Motorhead and L7 may represent different generations, genders, and cultures, but the musical kinship between them is etched in stone. Those about to rock salute each other.

By Sandy Masuo. Interview by Lemmy Kilmister. Photographs for Request by Alison Dyer.

Legend has it that L.A. rockers Donita Sparks and Suzi Gardner formed L7 in 1985 after a five-day speed binge during which they listened to nothing but the title track from Motorhead's Orgasmatron, "Orgone Accumulator" by Motorhead progenitor Hawkwind, and "Sex Bomb" by San Francisco punk band Flipper.

The members of L7, like Motorhead before them, have dedicated themselves to rock so staunchly elemental that it defies labels like "punk" and "metal". L7's raucous reputation is based, in large part, on a devastating live show, and like its forebear, the band spent years trying to capture that energy on a studio album. At long last it has succeeded. Produced by L7, Joe Barresi, and Rob Cavallo (Green Day), The Beauty Process: Triple Platinum strikes a perfect balance between crafty compositions and exuberant playing.

With L7 having recorded an album that finally does its justice and accepted a high-profile opening slot on Marilyn Manson's current tour, the time seemed right to bring the band's members together with one of their heroes. As it turns out, Motorhead main man Lemmy Kilmister has been an L7 fan since the release of the band's 1991 debut EP, Smell the Magic, and an air of mutual admiration looms around the free-ranging conversation. Over an assortment of beverages and an endless chain of cigarettes, Sparks, Gardner, and drummer Dee Plakas (L7's new bass player, Gail Greenwood, is out of town) compare notes and tattoos with the transplanted Welshman at the Rainbow Bar & Grill in his adopted home turf of Los Angeles.

Lemmy: What's the biggest single influence on you ever? How'd you choose your lifestyle, what you do, what you think?

Plakas: Oh, Jesus.

Sparks: That's a fuckin' tough one.

Plakas: Song or single?

Lemmy: Not necessarily musical. What was the biggest single influence on you — why do you live like you live? Who was it that made you do that?

Gardner: Too hard.

Lemmy: No, it's not too hard.

Sparks: Could you answer that question?

Lemmy: Yeah.

Plakas: Who was your person?

Lemmy: Buddy Holly.

Sparks: Really?

Lemmy: That was when my life changed, you know.

Sparks: All right. Then I will say Joey Ramone, because I think he's got a sense of humour and I think he totally rocks.

Lemmy: He understands rock 'n' roll.

Sparks: He understands rock 'n' roll, and he also has a heart.

Lemmy: Still.

Sparks: Yeah. I dig him a lot, and back when I first heard the Ramones, that was, like, a life-changing experience for me.

Lemmy: Me too, absolutely.

Plakas: For me, my life changed when I started listening to punk rock. I mean the Ramones were a big favourite band of mine, but...

Lemmy: Just the thing itself.

Plakas: Just the whole musical idea of it is what gave me the inspiration to play drums. It was like, "Oh, I could do this," yo know. So punk rock changed my life.

Lemmy: It's like, "I have to do this," isn't it?

Plakas: Yeah. I can do this, you know.

Lemmy: No, but whether you can or not, you have to do it. It's not like a career move, it's a vocation. Like the priesthood, you know. [to Gardner] What about you?

Gardner: Oh God, I don't know. It just would be when I heard rock 'n' roll music when I was a kid.

Lemmy: No particular artist?

Gardner: When I was really little, I think who made me want to rock was probably the Rolling Stones. Just that whole mystique and how good they were and...

Lemmy: The sleaze factor.

Gardner: The sleaze factor. Like, Jagger and Richards I think were really just so cool.

Lemmy: They pissed your mom and dad off the worst.

Gardner: Yeah. They were why my mom wouldn't let me sleep with the radio under my pillow, because I was getting told satanic messages. My radios kept disappearing. And as it went on, you know, just all the other great things that happened in rock: the Sex Pistols, Motorhead, on and on and on and on. L.A. punk rock.

Lemmy: L.A. punk rock was very good for a while there wasn't it? I don't know what happened to L.A. I think L.A. sort of bit itself to death, you know what I mean? They got worried about whether they should be changing, and then they did, without thinking of any [better goals].

Sparks: So, Buddy Holly and who else?

