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It’s well-known that late Motörhead legend Lemmy Kilmister was fond of an alcoholic tipple, and was a generous host when inviting fans, friends, and peers to join him for a celebratory drink.
But as Ricky Warwick, frontman of The Almighty and Black Star Riders, and a solo artist in his own right, recalls in the new issue of Classic Rock magazine, trying to keep pace with the indomitable rock ‘n’ roll hero could be a challenging, and indeed potentially hazardous, pursuit.
When The Almighty first burst onto the UK music scene at the tail end of the 1980s, Ricky Warwick made no secret of the fact that Motörhead were one of the band’s key influences, and that Lemmy was one of his heroes. As it turned out, Lemmy was a fan of The Almighty too.
“When we started coming to London we’d bump into Lemmy in places where he hung out, like the St. Moritz club [in Soho],” Warwick recalls. “He was brilliant with me straight off the bat, very friendly, very funny, and he always offered loads of advice.”
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In 1991, The Almighty were offered the opportunity to support Motörhead on their 1916 album tour, which Warwick recalls being “huge” for his band. Ahead of that tour, both Motörhead and The Almighty were booked play a music conference in Los Angeles called the Foundations Forum, and Lemmy invited Warwick to hang out whenever he got to LA.
“So we arrived at the hotel,” Warwick tells Classic Rock, “and Lemmy had left a note for me, saying: ‘I’m in room blah blah blah, come up.’ It’s, like, three in the afternoon, and I’m jet-lagged to fuck, but I knock on this door, and there’s a full-on party going on.
“Through the smoke I see Lemmy in his denim cut-off, his tight denim shorts and a cowboy hat. They’d just finished mixing 1916, so he sat me down, racked me out the biggest fucking tramline of whatever the fuck it was, poured me a pint of Jack Daniel’s and Coke, put headphones on me, and goes: ‘Listen to this’.”
“I’m buzzing, I’ve got the new Motörhead blasting, and Lemmy keeps topping up my glass. I’m trying to be cool, but as it’s coming to the end of the album, the room is spinning, and I’m thinking, Fuck, I’m in a bad way here, this isn’t good.”
What happened next makes for painful reading, even if Warwick is laughing as he shares the memory.
“So I get up to tell Lemmy what I think of the album,” he continues, “and my legs just go, I fall flat on my face on the floor, the pint glass shatters and cuts my fucking eyebrow when I land on it, and I throw up at the same time.
“So I’m fucking lying there in a pool of blood, and vomit, and glass, and snot, and then I feel this acrid breath close to my face, and it’s Lemmy going, ‘Warwick, you’re a fucking lightweight, you’ll never make it’.”
Happily, losing face in front of Lemmy didn’t ruin Warwick’s friendship with the great man.
“We did the 1916 tour, and we couldn’t have been treated better,” he recalls. “Lemmy and all the guys in Motörhead were just fantastic, and I miss them a lot.”
You can read the interview in full in the new issue of Classic Rock.
