David Sanborn’s spectral sax, Carlos Alomar’s seductive yet melancholy guitar and the heavenly background harmonies seemed to rise like smoke from a postcoital cigarette. It was late summer, but it felt more like winter in the sense that it was a period of decay. My girlfriend of almost 13 years and I had broken up, and were moving out of the apartment we’d shared for many years.

Neil Sedaka was right, breaking up is hard to do. Especially when it’s the middle of a beautiful, sunny afternoon, and you’re alone, stuck in a grey fog of depression, beginning the dismal process of cleaning out your belongings from a place you thought of as home. A home you had no desire to leave. Young Americans from David Bowie was playing, the title track providing some vigor to counter this moment, and this summer of rigor mortis.

Next up was “Win,” one of his best, and mentioned at the top. It had always come across as alluring. But the context of the present situation gave it a poignant, end of an era vibe, completely stopping me in my tracks. After it ended, I played it again, suddenly dawning on me that the first words are, “Hey, it ain’t over” from Luther Vandross, Robin Clark and the other background singers. Then there was the chorus, with Bowie purring, “All you’ve got to do is win” like if Scott Walker (not the Governor) were a horny soul singer from Mars reciting a speech by football legend Al Davis. Win what? Didn’t matter. It was the positive thought/spirit that counted, providing a boost to someone who sorely needed one, if just for one day.

Starting over isn’t easy. But the concept of change and beginning again is something David Bowie made a career out of, turned into an art form, and was even the basis of one of his biggest hits. The conventional wisdom is Bowie was a chameleon. But the simple fact is he loved music. And when you get down to it, was just another fanatic like us. It was apparent not just in his art, but in how he was an early champion of so many other talented artists. A short list includes Devo, Television, Eurythmics, TV On The Radio, Arcade Fire and Stevie Ray Vaughan, who most people first heard on 1983’s Let’s Dance. Aside from helping launch his career, younger fans like myself got their initial exposure to the blues through SRV because of Bowie.

He caught on to Bruce Springsteen early as well, recording covers of “Growin’ Up” in 1973, when the original came out and “It’s Hard to Be a Saint In the City” two years later. That was just before Born to Run, when Springsteen still had a cult following.

However, most impressive is even when he was a struggling artist himself in ’66, he helped the Velvet Underground, before their enormously influential debut The Velvet Underground & Nico was released. Bowie’s manager at the time, Kenneth Pitt, gave him the acetate of the record, and Bowie soon became spellbound by Lou Reed’s vision of New York City as a grimy, ashen phantasmagoria. Keep in mind, he was only 19 and had never been there before. During the last gig for his band Buzz, at his insistence, they played “I’m Waiting for the Man.” In a 2003 Vanity Fair article, Bowie stated, “Amusingly, not only was I to cover a Velvets’ song before anyone else in the world, I actually did it before the album came out. Now that’s the essence of Mod.” Actually, that’s the essence of Bowie, showing at the very beginning how ahead of the curve he was. Part of what makes his passing so sad is Bowie was rock’n’roll’s foremost forward-thinker, he could always anticipate the future. Now all that’s left of him is the past.

And what a past it is. The sheer amount of accomplishments and highlights are staggering. One of my favorite Bowie moments is in “Stay,” nasty nocturnal funk from the 1976 masterpiece Station to Station. It’s the verse where he intones, “Heart wrecker, heart wrecker, make me delight,” a nod to “Matchmaker, Matchmaker” from Fiddler on the Roof. In the brilliant 2014 book on ‘80s New Wave music Mad World by Lori Majewski and Jonathan Bernstein, Duran Duran bassist John Taylor talks about “Stay.” He points out how he and drummer Roger Taylor were trying to emulate the tightness of the rhythm section, which consisted of bassist George Murray and drummer Dennis Davis.

To review, we have a beloved musical about an early 20^th century Jewish peasant milkman living in a Russian shtetl, somehow connected to a hugely popular and stellar late 20^th century (and beyond) handsome British synth-pop band, known for lavish videos with beautiful women, yachts, and exotic locations. Seems like Bowie was quite the matchmaker himself.

Another one of his talents was that no one made loneliness sound quite so grand, particularly on “Life on Mars?” and “Space Oddity.” It was a sound and vision that was equal parts sorrow and triumph. He was lucky and smart enough to have musicians the caliber of guitarists Mick Ronson, Mick Wayne and future Yes keyboard wiz Rick Wakeman help convey that feeling of victory in isolation.

