MOTÖRHEAD BIOGRAPHY

MOTÖRHEAD
Biography

At a glance

Motörhead were a British rock band formed in London in June 1975. Lemmy Kilmister — Ian Fraser Kilmister — played bass and sang, and was the one member who stayed from the first day to the last; the band ended with his death on 28 December 2015.

Hard rock, heavy metal and punk all claimed them, and the band went on refusing to belong to any of the three. In Britain, Ace of Spades entered the album chart at No. 4 in 1980 and the live record No Sleep 'til Hammersmith reached No. 1 the following year. The band state on their own site that they sold more than twenty-five million albums over their career.

This site carries twenty-eight releases: the twenty-three studio albums from Motörhead in 1977 to Bad Magic in 2015, together with the three recent releases that have a Japanese pressing in circulation and two fortieth-anniversary editions sold as imports, Another Perfect Day (40th Anniversary) from 2023 and Orgasmatron (40th Anniversary Edition) from 2026. The band's official site calls Bad Magic "the 23rd (and final) studio album", and this article follows that count.

Formation, and an album that was shelved — 1975 to 1976

Lemmy Kilmister was arrested at the Canadian border during a Hawkwind tour of America in 1975 and sacked from the band. He named the group he formed next after a song he had written for Hawkwind shortly before the dismissal; Bastard had also been on the list of names and was not chosen.

The band came together in London in June 1975 as Lemmy on bass and vocals, Larry Wallis on guitar and Lucas Fox on drums; Fox was replaced by Phil Taylor that December. That line-up recorded On Parole across 1975 and 1976, and it should have been the first album. United Artists shelved it, and the tapes did not appear until December 1979, by which time the band were established.

Eddie Clarke replaced Larry Wallis in February 1976. In August that year Lemmy, Clarke and Taylor gathered at Emerson, Lake & Palmer's Manticore Studio in Fulham to rehearse and, for the first time, record together. The tape was lost for decades; restored, it was released as The Manticore Tapes on 27 June 2025 to mark the band's fiftieth anniversary.

The three-piece years — 1977 to 1983

The debut album Motörhead appeared in August 1977 on Chiswick as WIK 2. The band signed to Bronze and put out two albums within one year: Overkill in March 1979 and Bomber that October. Lars Ulrich of Metallica has said that Phil Taylor was the first drummer he ever heard play double bass drums, and that hearing Overkill made him want to play that way too.

Bomber peaked at No. 12 in the UK, and in the summer of 1980 a four-track live EP, The Golden Years, took the band into the Top 10 for the first time despite near-zero radio play.

Early in 1980 the band holed up at Rockfield Studios in South Wales to rehearse the follow-up. Eddie Clarke has said that Lemmy was not much interested in rehearsing, so the riffs came out of the hours he and Phil Taylor spent playing on their own — "Ace of Spades" among them, recorded as an instrumental at Rockfield with vocals and overdubs added later in London. Vic Maile, who had worked with Hawkwind, produced it. Clarke has also said that Lemmy's bass had no bottom end, which made it very hard to play along with, and that the band only got the hang of it on Ace of Spades because Maile insisted.

Released as a single in October 1980, again with little or no airplay, "Ace of Spades" entered the UK chart at No. 15, and the album went straight in at No. 4. The gambling language in the lyric is exact: "snake eyes" is double one on dice, and Lemmy explained that the "dead man's hand, aces and eights" was Wild Bill Hickok's hand when he was shot.

In February 1981 Bronze issued a three-track EP pairing Motörhead with Girlschool, the two bands billed as Headgirl: St Valentine's Day Massacre. Its lead track was a cover of Johnny Kidd & The Pirates' "Please Don't Touch", with Motörhead playing Girlschool's "Emergency" and Girlschool playing "Bomber". It reached No. 5 and sold more than 200,000 copies, the band's biggest-selling record. That June the live album No Sleep 'til Hammersmith (Bronze, BRON535) went to No. 1 and stayed on the chart for sixteen weeks, from 27 June to 10 October 1981.

Eddie Clarke left after Iron Fist, released on 17 April 1982, and Brian Robertson of Thin Lizzy took his place. The only album Robertson played on is Another Perfect Day, from 1983; he left that November.

Four players — 1984 to 1991

In February 1984 the band became a four-piece, with Phil Campbell and Würzel on guitars and Pete Gill on drums. Campbell stayed until 2015 — thirty-one years, the longest-serving member other than Lemmy. In his first year the band played "Iron Fist" for ITV's Saturday morning children's show The Saturday Starship in the car park of Central TV's Birmingham studios, which drew noise complaints from the neighbours. Later in 1984, while Würzel was in hospital in Newcastle with a kidney illness, they played as a three-piece of Lemmy, Pete Gill and the newly recruited Campbell.

