There's virtually no heavy rock fan living who has not heard of Motorhead or duly recognize their immense and unprecedented contributions to the genre. With the tireless and ever-youthful Lan "Lemmy" Kilmister at the head, the band have solidly written their name in the sands of time by eclipsing virtually any other rock band in history with their iconic releases over the years.
Made up of a trio of evil spirits, sorry rockers par excellence with more years in the service of rock, it should be obvious that there's bound to be a few interesting facts about them that are unknown to most of the populace.
Here they are in no order.
1.Lemmy Vs Motorhead: Well, it turns out that apart from Lemmy crafting the song Motorhead for this band, he also wrote a song of the same name for his old band.
2.Hard Rock Times: When times were lean, and before Motorhead blew up into the global consciousness, Lemmy had to perform gigs backstage managing a band or two. Who says hard work never pays!
3. Overkill Killed Us All: If you are a real fan of the band, then you most probably have a shrine dedicated to the "Overkill" album that the band released in 1979! Apart from having music fit to wake the dead, it also boasted one of the more brilliant cover designs ever.
4. Dead Men Do Tell Tales: Despite Lemmy being higher than a kite most times, the "Dead Men Tell No Tales" song was written by him in reference to the producer of the "Bomber" album Jimmy Miller.
5. Game on: As most players know, the Motorhead signature song Ace of Spades found its way to the Rock Band 2 video game. There, its lyrics underwent a change at the instigation of Lemmy.
6. Drum It Up: Drummer Philthy 'Animal" Taylor once played with a broken neck, which was sustained after being lifted and dropped on his head!
7. Grave Dancing: The Motorhead song "Dancing on your grave" provided the inspiration needed for a name change by what became the Brazilian Selputra heavy metal band.
8. Killing needed: The Killed by Death music video starring Lemmy used a stunt double during the motorcycle scenes.
9. Scarecrow Man: Michael "Wurzel' Burston was so nicknamed due to his uncanny resemblance to a shambolic cartoon character by the name of Worzel Gummidge.
10. Lend me some, mate: Band member Lemmy got this nickname due to his forever asking his fellow band mates and other people to lend him money.
11. Hail Phil Campbell: Before joining the band, Phil Campbell played the guitars from the moment he was strong enough to hold one and had a solid rep from time spent with the top Welsh bands of the period.
12. Getting demonic: remember the horned, demonic train emblazoned across the "Orgasmatron LP" cover? Well, it is in homage to the title that was first proposed for the album, which was "Riding with the Driver."
13. Motorize the Motorizer: The Motoriser cover art was based on the flags used by the countries of the three bandmates, with a Snaggletooth being used to represent the entire band members.
14.War Pigs: the war pig mascot is present on all but two of Motorhead's studio album sleeves and was designed by Joe Petagno.
15. It's 1916: Ed Stasium was originally picked to produce the 1916 album. Unfortunately, he got the boot after Lemmy caught him adding unauthorised sounds to the band's songs.
16. Spongebob Loves Rock: For an episode of Spongebob Squarepants, the "You Better Run" taken from the "March or Die" LP was re-recorded as "You Better Swim."
17. Skilful Howard: starting from the 1993 "Bastards" album and terminating at the 1998 "Snake Bite Love" album, Motorhead utilized the services of Grammy-nominated producer Howard Benson.
18. Lovely Inferno: In the 2004 Inferno album guitarist Steve Vai makes a cameo appearance and as expected performs well enough to be worshipped as a divine being!
19.Bang the Drums: every rock fan knows of Mikkey Dee. Yes, he's Swedish, but did you also know that he's half Greek and can drum so well that even statuses at Red Spins start dancing!
20. Sorry: Back in 2001, Motorhead put in a cameo appearance on where else but The Drew Carey Show. There, they played "Sorry."