Bowie also had a knack for the exquisite and odd wordless vocal. In “Under Pressure,” while Freddy Mercury is scatting, in the background Bowie is chanting like a Cantor in a ‘50s Technicolor musical. More recently is “The Stars (Are Out Tonight)” from his 2013 comeback The Next Day. The main vocal hook is Bowie singing, “Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo,” like an owl imitating Buddy Holly.

Even more peculiar was what a friend of mine refers to as, “the David Bowie whispers and mumbles.” Perhaps the most famous example is “Modern Love,” where Bowie proudly mutters, “I know when to go out/And when to stay in/Get things done.” Then there’s “Ashes to Ashes,” where during the bridge he sings, “I’ve never done good things (I’ve never done good things)/I’ve never done bad things (I’ve never done bad things)/I never did anything out of the blue, woh-o-oh (who-o-oh).” He sings the lyrics in a slightly anguished voice, immediately repeating them in a rushed murmur, making it simultaneously unsettling and amusing. Reiterating the wordless vocal “who-o-oh” adds an extra humorously bizarre touch.

“Ashes to Ashes” was how Bowie started the ‘80s, a decade that’s unimaginable without him. The “Berlin Trilogy” of the late ‘70s had a seismic impact on the synth-pop bands that dominated MTV, as well as the post-punk/alternative/goth bands like Magazine, The Chameleons, Bauhaus, etc. And his early ‘70s “Ziggy Stardust” period effected everyone from Echo and the Bunnymen to Mötley Crüe to John Mellencamp back when he went by “Johnny Cougar,” a name given to him by one-time Bowie manager Tony DeFries.

While his influence was/is godlike, conversely, it was also during this time that he was somewhat underrated. 1984’s “Blue Jean” was not only a captivating pop song, but one of the best videos of that era. The extended version of the clip (a mini-movie called Jazzin’ for Blue Jean) showcases Bowie’s killer comedic chops. He portrays a likeable schnook trying to impress a woman by taking her to a club where “Screaming Lord Byron,” the suave singer also played by Bowie, is performing. There’s a Clark Kent/Superman, Nutty Professor/Buddy Love dynamic to his dual performance. Anyone who loves the original, Ricky Gervais version of The Office will recognize David Brent with Bowie’s “Vic” character.

Better still was “Absolute Beginners,” the theme to Julien Temple’s overlooked 1986 musical of the same name, where Bowie was a sleazy advertising executive courting the protagonist, an aspiring young photographer in 1958 London. The song itself is one of Bowie’s all-time greatest, with old cohort Rick Wakeman once again providing beautifully melancholy piano, and Soft Boys bassist Matthew Seligman, who performs the kind of melodic, emotive lead bass Guns ‘N’ Roses’ Duff McKagan would contribute to “Sweet Child o’ Mine” a year later. And the lines, “If our love song/Could fly over mountains/Could laugh at the ocean/Just like the films,” is set to a majestic, operatic melody Pavarotti would have devoured.

How does the man who brought upon the synth-friendly, MTV ‘80s end that decade? By foreseeing the darker, more guitar-heavy ‘90s, of course, with Tin Machine in 1989. They were a band with his Lust for Life colleagues, the incredible rhythm section Hunt and Tony Sales, and Reeves Gabrels, whose guitar could veer from 4am blues to Robert Fripp in a manic mosh pit.

While once again predicting and shaping the future, Tin Machine’s self-titled debut was also Bowie’s heaviest album since 1970’s The Man Who Sold the World. The connection between those records was Jeff Beck’s extraordinary work in the ‘60s with the Jeff Beck Group and The Yardbirds. The song “Tin Machine” has Hunt Sales annihilating the drum kit like Gene Krupa transforming into the Hulk, with brother Tony swinging on bass. Meanwhile, Gabrels executes a middle-eastern melody that could be Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil attempting the Yardbirds “Over Under Sideways Down.” (Most people had no idea who Soundgarden was in ‘89.) Bowie does his best (late Yardbirds singer) “Keith Relf” voice, one that also appeared on “The Jean Genie” and other ‘70s classics.

It’s a reminder of yet another aspect of his genius, which is he managed to combine two completely dissimilar vocal influences. When you merge the insouciance of Relf with the passionate crooning of ‘60s (again, not the Governor) Scott Walker, you’ve got Bowie.

