(Credits: Rama)
Sun 18 January 2026 20:45, UK
Lemmy wasn’t exactly the kind of vocalist that was going to be nominated for any awards for outstanding performance or anything.
He was the epitome of the growling rock and roll troubadour, and while that did mean having a bit of a gruff bite, he could normally get his point across with only a few words whenever he bellowed through songs like ‘Ace of Spades’ and ‘Overkill’. But the core strength of Lemmy came from the fact that he was never going to reach the kind of singers of yesteryear.
After all, Motorhead were everything that rock and rollers would have loved, and the concerned parents hated them back in the day. Their odes to the rock and roll lifestyle was practically a rulebook for most hard rock bands to live by, and without their thunder, there’s a good chance we wouldn’t have had Metallica or even Guns N’ Roses later down the line. But for all of the lineups, it’s always back to Lemmy’s voice that sealed the deal every single time he made a new record.
For all the times that he sounded like he had a razor blade in his throat, his delivery actually became one of their biggest calling cards. Mikkey Dee was able to play the best drums that anyone had ever heard, and yet when listening to Lemmy’s bass guitar going throughout every single tune, there was no doubt that everyone was zeroed in on him. Then again, Motorhead was never meant to be a one-trick pony by any stretch, and outside of their frontman, they would take more chances on every record.
There were the classics, sure, but there were also conceptual pieces like 1916 that were a lot more adventurous, and when listening to their later stuff, they managed to get even bluesier with age, when on tunes like ‘Whorehouse Blues’, they stripped everything down. Lemmy could still hang with the best of them, even through their years of booze and partying, but there was never any point where someone was asking them for a ballad.
I mean, what would the Lemmy-fronted ballad even sound like? He was influenced by The Beatles, but he wasn’t exactly going to be singing ‘Eleanor Rigby’ or ‘Yesterday’, nor was anyone asking him to. Easy listening wasn’t his forte and when listening to some of the greatest crooners of the pre-rock and roll age, Lemmy took a certain degree of pride knowing that Frank Sinatra was a completely different breed than him.
‘Ol Blue Eyes’ had some of the greatest pop gems to his name, but Lemmy felt that he was so good that he was going to head in the opposite direction, saying, “You can get people who inspire you not to do it their way. I can say Frank Sinatra’s an influence, because I swore to God I’d never sing like that.” But that’s not to say that he didn’t have somewhat of a sensitive soul behind those massive mutton chops.
He was known as the most badass rock star on the planet, but some of that levity came in when writing ‘Mama I’m Coming Home’ for Ozzy Osbourne. Sinatra may have considered the song to be a little too primitive to sing at the time, but as far as ‘The Prince of Darkness’ was concerned, those few chords and lyrics about getting off the road was the kind of tune that every other rock and roll star would have killed to have written.
So while Lemmy didn’t have it in him to put on a suit and sip scotch as he went through the classics, he figured he would build his own standard for rock and roll. And when he came up for air, Sinatra was being treated like a relic and the rest of the metal world was calling him one of the greatest frontmen of all time. Not bad for a guy who only became a musician while trying to impress the ladies.
Related Topics