Lemmy & Phil Taylor

Ace Of Spades peaked at #4 on the UK chart in 1980 and with the release of the title track as a single (giving them a #15 hit), Motorhead were almost brought into the mainstream – appearing on Top Of The Pops (twice) and were guests on the British ITV children’s Saturday morning show Tiswas.

The cover didn’t look much like a British classic, with the Motorhead line-up of Lemmy, Phil Taylor and ‘Fast’ Eddie Clarke standing on top of what appeared to be a Californian mountain ridge, dressed in full Mexican bandit regalia and backed by the kind of blue skies that had little in common with their nocturnal lifestyle.

Then there was the title: Ace Of Spades evoked card games and cowboys, not the dank torpor of rainy Britain at the dawn of the 1980s. In the end, though, Lemmy’s hand on the tiller meant that Ace Of Spades was still shot through with the wry pessimism and sense of absurdity that form the backbone of any British classic.

On closer inspection, this album was English to its rotten core. The sleeve was shot not in LA, but in a sandstone quarry in High Wycombe. And the title wasn’t meant to sound indomitable; it was pure British gallows humour – a nod to the band’s underdog status. “The ace of spades is bad luck,” Lemmy explained. “So we figured, if we use bad luck as our theme, it can’t get any worse.” It’s fitting, then, that Ace Of Spades was a victory snatched from the jaws of defeat.

The album got off to a muted start with a two-week rehearsal session at Rockfield Studios in Wales, with the band struggling to find a producer and Lemmy often failing to show up at all. Frustrated, they threw their hand in with Vic Maile, recording the album in August and September 1980, at Maile’s studio, Jackson’s in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire. This is the first of what would be a series of projects with Maile, whose admonitory presence would help shape Lemmy’s greatest set of songs. “He’d come up with these magnificent mixes,” Clarke recalls. “He was only a little guy, but he didn’t take any shit, so we didn’t give him any in the end. He could get us to do anything.”

In the mid 60s Lemmy joined local bands the Rainmakers and then the Motown Sect who played northern clubs for three years. He later joined The Rockin’ Vickers who signed a deal with CBS, released three singles and toured Europe, reportedly being the first British band to visit the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Leaving the Rockin’ Vickers, Lemmy moved to London in 1967. He shared a flat with Noel Redding, bassist of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and with Neville Chesters, their road manager. He got a job as a roadie for the band. In 1968, he joined the psychedelic rock band Sam Gopal under the name Ian Willis and recorded the album Escalator which was released in 1969.

In August 1971, Lemmy joined the space rock band Hawkwind, who were based in Ladbroke Grove, London, as a bassist and vocalist. After Hawkwind, Lemmy formed a new band called “Bastard” with guitarist Larry Wallis (former member of the Pink Fairies, Steve Peregrin Took’s band Shagrat and UFO) and drummer Lucas Fox. Lemmy and Took were friends, and Took was the stepfather to Lemmy’s son Paul. When his manager informed him that a band by the name of “Bastard” would never get a slot on Top of the Pops, Lemmy changed the band’s name to “Motörhead” – the title of the last song he had written for Hawkwind.

Fast-forwarding to the contemporary world, though, the enduring power of the Ace Of Spades album can be measured by the fact that, in March 2005, Q magazine placed it at No. 27 in its list of the ‘100 Greatest Guitar Tracks’, stating ‘This song has an intro which wouldn’t be out of place ushering in the end of the world’. In 2009, it was named the 10th greatest hard rock song of all time by VH1.

Phil Taylor better known as “Philthy Animal” Taylor and drummer with Motorhead died on 11 Nov 2015, aged 61. He was a member of Motörhead from 1975 to 1984 and 1987 to 1992, recording eleven studio albums and four live albums with the band. The Motörhead line-up consisting of Taylor, Lemmy and “Fast” Eddie Clarke is generally regarded as the ‘classic’ line-up of the band. Shortly after recording the classic Ace of Spades album in 1980, Taylor broke his neck after being lifted above the head of a friend in a test of strength, only to be dropped on his head. Taylor continued to play in Motörhead with the aid of a neck brace.

Lemmy the founding member died on 28 December 2015, at the age of 70 shortly after learning he had been diagnosed with cancer. On the news of his death, the band requested fans to “play Lemmy’s music LOUD. Have a drink or few. Share stories. Celebrate the life this lovely, wonderful man celebrated so vibrantly himself.