"Everything Louder Than Everything Else." The credo of legendary UK rockers Motorhead speaks, uh, VOLUMES about not just their music, but their entire over-the-top approach to existence itself. Whereas many loud-n-fast outfits often strike wild, outrageous poses, or die trying to live up to them, Motorhead guru Ian "Lemmy" Kilmister has, in his own words, "done most of it at least twice." And he's still living to tell the tale. To Lemmy, after 22 years with Motorhead alone, not to mention stints with Hawkwind and scores of lesser bands before it, "it's not a job, it's a life. This is what I am. I don't get to clock out. It's like a vocation..." He begins laughing. "Like the priesthood!"

Motorhead's impact on scores of aggressive Anglo bands is sizable, in rock sub-genres ranging from punk to speed metal, hardcore and grunge. And yet, they remain one of those monolithic, classic groups who most music listeners probably know only from jokey references in flicks like Airheads ("Trick question ­ Lemmy is God!") or from their crushing performance of "Ace of Spades" on the old "Young Ones" BBC TV show. They're not on the radio, they're not on MTV, and most major music magazines never cared about 'em at the peak of their popularity, let alone today. Where are the true Motorhead fans in America? For the most part they're in bands — bands like Metallica, whose drummer Lars Ulrich was the president of a Motorhead fan club while growing up ("He used to come around and see us when we played LA," recalls Kilmister. "I sent him a picture of the band once.") Or, they're simply longtime die-hard followers, the kind of regular rock 'n' rollers who could care less about trends or who's on the cover of Spin this month. The kind who stick with their favorite bands through thick and thin. The kind who are milling around downstairs at Masquerade the evening before Motorhead's recent show there, trying to act cool but ultimately unable to keep their eyes off the charismatic Kilmister ­ one of rock's true characters ­ who's standing six feet away from them, alone, smoking cigarettes and pumping quarter after quarter into the pinball machines and video games. (He'll eventually go through a couple of ten dollar rolls!) Even at 51, Lemmy's an unmistakable, somewhat imposing figure, dressed in black jeans, a belt made from bullet shells, black shirt, iron cross dangling from his neck, arms covered with tattoos, face covered with those beautiful warts. Yeah, it's him, all right, and he's still cool as fuck! Every now and then a group of fans'll brave a timid greeting to ask for an autograph or to take his picture, and he accommodates 'em all, with a natural good nature that betrays his image.

"I don't have a violent image," he insists. "I have a strong image. There's a difference; it's supposed to be loud, you know, rock 'n' roll's supposed to be offensive. What's the point of unaggressive rock 'n' roll? You'd rather hear the Carpenters or Bread? Or the fucking Cardigans?! Jesus..."

I've just let the man beat me in a game of pool (alright, he won fair and square, but his billiards skills are about as shoddy as mine!) and I've pried him away from the pinball machine long enough to conduct a semi-undisturbed interview backstage before their set tonight. He's relaxed after spending a few off-days hanging around Atlanta (mostly at The Cheetah, although he claims, with a wink, "the only thing we ever notice is [the dancers'] feet, anyway." Criminally, they're touring with W.A.S.P., and even worse, opening for them. Lemmy thinks it sucks, too, and doesn't mind saying so:

"W.A.S.P. is a prime example of what a band should not be," he snorts, berating their cartoonish frontman Blackie Lawless for taking himself far too seriously. Isn't it hard to take yourself seriously when you have a buzzsaw codpiece? I ask. "He doesn't have that anymore," Lemmy laughs. "He's got his ass hangin' out of his trousers with lavender panty hose over it!"

Luckily, I duck out immediately after Motorhead's deafening, crunching set, so I don't have to witness such a display. But it's clear that Lemmy'd rather be headlining, or touring with a band closer to their attitude, like for instance, the Ramones, who Motorhead has honored in song (the 1:25 "Ramones," from '91's 1916 album) and co-headlined with in Argentina in 1994 in front of 45,000 fans.

"If we didn't have long hair, we would've been a punk rock band, wouldn't we?" Lemmy asks, and while that might be an exaggeration, surely their honesty, street-level rawness and energy blew away many of the newly-emerging punk bands when Motorhead formed in England in 1975. "I always thought we had a lot more in common with The Damned than, say, Judas Priest or something," says Lemmy, and it's hard to argue with that. "We're not a heavy metal band. We're a blues band, if anything. We're blues influenced, we just do it fast and loud In the end, we just play Motorhead music. That's all we do. Nobody else plays it, right?"

Well, frankly I can't think of any other band who's collaborated with the aforementioned Damned, plus Nina Hagen, Girlschool, Wendy O. Williams, Ice-T, and Ozzy Osbourne. Still, despite the fact that Lars' band Metallica threw a huge party for Lemmy's 50th birthday in LA back in 1995, even getting onstage and plowing through a whole set of Motorhead covers, the multi-platinum Metallica sells out arenas while the band that helped inspire them plays medium-sized clubs and "can't sell our own shows out, and we have to tour with idiots like W.A.S.P." What gives?

"They're their age, you see," croaks Lemmy, who is amazingly level-headed about it all. "You need your own gang that's your age, and you need your own band from that gang, you know. That generation, I know how it works. I'm not bitter and twisted about it. I just think they're missing out, 'cause they aren't hearin' all this good music that we're puttin' out. But you can't force feed 'em... People just don't wanna buy our records, you know. That's the thing I've gotta live with. 'Cause our time was 1980, and people still think of us as being in 1980. I can't fight that."