Tin Machine is thought of as some odd footnote in his oeuvre, but Bowie accomplishes his usual trick of connecting through contrasts. Underneath the volume and fury of “Under the God” is the iconic opening riff to “What’d I Say” by Ray Charles. “Prisoner of Love” evokes the vulnerability and authority of Sinatra singing in the darkness, under a street lamp and (Echo and the Bunnymen’s) “The Killing Moon.”

He could achieve this visually as well, like his appearance on Soul Train in 1975 lip-synching “Golden Years.” Amidst a sea of black faces stands this pale, skinny wraith with orange hair, half-zombie, half-carrot, dancers bathed in dark silhouette grooving behind him.

His most unforgettable appearance might be when he opened The Concert for New York City with a cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s “America.” It was just him sitting cross-legged with a small keyboard, playing a creepy/innocent merry-go-round melody. He was paying homage to his adopted country and city, which had just been devastated by the tragic events of 9/11, consoling the city that he loved so much. It’s where he would eventually die, having just released a new album and staged an Off-Broadway musical. Leave it to Bowie to exit within a swirl of life, art and creativity, one final contrast.

He joins Lennon, Hendrix, Jones, Bolan, Lou and all the madmen who preceded him in death. The man is gone, but what he left behind is eternal.

It ain’t over.

Matt Leinwohl

Warren Haynes was once the new guy. Back in the summer of ‘89, the Allman Brothers Band reunited after seven years for their 20^th anniversary. They put out the Dreams box set and went on tour. My father and I went to the show at Jones Beach and couldn’t believe how incredible their new guitarist was. In fact, he seemed to take the entire amphitheatre by surprise.

Back then, you couldn’t preview performances on YouTube. Information was minimal, as social media didn’t exist. Life had more of an air of stealth to it. Plus, the Allmans were not as popular as they are now, so there wasn’t much hype about the tour. Even the Doobie Brothers reunion that year got more press. But by the end of the summer, this guy few had heard of got people excited about the Allman Brothers again.

How excited? In ‘92, my friend and I went to the old Tower Records in Carle Place, Long Island to get some records signed by the band. I brought my parent’s copy of At Fillmore East. Wearing the mushroom t-shirt I got at that Jones Beach show and a goofy grin, I enthused to Haynes, “It’s a true honor to meet the biggest badass on slide guitar!” Gazing up from signing the album, the look on his face was a mixture of appreciation and just the slightest bit of deadpan amusement, like he was thinking to himself, “Is this guy for real?”

Cut to all these years later, I’m at the Beacon Theatre on New Year’s Eve, waiting for the doors to open, standing with a bunch of older, grey-haired men from Upstate with matching white baseball caps. You could immediately tell where they were from by their friendly dispositions and the Inland North accent they share with people from certain parts of the Midwest. After a few minutes, I realized these guys probably weren’t that much older than me, maybe a decade at most. It had been a long time since I was that enthusiastic 19-year-old at Tower. He still exists, albeit somewhat more seasoned.

This last evening of 2015 was a celebration led by Government Mule. They started out as a side project in ’95 by Haynes and late Allmans bassist Allen Woody. Once the ABB called it a night in 2014, the Mule became the main focus. It’s been a tradition for them to play the Beacon on the final few nights of the year.

Of course, the Beacon is probably best known for the annual Allman Brothers residency that occurred each spring for a few decades. Those shows helped attract new fans, cement their legacy, and made them as beloved as the Grateful Dead. So it was appropriate that the Mule would be playing sets devoted to the Dead, The Band and the Allmans with special guests. It was like the July ’73 (the month I was born) Summer Jam at the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Raceway with a Fairway across the street.

A few minutes after 9:00, the Mule came out with bassist Lincoln Schleifer, guitarist Steve Kimock, and back-up singers Machan Taylor and Elaine Caswell. Haynes and Kimock had experience playing in various Dead spin-off bands, so they were familiar with the material. Starting with “Watkins Glen Jam,” it featured glacial Garcia guitar, in particular from Kimock. Haynes contributed watery tones with what sounded like a Rotary speaker pedal, otherwise best known as a “Leslie.” Hendrix, Clapton, Joe Perry and many others have used it over the years. The icy, isolated, atmospheric beauty of the guitars combined with the jazzy rhythm section conjured up astronauts performing floating pirouettes on the moon. The instrumental then went right into “Bird Song.”

