I finally got to meet Lemmy, some 21 years after my Motörhead introduction, doing what we now know would be his final Kerrang! feature, in summer 2015. I had spoken to him a couple of times on the phone before, and he was always hilarious, thanks to a dry sense of humour, coupled with a genuinely warm manner and a sharp wit to cut through bullshit.
He actually asked me during one interview what the price of petrol was in the UK, before boasting that he “might have to put a long-sleeved shirt on” in Los Angeles, when informed that we were in the midst of a snowstorm.
The Lemmy I met on that day did look like a man who was on doctor’s orders to take it easy. But his personality was exactly what you wished and hoped it would be. We met in his room at a London hotel on a baking hot day. Being a gentleman, he offered me a drink. And like a twat, I said, “Have you got any water?”
Lemmy fixed me with a weary look that told me I was making an idiot of myself.
“Let’s try that again, shall we?” He got me a beer, and handed it over like a schoolmaster giving back the football of, not a naughty student, but a mildly incompetent one.