back to bed, you know !

B: We bought you a little present, cos after your comments on stage last night about Japanese girls being the best, of course we're not passing any aspersions on your abilities, but we just thought we'd get you this little present. (Handing over the porno. More laughter)

L: The amazing thing about Japanese porno is they all look about twekve years old !

P: Can we play that on European VCR's? We'll take that on tour with us !

B: You can play it in the US and Japan, but not Europe.

P: We'll have to check what system we've got on the bus.

Band's personal assistant: I think it's one of those VCR's that plays everything.

B: And if you guys get a achance to sit down and watch it together, if you could review it for us, like the Motorhead porno review, and e-mail it to us, we'd really appreciate it.

P: Alright, we'll do that for you !

Then Shuhei handed over his presents: handmade paper lanterns for each member of the band with their names and 'Motorhead' written on them in Katakana. Lemmy, you'll be pleased to hear, could read them all and Mikkey knew his name in Japanese too.

In exchange for our Japanese porno Phil promised to send us a copy of "Bitch Battles," which is apparently a pretty nasty cat fight video. As Mikkey put it, "Trailer chicks. White trash. Real Gerry Springer stuff ! "

By this point the record company guy was in the final stage of having a very large litter of kittens. The reporter from "Burn"magazine had been waiting outside for over twenty mnutes and there were others behind him. The record company dude was eager to move us along. So when we asked the band if we could take a photo with them he almost died. "I'm sorry, there's no time for photos," he whined. Then the band stepped in. "So, just enough time for photos with the guys," said Mikkey. "Yeah," said Lemmy, "Lets take that picture !"  Lemmy directed operations like dad at a wedding, making sure we were standing on either side of him and Warren, disappointed the he couldn't be in the pictures because he had to shoot, ran off about five shots. That lad's a trooper.

Courteous to the end, the band shook everyone's hands and hoped to see us later at the how. It had been the best interview, er relaxed chat, of my life. Shuhei and I had met our idols and they had been very, very cool. As we left the Burn reporter shuffled in suspiciously eyeing the savagely molested courtesy table and room table covered with copies of Chain-Whipped and empty Two Dogs bottles. Yes, life is good.  After the interview we went out, ate steak, got pissed and headed down to the secound gig at Liquid Room where Phil blew his Marshall stacks and I blew my head on a monitor speaker crowd surfing, My god I love Motorhead !

Post script: You many br happy yo hear that the record company guy had his kittens and that they were all delivered without complications. He is now the proud father(mother?) of ten. He has since retired from the music business and now lives in a small village on the Sea of Japan coast where he pursues his passion for collecting sea shellsa. We are sorry man, but what else could we do?　

Translator >> MARIKO KAWAHARA
Translastion >> MIKA.M
Photos >> WARREN DAVIS
CHAIN-WHIPPED Magazine #35