Motorhead: 100 things to do before you die

Last weekend I survived another Motörhead concert. I’ve been a fan of the band for more than 30 years, which amounts to a great deal of sonic abuse over the decades.

A Motörhead concert is a unique experience, perhaps worthy of inclusion in those lists of 101 things to do before you die. The volume is pulverising, and the crowd is a seething, heaving sea of people seemingly plugged into another wavelength. It is like no other concert, it is like no other place on earth, it is Motörhead live.

Formed in 1975 just before the birth of the UK punk movement, Motörhead were outsiders from the get-go and, in truth, nothing has changed after all the years. Band founder  Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister has passed during that period, from being a rock and roll joker through to a counter culture icon. Motörhead are called after a song of the same name penned by Lemmy. The song epitomised the band at the time, which epitomised a lifestyle and outlook that seemed almost impossibly excessive and over-the-top in every respect:

 

“Sunrise wrong side of another day
 Sky-high and six thousand miles away
 Don't know how long I've been awake”


Motörhead's music however is much misunderstood; casual observers (if that’s the right word to use when referring to those confronted with the band’s sonic blizzard) experience only a loud, if not shocking aural assault. But Lemmy traces his roots back to the music of the 1950s and 60s and the band’s music is based upon, an admittedly very heavy very fast form of, pure rock ‘n roll, infused with a dose of blues that might even have had Robert Johnson smiling:

 I seen 'em come, & I seen 'em go,
 I seen things & been people, that nobody knows
 I'm talking in pictures and I'm painting them black,
 I seen Satan coming honey in a big black Cadillac

The magic, or perhaps even the genius, of the band is something that is hard to define. The uncompromising, jagged sonic tsunami that is Motörhead combines a surprisingly accomplished range of lyrics that go careering across the exploding landscape of the music. Lemmy writes about those issues which preoccupy him most, from that trio of sacred cows: war, politics (he doesn’t like them) and religion, to his personal demons, and, of course, his memories. He writes as the outsider, as someone who has never been part of the normal world that you and I inhabit and when he rasps out the poetry of his philosophies, it is often a thing of dark tortured beauty, even sadness. It is all this which adds the unique, often hidden dimensions to the band’s music that simply cannot be appreciated by those who only hear a loud noise, from a strange looking man.

Death in the stars, rain on the wind,
 Came to the mission, couldn't get in,
 Came out of nowhere, guess I'll go back,
 All down to bad luck,

Fire in the sky, nowhere to run,
 Came to the desert, burned by the sun,
 Came out of somewhere, I ain't never been back,
 All down to bad luck

With Johnny Cash’s death nearly 10 years ago it is Lemmy who has now ascended to that strangley popular pedestal Cash occupied. Like Cash, it is Lemmy who has now become the iconic rebel, but somehow with an image softened by a public affection that transcends boundaries and generations. Lemmy is 67 (next month), now only four years behind Cash. For all that Lemmy seems near indestructible he seems to recognises the limits of time and age in his profession in his typically uncompromising way:

 

“Stay on the right track, you can't live a lie
Make sure you don't come back, look me in the eye
Know I ain't no angel, broken wings don't fly
I know the law, I know how to die”

 

Yet, towards the end of his career, it is now that he has gained the recognition, whether sought out on not, for what he has done, and not “sold his soul” to become. Motörhead and Lemmy have escaped the cloying gravity of fickle, transient media opinions, chart fashion and record label pressure. He is his own man; there is no need for shallow posturing, no one left to impress, no corporate schmoozing. His music remains brutal, un-tempered and honest, yet it is sometimes strangely fragile, sad and bittersweet, the reminiscing of a hard life on the road, of times, faces and places long gone.

This is music written to rupture the sweet dream we have been sold, where the only reward is obsolescence and a fading promise of an eternal life somewhere else when the shutters come down ….

…I have nothing but the world
 I have nothing to take its place
 I don't believe a word, I don't believe a word...

At nearly 67, Lemmy has joined a small unique group of musicians who have  escaped the straight-jacket categorization of their generation. It’s inevitable now that he looks back, not just on times good, but with the haunted memories of dark times too,

…..Out of the night comes a song that I know
 Twisted and ruined and black….

And the tragedy of the wasted lives of those now long passed on. The dark pain and poignancy uncurls itself in band’s the harsh guttural anthems:

….I can remember the people they were
 Nobody knows if they ever come back
 Lost in the ashes of time they still sing
 Echoes of romance gone bad
 I can remember them better than you
 I shared the darkness they had
 Dead and gone, dead and gone”

But the real thrill is of course seeing Motörhead live. Standing there, the very clothes you wear vibrating against the crushing volume, the giant reverb like a second heart beat beneath your skin, physically feeling that you can lean forward at 45 degrees into the sonic wall coming at you; shouting out the words to songs that vanish wordlessly into the hurricane of sound. And all the while, carried irresistibly along on the giant pulsing, overwhelming surge of the music, the heavy fast moving waves of primordial, crashing musical thunder rolling across the crowds, washed in strobe and blinding neon, and for a few precious moments, nothing matters any more.....

INNOCENT UNTIL FOUND GUILTY BY JOURNALISM

The current fits of guilt, fury and outrages swirling around the BBC are the latest symptom of the dilemma posed by and for traditional media in the early 21 century. There is an increasingly sinister confluence where objective news reporting seems to have been overwhelmed by the subjective, dark art of “news analysis” and the commercial imperative to “break the story first”. To this add the frenzy around the hunt for ratings and audience reach and the media’s seeming intoxication with its own sense of importance in the affairs of the world.

