HAVING lived life in the fast lane, it is fitting that heavy metal legend Lemmy Kilmister exited it quickly – dying just two days after he was told he had cancer.

After decades of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, even the Motörhead founder was surprised he had managed to keep going for so long, dying four days after turning 70 and after the recording of the band’s 22nd studio album, Bad Magic.

Equally famous for his contempt of convention as for his gravelly voice, deafeningly loud music and hard living, he would have raised an eyebrow – and probably a strong drink – at the outpouring of grief following his death, reserving his approval for fans who marked it by going out and getting high.

“People don’t become better when they’re dead; you just talk about them as if they are,” he wrote in his autobiography, White Line Fever. “But it’s not true! People are still assholes, they’re just dead assholes!”

MIGHTY

HIS death comes just a month after the band’s former drummer Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor died at the age of 61.

It means that “Fast” Eddie Clark is the last surviving member of Motörhead’s most revered, or “classic” line-up.

“I have just been told that Lemmy has passed away in LA,” said Clark yesterday. “Like Phil, he was like a brother to me. I am devastated. We did so much together, the three of us.

“The world seems a really empty place right now. I am having trouble finding the words … He will live on in our hearts. RIP Lemmy!”

Kilmister’s death was announced on the band’s Facebook page.

“There is no easy way to say this … our mighty, noble friend Lemmy passed away today after a short battle with an extremely aggressive cancer. He had learned of the disease on 26 December, and was at home … with his family.

“We cannot begin to express our shock and sadness; there aren’t words. We will say more in the coming days, but for now, please … play Motörhead loud, play Hawkwind loud, play Lemmy’s music LOUD. Have a drink or few.

“Share stories.

“Celebrate the LIFE this lovely, wonderful man celebrated so vibrantly himself.

“He would want exactly that.”


DRUGS

BORN Ian Fraser Kilmister in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, in 1945, Lemmy was brought up by his mother after his father, a former chaplain in the RAF, left the family.

Nicknamed Lemmy at school allegedly for always asking “Lend me a quid” to feed his slot machine habit, he moved to north Wales at the age of 10 when his mother remarried.

After school he worked with horses and in a washing machine factory before heading to London with his guitar.

Working first as a roadie to Jimi Hendrix he joined Hawkwind in 1970 where he created a unique bass sound and sang lead vocals on the band’s biggest hit, Silver Machine.

He was fired in 1975 after being caught with drugs on the Canadian border. He later said the band got rid of him for “doing the wrong drugs” as he was more into amphetamines than hallucinogens.


DEBAUCHERY

Undaunted, Lemmy founded a new band, initially called Bastard until his manager convinced him to change the name. He went instead with Motörhead, a US nickname for someone who takes speed.The band’s fast, loud style was a huge influence on the new wave of heavy metal bands like Metallica but Lemmy, who was inspired by Little Richard and Elvis, maintained it was more about pure rock‘n’roll.

“Basically, I wanted to be the MC5, playing fast, loud rock’n’roll,” he said in 2009. “We were never a metal band. Judas Priest and Black Sabbath were metal, but we were never like them.”

The band’s energy and iconoclasm fitted well with the emerging punk scene and Motörhead even occasionally worked with The Damned.

Many of the group’s songs were dedicated to debauchery or a condemnation of authority but Lemmy also wrote on issues like child abuse (Don’t Let Daddy Kiss Me) and war (Get Back in Line).

He wasn’t optimistic about the way the world was going.

“The world’s going to end up with everybody sitting in their room punching keyboards,” he said.


NAZIS

CONTROVERSIALLY he collected Third Reich memorabilia but said it didn’t make him a skinhead or fascist.

“I just liked the clobber. I’ve always liked a good uniform, and throughout history, it’s always been the bad guys who dressed the best: Napoleon, the Confederates, the Nazis.”

The golden era of the band was between 1979 and 1983, peaking with the No Sleep ’til Hammersmith live album which made UK No1 and their fourth album Ace of Spades, with the title track becoming the band’s anthem.

Managing to keep the band going through different line-ups, Lemmy settled with drummer Mickey

Dee and Phil Campbell in 1995 touring and recording with them ever since.

Lemmy never married but, unusually for a man in the hard rock scene, was critical of the way female rock musicians are treated.

“All of these [female] bands, people treat them like second-class citizens, because they’re chicks,” he said in 2010

“There’s all this ‘show us your tits, and we’ll give you a gig’. And all of that sh*t. It’s really like, poor.”

Awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award this year by the Bass Player Live! Event in the US, the band also picked up a Grammy in 2005 for a cover of Metallica’s Whiplash.

Lemmy’s hard-living did eventually take its toll and in 2013 he gave up his daily bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

Despite health problems over the last couple of years, he kept going with the band playing a storming set at Glastonbury this summer.

Even back in 1988 he was being asked how the band had managed to record and tour for so long.

“We’re still here,” he replied, “because we should have died a long time ago but we didn’t.”