Film Review: Lemmy
February 7 2011 at 06:19:12 AM  Wanna buy a frog!?
It’s often considered sound advice to stay clear of meeting heroes in person should reality demolish one’s dearly held impressions. But I think there at least you’d have the benefit of replacing one perception with another still your own. More harmful it seems would be having that image built up by someone else. So better still I say to never watch any film produced for the general public about anyone or anything you care about. There are exceptions, you might say. For every Some Kind of Monster there is a Story of Anvil. Somewhere in the middle is Lemmy, a fawning documentary about an influential if still noticeably underappreciated musician, to put it as mildly as I experienced it both times. There is no rise, no fall, no drama, no argument, no lessons (I suppose, thankfully), and little insight to come away with in just under two hours worth of sit down interviews and, we’re told, the loudest music ever performed on record. If you like to gamble, I tell you I'm your man
You win some, lose some, it's - all - the same to me No soft landings either for those who’ve suspended their impression via vinyl photographs of dusters or iron crosses. Remember the man existed before the song. The trouble here is: how do you make an interesting film about someone who still lives by that infamous credo? Turns out there are at least a couple of ways. In 2003, Britain’s Channel 4 T.V. station aired Lived Fast, Die Old, a much shorter, stronger program following Motorhead and frontman Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister on their way back to Hammersmith, where twenty years prior they recorded the live album that charted #1 in the U.K. Lemmy, then 57, still sharp and acid-tongued, bristled often at personal questions, but answered honestly even as he readied each response with a quip. That the journalist travelling with the band was a woman also added a good amount of tension between the camera and subject, who according to legend has been with thousands along the way. Most importantly, the feature took Motorhead on their own terms, insulated the viewer in their own world on the road, where they really did seem every bit as bad ass and son of bitch as the new documentary by first time feature directors Greg Olliver and Wes Orshoski promotes without so much as a bad word said against them much less the guts to show friends and associates chopping their breakfast on a mirror. Lemmy finds Kilmister in what is arguably the twilight of his career, speaking through a diabetic wheeze how he’s never made his millions, but still trying, but not really. When we drop in on Lemmy’s life in his bombed out apartment off the sunset strip, Motorhead are readying the release of their nineteenth album Motorizer, a record we already know won’t make, break, or change a thing, save getting the band back on the road, and Lemmy out of his grizzly-like state of strip-joint semi-hibernation. That’s as much of plot as there is, told by a familiar cast of more famous talking heads in their L.A. mansions and famous-by-association VH1 house pets like Scott Ian. I’ll admit I was never fascinated by what made Lemmy tick, and even less by the knowledge the old outlaw actually has a heart of gold. Just fuckin’ glad he existed. But for those keeping score the formula is told consistently: Deadbeat father, a young dead girlfriend, the Beatles, drugs, women. What more needs to be mined from such a famously uncomplicated guy? Well, nothing actually. Isn’t that why we love him and Motorhead in the first place? All that bogus complexity and touchy feely shit killed the best bands of the 80’s. Thirty years in the business with nearly as many albums, some good, some bad, others great, and aside from some singles made for quick change, not one is an embarrassment. Just turn it up, crank it out, and get back on the bus. When you realize that, it’s easy to see why the earlier, one hour production is so superior. With so much ass-licking on camera it’s not even fair to credit Lemmy with demystifying a legend; those moments which momentarily bring the god down from the mountain we’ve fashioned happen almost purely by accident and viewer introspection. Maybe, like I did, you’ll momentarily see something of yourself as Lemmy talks excitedly, once with Billy Bob Thornton and later with Dave Grohl, about Elvis and the start of rock 'n roll and the voice of Little Richard before being shown up with stories from the mega-stars who actually got to meet him, if briefly, before being reminded their only talking to a former roadie for Hendrix whose old enough to remember a world before rock n roll. And that’s the point of it all, really. That all these talking heads rolled out one after another wouldn’t exist without him. As a friend of mine asked, “Does Lemmy really need a 2 plus hour doc to tell us how fuckin' badass he is? No. Does he deserve one? Fuck yeah.” A legend for being one of the first icons of a new era in music, surviving it and remaining today as the genuine artifact, Lemmy ain’t never changed, only the way he’s used and interpreted. His repulsive junk-hoarding, video-gaming and lonely attachment to slot-machines (we never actually hear from any woman who’ll admit to fucking him), which passed seen but unspoken in the early documentary, now take a far more prominent role on screen, become some poignant metaphor for who he is; alone with his book, in his dressing room, waiting to go on stage. You know I'm born to lose, and gambling's for fools,
But that's the way I like it baby, I don't wanna live forever, And don't forget the joker! Maybe there is more attachment to these objects in old age as the tour bus appears noticeably quieter at night. Maybe they were more interested in playing up an image more strongly before. Maybe the Brits are just more sensational. Maybe if things were different he’d be writing columns for some WWII quarterly and not belting out some nerdy viking dream on stage every night. …and then there’d be no Metallica. Sad way to look at it, huh? I suppose that’s how you get the kids interested though. You’ll notice every teenage fanatic who talks about the band here is not American. But to me, speaking most unexceptionally, to consider the force behind “Damage Case,” “The Claw,” “Capricorn,” “Overkill,” “Deaf Forever,” “Time We Left This World Today” – that’s all the reason needed right there. There was a moment, not any moment in particular, quite early on when I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I had actually seen Lemmy. This Lemmy, I mean. When you survey the faces on camera it’s almost bankable the tough old bastard’ll outlive Duff McKagan, but it’s no longer amusing to watch him defy medical science. There’s some words on mortality, stupid questions like what keeps him going. Start to wonder if the irony of the song’s ever haunted him. Perhaps less than it will everyone else. How can you feel old as long as Lemmy’s still on stage? Something tells me we’ll each find a way to keep the train a rollin.’ [Todd DePalma]
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One unintentional outcome - if you watch Lemmy's face for 3 hours he seems old, ill and decaying.
This review rules! Spot on.