Count Motorhead

I had the privilege of seeing Motorhead play live, once, some time in the mid-90s at one of Glasgow University's two student unions. It was pretty great. I was very sad to hear of his passing. Having Lemmy in the world was one of the few things that made having to live through the Eighties bearable (shit music, shit fashion, at least in the mainstream).

I've long been a fan of the band Hawkwind, for whom Lemmy was also, for a number of years, the bass player. It's hard to think of an appropriate tribute to such a remarkably iconic figure, since everyone and their Granny has by now posted videos on Facebook of the band playing Ace of Spades or Killed by Death or even Silver Machine when he was still in his old band.

Few people are aware Lemmy was also a character in a novel. A really, really terrible novel called The Time of the Hawklords, purportedly co-written by Michael Moorcock (who had some involvement with the band) and Michael Butterworth in the mid-70s. A quick google reveals something I didn't know: Moorcock had nothing to do with it, and worked hard to disown the book.

Having read it, or at least a fat chunk of it, I really don't blame him. The writing is amateurish at best, and there's no trace of anything that might have come from Moorcock's hand.

Weirdly enough, my memory informs me that the plot featured the characters roving a largely depopulated Earth, the majority of the species having opted instead to go and live inside a vast virtual reality. In other words, it's a work of singularity science fiction before anyone started using that word in that context, and does indeed contain Lemmy in the form of a character known as - wait for it - Count Motorhead.

You could track it down and read it, but you wouldn't thank me.