“Tennessee Jed” and “Bertha” followed. The latter had Kimock invoking the late Byrds guitarist Clarence White with some bucolic licks that turned the Beacon into one of those stunning ‘70s photographs of the Southwest from Stephen Shore. In the midst of the “Buick riding through Route 66 into the sun” vibe was a 30ish fat guy wearing multi-colored shades, dancing horribly with what resembled a glowing green squid tentacle rotating around his neck. His friend then joined him in the mirth and merriment, with the same slimy, shimmering green item around her collar. They looked like two people rejoicing right after the Swamp Thing had exploded on them.

What made the entire spectacle amusing was the self-satisfied smirk on the guy’s face. He actually thought he looked cool. No human being has ever looked cool doing whatever he was doing, least of all a sweaty, doughy doofus. I felt bad for the people near them, dealing with the potentially seizure-inducing, rapidly flashing lights emanating from the fat man and his friend. There’s a difference between enjoying yourself and being a pain in the ass. Hopefully, they’ll never make an appearance on my lawn.

During “Truckin’,” the crowd predictably and justifiably cheered at the line, “New York’s got the ways and means.” This included an older woman who looked like the late singer Edie Gormé. We’re used to thinking of Deadheads in a certain way, like skinny young women named “Sunshine” with stringy blonde hair and granny classes. But the reality is the Dead have been around in some form or another for five decades. We’re at the point where the audience actually does include grannies.

This portion of the show concluded with “China Cat Sunflower/I Know You Rider.” As he did throughout the set, Haynes (North) Carolinaized the Dead. The tranquil twang in his voice put some Southern hospitality into their lysergic, rural West Coast hymns. That same spirit was evident in the guitar as well, as you could hear his old mentor Dickey Betts C&W-inflected leads.

And that was the end of the Dead set. To quote a song they had performed earlier, there was “nothin’ left to do but smile, smile, smile!!!” That may sound corny, but you’d be happy too witnessing Steve Kimock and Warren Haynes do justice to one of the great American songbooks, inspiring each other to exhilarating heights. The goofy grin from my 19-year-old self was back. It seemed to be asking, “Were these guys for real?”

Matt Leinwohl

Somewhere out there, Mike Damone’s toes are tappin’. You can picture the fictional but all too real Cheap Trick fan and other characters from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Dazed and Confused, Over the Edge and Freaks and Geeks all together raising a triumphant joint and enjoying a cool buzz in honor of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame class of 2016.

With the exception of N.W.A., this particular group (Steve Miller, Cheap Trick, Deep Purple and Chicago) are getting in because of the contributions they made during the post-Woodstock, pre-AIDS/MTV era those beloved films (and TV show) so accurately portrayed. This period, from roughly 1970 to ’81, was an incredibly rich one for music. Unfortunately, this decade is often overlooked possibly because it’s book-ended by the cultural, societal and musical transformations of the ‘60s and the music video phenomenon of the ‘80s. In other words, stuck between revolutions.

 The irony is the 1970’s were perhaps the most revolutionary time of all. It was all about, to paraphrase the Cohen Brothers A Serious Man, taking advantage of the new freedoms. Dylan, The Beatles, Hendrix, Velvet Underground, MC5, The Animals, Rolling Stones, Sly Stone, The Who, Motown, Stax, etc. led the charge and blazed a Technicolor path.

The bar was set as high as the musicians, leading to the ‘70s and the golden age of hard rock/heavy metal, dance music, progressive rock, fusion, introspective singer-songwriters, reggae, punk and the overall endless amount of innovation, variety and excellence. The previous post touched upon this, briefly focusing on 1979. The class of 2016 has a Bicentennial, spirit of ’76 feel to them, especially with Steve Miller’s “Rock’n’Me” taking over the top spot of the Billboard Hot 100 from Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now” from November of that year.

Chicago kicked off their incredible run with one of the greatest debuts of all time, 1969’s Chicago Transit Authority. It was a record as versatile as the decade they would soon dominate. Robert Lamm could play piano like Vince Guaraldi and sing in a gutsy croon. The late Terry Kath was a burly 23-year-old Caucasian who sounded like Ray Charles and played guitar like nobody else.

Kath’s instrumental “Free Form Guitar” will shock anyone who thinks of Chicago as strictly horns and harmonies. In the midst of all the funk, soul, folk and Bacharach level of songcraft, Kath paid homage to Jimi Hendrix. Except by paying tribute to the (then recent) past, he also gave us a glimpse of the future. “Free Form Guitar” was shredding that predated Eddie Van Halen’s 1978 instrumental/introduction “Eruption” by almost ten years. But more than anything, it anticipated Dinosaur Jr. and Sonic Youth’s avant-garde experimentation with feedback and dissonance in the 1980’s. Even with all the mind-blowing guitar heroics of the late ‘60s, this was completely unprecedented. Then there’s Peter Cetera, whose voice is so inimitable it’s easy to forget his bass playing, which combined the melodic jauntiness of Paul McCartney with the funkiness of Larry Graham.