Lemmy: Buddy Holly changed me when I started, but then it was Little Richard, Eddie Cochran... and that was the first wave. Then the Beatles came. I was a Beatles person, see. Or, I was a Beatles man. It's funny isn't that? Like, "chairperson". What the fuck is that? Is it a man or a woman? If it's a man it should be a chairman, if it's a woman it should be a chairwoman. I don't like this "person" shit. Like "person-hole cover", you know. Excuse me?

Sparks: Person-hole cover? [laughing]

Lemmy: Yeah, they do that. How about "sefem" instead of "semen", so you won't have to worry about the "men" in it?

Sparks: Seamen?

Lemmy: Yeah, sefem.

Sparks: Seafem? Like a military person?

Lemmy: No, like come. Sefem instead of semen. Is that fucking pathetic?

Sparks: [laughing] I thought you were talking about a Navy person, like a sailor.

Lemmy: [laughing] There you go. You've been too long away from it.

Sparks: I know, no shit.

Lemmy: [laughs]

Sparks: Oh, Lemmy, you can see right through me.

Lemmy: Are you fucking tired of being expected to be rabid feminists even if you're not in the mood? Like when you don't want to talk about it at all and that's the first question. Is it still?

Sparks: Yes, it is. Sometimes. It's some of our baggage that we have to fuckin' tote around.

Lemmy: You have no idea, when you pick that shit up, that you'll have to carry it the rest of your life.

Sparks: Yeah. I mean, we are feminists, but that's not really our agenda. Our agenda is to rock.

Lemmy: You can't help yourselves. You have to say what you're thinking at the time. And then they just write the fucker and that's it forever.

Plakas: Right. You want to talk about your music, and they want to talk about your political stance on things.

Lemmy: Do you think, perhaps, you're overdoing this "we are not sex objects" thing?

Sparks: Overdoing it? But we are sex objects.

Lemmy: Everybody is.

Plakas: People hate us 'cause we're beautiful all the time.

Lemmy: Everybody is a sex object to somebody.

Sparks: They want to kick our ass cause we're so goddamn sexy.

Lemmy: Once you say you're not going to be one, you sort of get webbed up in it though. It's like that feminist thing. Everybody concentrates on that. Like, "Look how unsexy they look." Do you know what I mean?

Sparks: Well, I think we're just the way we are, and there are probably some people out there who do think we're sexy and...

Lemmy: The trouble is they aren't sexy [laughter all around].

Lemmy: Who does most of the lyrics?

Sparks: Suzi and I.

Lemmy: [Judging from the lyrics] we haven't been that lucky in relationships, have we?

Sparks: [using a Homer Simpson voice] Doh! [laughter] In love relationships and in general relationships, you know what I mean? We feel disappointed by a lot of people. I think the human race is pretty crap.

Lemmy: I went past that. I'm starting to feel outraged and disgusted by it. "Disappointed" didn't last long with me.

Sparks: Well, "disappointed", I suppose, is a charitable word.

Lemmy: Far too charitable. I fucking hate them sons of bitches.

Gardner: Bitterness is sinking in.

Lemmy: You've got to make it humorous, though, you see.

Sparks: Yeah, yeah. Which we do.

Lemmy: You have to do that or else you're dead. Because if I hadn't got that black English sense of humor, I'd have been gone by now.

Plakas: Yeah. You gotta laugh to keep from cryin'.

Lemmy: The tears of a clown...I always hated that fucking song.

Sparks: Lemmy, are you in a relationship?

Lemmy: No, I have the same luck with you guys there. Hopeless.

Sparks: All right, what is Lemmy short for?

Lemmy: It's not. My name is Ian.

Sparks: But how'd you get Lemmy?

Lemmy: 'Cause I used to say, "Lend me a quid till Friday" to everybody. And I made a joke out of it and it's been backfiring on me ever since.

Lemmy: Rock For Choice, right? I was in England, as you know, for years, and we must have played the most benefits I've ever seen any band play. We played for the Stoke-Newington Eight and people like that who nobody else had heard of before except for the Stoke Newington Eight. We did all these fucking benefits, and we found out that most of the money just went in the pockets of the people who put it on. Do you watch where the money goes?

Plakas: With Rock For Choice?