Following the recent scandal around the late Jimmy Saville, an allegedly notorious paedophile, last week the BBC’s (formerly) respected News Night programme found itself in very hot water(again) by “outing” a senior political figure in all but name, and accusing him of paedophilia. Incorrectly. Without any reliable evidence. Without checking their story properly. Without giving the target of their attack even the courtesy of a response before airing their fictions. In complete disregard for even the most basic tenants of fairness and proper journalism.
 

Only days ago ITV also pulled a similarly shameful stunt where a shoddy and dubious list of alleged paedophiles was compiled by one of their “allegedly serious” presenters quickly searching the Internet for a few minutes and then chucking his “list” at the UK prime minister in a live television interview. This stunt was no more than shameless media bandwagon jumping and political game playing where trying to embarrass politicians is now the emblem of the serious news reporter. In this instance it backfired spectacularly, although the wretched ITV presenter in question will probably exercise a little more care and humility in future, given the volume of opprobrium he has so deservedly brought down on his head.

However, what journalists and news reporters are managing to do is rather amazing. They are on the verge of making themselves even more reviled than politicians – no easy task. And that is surely not as it should be. Yes, much of the media is probably over-powerful, irresponsible, arrogant and on the evidence, even out of control in many cases. Yet, in so many countries, it is the media that is the first line in defence against governments and other powerful organisations that would otherwise abuse their power without fear. It is the media’s spotlight that corrupt officials fear most. It is the media that exposes wrongdoing, crime, waste and inefficiency, oppression and state violence. Just think of Syria and Libya. In oppressive states, it is journalists that often suffer threats and violence for seeking to expose wrongdoing and abuse.  In this sense its value is hard to over-state. Yet there is a nagging worry about the media's own immense power too, for surely power corrupts all its handlers equally and none are immune.

About the most unfashionable thing to point out at the moment is that Jimmy Saville would have been considered innocent until properly proven guilty. Saville would also have had the right to a fair trial in a sober court of law. He may have been the world’s most monstrous paedophile and found to be so – but once we make exceptions to that right we are on a slippery slope.  That a man like Saville would still have had that right is the best guarantee of all our rights to such a fair process.

There is a risk now that people, more than ever before, are being judged in the inferno of hysterical headlines and disgraceful journalistic posturing. The role of the media is pivotal to the proper functioning of civil society. However, it has no role whatsoever in the weighing of evidence and the passing of judgement  under the law and should be scrupulously careful not to undermine this, one of the most basic and fundamental right in a free society.

VOYAGER 1 AND THE NEVER-ENDING JOURNEY

There are few things in life that truly justify the word “extraordinary”.  The Voyager space craft though are most certainly among them.

Voyagers 1 and 2 are small, now rather primitive space probes that, at their launch way back in 1977, weighed in at just over 800kgs each. Built with early 1970s technology and nuclear powered, they were designed to visit Jupiter and Saturn and then, just perhaps, go a bit further depending upon how long their plutonium lasted. No doubt ambitious at the time, their journeys have now become quite the most extraordinary odysseys whose scale and duration are moving beyond our ability to comprehend in terms of time and distance.

For instance, when Voyager 2 reached Uranus in 1986, NASA estimated it was about 120 miles of its pre-planned course.  At the time scientist Carl Sagan compared this to the equivalent of throwing a pin through the eye of a needle that was 50 km away. But for Voyagers 1 and 2 such statistical miracles are now common place.

But amidst the near statistical impossibilities, there is poignancy too. The last picture ever taken by Voyager 1 was to look back over its shoulder for one final glimpse of our solar system though which it had travelled so far. Even then, the picture showed our sun as just another star in Voyager’s sky, so far had our intrepid explorer travelled from home.  That was 22 years ago. Voyager’s camera has been still ever since. Yet, its other tiny measurement systems, ancient by today’s technological standards, continue to send almost impossibly faint signals home, whispered data steams arcing back over tens of billions of  miles, telling a story of a journey into the true unknown. However, scientists reckon that by 2025 the last of its instruments will fall into silence and Voyager will be, finally and utterly, alone as its last link with earth is lost.

Already though, for the Voyagers the outer planets of our solar system are long distant memories. Voyager 1 is now passing out of our solar system. Last month (October 2012) evidence emerged to show that Voyager 1 was entering deep, interstellar space, the first human made object ever to do so. In cosmological  terms, I guess you could consider it to be leaving the local neighbourhood.

As it does so, Voyager 1 is now on the verge of entering what is known as the Oort cloud, a vast area of space debris and comets, ever so loosely kept in orbit by the sun’s faint and fading gravity. Passing through the cloud, which hopefully it will do without incident, may take it up to 28 000 years. In terms of the journey that awaits Voyager 1 however, this will be no more than the blinking of an eye. Thereafter, it will continue into the nothingness that is interstellar space, a tiny mote of ancient technology moving in a near infinite gulf of emptiness.

For Voyager though time will have for all intents and purposes stopped. Perhaps, long after our sun has exploded and consumed earth and all trace of life here have vanished forever, Voyager will still be on its eternal passage across the void and into infinity.  It is destined to be a lone ambassador carrying with it the simple story of our race, with its gold record of earth recordings from the sound of whales whistling to greeting in a number of earth languages through to Chuck Berry rockin’ out to Johnny B Goode.

Yet amidst the marvels of Voyager 1, there is room for a little retrospective irony too. Aboard there are printed messages dated 1977 from the US President Jimmy Carter and U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim. Should space faring aliens ever encounter Voyager, little would they know these noble missives penned on behalf of planet earth and the human race are being conveyed from possibly the feeblest ever leader of a distant planet’s super power, and the other from a man subsequently outed as a former Nazi?

Yet the chances that alien eyes and ears will ever experience our long lost messages, is a near impossibly small probability. Moving at 37 500 miles an hour, its unlikely Voyager will ever be disturbed again; an infinitesimally small frozen dot of wires and metal on an extraordinary, never ending journey to the stars.