In early ’77, another band from Illinois, Cheap Trick, broke through with their self-titled first record. Like Chicago Transit Authority, it’s not only one of the best opening statements in rock’n’roll, it’s one of the best albums period. “Oh, Candy” is such a vibrant three-minute pop song/pop art it’s easy to forget it deals with the suicide of photographer Marshall Mintz, a close friend of the band. The incredibly catchy, upbeat yet downbeat chorus (“Oh, Candy worked so hard/at doin’ what he thought was right/it really, really doesn’t mean a thing.”), with the Beatles/Big Star harmonies of vocalist Robin Zander, bassist Tom Petersson and guitarist/primary songwriter Rick Nielsen, lights up like fireworks in pitch-black darkness. The song proved quickly that behind the whole cool-looking guy/odd-looking guy image of the band, there was a vast amount of depth.

On the same record, “Mandocello” and “The Ballad of T.V. Violence (I’m Not the Only Boy)” were placed back to back. It’s hard to fathom they were from the same four guys. The former is a ballad with an airy, breathtaking quality, the sonic equivalent of the Manhattan Solstice. The latter is a psychotic, snarling rocker about serial killer Richard Speck with the chilling refrain, “I was a lonely boy/I’m not the only boy.” The other refrain, “gimme your love,” invokes another Illinois icon, Curtis Mayfield and his tune of the same name from Superfly. It’s not surprising that Zander would soon be known as “the man of a thousand voices.”

Not every Cheap Trick album has been nearly as stellar, but their first six, up until 1980’s All Shook Up, is as good a run as any group has ever had. It’s nice to see the Hall of Fame’s website acknowledge that as well. It should also be noted that the first post from this blog took its title from their usual concert opener “Hello There.”

At the same time CT were introducing themselves at full volume, Steve Miller was reacquainting himself in a more mellow manner to everyone with “Fly Like an Eagle,” at that point near the top of the charts. Despite being just 33, he was a veteran coming off a three-year gap between albums, a lifetime back then. The blues guitarist from Texas with the chill West Coast Jazz singer vocals, added synthesizer but still had Joachim Young’s B-3 Organ to add some Booker T earthiness to the otherwise spacey ambience.

Listening to the line, “Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ into the future” actually accomplishes the complete opposite; the swirly synths and Miller’s nasty but smooth riff are now like a portal back to the past. It’s difficult not to think of growing up in Rego Park, Queens and my mother pregnant with my sister. It doesn’t seem that long ago. How did time slip into the future so fast?

Speaking of the future, even Bill Kristol could’ve correctly predicted that N.W.A. were getting in this year. The recent commercial and critical success of Straight Outta Compton essentially locked that down. Some people don’t feel hip-hop should be included, but that’s a shortsighted notion. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is basically the Music Hall of Fame. “Rock and Roll” is simply an umbrella term. Also, there’s more rock in N.W.A. than in most of the current acts categorized as rock. Even compared to modern hip-hop artists, they have more in common with their fellow Reagan/Bush-era L.A. legends Guns N’ Roses than Kanye or Drake.

There’s an “about time!” aspect to this particular class, none more so than Deep Purple. They were first eligible in 1993, so long ago that George Burns and Rose Kennedy were still alive, and Justin Bieber and reigning American League Rookie of the Year Carlos Correa were not. As discussed last year on this blog, Green Day got in before them, a complete embarrassment for the Hall.

Purple are one of the principal architects of hard rock/heavy metal. For the past four decades, “Smoke on the Water” has usually been the first song budding musicians learn when they start playing guitar. Ritchie Blackmore’s riff is so iconic that his soulful, tasteful, almost Mark Knopfleresque (years before the actual Knopfler appeared) solo is overlooked. On this song and a few others, the rhythm section of bassist Roger Glover and drummer Ian Paice pulled off the complex trick of making the groove simultaneously lumber and gracefully swing.

They went through a few configurations, but the “Mark II” lineup mentioned above is the one that helped change the world of music. Ian Gillian was the first rock singer to use the titanic, operatic scream predominant in heavy metal, one that everyone from Rob Halford to Axl Rose is known for. And the late keyboardist Jon Lord was among the elite at his craft, performing Hammond organ like Jimmy Smith in a Gothic cathedral.

