Incredible as it may seem, the mighty Motörhead are now a staggering 25 years old — and looks like they may manage another 25 if mainman Lemmy has anything to do with it! As such a long-running rock'n'roll institution they have gone through several incarnations. The so-called 'classic' line-up featured guitarist 'Fast' Eddie Clarke and drummer Phil 'Philthy Animal' Taylor.

Then we saw ex-Thin Lizzy guitarist Brian Robertson replace Clarke long enough to feature on the 'Another Perfect Day' album, before the mid-Eighties brought in ex-Saxon drummer Pete Gill along with guitarists Wurzel and Phil Campbell. Arguably the band seem to function best as a three-piece and Campbell is still a member of the current line-up along with long-serving drummer Mikkey Dee.

Naturally, Lemmy has been the focus and main motivator behind the band through thick and thin with his sole desire to deliver the ultimate rock experience and have a bloody good time while doing it. Metal-Is' Valerie Potter recently caught up with Lemmy in London to get his current perspective on the band's past and also to try and find out a little bit more about the man behind the legend.

Does it seem like 25 years?

Lemmy: No — it seems like 45 years! No, you don't know, you don't realise. Twenty-five years — it's ridiculous, isn't it? Who was ever planning for that? I didn't start Motörhead 'til I was 30, so I thought three years tops, if we were lucky, and there you go, you see — so much for planning! (laughs) So much for malice aforethought! And different incarnations of Motörhead have been different phases of several years, so it's like a lot of bands, really. I mean, Eddie and Phil were one band and then Robbo was another band, so it's been like being in a lot of different bands.

You're going to be celebrating your anniversary with a show at Brixton Academy in October. Are you planning anything special for it?

Aw, Christ, I don't know. We were supposed to be getting the bomber out, but I don't know if we still can. It's holding up the shed where it was stored in Essex. They had a storm, right, and the fuckin' shed collapsed, and the bomber's holding up one end of it, so without major reconstruction, I don't know if we can get it out! Cheaper to build a new one, eh?

Going back to when you first started Motörhead, what kind of band did you want it to be?

Offensive, mainly.

Which is presumably why you originally called it 'Bastard'?

Yeah — I just wanted to offend people's parents and be that band that they feared and that they thought their daughter was on her knees in the tour bus with. I just wanted to piss everybody off — and we certainly managed that! (laughs)

In your early days, in the mid-Seventies, you were lumped into the punk movement, weren't you?

We weren't lumped into it, we attracted the same audience. We attracted punks and long-hairs — we were the only ones that did, in fact. We always had gigs with the punk bands. There was the Damned, and us, and the Adverts on one show at the Roundhouse — which is very odd, given the time, because it was all 'Dump our flares/Cut my hair/It's not fair/I don't care'! (laughs) We were the only ones they tolerated with long hair, because we sounded like them. If we'd had short hair, we would have been in the punk bin. But everybody knows that if you have long hair, you have to be heavy metal, don't you? That's how smart they are! (laughs) We're just a rock and roll band, like a lot of them were. The Damned are a rock and roll band, but they're also the archetypal punk band. I thought they were much more punk than the Pistols — they had a quick shot and buggered off.

Was it a blow to you when Eddie and Phil left the band, breaking up what was considered to be the classic line-up?

Eddie left every three months anyway, all the way through the band. He was always leaving, so this time, me and Phil just said, "Fuck it, we're not talking him back into it this time!" So he went. Phil leaving was kind of odd — 'cause he left in the morning of the day we were supposed to be rehearsing the two guitar players for like a sudden death contest between the two of them. On the way to the rehearsal studio, me and our manager went round to his house, and he resigned. So I had to go on me own and say, "Oh, Phil's delayed!" Let's see — the biggest blow was probably firing Phil Taylor the second time, because I would never have done it if he was pulling his weight, but he wasn't, and I couldn't make him do it. Three warnings is enough, right? It's more than you get in day-to-day life, so we had to let him go. That was a blow, because I knew it was going to devastate him and it did and that really upset me.

Is there any chance that Eddie and Phil may get up and play with your this year?

Maybe. But we've gotta rehearse, I've gotta see if they can still do it. Because they've been off-duty for a long time. I'm not going to go on and have a worse version of that, 'cause that's killer, that's death. So if they're not better, they're not going.

What's been your favourite incarnation of the band?

This one — certainly. 'Cause there's only three of us, so we get more money! I liked the so-called 'classic' line-up as well, but like I said, to me, they've all been classic line-ups, in their own way.

What's the best party you've ever had while you've been a member of Motörhead?

Probably the one with the firebreathing strippers, I think. That was at Hammersmith, our tenth anniversary party. They were finding people in the gutters three days later!

What have been your best times with Motörhead?