Sure, Overnight Sensation, Motorhead's second album for CMC International (the BMG-distributed label that seems to be where all the old hair bands go to die), has a few damn good songs on it (namely the funny title track), and when asked, Lemmy cites recent Motorhead songs like "Sacrifice" and "Going to Brazil" as his favorites. But it's pedal-to-the-metal biker-rock classics like "Iron Horse," "Steal Your Face," "Overkill," and of course "Ace of Spades" (one of the best rock 'n' roll songs ever written) that even the most open-minded fans come to hear. And who can really blame them? Motorhead seems destined to be another of those bands that everyone raves about, but no one buys. "Yeah, like the MC5," he agrees. "It'll only be when I'm gone. Like, when I'm dead, we'll sell millions. Some other bastard'll get all the bread. I really don't mind one way or the other. I'm not philosophical about it at this age. I do very good rock 'n' roll, and I'll go on doing very good rock 'n' roll until it kills me. Which won't be very long," he coughs. "I've been smoking since I was nine." Ah, the secret to the gnarliest voice in rock 'n' roll is revealed! "It's just my Little Richard impression!" Lemmy laughs, citing one of his earliest influences.

"Kids have snot on their faces and scabs on their knees. That's what I was like," Kilmister says of his childhood. Growing up in Wales, an area which, it seems, breeds only the heartiest of souls, Lemmy says "there wasn't much room to be crazy" as teenagers. That is, until "we discovered acid and the birth pill at the same time. I rest my case... I always wanted to fuck everything that moved, you know. 'Course, I still do! Well, the change is, there's not as many young ones anymore. Actually, that's not true, I get more young ones! What a shame, I should really open my eyes, shouldn't I? The chicks've gotten better!"

Such wanton activity resulted in two children for Kilmister before 1968, at which time he presumably started being a little more careful. And while he never married ("The only mistake I didn't make,") he keeps in contact with the youngest of the two kids, now 30. By the late '60's, though, Lemmy's focus had been drawn to England's rock 'n' roll scene, and the fledgling young guitarist found himself in such forgotten bands as the Rockin' Vicars and Sam Gopal before hooking up with heavy space-rock crew Hawkwind in the summer of 1971. After penning a few of their more memorable songs, and switching from guitar to bass (which he plays like an amped-up rhythm guitar, anyhow), Lemmy was booted out of Hawkwind following a drug bust in 1975. After being told by his manager that "Bastard" was probably an unwise choice for his new group, Kilmister went with the name of his last song written for Hawkwind, "Motorhead." Perhaps tellingly, it was originally the B-side to a single called "Kings of Speed."

Motorhead's been associated with speed since say one, and not just because of the adrenaline in their music. In fact, right in the middle of our interview, Lemmy whips out a baggy of powdered amphetamine, dabs a small pile on the end of a finger, puts it in his mouth, and washes it down with a swig of Woodpecker cider, before fixing himself a large Jack and Coke. Yes, he still lives the life, and makes no apologies for it.

"I take speed, but I don't advise it," he says. "It doesn't agree with everybody, but it agrees with me. But you have to be careful about what is offered, and what you accept. 'Cause people'll give you anything. Junk, I'm talking." Otherwise known as heroin, probably the only drug that Kilmister's never done, and preaches against vehemently: "Turns you into a dog and kills you, or if it doesn't kill you it turns you into a carrier of disease. It just turns you into a big loser and a junkie, which is a great thing to be proud of. It's a bullshit drug, for a bullshit reason: to shut the world out. It's still gonna be there when you come around, anyway. Hello, hello, this is reality! If you can't handle it, you know, fucking blow your brains out, but don't fuck a lot of other people up... It is a bad drug, no doubt about it." In other words, don't make the mistake, like I did, of comparing Lemmy's survival to, say, Keith Richards'. "He's a mess, Keith. He made the wrong choice. He looks like he's been dead for 20 years.

"The Beatles were my biggest influence, really," he continues. "The Stones were the bad guys, but the Beatles were from Liverpool, which is comparable to, say, Newport News, as far as things to do in the evening. That was a hard city. The Stones were from the suburbs of London, fuckin' pussies! I mean, look at Mick Jagger? Y'ever seen 'im dance? Nobody would ever consider dancing like that in Liverpool. Never!"

With an often overlooked sense of humor that Kilmister describes as "creative lunacy," Motorhead has survived numerous lineup upheavals (current drummer Mikkey Dee ­ a typically cocky pounder who looks like he played with every spandex band in LA before getting this gig ­ has been with the band since '92, while guitarist Phil Campbell has been on board since '84), countless record labels, and yearly pop music trends that pass them by like worthless roadkill. But one thing Lemmy's never done is compromise his singular vision for his band in an attempt to jump-start dwindling sales. As he made clear earlier, they play "Motorhead music," and nothing else:

"What's the point? I'm not very fond of bullshit, as you've probably found out. There's no reason to jump on somebody else's music That's the idea of being a musician, to make your own music, not just slavishly copy somebody else's." Averaging about one new album a year (not counting the scores of compilations and reissues of their older material, to which Motorhead does not own the rights), Lemmy still feels that "our music is as valid now as it was then. It doesn't sound old-fashioned, what we do now."

With that optimistic note, I duck out so the band can prepare for its show. But before I leave, they somehow find time for yet more rock 'n' roll hedonism. Motorhead's road manager tromps into the dressing room, and Lemmy has a job for him: "Can you find out if any of my guests are out there?"

"What do they look like," asks the road manager.

"They look like strippers," comes the matter-of-fact reply. Still living the life...