1. Named the group Bastard (Bastard)

After Lem­my was kicked out of the band Hawk­wind in 1975 when he was caught with drugs on the Cana­da-US bor­der, Kilmis­ter found­ed the band under the sim­ple and, in gen­er­al, real­i­ty-reflect­ing name Bas­tard. The man­ag­er of the new­ly formed group was hor­ri­fied: in his opin­ion, with such a name, the musi­cians would not see the charts like their ears. Then Lem­my heed­ed the pleas and renamed the trio Motor­head — that was the name of the last song he wrote for Hawk­wind. How­ev­er, he did not miss the oppor­tu­ni­ty to laugh at the man­ag­er in 1993, releas­ing the album “Bas­tards”.

2. Called all of my amps by name.

Most pro­fes­sion­al musi­cians spend far more time with their instru­ments and ampli­fiers than with their fam­i­lies, so it’s not sur­pris­ing that Lem­my felt a kin­dred spir­it towards his favorite gear: his friends Mur­der One, No Remorse and Killer were all tube-based. Mar­shall bass ampli­fiers (for those espe­cial­ly inter­est­ed: Kilmis­ter used exclu­sive­ly Mar­shall Super Bass and MF 350, on the basis of which the Mar­shall 1992 Lem­my Kilmis­ter Sig­na­ture ampli­fi­er was sub­se­quent­ly cre­at­ed).

Car­ing for and car­ing for his equip­ment, the musi­cian demand­ed the same rev­er­ent atti­tude from him, and when “Killer” burned down dur­ing one of his per­for­mances, Lem­my gave him the con­temp­tu­ous female nick­name “Mar­sha,” explain­ing that “This bas­tard turned out to be not at all as tough as he tried to make him­self out to be.”

3. Developed and released his own line of sex toys

In ear­ly 2015, Motor­head joined forces with sex prod­ucts man­u­fac­tur­er Love­Honey and released a series of tor­pe­do-shaped vibra­tors with the band’s logo. True, Lem­my was indig­nant that he was not shown the final design, and he was going to sell com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent dil­dos to fans, but in the end he calmed down, demand­ing inti­mate feed­back from cus­tomers about his prod­uct.

4. Brought a patient out of a coma using his own music

Boast­ing in an inter­view that Motör­head­’s music can cure seri­ous ill­ness­es, Lem­my was not exag­ger­at­ing: in the late 70s and ear­ly 80s, the field of med­i­cine saw a flour­ish­ing of research into var­i­ous alter­na­tive meth­ods of treat­ment, one of which was music ther­a­py.

“We found out that Motör­head is the favorite band of one guy who has been in a coma for a year, Lem­my recalled. — Well, we quick­ly wrote down a few things along with a mes­sage along the lines of “Hey man, it’s Motör­head! It’s time to wake up!”, and sent it to him at the clin­ic. And this guy actu­al­ly woke up! Damn, this was worth study­ing music for so many years. True, this is an iso­lat­ed case — five more of our records could not help any­one.”

5. Fired the producer because of the percussion

One day dur­ing the record­ing of the 1916 album, Lem­my came into the stu­dio to lis­ten to the new­ly record­ed track “Going To Brasil,” which was mixed by pro­duc­er Ed Sta­si­um. After play­ing the song sev­er­al times, Kilmis­ter dis­cov­ered some strange nois­es in the back­ground. To his rage, it turned out to be a tam­bourine and clave, which Sta­si­um added with­out per­mis­sion to, in his words, give the com­po­si­tion a Brazil­ian fla­vor. Lem­my furi­ous­ly threw the hap­less pro­duc­er out of the stu­dio and erased the sounds of per­cus­sion, which he hat­ed with all his soul, believ­ing that “all those bells have no place in rock and roll.” As a result, work on the album was com­plet­ed by Peter Sol­ly, not least thanks to whom “1916” was nom­i­nat­ed for a Gram­my Award.

6. Lost consciousness after oral sex

It is not known for cer­tain how true this sto­ry is, but this is how Motör­head biog­ra­ph­er Oscar Palmer tells it: “It was one of the con­certs in sup­port of the Bomber album. After the per­for­mance, back­stage, Lem­my sud­den­ly lost con­scious­ness, and every­one else had to work hard to revive him for the encore. And when the jour­nal­ist asked what hap­pened, Kilmis­ter said: “Dude, before the con­cert they gave me three blowjobs in a row, sucked all my strength, for­give the pun — how do you think I should feel?”

7. Started to lead a healthy lifestyle: switched from Bourbon-Cola to Screwdriver

A few months before his death, Lem­my decid­ed to change his leg­endary dai­ly diet — 1 liter of Jack Daniel’s with cola — to, in his opin­ion, a more gen­tle mix­ture: vod­ka with orange juice. Accord­ing to Kilmis­ter, this cock­tail, if it did not help him in the fight against dia­betes, then cer­tain­ly would not harm him.

8. Came on stage until the last minute

Despite seri­ous health prob­lems, Lem­my found the strength to take part in the Motor­boat met­al cruise in Sep­tem­ber-Octo­ber 2015, sail from Mia­mi to the Bahamas and play sev­er­al con­certs, which became the last for the Motor­head leader. As a true musi­cian and rock ’n’ roller, Lem­my was obsessed with the stage, repeat­ed­ly stat­ing: “I will per­form as long as I can walk a few meters to the micro­phone with­out crutch­es. And with crutch­es, damn it, I’ll go on stage and kick all your ass­es.”