Lemmy: Yeah. Are you after it? Cause you've got to be after it, cause they'll fuckin' rob you — all them friends of yours that are doing it for you.

Sparks: We know where the money goes, and the office it's out of is a nonprofit organisation.

Lemmy: I know, but that won't stop people from skimming some of the cream off.

Sparks: I don't think anybody's skimming.

Lemmy: I would hate to think so, believe me. In my case, we found all our friends that we'd known for years and trusted with our lives — you know, once you trust 'em with five thousand bucks they immediately got venal and fucking grabbed it.

Sparks: One of the women who is charge of Rock For Choice is also in charge of the Feminist Majority Foundation and donated 30 million of her own dollars to get RU486 into the country, so she's...

Lemmy: She's great.

Sparks: She's awesome.

Lemmy: I'm talking about the [briefcase manager]... when you see the guy going out the door with a little case at four in the afternoon, you have to watch that shit.

Sparks: I think they're fine upstanding people.

Lemmy: Hey, look, I hope you're right.

Sparks: Now the other benefits we played — you know we've played a shitload of benefits for other organisations, too — we don't really know.

Lemmy: Friends of the Earth was our bloody staple. We were down in bloody Cornwall every three months.

Sparks: Lemmy, I had no idea that you played so many benefits. That's awesome.

Lemmy: That's why I don't do any now. 'Cause we found out that the people get about a quarter of the money that we fucking worked for, so I just got completely pissed off.

Sparks: I can see how.

Lemmy: Well, it is kind of depressing.

Sparks: Yeah, very much so.

Lemmy: Like that Live Aid thing: They got all the food, but when they got it [to Ethiopia], nobody'd thought to buy trucks, so it rotted on the wharf.

Gardner: That's awful.

Lemmy: Disgraceful. I'd be interested in doing a Rock For Choice benefit, actually.

Sparks: That would be awesome.

Lemmy: I would because you know most of the press has got this idea that Motorhead are like these sexist fuckin Hell's Angels or something. I took the first all-girl band [Girlschool] out on tour in England. We gave them the break 'cause I always said, if they're good enough to play on stage, they're good enough to be forgotten about, as far as that goes.

Lemmy: If you had to be an animal, what kind of animal would you be?

Sparks: Oh, this is such a Barbara Walters question.

Lemmy: No, I want to know, really. What kind of animal would you be?

Plakas: OK, what kind of animal would I be?

Lemmy: I'll give you an idea: I'd be a fucking wolverine, 'cause nobody fucks with them. They'll eat the legs out from under you as you're charging, you know. Horrible little bastards. I'd be one of them 'cause you'd get very little trouble.

Sparks: I'd be a seed-eating bird.

Lemmy: Would you?

Sparks: Yes.

Lemmy: Wolverines would kill you.

Sparks: I'd fly away from them.

Lemmy: Not if two of them got in the way, one on each side — difficult to pop up into the air.

Sparks: I'd want to be a seed-eating bird because then I could fly and I wouldn't have to eat any worms.

Gardner: See, if we're talking about animals here, we don't want to think about reentering back into the food chain.

Lemmy: Don't we?

Gardner: No, you're describing it like we have to enter back into the food chain. That scares me.

Lemmy: Everything is the food chain. You're sitting on the food chain. I mean, you can't help it. There it is.

Gardner: God, I don't know. Dee, do you know what animal you'd be?

Plakas: I think I'd be some sort of a cat. A big cat.

Lemmy: A snow leopard. They're good.

Plakas: Yeah, like some kind of a leopard. I'd be a...

Sparks: But then you'd have to eat the wildebeest.

Lemmy: No, no, not the snow leopard. The snow leopard lives right above the snow line.

Sparks: What do they eat?

Gardner: Rabbits. You'd eat rabbits. Snow rabbits.

Lemmy: OK [turns to Garnder], what about you? You'd have to be a neutered pussycat if you don't want to get into the food chain.

Gardner: Yeah, I think I'd be a house cat.

Lemmy: That's a pretty cushy job, isn't it? Just lay around on the sofa and put on weight all day.

Gardner: Probably not a good chance of reentering into the food chain.

Lemmy: Everything is the food chain. Believe me, we are in it. That's why we've got teeth.

