Motörhead’s Lemmy told his bandmates he would fire them if they tried drugs

Posted by on February 16, 2016

mikkeydeeLemmy had a wild life for basically the entirety of his musical career and that life included plenty of sex, drugs and rock & roll. Having said that, Lemmy knew that sort of lifestyle can become the doom of anyone who can get lost in it and he warned his bandmate Mikkey Dee to stay away from it, otherwise he would fire him from the band.

In a recent interview with Sweden Rock Magazine, guitarist Mikkey Dee spoke about the life and death of his longtime friend and what’s coming next, which you can read thanks to the translation from Blabbermouth below:

“Seeing Lemmy’s empty boots up there. In the middle they’d placed some pictures and his hat, but just seeing his boots standing there. Empty. I know how much his boots meant to him. He was wearing them all the time. He didn’t feel comfortable if he wasn’t wearing his boots. And there they were, empty, and then it all hit me… That was really hard to look at. Then, of course, it was hard listening to the speeches. A lot of people broke down crying. Dave Grohl had a hard time [not crying]. It was almost a good thing Phil [Campbell, MOTÖRHEAD guitarist] wasn’t there — he probably wouldn’t have be able to handle it.”

Part of the interview mentions Dee talking to Lemmy regarding the use of drugs :

“I don’t know if I want to sit here and say what he was and wasn’t doing. I can say this: he quit doing everything for quite a long while, because he was actually shocked when he became ill [in 2013]. I just know that he told me: ‘The day you try drugs, you’re fucking fired.’ [Laughs] I’ve never tried drugs. I drink my beer, but he made sure that I would never try drugs. If I’d done that, the whole thing would’ve crashed.”

On arguing with Lemmy:

“Many years ago, I replaced his regular Coke in the dressing room with Cola Zero and Diet Coke. I told the crew not to give him regular Coke. Lemmy thought it was a fucking drag when I interfered like that, but what was I supposed to do? During that period, he was careless with his diabetes in a way that was… I went through the same thing with my father, so I know how important that was. I said: ‘It won’t be long until they cut both your legs off and then you’ll be sitting in a wheelchair.'”

He also spoke about his future, including if there was any possibility to rejoin King Diamond:

 “I don’t know about that. He’s got Matt Thompson, who is great and has played in the band for a really long time, so that’s up to King. I think it would be a lot of fun to play with KING DIAMOND again. It would be great, but I’m not going to talk my way into the band. That’s something they have to decide on. When I played in MOTÖRHEAD, there was a lot of pressure on Lemmy to bring back both Phil Taylor and Fast Eddie again. Lemmy wouldn’t even listen to all that [talk].”

If you understand Swedish and want more information about the issue, you can get more information here.

swedenrockmagazinelemmyissue_638

Tags: , , ,

Categorised in: News, Updates