Motorhead

Manchester Apollo,

Monday 13 October 2003

With Motorhead you get exactly what you pay for: extreme high volume and very little sophistication of any kind. I was disappointed in only one respect and this was the rather obvious one that it wasn't the classic line up. In many ways that's a bit of a spurious complaint any way since this current line up has been together for something like 15 years or more! Motorhead's glory days were built around the "Ace of Spades" album, and Lemmy, Fast Eddie Clarke and Philthy Animal Taylor and this was the precise time when I bought the album and nearly blew my headphones apart! There was thus a lot of nostalgia involved, even if a little imperfect. It was also a bit of a lifetime's ambition to go to a Motorhead concert because they have always represented the ultimate in ultra  loud heavy metal, and with stories of bleeding ears abounding, I have always wondered how I would cope. As it happened, it was no problem whatsoever, it was of course comfortably the loudest concert that I have been to, but many hours on my headphones in my youth had amply prepared me for it. To be fair, my bigger worry was not physical discomfort, but of it being so loud as to degenerate into white noise. The latter didn't happen, but it must be said that the tracks I didn't know just tended to be "noise". The reputation for noise seemed to be responsible for the slightly strange demographic of the audience too. The bulk of course were sad clapped out middle aged blokes like me, with beer bellies, but there was a strange smattering of students, who appeared to have come to experience the Motorhead experience, or more likely, for a "dare". The experience was obviously a bit too much for a good few of the young darlings though, who were seen heading for the exits and some blessed quiet after the first few songs. The concert was good from another point of view too, as it reminded me that Motorhead were not only seminal in being the musical inspiration for generations of heavy rock, but for being virtual style gurus too. Liam Gallagher for one certainly owes a lot to Lemmy. The lack of showmanship plus the arrogant swagger is very noticeable. Coming on stage smoking, and enjoying pints throughout are certainly not the most politically correct things to do these days! Funnily though there was a heart-warming throwback to their true rock roots: as with Deep Purple and Yes there was plenty of time for the rather quaint tradition of a solo for each band member. The drum solo was brilliant, Lemmy's bass and vocal solo rather less so. As for the songs, as I said, you get what you pay for. As their hey day has gone a good while ago, there were a few tracks I didn't know, but thankfully most were from their glory days, and Ace of Spades is one of the best rock tracks ever, acknowledged even by serial anti heavy metal exponents. In short, everything I expected, no sore ears but joyous high volume. (26.10.03)