Lemmy: When I was with the Rockin' Vicars in '66, '67, I couldn't play lead. See, I was supposed to be the lead guitarist, so I faked it. I auditioned during a gig — most of us did in those days. So I set the fuzz on full and the volume on full and I just hit it very hard and moved my fingers about very fast, and I jumped on the piano and that collapsed, and I smashed me guitar on it, and they thought it was fucking huge. They said, "Hire him" on the spot, and I played with them for a year and a half, and I never played any lead worth a damn, but I was good spectacle, you see, and this is what they were looking for. So, what I wanted to say is it doesn't matter — playing a million miles a minute — 'cause it really isn't important. As long as what you do fits the song.

Gardner: That's kind of how I started playing lead, too — by faking it and seeing what sounded good. I've always admired, like, Keith Richards, who could play a one-note solo, like, play one note four times in a row, but the band has so much soul in it that one note captivates me way more than...

Lemmy: A million notes a minute.

Gardner: Yeah, with no soul.

Sparks: I've been fakin' my way for fuckin' years as far as playing lead.

Lemmy: Actually, we all are. I mean, I'm such a good guitarist I'm a bass player!

Sparks: Exactly. I really like a lead that you can sing, you know what I mean? As opposed to, like, deedle-deedle-deedle [singing a rapid flurry of notes]. I like a lot of guitar solos that are melodic, that you can sing and they're actually quite simplistic.

Lemmy: It can be two notes, if it's played right...The last song on your new album sounds like Hawkwind to me.

Sparks: "Lorenza, Giada, Alessandra" sounds like Hawkwind?

Lemmy: Yeah.

Sparks: All right. That's awesome! Does it sound like a specific Hawkwind song?

Lemmy: No, no. It sounds like what we used to do.

Sparks: But see, that didn't start out as anything really. Those are three Italian fans of ours, and I was trying to remember their names by just, like, repeating them over and over again, 'cause we were calling 'em up on stage and the only way for me to remember was to go, [chanting] "Lorenza, Giada, Alessandra," and then they were, like, clawing their way up to the front of the stage and we just started playing that song. So it's just a jam — it's repetitive and it's almost like a mantra or something, but, God, that it sounds like Hawkwind? That fuckin' rules!

Lemmy: Yeah, I mean, Dave [Brock] used a lot of fuzz guitar. I don't really use effects, but I used to have a side cabinet that was as good as the ones I have now, but it used to be fuzzier with Hawkwind, the three-piece rock 'n' roll band. The trouble was Nik Turner. You see, we couldn't get the saxophone off him, and when he had it he'd play it all the time. Even when he was singing he'd play it, you know.

Sparks: Did you see any of the Hawkwind Revisited tours?

Lemmy: Well, Nik Turner's going around calling himself Hawkwind, but he isn't. Dave Brock is Hawkwind. Dave's band would always be Hawkwind, whatever he calls it.

Sparks: That song you said sounds like Hawkwind? That's the only song we did completely live on the record. It sounds like a riot to me, like a riot's about to break out.

Lemmy: It sounds like you're enjoying yourselves.

Sparks: Definitely. Is your new album out yet?

Lemmy: Yeah, it's been out a couple months.

Sparks: What label is that on?

Lemmy: CMC [International]. We actually shipped the record before we signed with them, can you believe that?

Sparks: They were confident. Thank God it worked out.

Lemmy: [They] gave us the benefit of the doubt. We might not have signed. You don't get that anymore. I was impressed, and then they got into a [deal] with BMG, so now we've got distribution. We've sold 200,000 already. That's big for Motorhead in America, you know. Our last one sold 20,000.

Sparks: In the U.S.?

Lemmy: Yeah.

Sparks: Oh, you're fuckin' kidding.

Lemmy: Nobody buys our stuff. We're legends. That's the trouble with being a legend: Nobody buys your new shit.

Sparks: Thanks for writing such good questions.

Plakas: Yeah, they were really good questions.

Sparks: Thanks for fuckin' interviewing us.

Lemmy: I've never done it before.

Gardner: Really?

Plakas: We're your first?

Lemmy: You broke my hymen, baby.

Plakas: [cracks up]

Lemmy: I don't know what the fuck I'm going to do now. I want to get married one day and [you've] ruined it.