White Line Fever: Lemmy: The Autobiography Read Online Free PDF

fucking did.’ John went after him and BAM, gave him the Liverpool kiss, sticking the nut on him – twice! And the kid went down in a mass of blood, snot and teeth. Then John got back on the stage.
    ‘Anybody else?’ he asked. Silence. ‘All right then. “Some Other Guy”.’
    The Beatles opened the door for all the bands that came out of that area. It was like Seattle became in the early nineties – the record labels came up and signed everything that moved. Oriole Records held an audition session in a ballroom that lasted for three days. They set up some equipment and seventy-something bands went through and played one song each and the label signed about half of them.
    Epstein had other bands besides the Beatles. One of the few he had that didn’t make it was called the Big Three. Johnny Gustafson, who later was in Quatermass, Andromeda, and then the Merseybeats, played bass. The band had a fantastic guitar player, Brian ‘Griff’ Griffiths who had this old, beat-up Hofner Colorama – a horrible fucking guitar with a neck like a tree trunk, but he played unbelievably. And the drummer, Johnny Hutchinson, did all the singing, which was unheard of then – a drummer singing? They were an excellent R&B band, but they got emasculated by the business. The band put out one record that they were happy with, but it didn’t make it, so after that they were stuck with two Mitch Murray titles – he wrote a lot of those saccharin-sweet pop songs (one of them was ‘How Do You Do It?’ for Gerry and the Pacemakers). Those didn’t go anywhere, either, so Epstein dropped them. It was a shame ’cause they were a great band.
    I suppose you could say that these bands were my peer group, a few years older than me, maybe. And I was in bands myself all this time, of course. You were no doubt wondering when I would get around to that. I already had been through the usual local band thing back in Wales, but in those days, putting together a group wasn’t easy. You couldn’t get equipment for a start. Whether a guy was going to play bass for you rested mainly on if he had a bass or not, not if he was a good player. And if he had an amp you could all plug into, he was definitely in. It was primitive shit. I was lucky to have my Hofner Club 50 guitar. I saw it hanging in this music store, Wagstaff’s, inLlandudno. Old man Wagstaff – he was about 107 and he was an all right guy. He ran an old-fashioned store that would let you take things on spec – put a few quid down and he’d hold it for you for ever. Needless to say, he went out of business. His son took over and immediately sold the fucking store! I think it became a ladies’ lingerie shop.
    It was after seeing Oh Boy (possibly the best rock show ever) and 6–5 Special (which wasn’t!) I was driven to be a guitar slinger. There weren’t many players around in Wales. You’d hear about somebody three villages up who had a guitar and you’d go and interview him. I met Maldwyn Hughes somewhere in Conwy when I was living there – he was a drummer (or, he had a drum kit!). He played in a dance-band style – brushes and riveted cymbal – but he was okay for then. We got a guy he knew, Dave (his last name escapes me, but he came to a Motörhead gig last year!), who was a good guitarist, but a horrendous person. He had green teeth, and his father, a failed comedian on the dinner club circuit, was always around cracking these rotten jokes. Dave, however, thought his old man was hilarious and would quote him when he wasn’t there. At first we called our band the Sundowners, then our second name was the DeeJays.
    My first show in front of people was in a basement caff in Llandudno. My big moment was singing ‘Travelin’ Man’, a song by Ricky Nelson who, incidentally, was a real good singer, and as handsome as few thousand motherfuckers. Otherwise, we did a lot of instrumentals by people like the Shadows, the Ventures, Duane Eddy, stuff like that. Around the same time I