{"id":690033,"date":"2026-07-13T22:02:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T22:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/690033\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T22:02:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T22:02:11","slug":"the-1979-song-lemmy-forced-himself-to-write","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/690033\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1979 song Lemmy forced himself to write"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Lemmy<\/p>\n

Credit: Far Out \/ Alejandro P\u00e1ez<\/p>\n

Mon 13 July 2026 19:30, UK <\/p>\n

1979 was the year that the metal world was given a hard slap by Mot\u00f6rhead<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Not that they ever saw themselves in the metal vein. Most live nights, frontman and bassist Ian \u2018Lemmy\u2019 Kilmister would take the stage, tilt his head back and bellow \u201cWe are Mot\u00f6rhead, and we play rock and roll\u201d before kicking off the show. <\/p>\n

As far as Lemmy was concerned, his Mot\u00f6rhead juggernaut simply carried over Little Richard\u2019s original R&B beat, dragged through the rawer turbo rock of the Detroit garage, and spiked with his notorious taste for amphetamine.<\/p>\n

Whether he liked it or not, Mot\u00f6rhead absolutely stood as one of the leading forces of the new wave of British heavy metal, while managing to forge a respectable cowboy boot in the world of punk. Such a marriage of two underground camps would find its essential document on 1979\u2019s immortal LP twofer, Overkill and Bomber, establishing the Mot\u00f6rhead assault and heralding their classic tenure through their defining Ace of Spades top ten.<\/p>\n

Ambitions were expanding for the band. Having cut their debut in a blistering three days, Mot\u00f6rhead holed up in London\u2019s Roundhouse and Sound Development studios across a six-week stint from December 1978 with producer Jimmy Miller<\/a>, interspersed with their heavy touring commitments. Having shaped much of their material on the road, the band were able to enter the studio and blast through their material with the confidence of having nurtured them on stage repeatedly into the final, belligerent forms.<\/p>\n

Save one number. It turned out that a burst of cinematic inspiration would compel Lemmy to pen a number to quickly sketch out a much-loved Overkill cut that never shared its genesis on stage like the rest of the album.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be honest, we were one song short,\u201d Lemmy once stated. \u201cSo I had to come up with something literally overnight. I remember going to a cinema in Portobello Road that night; they were screening the classic Metropolis silent film from the 1920s, which was directed by Fritz Lang. That gave me the creative boost I needed. So, I went home, wrote the song, took it into the studio and we did it on the spot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Further reading: From The Vault<\/p>\n

A penchant for sci-fi was never above Lemmy. As longtime fans will know, the Mot\u00f6rhead frontman first came to real prominence slinging his growling bass for the rag-tag space rock ensemble Hawkwind, adding that hard rock heft to tales of cosmic travel and writer Michael Moorcock\u2019s \u2018The Eternal Champion\u2019<\/a> around their Space Ritual era. He\u2019d lift his own formerly far-out \u2018Mot\u00f6rhead\u2019 and \u2018Lost Johnny\u2019 from Hawkind for his heavy successor, and even appear in 1990\u2019s dystopian thriller Hardware.<\/p>\n

Metropolis\u2019 German expressionist reach towers across cinema, but the silent movie\u2019s immortal tale of class conflict in the futurist cityscape managed to rear its head potently in Lemmy\u2019s terse lyrics, clearly the result of a night\u2019s furious creative writing but still capturing the themes starkly, \u201cMetropolis, the worlds divide \/ Ain\u2019t nobody on the other side.\u201d<\/p>\n

Suddenly, Lemmy was able to pluck a slice of sci-fi and hammer the material into his own image, that of outlaw rebellion against the Man the \u2018Ace of Spades\u2019 bellower was more than an authority on.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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