Probably the first few months of when Phil and Wurzel and Pete Gill joined, 'cause we seemed to be laughing all the fucking time. It was great, they took ten years off me, because I was seeing it through their eyes and it was all new to them.

And the worst?

The worst was the end of the Robbo period, when he was just being a twat all the time and I couldn't figure it out. We went to Glasgow and I went round his house. Him and his brother both suck their thumbs. On the way to gigs, he'd be (puts his thumb in his mouth). I said to his mum, "You know when Brian sucks his thumb?" She said, "Aye." And I said, "You know when he gets stubborn and he won't fuckin' listen to you?" She said, "Aye." I said, "What did you used to do?" She said, "I used to hit him!" Which probably explains a lot, doesn't it?!

Has it ever reached a point where it's been so bad, you've felt like knocking the band on the head?

No, never. Everybody else did, including our record company, but not me, See, if you quit, you've definitely got fuck all and you're going to have to start doing something else anyway, so you might as well do what you've got, which has got the name that's famous at least. I'm not going to start again, doing The Red Bull in Walthamstow — I'm not going to do it!

Do you think you will ever retire?

Well, not as such. Because I've got nothing better to retire to, you see. This is a pretty good life, travelling round the world and staying in nice hotels. All that stops immediately.

If you did decide to make a career change though, what would you do?

I'd have to go back to college. I'd be an archaeologist or anything to do with history. Journalism — I could have been a great writer.

You're a great one for reading, aren't you?

Reading's the greatest release — it's the only release. Because a movie, however good, is still somebody else's idea, whereas a book is all yours. People have given up reading.

But in the UK, business in bookstores is said to be booming in the last few years.

I know, but in what kind of book? Self-help and how to teach yourself shit. How to jog! They've got 'Walking' magazine now, did you know that? 'Walking' magazine! "This week, we're going to try one pace to the side and two paces forward!" What the fuck are you talking about?! You think you would have mastered that by now — to walk to the newsagent to get it, right?!

What are you reading at the moment?

I'm reading yet another biography of Hitler,1889-1936 — it's quite interesting. I dunno, I shouldn't talk about that, I've got enough problems with this shit already: "He's a Nazi!" (referring to a British music magazine's take on an interview in which he spoke about his collection of Third Reich memorabilia) But my girlfriend is black. I'm a really bad Nazi — you couldn't have taken her to the Nuremburg rallies! But Hitler is an interesting man. The trouble is that people don't realise he was only a man. He wasn't a monster, he wasn't made by symbiosis, he was a man, like everybody else. And that's the trouble, because when you realise that, then you have to examine yourself, 'cause he came from the same gene pool you came from. If you put him in the Monster Box, it's too easy.

In the past, you've taken cameo roles in films. Would you like to do more acting?

I can live without acting! It's fucking tedious, making a film. You have to be there at 4.30 or some ungodly hour in the morning, have a sausage roll and a cup of tea and then stand there all day and at 3.30 in the afternoon, they say, "We don't need you today." That's all I need to do — hang out with fuckin' actors!

Over the years, you've been involved with musical collaborations with the likes of Ozzy Osbourne, Slash, Girlschool and Wendy O'Williams. Is there anyone else you'd like to work with?

Dave Edmunds. We were supposed to do a thing together that never got done and Jeff Beck was supposed to do a thing as well. I would have loved to have done either or both of them, but it never happened. I wouldn't mind having another go with Girlschool.

Do you enjoy working with women?

I've done a lot of it. I just made a country single with a girl in LA and I just did a thing with Doro in Germany.

You have a reputation for being something of a ladies' man. Is it justified?

Oh yeah. Every chance I get. In fact, what are you doing later?! (laughs)

Obviously, Motörhead are such a legendary band now, they'll never be forgotten…

They'd better fucking not — or I'll come back and fucking haunt ya!

Are you proud of that?

Obviously, yeah. That's a kind of a redundant question. How we'll be remembered is another thing. It depends on what journalists get hold of. 'Cause after you're gone, you've got no control. Apparently, King John wasn't a very bad king and Richard III didn't murder the princes in the Tower — but look at all the bad publicity he got through Shakespeare working for the Tudors!

How do you think you've managed to survive so long, both personally and in terms of your career?

Well, I've always wanted to do this, ever since I saw Cliff Richard and The Shadows on TV. You're surrounded by women, you get to wear flash clothes, you can have your hair how you fucking want it and you get to go to different exotic countries and pull girls there. I've done it and I'm very privileged. Not many people get to stay in it this long; they're over and they can't cope with being over, so they never rise again. There's a lot of people slicing bacon and making car parts for a living who were better musicians than me. I just persevered, 'cause I loved doing it. That's it. Depressingly simple, not much of a story there, but that's what it is.

Finally, do you have any advice for musicians starting out today?

No. Do the best you can, that's all I say. Don't pay any attention to what anybody else ever says; only the band knows what they're doing.