Motorhead - Wolverhampton Civic Hall

  by David McNamee

published: 5 / 1 / 2002

Okay so you can sneer that tonight’s audience members not only are clad in faded tour shirts bearing such legends as Saxon and Quiet Riot, their logos are actually tattooed into wrinkly skin. The intro tape may consist solely of Iron Maiden’s ‘Killers’ album and for a moment that acrid stench of mothballed leather and stale sweat may resemble that of the ever-rotting carcass of hoary Heavy Metal dinosaur, but that’s before ‘Overkill’ leaves tire-tracks all over your face and ‘Bomber’ yanks your brain out through your nostrils. “We are Rock n Roll. We are…” Motorhead’s career path lies some light years outside the conventions of linear chronology. For Lemmy Kilminster and his hired guns history is a sort of amorphous succession of events punctuated by the building of Stonehenge, The Third Reich and the death of Buddy Holly. In that order. They are a band that could never possibly be unfashionable because, like all originals, they’ve never been in fashion. For one thing, they look older than time. Lemmy has probably had his blood changed more often than he’s changed his clothes - black canvas jeans, denim biker shirt, Iron Cross medallion and bulletbelt – and even though the set makes provision for Mickey Dee’s ridiculous Cozy Powell drum solo, Motorhead have bravely shunned the zeitgeist that has torn apart so many contemporaries. Even where younger contenders like Megadeth now appear laughable and somewhat tame by todays standards, Motorhead’s rock n roll apocalypse has been ceaseless. They’ve never had to worry about updating their music either, every song goes: DAGADAGADAGA ‘Killed by death! Killed by death!’ DAGADAGADAGA. Even the ones that aren’t called ‘Killed By Death’. Lemmy discovered the perfect song somewhere in 1979, called it ‘Ace Of Spades’ and decided rock n roll’s future was in safe hands. Why screw around with perfection? Only their cover of the Pistols’ ‘God Save The Queen’ is a worrying miscalculation in that it gives the impression of the sleepy Motorhead consciousness raising an eyelid and blearily regarding this new fangled ‘punk’ music, nearly a quarter of a century after the event.

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