When Gillian and Glover left in 1973, future Whitesnake vocalist David Coverdale and bassist/vocalist Glenn Hughes took over. The music still annihilated, but there was more of a soul element, to the extent that Coverdale and Hughes were referred to as “the unrighteous brothers.” It was appropriate, as the two had the same deep voice/high voice dynamic as Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield or even David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks of The Temptations. At times, Coverdale can come across like a hard rock/heavy metal Lou Rawls. The Hall of Fame did right by including them for the induction.

Shaping one genre of music would’ve been enough. But the original Deep Purple with Rod Evans on vocals managed to influence the U.K. bands of the late ‘80s/early ’90s with their 1968 cover of Joe South’s “Hush.” The Stone Roses, Charlatans, and others all made careers off of it. While the organ and rhythm gave it a “Swinging London” feeling, Evans drawled his way through “Hush” like he was from the American South, providing a striking counterpoint.

The Hall performed a mitzvah by not forgetting about Evans. Whether or not he shows up though is anyone’s guess. He completely dropped out of the public in 1980, and amazingly in this day and age, no information can be found about him since then.

Whatever happens, all hail the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame class of 2016 for expanding on “the new freedoms.”

And someone make sure to save Damone a seat at the Cheap Trick table.

Matt Leinwohl

 

 

 

Men like Ian Fraser “Lemmy” Kilmister tend not to live long lives. Yet he managed to just make it to 70. Sad as it is to hear of his passing, there’s something oddly fitting that he died as fast as he lived. Lemmy celebrated his birthday on Thursday, was diagnosed with terminal brain and neck cancer on Saturday, and as sudden and rapid as one of his songs, he’s dead on Monday.

In Donnie Brasco, when Michael Madsen finds out John Wayne passed away he asks, “How can John Wayne die?” Lemmy was such a larger than life figure and rock’n’roll survivor, I suspect people are asking the same question about him. He was a unique character, to the point where his headstone could say, “You can’t make this shit up.” At the impressionable age of 12, Lemmy actually got to see Buddy Holly in concert in 1958. A few years later, he saw the Beatles at one of their legendary gigs at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, back when, if you can imagine it, they were an up-and-coming band. By the end of the decade, he had roadied for Jimi Hendrix.

Then there’s that surname. The most authentic, intimidating, rebellious, anti-establishment figure in rock’n’roll history, and his last name was Kilmister. Perfect.

In the late ‘60s, the man best known for his deafening bass and gravelly gargoyle shout, played guitar and sang for the psychedelic band Sam Gopal. If Motörhead were like a traffic collision, Gopal were more akin to the band Traffic, with Lemmy singing in a (for him) folkish, mellow tone similar to Steve Winwood at that time. But even back in 1969, when some of the most popular songs were “Get Together” and “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In,” Lemmy countered the counterculture with “The Sky is Burning.”

Par for the course for someone usually at the right place at the right time, Lemmy started Motörhead and eventually found a drummer who went by “Philthy Animal.” Together with guitarist “Fast” Eddie Clarke, they gave new meaning to the term “power trio.”

1979 (and the ‘70s in general) featured an incredible mélange of music; the unrelenting ascension of Donna Summer, Blondie, hip-hop, Elvis Costello, The Clash, and Van Halen, the introduction of Joy Division, Killing Joke, Bauhaus, The Comsat Angels, and The Cure’s dusky alternative/goth/post-punk, as well as Led Zeppelin’s bittersweet, inadvertent last call with In Through the Out Door. And that’s a small sampling.

That same year, Motörhead’s “Overkill,” featuring Lemmy’s bark and bass of doom, the breakneck severity of Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor’s pioneering use of double kick drums, and Clarke’s Dick Dale with motion sickness guitar, sounded like nothing that had come before. In a decade full of musical diversity and innovation, they ended the ‘70s by creating thrash metal, sonic evolution that sounded like revolution.

It wasn’t all darkness and decibels. He wrote the lyrics for his old friend Ozzy Osbourne’s 1991 ballad with balls, “Mama, I’m Coming Home.” And yet, he still managed to fit in the line, “I don’t care about the sunshine.” It was symbolic of the uncompromised life he led, like the warts on his face he never had removed. Ultimately, Lemmy was lucky enough to live life on his own terms. Not many people can say that.

Sadly, Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor preceded Lemmy in death by only a month. The earth was a little more scorched by their presence. Now it’s the sky’s turn to burn.

Matt Leinwohl