This line-up made Orgasmatron, released in July 1986, and Rock 'n' Roll, in 1987, both on GWR. Pete Gill left in June 1987 and Phil Taylor returned. The band moved to Epic for 1916 in January 1991, followed by March ör Die in July 1992.

Mikkey Dee, and two decades of one line-up — 1992 to 2004

Phil Taylor left again in April 1992 and Mikkey Dee joined that July; he played drums for the rest of the band's life. Bastards came out on 11 October 1993 on ZYX of Germany, and after Würzel left in February 1995 the band settled into the three-piece of Lemmy, Campbell and Dee, which did not change again until 2015.

Their long association with SPV / Steamhammer of Germany began here, and albums arrived at roughly two-year intervals: Sacrifice on 27 March 1995, Overnight Sensation on 15 October 1996, Snake Bite Love on 10 March 1998, We Are Motörhead on 15 May 2000, Hammered on 9 April 2002 and Inferno on 22 June 2004.

In 2005 the band won the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance with their cover of Metallica's "Whiplash". The category that year honoured recordings released between 1 October 2003 and 30 September 2004.

The last ten years — 2006 to 2015

Kiss of Death followed on 29 August 2006 and Motörizer on 26 August 2008. From The Wörld Is Yours, released on 14 December 2010, the band put their records out on their own UDR / Motörhead Music. Aftershock came on 21 October 2013, and Bad Magic, of 28 August 2015, was the last studio album; Warner Music Japan issued the Japanese pressing the same day as WPCR-16754.

Lemmy Kilmister died in December 2015, four days after his seventieth birthday. The band ended there.

After the band — 2016 to now

Records and reckonings have gone on appearing. Seriously Bad Magic, in 2023, brought out "Greedy Bastards", a previously unreleased track recovered from the Bad Magic session vaults. In October 2024, nine years after the end, "Lawman" gave the band a new UK Top 10 single, and they published their own figures for that year: over 320 million streams worldwide and twenty million listeners on Spotify.

On 19 April 2024 Lemmy's ashes were enshrined at the Rainbow Bar & Grill on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. On 9 May 2025 a statue of him was unveiled in his birthplace, Stoke-on-Trent, with Phil Campbell placing the ashes and leading the celebrations. Campbell himself died on 13 March 2026.

2025 marked fifty years since the band formed and since their first show, and would have been Lemmy's eightieth year; 2026 marks fifty years since their first recording was finished in early 1976. On Parole Sessions, which collects those sessions in full, was released to mark it on 17 April 2026, with a Japanese edition from Warner Music Japan as WPZR-31105/8.

Orgasmatron, from 1986, was rebuilt for its fortieth anniversary as Orgasmatron (40th Anniversary Edition), a two-CD and three-LP set from BMG dated 6 November 2026. Beside a master cut at half speed from the original tapes, it holds a new mix made from the stems by Cameron Webb, the producer of the band's six albums from Inferno on, together with studio rehearsals and outtakes from 1985 and the band's 1986 session for BBC Radio 1's Friday Rock Show.

Box sets include The Löst Tapes - The Collection (Vol. 1-5) (2024), the five volumes of the archive live series on eight CDs.

Members

Name	Role	Years
Lemmy Kilmister	Bass, lead vocals	June 1975 – 28 December 2015 (founder)
Phil Campbell	Guitar	February 1984 – 28 December 2015
Mikkey Dee	Drums	July 1992 – 28 December 2015
Phil "Philthy Animal" Taylor	Drums	December 1975 – February 1984, February 1987 – April 1992
Würzel	Guitar	February 1984 – February 1995
Eddie Clarke	Guitar	February 1976 – 15 May 1982
Pete Gill	Drums	February 1984 – June 1987
Brian Robertson	Guitar	15 May 1982 – 11 November 1983
Larry Wallis	Guitar	June 1975 – February 1976 (founder)
Lucas Fox	Drums	June 1975 – December 1975 (founder)

A note on sources

This article was written against the band's own announcements at imotorhead.com (the notice of Phil Campbell's death, the release of The Manticore Tapes, the fiftieth-anniversary post, and the pieces on Lemmy's ashes and his statue), Warner Music Japan's product page for On Parole Sessions, TOWER RECORDS ONLINE's product pages, the Official Charts Company entry for No Sleep 'til Hammersmith, Grammy.com's page for Best Metal Performance in 2005, two Louder features on Ace of Spades from Classic Rock and Metal Hammer, uDiscover Music Japan, and the membership and release data MusicBrainz holds for artist 57961a97-3796-4bf7-9f02-a985a8979ae9. Release dates, labels and catalogue numbers are taken where the MusicBrainz original-pressing rows and Apple's current catalogue agree. Every video was checked against the channel that uploaded it, and no fan re-upload is included.